Via Skeptical Science, Peter Sinclair's video on the evidence for man-made global warming.
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You know that whole "climategate" nonsense was settled, right? It was a ginned-up controversy with no merit, and the evidence still supports the conclusion of anthropogenic global warming.
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A very frequent whinge from climate change denialists is that the big bad environmental industrial complex is suppressing any dissent from the pre-approved party line. This is never accompanied by any actual evidence beyond an occasional anecdote.
One such anecdote emerged last June in what was…
The National Journal has released its annual survey of Congressional members on their views of climate science. When asked: "Do you think it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made pollution?," of the 38 Democratic members of Congress interviewed, 98…
Ideas that were once championed by evolutionists are no longer valid, much like the false science behind man-made global warming. Students deserve the truth.
That's from a guy running for school board in Wisconsin. Pharyngula has the details.
Shorter Hank Roberts @ 499: _I haven't read the thread either._
Brent,
Just finished reading this long series of comments and you've shown yourself to be completely and proudly ignorant. As others have corrected you on everything else, I'll correct you on something unrelated to climate change:
@344
No. The Cathars were the persecuted sect that was nearly wiped out during the Albigensian Crusade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathar
There are Cathars around today and they likely wouldn't appreciate being called "angry heretics". Funny, you pegged the wrong side as being "angry" and violent with the Cathars, you make similar mistakes in your other characterizations here.
You claim to be an engineer. Judging by your track record here, are you the engineer who designed Toyota's gas pedals?
Of course, as an engineer who dropped out of physics 'cause he couldn't understand the math, you're in good company. Here's a colleague of yours: http://www.timecube.com
Brent:
That's a funny one.
By the way again, Brent. Since you're such a big fan of Watts, you might like to help him out at Tamino's message to Anthony Watts where he asks Watts to apologise for lying about what NOAA did and accusing them of fraud. You don't want people to think you're a fan of a big liar, do you?
Jeff Harvey (494): "Brent gives the impression that the bulk of true academics are contrarians. This nonsense could not go unchallenged."
Jeff, I know the sceptics are in the minority. I haven't said such a thing. Maybe it's the "there must be people in the warming camp who are educated, sincere and well-informed" somebody plucked out of another site, where I was arguing for a little more understanding of your side.
If somebody were to write, "Now, surely the entire population of xxxx-country cannot be terrorists" or "Now, as far as we know there is not actually a man in the moon" in the course of making a point, and then have it quoted solo, well, you know...
Dave R (456): I must apologise for not reacting to the many links you posted in contradiction of large-scale solar forcing. I somehow missed your posting; my silence was not a deliberate rebuff, althogh I can understand that it appeared so. You also corrected me on the Solar Cycle No - the new one is 24, not 25, yep.
Lotharsson (462): Haven't yet read in detail the OpenMind link you kindly offered on the same theme. But I will.
I'll have to go quiet for a while, but may I leave you with this food for thought:
(i) In a magnificent piece on how glaciers work at
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/site/GSL/lang/en/page7209.html
the Geological Society's website (founded 1808) (the society, that is, not the website) says:
"All this suggests that the present climate has limited effect on melting ice and rising sea levels, but since the Alarmists keep up their horror stories it is good to know that even the present times are not all bad."
(ii) From RealClimate: "From studying all the available data (not just ice cores), the probable sequence of events at a termination goes something like this. Some (currently unknown) process causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later."
'Currently unknown', eh? Isn't that Gavin one of yours? Maybe call him some of the names directed at me here.....
The pygmy blowpipes will surely start shooting at me, but... could it be that the currently rising CO2 PPM is a consequence of the Medieval Warm Period 800 years ago?
[Brent](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…):
>could it be that the currently rising CO2 PPM is a consequence of the Medieval Warm Period 800 years ago?
No, and you've [already been told why](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…). But as usual with denialist loons you just repeat the same tripe again without reference to that rebuttal -- which in fact was also explained in the video that is the subject of this thread.
Rather than provide a link to explain why Brent's suggestion about the cause of rising CO2 is wrong, I'm just going to do the quick "layman's explanation" here.
Point one: Humans are emitting a whole lot of CO2 - in fact, somewhat MORE than the observed increase, although not a whole lot more. If the CO2 increase was caused by something else, what would you propose is happening to the CO2 that we're observably emitting?
Point two: By looking at the isotope ratios, we find that the C14/C13 ratio in atmospheric CO2 is shifting - there's less C14 and more C13 than there used to be, which is an indicator that the carbon being released is 'old' - the simplest explanation of that is that it's fossil fuels.
Now, yes, you could come up with alternative explanations to either point, I'm sure. But any such alternative explanations would be more complicated, and almost certainly wouldn't cover both points - so you'd need two separate explanations instead of one, which is again more complex, and thus Occam's Razor suggests you should just stick with the "we're causing it" explanation which is simple and consistent with all the observed facts.
There's no need to be rude to Bruce.
There are many things there is no need for, like Bruce's finger wagging.
Folks, I'm going to absent myself for a couple of days to do a lot of homework and just maybe see if the outside world is still there.
Interesting site you might want to see: It links to a great deal of evidential support for AGW:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
In a magnificent piece on how glaciers work
Gee, I wonder whether Brent's adjective has anything to do with the fact that the author is a rabid denialist. . [Here](http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/method/ollier20…) he likens "the greenhouse bandwagon" to "Lysenko pseudo-science".
Humans are emitting a whole lot of CO2 - in fact, somewhat MORE than the observed increase, although not a whole lot more.
I'd say that 11 gigatons in excess -- 42% of the total emissions -- is a whole lot more.
I'm with you on *main* concern, but not as the *only* concern - because it *does not work*.
The whole **point** of trolling is to derail and make ineffective the discussion at hand (by vandalising the commons, if that analogy works for you). And the tactics to achieve this have evolved to leverage the good will of people who are genuinely interested in the health of the discussion. In this sense trolling is a bit like a virus that leverages the resources of the host to attack the host (but of course, don't push the analogy too far).
If you want to avoid losing the commons to vandals, then you need effective counter tactics. AFAIK there are really only two - everyone ignores trolls (hard to achieve, and I speak as one who is less competent at this than others are), or trolls are called out early and often and in the worst cases are banned.
Brent,
Homework suggestion:
http://geoflop.uchicago.edu/forecast/docs/index.html
Humor suggestion:
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." - Mark Twain
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan
Don't be a Bozo.
Brent, if you were *actually* interested in figuring out *whether* the science holds up to scrutiny rather than trolling, then perhaps you'd start *actually scrutinising* the scientific case **from the fundamentals up**.
Informed skepticism requires *understanding* (and being able to honestly relate) the science that you're skeptical of and then explain what basis you have for skepticism. I'm not seeing much evidence of this in your case.
You, like nearly all "skeptics" are still trying to find/promote one little piece that you can pull out of the case to make the whole thing collapse like a house of cards - or at least a soundbite you can relate that you hope will give that impression to those that aren't that familiar with the science. (Doubt is their product.)
Strangely enough, thousands of scientists have tried finding simple keys to collapsing the case as well, and they've thought of pretty much everything you can come up with and a whole lot more - because they've a lot more domain knowledge and scientific skill. And that observation leads to a whole lot of interesting questions...
I believe Brent described AGW as a "rotten edifice" that would "tumble down".
I believe Brent described AGW as a "rotten edifice" that would "tumble down".
People like Bruce Sharp who criticize the reactions to someone like Brent without bothering to examine the evidence that produced those reactions ought to take a look at it:
[#466](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…)
That's Bruce's "one innocent person".
It's funny how people who seem so *certain* it's a rotten edifice generally haven't yet found a plank they can poke their fingers through. It's like they've eyeballed a couple and they're *sure* they'll yield, but they haven't put the hypothesis to the test. You know, like scientists would...
the pedestal CO2 sits upon has rotted legs.
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/solar-cycles/Al…
go on spit the dummy, smash that keyboard to bits, heaps more here -
SEARCH RESULTS 1 - 10 of 113 total results for sunspot
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/37g
[Michael Ralston](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…).
A useful Point 3 would be the fact that oxygen in the atmsophere is decreasing in stoichiometric proportion to the fossil carbon being combusted by humans.
A candidate for Point 4 would be that the CO2 decrease and the oxygen increase coincide, in time, with humanity's significant increase in fossil carbon burning stemming from the Industrial Revolution.
The more one focuses a magnifying glass on Brent's red herring, the more patently obvious it is that said piscine is a stinking, rotting carcass that has been festering in the sun for far too long.
For someone of Brent's obvious intelligence, it is surprising that he cannot see that the robust consistency of the AGW case, in contrast to the robust inconsistency of the denialist case, screams a particular parsimonious conclusion.
Perhaps this is a reflection of the fact that IQ is not equivalent to wisdom, and that its possession is no guarantee of a capacity for logical, rational, impartial thought and analysis.
Sunspot, how delightful of you to provide a report from the South African Journal of Civil Engineering. Did you actually read it? Perhaps you can summarise it for me because I am lazy.
sunspot, can you at least Google alexander lavoisier @ sicenceblogs.com/deltoid before you do your ignorant trolling?
I thinks it's infinitely more likely the Lavoisier Society sits upon rotted legs.
He can but, as I noted earlier, that doesn't matter because Brent knows the truth. Nothing is going to destory his personal, non-scientific and illogical belief that it's a hoax, scam, con etc etc. He came obviously hoping to score a quick victory by asking what he thought were clever questions that would trip everybody up, only to sink in a pit of failure. Now I think he realises he really doesn't know anything at all, so he's disappeared to arm himself with more ammo against those scurrilous lying climate scientists.
yep, when its hot its warming, when its cold its weather.
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/37k
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/37m
#524
No, when it's hot it's weather, when it's cold it's weather.
When it's hot more often, in more places, it's warming.
sunspot, I know you're just an ignorant troll, but just because it's cold where most of the people are doesn't mean the whole hemisphere is cold.
The CO2 theory has predicted steadily increasing global temperatures, and this has been refuted by experience Chris.
If the cold continues you might have to open a nail painting salon or similar.
As long as we're using newspapers and single data points as arguments: Seattle.
Spokane. (completely different climate)
sunspot:
CO2 forcing does not abolish weather. A CO2 effect of +0.02ºC from one year to the next is much smaller in magnitude than an average ±0.1ºC interannual natural variation. So there is not a steady increase from one year to the next.
Stop bullsh!tting sunspot. IT IS NOT COLD.
[Sunspot](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…).
[Lavoisier](http://home.mindspring.com/~samrc/sounds/laugh.wav)?!
Riiight...
Shorter sunspot: My foot planted on this strawman implies victory over your enormous approaching army of heavily armoured highly train soldi...oh sh!t.
Thanks for that link Chris ???
Now don't spit and cough all over your monitor but Roy Spencer has different ideas to you, an opposing view.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-natural-or-manmade/
unless your changing sides, are you ?
Is this the same Roy Spencer who fails to notice a **mathematical** identity and convinces himself it proves a **physical** relationship?
The one who says - apparently with a straight face - on that link you posted
...as if all of the research to understand **how climate works** somehow has studiously avoided that question.
The one who sidetracks the gullible with talk about how few CO2 molecules there are in the air, as if that were the relevant metric?
The one who slyly appeals to "TV meteorologists" as authorities towards the end of that article? (Whilst failing to note that an undergrad degree in meteorology isn't necessary to play a weatherman on TV - IIRC no-one can find evidence that Anthony Watts has one.)
The one whose papers seem to be having zero impact on climate science (although not being a climate scientist I don't know whether this is because his work is immediately obviously crap to the scientists, or irrelevant, or hangs out too much with blatant denialists, or has consistently failed to survive scrutiny in the past, or mostly can't get into decent journals, or some other reason - I would appreciate further insight).
The one who ends that webpage with
...as if that were somehow a valid critique of AGW **which says that climate change is due to a combination of natural and anthropogenic causes**.
The one who asserts that climate sensitivity is several times lower than the likely range derived from about ten different lines of evidence?
The one who publishes his own processed version of the satellite temperature records, noting the last two months were basically the warmest ever, and then claims from looking at surface data:
You'll note in that article he processes the data *differently* from the CRU without justifying his method - and does not reference his own satellite record before drawing that conclusion.
Yeah, that one. Real convincing, isn't he?
Yes, it's possible he's right about climate sensitivity - but I **really** don't like his chances.
And while we're on Spencer's determination of climate sensitivity, here's a three part post that suggests that he is (deliberately or inadvertently) screwing up the calculation in ways that give him a significantly lower value than he should find. You need to read all three parts (although you may be able to skim much of the second half of the first part and still get the argument).
In essence, Spencer's estimating sensitivity by observing **short term** climate variations but using calculations that assume equilibrium is reached which requires a long time. Why do you need a long time? Because different feedback mechanisms (forces that act to change global average temperature *in response to* a change in global average temperature) take wildly different time spans to operate.
And I believe that is also what Monckton has been doing in his climate sensitivity calculations (amongst other things).
sunspot, so now you agree with Dr Spencer, do you, that it is hot, but that we're not causing it? Or is it actually cold?
It's fascinating how 'sceptics' can believe multiple contradictory arguments at the same time.
Chris, it's mean to bait the troll like that. Funny though. Did you see his eyes light up?
I suspect he agrees with Dr. Spencer that he doesn't know *whether* it's hot or cold, and once he figures *that* out, he still won't know why ;-)
Not my link, take it up with yer turncoat mate, seems there's a few out there that don't have CO2 impregnated neurons,
Chris seems to agree with them anyway
With each link presented by 'sunspot', readers might want to ask: how much of what he pushes does 'spotty' already know to dodgy?
Spotty has a record of pushing information he [knows to be false](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…).
Sun spot, you still haven't stated which bits are true amongst the list of bogus claims you pushed on us.
Perhaps instead you could give some data on a [hypothesis that I'm researching](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/the_hate_mail_campaign_against…):
>*I think one of the traits of denial is resistance (and in extreme cases pathological inability) to accept error, correct the record and thus to some degree retarding improvement and development in the area of concern.*
What do you think of my hypothesis?
janet,
'What do you think of my hypothesis?'
It looks like self-examination.
Sunspot doesn't want to be answerable to anything he posts.
One must be open to self examination sunspot. Do you think your or my behaviour here best fits the traits of denial that I described in my hypothesis?
[Note: meaningless quips and other forms of distraction are good data, I won't be disappointed if you provide more of that.]
sunspot:
The point at issue is that he has a different idea to you about whether the world is cold or not. He disagrees with you. Stop lying about this fact.
Janet,
Psychoanalysis has a degree of grey areas, as does climate science.
I am not a denier of AGW, I am a denier of it's puissance as compared to that of solar activity,
you on the other hand are a denier of all that is exposed against your conjecture that GHG's
are the primary drivers of GW, you can hypothesise all you like if you think it helps.
Sunspot,
Your news paper article is well out of date. Central and northern Canada - including much of the Arctic - has had its warmest winter in recorded history.
So much for your 'obectivity'.
thanks for clearing that up Chris and I do appreciate you giving me that link,
unfortunately I spend a considerable amount of time under the sun and in recent years myself and my co workers have noticed that the intensity of the sun is not dissimilar to welding without your shirt on, even when its only 35C,
so yes I don't deny how hot it gets,
so how has C02 intensified this effect ?
no not O3 depletion !
A sunspot is a transient, recurring phenomenon. When reappearing, it is still dimmer than all around it.
[sunspot](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…):
>I am a denier of it's puissance as compared to that of solar activity
Then answer all of the arguments that have been provided against that hypothesis in the video at the top of this thread and in the comments, for example [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) and [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) -- or concede that you are wrong.
Sunspot thank you for [that data](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…). More for [my study](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…).
spotty writes:
>*I am not a denier of AGW, I am a denier of it's puissance as compared to that of solar activity, you on the other hand are a denier of all that is exposed against your conjecture that GHG's are the primary drivers of GW*
To help me understand your position, could you elaborate on what it is exactly I am denying and what is your evidence for my denial.
Just for sunspot:
http://thesudburystar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2484770
I hate to mix up weather with climate, but this kind of winter has become the norm over the past decade over much of Canada. Parts of the Yukon and Northwest Territories are well above freezing and were even back in January. As one can see from the Gistemp data in January, much of northern Canada was 5-10 C (and even higher) above normal. This kind of information was buried in the corporate media's reporting of a cold winter over central and western Europe -something which was quite localized.
A researcher in Canada who spoke at our Institute in December told me that there are already signs of shifting vegetation zones in eastern North America in response to the recent warming. How ecological communities will reassemble themselves, and how this will affect interaction network webs in these communities is anyone's guess. The problem that I have alluded to before is that biomes are having to adjust to warming climate against the background of other anthropogenic stresses, most important of which is habitat loss and fragmentation. The ability to disperse is hampered seriously by human-inflicted changes in the ecological landscape. And these will be effects on interacting species in complex food webs.
sunspot:
Jeff I do understand your concerns and thanks for the input,
I myself at my last property grew from seed and planted 10000 endemic trees, shrubs
ground covers ect, built and used a yeomans type subsoil plough for contour pasture and planting,
my inputs were only compost and BD derived from within my boundary.
I lived off grid using solar panels and constructed diversion drains to feed a overshot hydro electric
generator and I was quite self sufficient, generated a meagre income and my CO2 bootprint was almost non
existent before it was even fashionable. None of the shit head shinny arse's in here would have
any idea how to survive in the environment as I have, most of them wouldn't know what the sun
felt like on their vitamin D deficient, lilly white, blubbery carcasses or by planning their lives
around the weather in order to survive.
I don't think I need to remind you about the environmental impacts of pharmaceuticals,
agrochemicals, fertilizers, industrial and household products that all the smarties in here
contribute to while screaming CO2 out of their traps !
I know its not the right forum but how do you think the world is going to handle the great
science of GMO's ? What impact do you think that the great
science Nanotech with have ?
these two things scare me more than CO2
Shorter sunspot @ 551:
_No, I don't have any response to the arguments that refuted my "it's the sun" talking point. Instead I'm just going to lie about the lifestyles of people I know nothing about._
Another shorter sunspot:
*In the absence of evidence to support the claims of denial that I push, I'll push some more baseless claims about everyone here. I wonder if anyone will notice?*
It's all [good data](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) sunspot, Thankyou.
Shorter sunspot:
*I'm a survivalist, I used the phone and bought solar panels.*
Hello again, folks!
Following the suggestions of Lotharsson and especially Dave R, I have been trawling through the many websites they recommended. These include: Lockwood 2007, Erlykin 2009, Amman 2007, UK Met Office, Benestad 2009,, Lockwood 2008 and the OpenMinds site recommended by Lotharsson.
They all report similar findings, namely that late 20th century warming is unprecedented and cannot be explained by solar forcing. Of course the wording in each paper is different, but I don't think it unfair to quote Erlykin as typical: âOur results show that the observed rapid rise in
global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanisms is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified.â Whilst I understood much of the descriptions of technique, much of the detail was over my head.
These people have clearly put a lot of good honest work into their papers, and although I've avoided using language like 'bent scientists on the gravy train' in on this site, I am guilty of using it elsewhere.
So the hockey stick is alive and well!
Each such conclusion (like Erlykin's) I transcribed into a document using red text, and I was looking for statements which question whether, say, solar forcing mechanisms other than sheer W/m2 (such as advanced in the Svensmark paper) were worthy of consideration. These I transcribed in green.
I have to say, there's a lot more red than green!
Here's a green one, from Lockwood 2007: "it has been suggested that air ions generated by cosmic rays modulate the production of clouds (Svensmark 2007). This mechanism (Carslaw et al. 2002) has been highly controversial and the data series have generally been too short (and of inadequate homogeneity) to detect solar cycle variations in cloud cover; however, recent observations of short-lived
(lasting of the order of 1 day) transient events indicate there may indeed be an effect on clean, maritime air (Harrison & Stephenson 2006).â
So it's looking like you were right all along.
I'd like to hear others' views here on two issues: (i)whether the Svensmark hypothesis might have legs and (ii) whether the temperature rise (last few decades) they are all investigating is 'clean'. All the sites I checked cite GISS, NCDC and HADCRUT. Are these sources to be accepted as gospel?
Cosmic rays and clouds: 1 and 2.
More on cosmic rays [here](http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/its-2010-and-cosmic-rays-st…).
although I've avoided using language like 'bent scientists on the gravy train' in on this site, I am guilty of using it elsewhere
Indeed you are. Perhaps you would like to explain or at least explore the mental processes that lead one to write the sorts of things you wrote in #466 in the absence of supporting evidence. How much time have you spent reading the sources you've been provided here? How much time do you suppose the average member of the "rational folk" you mention in #466 has? And how much time do you suppose that the average climate scientist has? I think you seriously need to reevaluate your notion of what constitutes rationality.
In today's Times (UK), p17:
"Human activity blamed as 500 species of plants and animals disappear in England."
I am astonished that the words Global Warming and Climate Change do not appear.
Brent said:
"In today's Times (UK), p17:
"Human activity blamed as 500 species of plants and animals disappear in England."
I am astonished that the words Global Warming and Climate Change do not appear".
I'm astonished that those such as you can only evaluate events in your own narrow, artificial ideological point-scoring terms, such as they are.
Never would the phrase "get real" be more apt.
>*"Human activity blamed as 500 species of plants and animals disappear in England."*
>I am astonished that the words Global Warming and Climate Change do not appear.
I'm not surprised, '[The Australian](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_australians_war_on_science_…)' would avoid including the assessments of future impact of climate change in a report like that one. As Murchoch's British tool I expect little different from [The Times](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/now_its_timesgate.php).
I am astonished that the words Global Warming and Climate Change do not appear.
I am not astonished at your inability to read.
Of course, the fact that it is mentioned in the article does not alone mean that climate change was a significant factor in species loss, or even a factor at all. But no amount of exaggeration or "alarmism" undoes the science of climate change. That's why your #510 is trolling.
@chek @jakerman
Please do not make the mistake of assuming that a claim, especially a claim by Brent, is true, and certainly do not then proceed to offer rationalizations for the non fact.
P.S.
I quoted from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7057399.ece
It's possible that Brent is correct about the printed version.
Now that I see the error of my ways, and that global warming is real, my mates down the pub are surprised. I tell them that only a fool refuses to change his mind in the light of evidence.
Just last December I was telling them about a BBC Radio 4 play called "Getting to Four Degrees" by Sarah Woods. I was ridiculing it. Now I'm wondering whether this work of fiction may be defensible. Can anybody help me out here?
The play was a mixture of a fictional family's experiences later in the 21st century interspersed with three real-life global warming experts giving explanations (these are Professor Kevin Anderson, Mark Lynas and Dr Emma Tompkins).
A couple of examples of what I (then) considered unneccessarily alarmist:
Scene A:
[Knock on door]
Mr. Jones: "Who's there?"
Woman: "It's the Refugee Authority. Open up!
Jones: What do you want?
Woman: I have five people from Bangladesh who have lost their homes to flooding. You have to put them up.
Jones: I've already got my old Dad who was evicted by the Coastal Relocation Authority when Grimsby went under. Why can't local Bangladeshi families put them up?
Woman: Mister Jones, they already HAVE. Open up!
Scene B:
Telephone voice: Hello, I'd like to make an appointment to see the Doctor please.
Doctors Receptionist: I can offer you next Monday at 4am.
Voice: What, four in the morning? Are you mad?
Receptionist: It's now so hot since global warming kicked in that we only open at night. Is 4am possible for you?
Voice: I'm an old lady. I can't do that. Can I have a home visit instead?
Receptionist: Mrs. Jones, the Doctor can't make house calls in the day. The roads are melting.
Now, at the time I derided this as poppycock, and said that the roads don't melt in Morocco. But tell me, was I a little hasty? After all, Professor Kevin Anderson is the Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and holds a joint chair in Energy and Climate Change at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester and School of Environmental Sciences at University of East Anglia.
I have been rude about some academics in the past, Prof Anderson included. Was this unfair? Given that he lent his authority to this radio piece, should its theme be considered a feasible portrayal of what the future may hold?
brent, your a goner ! we are all doomed.
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3aa
nobody in here will or has got off their arse's to do anything about it, in their narrow fields of vision they think that by ridiculing you into their belief that you might save the world for them !!!!!
sunspot, you still haven't explained why you used reports of cold weather to imply that global climate is not warming.
Further to Chris's post, I was wondering why Sunspot is not paying interest to the fact that most of Canada has experienced its warmest winter ever - 5-10 C above normal in many places. if we are to play the weather is climate game, why is this not picked up by the corporate msm and the denialati? Perhaps because it does not fit well with their narrative?
Brent,
Climate change is just one of several profoundly important anthropogenic stresses that are being inflicted on complex adaptive systems. Given that it is likely to exacerbate the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation, invasive (non-native) species, and other human-inded changes, it is certainly not trivial. Most importantly, yopu and your pub mates ought to look beyond the end of your noses and to try and place global change within the context of nature's ability to sustain man. The effects of climate warming will go well beyond rises in sea levels and similar effects. Once natural systems are stretched beyond some point they will be unable to generate a range of critical services that permit - that being the operative word - humans to exist and to persist. The economic and social costs of lost (or severely degraded) ecological services will be exceptionally high, given that there are few, if any, techological substitutes for most of them. And even where there are, they are prohibitively expensive.
The problem with many people is that they fail to grasp the importance of nature in sustaining us. Thanks in part to a large measure of scientific illiteracy amongst members of the public, and also to the fact that many of us have been conditioned to believe that our cultural and technological evolution has enabled us to free ourselves from any natural constraints, we are in effect driving blindly towards a cliff of our own making. I have exchanged views many times with contrarians who subconciously think that humans are not bound by the laws that govern the existence of other species. Therefore, they expunge any notion that humans can push ourselves beyond any natural limits, because human ingenuity will always increase the planet's human carrying capacity. This is, of course, utter nonsense. Still, there are many who think we can slash and burn our way across the biosphere and that, somehow, humanity will rise from the ashes and persist into antiquity.
Sunspot, your link to His Royal Highness's statement has put the shits up me. '96 months to save the world', he said. Eight months ago. That leaves us only 89.
Note the new vocabulary. I am now entitled to call people fool, idiot, moron and bozo. When I read your description of our side as
"shit head shinny arse's in here [] most of [whom] wouldn't know what the sun felt like on their vitamin D deficient, lilly white, blubbery carcasses", I thought it was most unfunny.
And, Sunspot (it that's really your name, which I doubt), just look out of the window. See that road? Yeah.... mel-ting, isn't it? Huh? What's that you say? Not melting? Yeah, well it SOON WILL BE, you..... you.... sceptic!!!!!
PS
!!!!!!!!!
Heads up, boys.
The vicious denialisti are circulating a smear-cartoon which ridicules the models:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/12/gallup-americans-global-warming-c…
Yes, I know we shouldn't be looking at their propoganda, but... know thy enemy, eh? These morons are using humour against us, and it's affecting public opinion.
Shorter Brent and sunspot:
_We still have absolutely nothing to dispute the science of human caused global warming. However, we still have plenty of smears and straw men._
Chris & Jeff,
All great leaders lead by example, in here I see neither leaders nor example, why would
I wish to follow or be guided by leaderless lemming's ? The sole plan in here is to discuss AGW
and discredit deniers, when are you brainiac's going to form a plan ?
eg. what would be yearly CO2 savings be if every house with a north facing roof in the suburbs
of every major populated town/city was fitted with a 2.5kw grid connected solar system ?
Most households use little energy through the day and the surplus goes to industry.
To big, to costly you say, Hmm.... easier to put yer head in a bucket eh !
A great article by Bill McKibben oin the American Empire Report that sums up the strategies of the denialati:
http://aep.typepad.com/american_empire_project/2010/02/the-attack-on-cl…
Watching Brent and Sunspot attempting to troll is like watching Laurel and Hardy attempting to climb a ladder.
Sunspot,
I am not an engineer. I am a population ecologist who just happens to think that the empirical evidence for AGW is very strong, well past a reasonable doubt. Basically, your argument - and it is a pithy one at that - is to suggest that the solutions are easier to talk about than to implement. Fair enough. But if we do not implement changes, then nature will impose changes by itself that have far greater costs on humanity. Nature is unforgiving, and if Homo sapiens continues with its single global experiment then there will be consequenses - nasty ones - in store.
More importantly, there are people with the expertise and acumen to get humanity onto an environmentally sustainable path, and to develop new technologies that as painlessly as possible wean us off of our addiction to fossil fuels. We should have been working towards this goal for the past 20 years, but powerful, selfish forces that think only in terms of short-term profit and damn the future have used their political muscle to delay, delay, delay, postpone, postpone, postpone. They are experts in manipulating public opinion and posesses PR skills that scientists will never be able to emulate. As Michael Mann said in an interview recently, it is a kind of asymmetric warfare - well oiled PR operatives and lobbyists like Steve Milloy and Marc Morano are far more successful in manipulating public opinion than we scientists are, because they have been honed in their spin-doctoring techniques whereas scientist's have not. It does not matter that, in my opinion, Morano and Milloy and their ilk and knuckleheads who do not understand the basics of environmental science; they make waves because the public know even less than they do, and are desperate for optimistic scenarios. I recall another of Morano's appalling projects ten years ago called 'Amazon.con' in which he claimed that the Amazon forests were not under threat. The report was an abomination and full of empirical holes, but I am sure that many out there who want to believe in the tooth fairy swallowed it up.
So to get back to your point: there are those out there working on devising new technologies to replace the fossil fuel addiction we are in. But they are not being heard. So long as the environmental costs of economic activities are externalized, there will never be the will to change course.
Thank you Jeff,
my thrust is Deltoid needs to be more
proactive in the solving side of things,
if most in here fear AGW then why all the chest thumping, big talk and no action ? If your team wants good PR and
wants to be heard you need to lead by example
[sunspot](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) thinks he can switch to concern trolling without anyone noticing:
>my thrust is Deltoid needs to be more proactive in the solving side of things
If it weren't for morons like you and the liars who feed you your talking points, many more people would be able to devote a lot more time to "the solving side of things".
>why [...] no action ?
Claiming that commenters here have taken no action is a bare faced lie, as you have already been told.
Brent, you still haven't let us know how much shorter the Aletsch glacier was earlier in the Holocene than it is now. Have you gone blind?
sunspot:
I thought your thrust was using reports of cold weather to imply that global climate is not warming. You still haven't explained why you did that.
[Here's the link](http://aep.typepad.com/american_empire_project/2010/02/the-attack-on-cl…) that got mangled in Jeff's comment #574.
>A great article by Bill McKibben oin the American Empire Report that sums up the strategies of the denialati
Well worth a read.
Chris, the Holzhauser graph suggests that it was about 100m shorter in 100BC and 500m shorter in 1300BC.
Having read the magnificent document at
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/site/GSL/lang/en/page7209.html
glaciers are a much better indicator of past precipitation than current temperature.
When, for instance, a retreating glacier's tip happens to be in a depression - a lake - the retreat is much faster (makes sense) but that sprint is irrelevant to the overall length oscillation. Presumably the converse happens: that in an extended cold period (when such a lake freezes) a forward sprint will occur.
There are doubtless other studies of other glaciers in other parts of the world, but I haven't yet taken time to go in search of them. Somebody wrote here that the Aletsch might be in a microclimate; comparisons with others would help confirm/refute that. I have recently seen results of a c2000 yr proxy study using molluscs in Canada, showing a similar curve, complete with MWP and LIA, which supports the idea of worldwide variation rather than localised.
Hey, Chris, you can't say, "Have you gone blind?"
I'm on the hockey team now. Be nice. Talk to Sunspot like that by all means. Gee, I do miss that Aussie James, denialist scum. What a bozo. Called me a bastard, the bastard, but that's probably just rugby-envy making him lash out at a Pommie.
Hey, James, are you lurking? You TROLL. (Feels good to use these words.)
Just for sunspot:
Its 20 C above normal in Big Trout Lake, northern Ontario, Canada this week... get that! 20 C! (Normal temperature there in mid-March is -6 by day and -21 at night; yesterday and today it has reached +12 to +14 C and is still above freezing at night). Guess what: Marc Morano won't be covering this on "Climate Depot". Neither will WUWT, CA, nor any of the other contrarian sites that peddle gibberish. It does not fit their narrative.
Maximum temperature records are falling like bowling pins across central Canada - areas as far north as Whitehorse, NWT, normally blocks of ice at this time of the year, are also well above freezing. Unprecedented. And, more importantly, many more record high temperatures are being recorded across the globe over the past 20 years than record lows. Of course the planet is warming and doing so rapidly, and the human fingerprint is all over it.
Further to Jeff's comments about Canada being unusually warm - robins are currently overwintering in Manitoba (several locations about 51 degrees N), about 500 km north of their usual winter range. In recent years various other birds have extended their range and gardeners are finding that previously tender plants are now able to survive. On the downside, I expect that some of the ice roads into remote communities will close earlier than usual this spring.
As an aside, I am always entertained when denialists descend into infantile, sarcastic 'humour'.
Richard,
Good points. I recall seeing robins in the middle of winter in Quebec seven years ago, which was quite a surprise seeing as it rarely wintered even in southern Ontario as I recall growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. Range exapnsions are becoming the norm; thermophic plants are advancing into northern Europe from the south, and we are finding species of arthropods in Holland that are normally confined to central and southern Europe. The first record of Argiope brunnechi (golden orb spider) was made in the province in which I live (Gelderland) in 2000; it is now common over much of ther country. Basically, some species and populations are responding to the current rapid warming. The problem will be in how food webs rearrange themselves and which species will not be able to respond fast enough.
Yeah, what HE said!
You don't get it, do you, Sunspot? The metre of snow in your area is just weather, and Canada's getting the climate.
Here in England the daffodils are still not out. THAT's climate. No wait, that's weather. Or is it the other way round?
On a more serious note, that den of denialist vipers at JunkScience claims that there's a growing disparity between the UAH MSU satellite temperature record and the ground-based GISS. Do we have an explanation? All those research papers I just looked at are using GISS, but if the satellite data is more authoritative, well, might it damage our case in the AGW camp?
Anyone who actually understands what the MSU and AMSU sensors measure, and how they're processed, isn't likely to consider the satellite data "more authoritative".
UAH just changed their processing algorithm to reduce a spurious annual cycle in their reported anomalies. Reduce, not eliminate. "spurious" as "does not physically exist in the temperature sense". "spurious" as in "an artifact of the processing algorithm".
The RSS temperature product matches the GISTEMP trend more closely. Given that UAH has a history of errors (mostly pointed out by RSS, this latest spurious annual cycle wasn't noticed by Christy or Spencer themselves, but detected and commented on by others, as has been typical of UAH problems), I'd trust RSS more than UAH.
Not to mention that Spencer is openly in the denialist camp and has put forward some really weird papers that are obviously agenda driven nonsense, have been rejected, and then claims the rejection is due to the close-minded agenda-driven review process.
The other thing to keep in mind is that the 1979-present data set covers a wide swath of the troposphere concentrated on the 4-7km layer. There were problems with one of the four MSU channels on a couple of the earlier satellite, so more comprehensive coverage doesn't go back past 1986 (according to RSS).
So it's not measuring surface temps.
RSS has a nice overview on their website.
Brent:
So at the current rate the Aletsch glacier will set a 125,000 year record for shortness in the next 10 years.
Looks like the goal posts are on the move again. Maybe they were set up in a glacier. In any case:
Of course, we all know you were lying when you said that but you don't do that anymore, do you?
dhogaza,
We shouldn't neglect to mention a third analysis by [Qiang Fu](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/msu.html) that brings the satellite trend even closer to GISS, or that of [Vinnikov and Grody](http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~kostya/CCSP/) that actually exceeds it.
It is seriously (not)funny how the [denialista brigades](http://www.claybennett.com/pages2/theaters.html) consistently cherry-pick the low ball estimates of any given distribution of data.
Thanks for those two, I've known there are other analyses but don't know much at all about how they're viewed within community of experts. Can you shed any light on this?
If nothing else, four analyses coming up with varying warming trends makes it clear that those who claim that the satellite data is somehow more reliable/easier to interpret/blah blah blah are talking smack.
Ah, the Fu analysis is the UW one that claims to do a better job of removing the lower stratosphere "pollution" of the mid-troposphere data product. His paper made it into Nature.
I'm not finding any commentary from RSS or UAH about it, with a quick google search.
Logically it makes sense. What do you know?
Chris(589): I don't quite understand why you mention 125,000 years.
This glacier has retreated 3300m in 150 years, a mean of 22m pa. If the 500m figure I quoted is accurate, in a couple of decades we'll be back where we were when Tutankhamen was on the throne. I take it that you find this prospect alarming. I take it that "business as usual" is in your eyes an inappropriate summary of such a return to a previous condition.
I am glad to change my previous (wrong) impression that glacier length is a reliable indicator of temperature in recent years/decades. Previously I figured that, "If it gets warmer, glaciers melt - it's that obvious". I am glad to have learned that a megatonne of ice lands on a glacier one century and pops out of the bottom the next. Yup, happy to learn! Sometimes a little embarrassed that the way the world works isn't immediately as obvious to me as it would be to some deity.
You sneer: "Looks like the goal posts are on the move again." No, mate. It's called 'learning'.
N'y a que les cons qui ne changent jamais d'avis.
Please stop insulting me.
dhogaza,
This is interesting:
>Error Structure and Atmospheric Temperature Trends in Observations from the Microwave Sounding Unit
Zou, Cheng-Zhi; Gao, Mei; Goldberg, Mitchell D.
Journal of Climate, vol. 22, issue 7, p. 1661
They have a website at NOAA, [MSCAT](http://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/smcd/emb/mscat/mscatmain.htm).
Dhogaza,
You clearly are well 'clued up' in the area of temperature measurement.
Help us out here, please: which of the various temperature series would you recommend as being most representative in assessing global warming? I've been figuring until now that UAH MSU and GISS are looking at the same phenomenon (one from space and the other from groundstations), and it seemed reasonable to wonder which is more 'authoritative'.
You mention RSS, a company which I think interprets satellite data. So RSS and UAH do parallel work. How would you describe this overlap? Are they competing with each other, or usefully calibrating each other, or working to different agendas?
Brent writes:
>*The metre of snow in your area is just weather, and Canada's getting the climate.
Here in England the daffodils are still not out. THAT's climate. No wait, that's weather. Or is it the other way round?*
Disingenuous Brent,
The example of Canada was raised to show the nature of Spotties weather cherry picking. But you knew that.
How many times have you revealed your disingenuous tactics in this thread alone? Do you see a pattern Brent?
Brent @587:
As jakerman said, I only mentioned the weather in Canada as a counter to the argument that, because this winter was colder in Europe than in recent years, therefore global warming has stopped.
A few records of species outside their normal range means little, but multi-year extensions of the previous range strongly suggests that something is going on.
BTW: why are you so keen on sarcasm? Repeated sarcasm raises a red flag in my mind, telling me "I can't think of any valid counter argument."
They don't really measure the same thing as the satellite MSU time series is concentrated in the 4-7km altitude range, not the surface.
And there's some pollution from the (cooling) stratosphere, which is what the Fu analysis attempts to correct for.
UAH made the first satellite temperature reconstruction, claimed the world was cooling, not warming, and that therefore the surface temp record and models were both wrong.
The RSS people did their own satellite temperature reconstruction, and also found errors in the UAH work. I know they're working under contract now but I don't know where the federal funding is coming from exactly. I don't know if they were working under contract when they first got involved.
The two groups use their own homebrewed algorithms and in a sense provide a check on each others work. UAH shows a lower warming trend than RSS, GISTEMP, or HadCRUT and given their past track record of errors, as mentioned earlier, it makes me tend to trust RSS more. It doesn't help that when UAH first "proved" global cooling, which was solely an artifact of errors in their work, they went around publicizing it loudly and often. I won't say that their political and religious beliefs tainted their work, but I think that their preconceived political ideology led them to trumpet their "cooling" findings to like-minded people on the right. And that they weren't sufficiently critical of their own work.
After all, their claims that both models and the surface temp record were wrong was quite the stunning result and deserved a great deal of critical examination. Which it got. But not from christy and spencer ...
This was actually what got me interested in the details of the climate science "debate", actually. The Wall Street Journal proclaimed the UAH "cooling" data to be the "wooden stake through the heart of AGW". I was curious, and the more I read, and the more I watched the drama unfold (errors found by RSS, Christy announcing yet more errors which he claimed restored the cooling when fixed, RSS finding more errors, a somewhat confrontational conference in which UAH got beat down fairly badly albeit politely) the less I came to trust Christy and Spencer.
Brent:
125,000 years ago was the last interglacial so once the Aletsch glacial becomes shorter than at any other time in the last 10,000 years(which should happen in around 10 years), it will be shorter than at any time in the past 125,000 years.
You obviously suffer from selective blindness when I write things like:
"Holzhauser says that's it's currently shrinking at up to 1 kilometer per 20 years."
Holzhauser said 5 years ago: "And in the last 10 years it has been reducing at a phenomenal rate of up to 50 m per year."
So the glacial retreat has accelerated.
or probably a lot less
And why, pray tell, do you think the retreat will suddenly come to a halt at that point? I guess it must be a case of anti-science blindness.
Spencer just made _another_ adjustment to UAH. Clearly his results cannot be trusted! Why won't Spencer release the raw data and the processing code? What is he hiding? Where is his commitment to openness in science? Why isn't McIntyre submitting FOI requests to Spencer? Release the e-mails!
;-) ;-)
Hmmmm, I don't think my parody skills are that great.
I really do think someone should FOI UAH, and post the FOI requests to CA and WUWT.
I'm sure it would be met with screams and howls of UAH being persecuted.
dave r @ 578, face it your a poodle not a pit bull, a 'concern troll' you say. If the shoe fits I'll wear it because I've been getting my hands dirty in the environment for over 25yrs and have 'concern trolled' a few environmental vandals. I spoze dave r would complain about the skid mark but never pick up the brush !
'If it weren't for morons like you and the liars who feed you your talking points, many more people would be able to devote a lot more time to "the solving side of things".'
your running around in circles like a chook with its head cut off dave,
show everyone in here that you can do something positive
'The example of Canada was raised to show the nature of Spotties weather cherry picking'
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3b4
>*The example of Canada was raised to show the nature of Spotties [disingenous] [weather cherry picking](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/plot/gistemp/mean:360/plot/gis…).*
Wikipedia defines "concern troll" as:
Brent said:
It's also pretty clear that Brent's tender feelings have been hurt by being labelled the "liar" and "troll" he so clearly is, and this latest frenzied attack of irrational comments merely confirms it.
Shorter Brent:
*"If you guys are gunna call me a troll then I'm gunna show you!"*
Give it up Brent. Nobody thinks you are clever. You are a failure.
John,
I think your #605 is a fine piece of work, and in a few short words expose what was indeed pretty obvious. Yes, guilty as charged. I congratulate you.
I arrived on this site hoping to debate this serious issue in a gentlemanly way, putting counterarguments and quite prepared to listen to solid reasoning and solid evidence which would confirm the AGW hypothesis. The abuse was pretty uncomfortable - even given the 'remoteness of the keyboard'.
So I must abandon trolling and return to being direct.
This being a layman's site (enriched by some science professionals) I still feel entitled to pose legitimate counterargumants and welcome others demolishing them in honourable debate.
Dhogaza gets this.
Shorter Dhogaza: This is what I think, and this is why; I persuade others by the power of my argument rather than by invective.
The discussion on species range in recent years I found absurd, and chipping in with what the daffodils are doing here was a reducio ad absurdum.
Chris (599): We have no evidence either way whether the Tutankhamun minimum (of the Aletsch Glacier) was preceded by other such minima during the earlier Holcene, so you can't say that if it retreats to this point, or beyond, it will be a 125,000-year low. You claim to have a crystal ball; I wish I did. I can only compare today with what we know of the past.
Current reading suggests that 'Cumulative Mass Balance' is a better parameter than length. Have a look at the graph in this link:
http://climaticidechronicles.org/2008/12/21/swiss-glaciers-going-the-wa…
and
http://doc.rero.ch/lm.php?url=1000,43,2,20100121152230-MF/huss_sag_sm.p…
The second one, a published paper, concludes that radiative forcing in the 1940s was behind the rapid 1940s retreat.
Glaciers still appear to be a useful proxy for past climate on millennial timescales. To my eyes, this proxy suggests "business as usual".
Oh shut up you ponderous bore.
[sunspot](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…):
>show everyone in here that you can do something positive
[Asked and answered](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…)
Brent:
So at last we come to the next set of goal posts. Took a while but they appeared eventually.
So reaching the shortest glacier length on record would be usual. You have a bizarre idea of what the word "usual" means. I can't wait for the weather report to say "we've just had the most usual temperature on record, never happened before but that makes it usual".
Brent @606
Why? A prediction associated with global warming is that species will tend to increase their range to cooler areas, and that is what is being found. It is considerably less absurd than arguing whether or not one particular glacier is retreating faster or slower than it did at some time in the past.
I arrived on this site hoping to debate this serious issue in a gentlemanly way, putting counterarguments and quite prepared to listen to solid reasoning and solid evidence which would confirm the AGW hypothesis.
You aren't fooling anyone, Brent. you came here thinking that climate scientists are bent and corrupt and irrational and that AGW is a hoax, and you continued to state such things on other blogs while you were here, and you insulted everyone here with your assumptions about how they live their lives and your demand that they prove themselves to you.
You are an ass, an ideologue who is incapable of rationally weighing evidence and reasoned argument -- this is clear in numerous of your comments, such as your recent moronic sarcasm about weather vs. climate and your ongoing idiocy about Tutankhamun. We do have a crystal ball and it's called science -- a discipline for the construction of predictive theories.
This being a layman's site (enriched by some science professionals) I still feel entitled to pose legitimate counterargumants and welcome others demolishing them in honourable debate.
Yes, it's obvious that you feel entitled to be a troll. You have yet to post a legitimate argument or to act honorably.
Dhogaza gets this.
Shorter Dhogaza: This is what I think, and this is why; I persuade others by the power of my argument rather than by invective.
A classic concern trolling technique. But no one cares about whether you approve of their tone, and again your ability to read and absorb evidence is demonstrated to be poor after Dhogaza's "
it clear that those who claim that the satellite data is somehow more reliable/easier to interpret/blah blah blah are talking smack". That's you, Brent.
We have no evidence either way whether the Tutankhamun minimum (of the Aletsch Glacier) was preceded by other such minima during the earlier Holcene, so you can't say that if it retreats to this point, or beyond, it will be a 125,000-year low.
You really are rather dim, Brent, and your ideology continues to cloud your vision. What we have here is not simply a context-free question, the sort that one might find on Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit, of how long it's been since the glacier has retreated this much. It's an indicator, of a process, and that process is AGW. It doesn't matter whether the glacier had receded as far at some point in the past, any more than it matters whether Pluto or Jupiter or Triton is undergoing warming. The important point is not whether it will or will not reach a 125,000 year low, it's that it is shrinking rapidly and that shrinkage is consistent with the theory of AGW -- which is about what is going on now, what went on at the time of Tutankhamun -- along with thousands of other indicators. The only reason that we are talking about the glacier is because you attempted to cherry pick it as a counterexample to AGW. As John said, you are a failure.
edit:
"which is about what is going on now, not what went on at the time of Tutankhamun "
[Brent said](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…):
and by doing so renders his entire presence on this thread completely and irrevocably absurd.
Brent, you are obviously not familiar with even the basics of biology. The biosphere is an extremely sensitive integrator of temperature shiftings, and the biosphere is demonstrating very clearly that the planet is warming.
If you find the science absurd, then you are simply demonstrating the cognitive dissonance that occurs when ideology, unfounded in reality, meets scientific fact.
There is only one absurdity that results from this collision, and it isn't the science. Rather, the fit seems to match your size precisely...
and by doing so renders his entire presence on this thread completely and irrevocably absurd.
Not the first time. Brent has repeatedly displayed an inability to think logically, that appears to be correlated with his ideology. His basic stance is "The world changes and stuff has happened before, so it's business as usual and there's no need for all this alarmist handwringing". The antecedent is an irrelevant strawman and the consequent doesn't follow. By Brent's logic, there's no need to worry about H1N5 because hey, we survived the Spanish flu pandemic. Einstein said he didn't know what weapons would be used in WW III but WW IV would be fought with sticks and stones; by Brent's logic, there's no need to be concerned with WW III reducing us to the technology of the stone age because hey, we've been there before.
You can see Brent's substitute for thinking in #348 (where there's a lot of other absurdity as well) when he writes
addressing a strawman -- no one denies constant change and adaptation -- and ignoring what matters, which is what species are adapting to and what relevance it has for us. Brent wrote "as for 'ecological stability'", but he ignored what Jeff Harvey actually wrote when he used the phrase:
Sure there is adaptation and vast population swings. The K-T extinction event 65 resulted in such a swing, for instance -- one that matters from our perspective. The existence of previous swings does not mean that we shouldn't care or that it's "alarmist" to be concerned about one going on now -- that's irrational, and verges on the insane. And it sure doesn't help that Brent mixes up cyclic swings in population size with adaptation and treats all timescales as if they were equivalent and as if the causal factors were the same for all of them -- a common theme of applying a fallacy of affirmation of the consequent, as I've noted. Change is ongoing at every level, as even geometry froths at the Planck level, but this is completely and utterly irrelevant to the issues before us.
P.S.
As for 'ecological stability', I read about wild swings in some species (locusts, lemmings, in briefly-blooming deserts). Has there in the past been 'ecological stability', or isn't nature characterised by constant change and adaptation, often with vast population swings over a variety of timescales?
This is a classic case of cherry picking and a false dilemma. Wild swings in population size of locusts and lemmings, and briefly blooming deserts, do not alone characterize nature, and they certainly don't contradict ecological stability. Now, deserts that briefly turned into rain forests and then the trees turned into lemmings who transformed into locusts and so-on -- that would be ecological instability. But the stable desert ecological network supports those plants that bloom briefly, over and over again, and there are stable ecological factors that support the cyclic growth and decline of lemming and locust populations, which is why we can even associate such swings with lemmings and locusts specifically.
Sheesh.
Shorter Brent 1:
Brent:
Shorter Brent 2:
These fallacies turn up in just about any climate change discussion.
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3ds
I'll post this again as some must have missed it or would prefer not to account for it.
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3b4
Latif has complained widely and bitterly about his paper and comments being misconstrued by the denialsphere, including those in the media.
Seems reasonable. Or did you stop at the sensationalist headline which is not repeated by a single person interviewed?
sunspot, you still haven't explained why you used reports of cold weather to imply that global climate is not warming.
>*sunspot, you still haven't explained why you used reports of cold weather to imply that global climate is not warming.*
Nor has spotty answered a plethora of straight questions put to him. Here is another for Spotty, why does spotty think El Nino surface warming contradicts [global warming](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/plot/gistemp/mean:360/plot/gis…)?
I think Spotty has shown himself to be a simple propagandist, he can't make his case in a conherent manner without contradicting himself, so he just pushes out vague notions in the hope massaging the prejudice of a few with vague allusions.
Like Brent, Sunspot doesn't need coherent evidence that the world isn't warming because he knows The Truth. Everything else is semantics and details.
Because I like to sink in the boot, I thought people might like an insight into Brent's motives here:
So much for "I arrived on this site hoping to debate this serious issue in a gentlemanly way, putting counterarguments and quite prepared to listen to solid reasoning and solid evidence which would confirm the AGW hypothesis.", eh?
We've had some pretty idiotic trolls here, but I reckon Brent would have to be the dumbest. At least most trolls don't lie about their motives.
People like Brent are the very reason there is a massive imbalance in this debate. Scientists are expected to uphold the highest ethics, while denialists rely on lying and misrepresentation and don't see any problem with this. Then, most heinous of all, Brent cries poor when he gets caught out on it!
would prefer not to account for it
You're the one who prefers not to account for evidence, you dishonest jerk. You really are a bad person.
Brent's motives here
Aside from what you point out, that post is another illustration of Brent's thinking based on the fallacy of affirmation of the consequent, as he misapplies the notion of "noble cause corruption". If you actually follow the links, you get to http://www.patc.com/weeklyarticles/print/noble-cause-corruption.pdf which talks about police acting unethically to put criminals, or people they think are criminals, away. But these actions of the police do not alone imply that those people did not commit the crime for which they are convicted due to the police misconduct; to determine that, one must example independent evidence. Brent's source, Steven Mosher, even acknowledges this in regard to "Climategate" (while he dishonestly characterizes the emails and other evidence), and goes on to say "To be sure, the balance of the evidence still indicates that the world has warmed" -- something that cherry picker Brent ignores. Of course, Mosher also shows his ignorance or dishonesty when he writes "Jones also affirmed what many contrarians have argued. There are periods in the instrument record that show rates of warming statistically indistinguishable from what we witnessed between 1975 and 1998. And the most recent years, since 1995, have shown no statistically significant warming". No one who misuses Jones' statement this way has a leg to stand on for talking about ethics or anything else in re global warming.
Climate denialism is no different to the Spanish Inquisition, or to the Salem witch trials.
In each case the rational, scientific truth of the matter was subsumed by the need of a credulous and ignorant laity, and of an ideologically-driven and selfishly-motivated leadership, to satiate their xenophobic conservatism by attacking those who threatened their world-view.
The trouble is that this time the lynchers will be responsible for turning up the heat on the whole planet.
Once again, ignorance trumps understanding. It seems that evolution hasn't come near to finishing the tweaking of Homo sapiens, beta version...
"Intelligence"? Ha! Seemed like a good idea at the time...
why does spotty think El Nino surface warming contradicts global warming?
This is another example of the fallacy of affirmation of the consequent. To make the reasoning explicit:
If humans are not the cause of warming, then there are other causes.
El Nino is another cause of warming.
Therefore humans are not the cause of warming.
Everyone, even someone as deficient as spotty, is able to understand that the same phenomenon (characterized loosely enough) can result from more than one process, yet somehow this obvious fact escapes the deniers reasoning about global warming, and so they blather on about sunspots, El Nino, Mars and Pluto warming, etc. ad dumbum.
It seems that evolution hasn't come near to finishing the tweaking of Homo sapiens, beta version...
Um, this is almost as unscientific as what we get from the deniers. Evolution is not directional, it has no goal or end point.
"Intelligence"? Ha! Seemed like a good idea at the time...
Intelligence is not generally a survival trait. It only happened to be selected in our lineage because of a number of unusual contingencies.
CANADA -El Niño or sGW or both ?
Regarding the post's 549 568 584 585 586 620 & 623
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3ew
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3ev
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3b4
Who's picking the twisted cherries ?
I thought this would be the most suitable site for most here -
http://kids.earth.nasa.gov/archive/nino/intro.html
I did like this sentence -
"Scientists do not really understand how El Nino forms."
they should have left the "really" out
G/day Truth,
you need to ask jakerman "why does spotty think El Nino surface warming contradicts global warming?"
jakerman made that accusation for me, nowhere have I said that, the point is about others blaming AGW on Canada's biota moving northwards and not mentioning the El Neno's.
the point is about others blaming AGW on Canada's biota moving northwards and not mentioning the El Neno's.
You're a liar. Canada was brought up in #544 in response to your idiocy in #524; as was noted, "The example of Canada was raised to show the nature of Spotties weather cherry picking". You implied in #524 that northern cold shows the globe isn't warming. When it was pointed out that your evidence was cherry picked, the north isn't so cold after all, you moved the goalposts to El Nino. As for biota and El Nino vs. AGW ... unlike you, scientists aren't idiots, they take into account all of the data and make the best inferences from them.
Brent,
Wasn't it you who admitted that you are a common man who knows nothing? Well, let me say that those are my words because they fit you quite well.
You certainly illustrate the maxim that if one has not a clue about a given field of resesarch, they ridicule it. Belittle it. Try and make it 'go away'. Or else you write some crap about daffodils, as if that is the full extent of the empirical evidence for recent warming. How much humiliation are you willing to pile upon yourself?
There is a huge amount of evidence of species and populations being forced to adjust migratory behavior, distributions, and egg laying behavior in response to recent warming. Given that species do not exist as isolated entitites but are involved in obligate interactions with other species, there is little doubt that asymmetric changes in the phenology of interaction networks will lead to concomitant changes in the abundance (usually downwards) of species due to rapid regional warming. There are certainly examples of that being manifested in the temperate realms involving the phenology of interactions between plants, insects, and insectivorous birds. Similarly, work by Eric Post and colleagues is reporting the same thing in Greenland amongst caribou populations and their main food plants.
Just because you are plainly ignorant in environmental science does not mean that you, by complete irony, have a monopoly on wisdom. Frankly, the more you write here the more of an embarrassment your posts become.
As for Sunspot, if the shoe fits, wear it. You come on here posting articles about a short-term cold spell in some of the northern hemisphere during January, then when I respond by showing that Canada is experiencing record winter warmth, suddenly it is also short-term and due to an El Nino event. Talk about the blind leading the blind. My example was explicitly aimed at countering yours, showing that weather and climate are very different. I pull the rug out from under your feet and you do not like it.
If we want to put the differing weather results into a climate context, FAR MORE record high temperatures are being broken in different parts of the world than cold weather records over the past 20 years. The margin between the two is dramatic. Furthermore, the cold weather in January in Eurasia failed to set many cold records whereas those in the Arctic (and not just Canada) are. Thse data will go into the books reinforcing the model predictions.
Of coursemit is warming now and at a rate unseen in perhaps many thousandsa of years. And like the current extinction spasm, it is clear beyond a reasonable doubt who is responsible. We are.
Truth,
I hope your dummy didn't get too dirty ?
you said,
'unlike you, scientists aren't idiots, they take into account all of the data and make the best inferences from them.'
I'd like to remind you that the world is in the condition it is largely because of science !
You, like most others in this blog are so concerned about being right and protecting your precious ego's that you haven't the foresight to network or think tank with your 'scientists aren't idiots' mate's, why should I believe your science when you and your peer's
think that your job is done. You are tooo lazy to look for answers or think that the dish washer at the local pub will come up with an answer for your aGW.
Don't give me the crap that your to busy insulting me, you reckon the worlds gunna burn and your doing jack shit to prove your fairytale.
You think your cluey, see how you go organizing the scatter brains in here to do something positive !
ps. I'm sick of hearing how smart you all are
Spotty ask:
>"Who's picking the twisted cherries ?"*
[Why](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/plot/gistemp/mean:360/plot/gis…), its [you Spotty](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…).
And who pushes out lies, he [knows to be false](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…), you do spotty.
And come clean with us Spotty, why are you [pushing your El Nino link](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) if not in an incoherent attempt to fabricate a non-scientific allusion against AGW?
I believe truth machine has a strong case when he called you out as a liar. It is consistent with your recent practice of as shown above. Whats more in your response to TM you failed to answer why you present you El Nino links in this context.
Make your defense spotty, the evidence against you is building.
Hi Jeff (633), and thank you for your kind words.
I think we all of us stuggle with having, on the one hand, a good knowledge of some areas of science and, on the other, accessing other areas where we are dependent on specialists to gain a wider understanding of the many areas with a bearing on climate.
Letâs make a small list with a bearing on climate: astronomy, ecology, thermodynamics, statistics, biology, chemistry, meteorology, geology, nuclear physics, chaos theory. You can doubtless add a few to this list, or point out that one of them is a subset of another one.
Some of these fields are quite mature, but of course still evolving. Some â I would suggest climatology and astrophysics â are in their infancy. In living memory plate tectonics and chaos theory have leaped from being a fringe notion to exciting new fields which enrich the entire scientific oeuvre.
Jeff, it would take a genius to master all these fields. In the absence of such a genius (but letâs hope that one such is about to emerge), we imperfect but educated debaters are attempting a âcollective effort of mass networkingâ to get to the truth. This is why I have tried to be courteous here. Unfortunately, sad bastards like TruthMachineOM have gone in search of pugnacious statements I have made on other sites and used it to demonstrate bad faith. It actually demonstrated that I had a prior view, a position, much as you do yourself. For a while I indulged in âtrollingâ. It was a transparent effort, and went down badly. In trolling, I was hoping to advance the debate by saying: âTaking the AGW hypothesis as the best weâve got, shouldnât we now address the following counterarguments?â Such counterargumants being, for example, alternative sources of forcing, conflicting temperature records, and âbusiness as usualâ.
May I please ask you a few questions?
(i)What is your view on the claim that current climate resembles the conditions of the MWP (as evidenced by the recent mollusc study, Aletsch glacier, Viking settlement of Greenland)?
(ii)Do you discount the sunspot theory (or rather the notion that solar activity may have a profound effect on climate (Parana River, Svensmark, Herschel, Aletsch), potentially rivalling that of CO2)?
(iii)Are you confident that the instrumental record in the last few decades shows an unprecedented increase in temperature, or rate of increase?
(iv)As an ecologist, would you say that recent observed species adaptations (I think you use the word âphenologyâ) are unprecedented and that the climate is changing faster than such species and their partners can cope with?
Please forgive me if you have already made your position clear. Somebody wrote above that the good guys need to be persistent and calm.
[Truth machine](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…).
Dude, it was ironic! Read my subtext - it says pretty much exactly what you yourself said afterward.
In case you're not aware, I'm a biologist: the machinations of the Blind Watchmaker are my bread and butter...
Brent,
There is litttle doubt that the rate of temperature increase, at least regionally, is unprecendented in many thousands of years. Climate control systems are highly deterministic and would require a major forcing the knock them out of short term equilibrium. And by short-term I am referring to a century or less (even a thousand years is a short time within a geological time frame). I have had it up to here with denialists arguing that change is the norm; of course it is! But within certain boundaries. Global changes must be viewed within the context of scale. Local processes are much more stochastic than global processes.
When a small planetoid or large asteroid struck the planet near to the present day Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago, the event which precipitated the demise of the dinosaurs at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary, it is often assumed by many that their extinction was an instantaneous event, or nearly so. But it is likely that the dinosaurs took 10,000-20,000 years to disappear. The problem with Homo sapiens is that changes that we perceive as being gradual represent the blink of an evolutionary and geological eye in nature. The fact is that the planet is warming at a remarkably rapid rate, given the size and scale of the climate regulation system. Temperatures in parts of the Arctic have increased by 10 C or more over the past century, an incredible amount. In Europe we are experiencing temperatures some 2-3 C higher than in the early 1980s. Again, that is exceptional. And of course there are going to be ecological consequences.
These consequences are likely to be severe. Why? Because species are evolutionarily programmed to respond to changes within certain phenotypic limits. There will be winners and losers, as food webs are stretched in response to rapid warming set against a suite of other anthropogenic stresses. The unraveling of food webs and ecological interaction networks will have significant repercussions on the way that complex systems are structured and how they function. Call it what you will, but I see human assaults across the biosphere simply as a single, non-replicatable experiment. This experiment is not very prudent given that a range of services emerge from nature that make consumption possible and upon which our civilization rests. As humans continue to chip away at nature's ecological life-support systems, there will be profound social and economic costs. Climate change is important because it is likely to amplify the effects of other human-mediated processes including habitat destruction and fragmentation, other forms of pollution, overharvesting and biotic invasions.
The MWP is an artifical denialist construction. If there was warming, it was regional and not global. And the argument that solar forcing accounts for the recent temperature rises has been disproven time, and time, and time again. Brent, what you ought to do is look at the chronology of denialist response to the phenomenon of global warming. Twenty years ago global warming was a doomsday myth; only about 10 years ago did the denialiti accept it a a fact but then their tactics sawitched to the "its natural" or "within natural ranges" mantras. In the face of global change, the problem is not that we do not have the will to make the necessary structural changes that are required, but that those commanding power and wealth will do everything they can to retain the status quo. This is because corporate planners just do not look more than a few years ahead. Their job is to maximize returns for investors now or over the next fiscal quarter or year at most. It is the boiled frog syndrome, in all of its inane stupidity.
I would also advise you to check out the credentials of many of the most prominent denialists. These are the same people who have downplayed the importance of biodiversaity loss, the effects of CFCs on the ozone layer, acid rain, pesticide effects on food chains, tobacco smoke on human health and many other areas dealing with the environment. The constitute a broad right wing coalition of anti-environmental groups waging war against government regulations. As someone who has followed environmental debates for the past 15 years, and has spoken at many universities in Europe and the United States on this topic, there are those who are using science as a tool to promote what is in effect a political agenda.
Sunspot mistakenly tried to intimate that the amount of money funding 'both sides' in the climate change debate was similar, but he is so, so wrong. The problem is that the think tanks and public relations firms receive billions of dollars trhough the back door to promote the corporate anti-regulatory view. This funding is rarely disclosed. But there is little doubt that the anti-environmental lobby - for that is what it is - has budgets that far exceed anything scientists and environmental NGOs will ever muster. Moreover, the anti's can hire the slickest snake oil salesman to pitch their arguments to the public, whereas scientists are traiend to do just that, science. We are not PR executives. This is why people like Morano and Monckton crave debates. They have the skills to sound like experts (which they are not) and in such as way as to appeal to a general public anxious to know the truth. At the same time, the cautious scientist, lacking any kinds of PR skills, comes across as a stammering idiot, even if it is he who is the honest broker.
Last week, the abominable WUWT site boasted polls showing that American public opinion was truning against the human role in climate change. As if this means anything to the 'truth', as elusive as this is in any scientific field. All this means is that the slick propoganda campaigns of those attacking science in pursuit of short-term profits are getting through. Heck, by 2002, 51% of American believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and that Iraq posed a threat to the United States. This could only have been achieved by one of the most mendacious propaganda campaigns in post-WW 2 history. So what does the WUWT heralded polls tell us? Only that the denilati is winning the battle over public opinion through relentless propagandizing. But, given that nature is completely unforgiving, the sad fact is that if we do not do something to stem the combined effects of humans on natural systems in the near future, then we will lose the war.
Somebody else also wrote that we're the "enemy" who need to be "destroyed".
@34
Erasmussimo, the url you give for the NAS brochure is corrupted. The correct version is http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/climate_change_2008_final.pdf.
Hm. Unless it's the comments software that's doing the corrupting (interpreting underscores as instructions to italicize). Here's a tinyurl that should get round that hypothetical problem: http://tinyurl.com/6cf7nl
@34
Erasmussimo, the url you give for the NAS brochure is corrupted. The comments software is interpreting underscores as instructions to italicize.
Here's a tinyurl to get round that problem: http://tinyurl.com/6cf7nl
Jeff,
I respect you and I do share your thoughts in many more ways than you may realize. I have tried to make the point that 'most' in here are only barracking
for a team, hanging off the coattails of climate science as it were, this blog has the potential of a meld of minds to create something positive, the procrastination feeds the denial.
Every action begins with a thought, I do believe that there are some brilliant minds in here albeit with narrow spectrum's that need to be joined into coherent and positive action. The problem needs to be tackled from the roots, a tax won't work, Geoengineering would most likely be another disastrous experiment.
Solution's need to be created from the ground level, even if you think that no one here is capable to do this it might just be the spark that light's the fire in others. Selflessness can achieve miracles
Spotty's tactic of concern trolling is odd:
>*I have tried to make the point that 'most' in here are only barracking for a team, hanging off the coattails of climate science as it were, this blog has the potential of a meld of minds to create something positive*
Odd, only becasue he makes these statemetns so shortly after series of misreprentations and dishonesties that has been [called out on](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…).
Spotty, try making up a new name then comeback and make these claims, and we won't realise how disingenous you are. Then we'd only call you on your lack of evidence, and you might avoid the being called on your dishonesty.
'unlike you, scientists aren't idiots, they take into account all of the data and make the best inferences from them.'
I'd like to remind you that the world is in the condition it is largely because of science !
Point-dodging non sequitur, but your hostility to science is noted.
I'm sick of hearing how smart you all are
And we're tired of you demonstrating how stupid and vile you are.
akerz,
if you could pry your other eye open you might be able to perceive that the platform that aGW stands upon has the potential to solve many environmental problems synergistically, your methods of approach are driving potential allies away.
How many converts do you have on your list ? Nil ?
Other than blessing us with your wisdom on aGW what is your planet saving strategy ?
sarcasm ? nitpicking ? drollery ?
Our end goals maybe the same regardless of different views
truth machine or 'Wether' man ?
>*your methods of approach are driving potential allies away.*
Sunspot read [my last post](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…), and you'll understand why your opinion do not represent those I respect. (Your subsequent snipe and Truthmachine re-confirms it, you should have directed that one into your closest mirror).
I'm open to alliance with genuine skeptics on issues of shared concerned. I'm not interested in wasting time on dishonest players expect to expose them for what they are to clear the feild for dialouge with people of genuine motives.
we imperfect but educated debaters are attempting a âcollective effort of mass networkingâ to get to the truth.
Even if you were really doing that, it's not how it's done. To get to the truth we use the scientific method, about which you are apparently quite uneducated. Jeff's point was that you dismiss as "absurd" things that you know nothing about but which Jeff, as a scientist familiar with the relevant collected evidence, does. If science were done by "debating" every point raised by some ignorant person, it wouldn't get done. Scientists answer the questions of the ignorant in order to educate them, but not to 'get to the truth".
Unfortunately, sad bastards like TruthMachineOM have gone in search of pugnacious statements I have made on other sites and used it to demonstrate bad faith.
It was John, not I, who searched for those, and they do indeed indicate that you have acted in bad faith and have trolled -- and you did so right in the middle of pretending to be more reasonable here! So why should anyone trust you now, especially when you continue to get things wrong in a way that is consistent with the ideology that you have spelled out elsewhere as well as here? Even this post is a troll, as you continue to fail to address points raised by myself and others.
In trolling, I was hoping to advance the debate by saying: âTaking the AGW hypothesis as the best weâve got,
Bull; you've made it clear that you don't think that the AGW hypothesis is the best we've got. You think that it's a hoax or at best the result of "noble cause corruption", and you want to have Steve McIntyre's babies -- and when you wrote that, it was in place of addressing the criticism raised of him -- that his "audits" are one-sided, much as you never turn your skepticism and debate on people like sunspot or the others that you absurdly called "we rational folk".
shouldnât we now address the following counterarguments?â Such counterargumants being, for example, alternative sources of forcing, conflicting temperature records, and âbusiness as usualâ.
Such concern. Such trolling. They have all been addressed.
Somebody wrote above that the good guys need to be persistent and calm.
Such concern. But it's a premise of an ad hominem argument; lack of calmness has no bearing on whether the claims are correct. And the evidence has made it clear that calmness does not win politically.
akerz you are blinded by your fanaticism.
no, not sorry about the snipe it cuts both ways
Shorter sunspot and Brent: "sure we were trolling, but we were only trying to help get to the truth".
Dude, it was ironic! Read my subtext - it says pretty much exactly what you yourself said afterward.
Dude, I'm not a mind reader. Subtext is the implicit meaning of a text -- it cannot itself say anything, certainly not anything exact. I'm glad you don't actually believe what you wrote, but plenty of other people -- including scientists who aren't biologists -- do.
And we're tired of you demonstrating how stupid and vile you are.
And yet on he goes:
sunspot, go get a brain. You ought to be able to find something in the local junkyard that works better than what you've got now.
akerz you are blinded by your fanaticism.
Blinded by science!
no, not sorry about the snipe it cuts both ways
A brain. Get one.
>*akerz you are blinded by your fanaticism.*
Empty unsupported assertion, typical of those with no honest arguement, and cosistent with spotty's [preveious performance](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…).
I have had it up to here with denialists arguing that change is the norm; of course it is!
Sad Bastard!
I would also advise you to check out the credentials of many of the most prominent denialists.
Certainly before he buys a cottage by the sea to have their babies.
These are the same people who have downplayed the importance of biodiversaity loss, the effects of CFCs on the ozone layer, acid rain, pesticide effects on food chains, tobacco smoke on human health and many other areas dealing with the environment. The constitute a broad right wing coalition of anti-environmental groups waging war against government regulations.
aka "We rational folk".
Sunspot mistakenly tried to intimate that the amount of money funding 'both sides' in the climate change debate was similar, but he is so, so wrong.
[As did Brent](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) (in a response to you) and as is Brent.
This is why people like Morano and Monckton crave debates.
What? You're against debates? Don't you know that's how to get to the truth? You sad bastard!
They have the skills to sound like experts (which they are not)
Well, you know, there are no experts (it would take a genius!), just a bunch of imperfect but educated debaters attempting a âcollective effort of mass networkingâ.
the abominable WUWT site
What?! Those are rational folk, you sad bastard!
All this means is that the slick propoganda campaigns of those attacking science in pursuit of short-term profits are getting through
Sad bastard!
This could only have been achieved by one of the most mendacious propaganda campaigns in post-WW 2 history.
Sad bastard!
Only that the denilati is winning the battle over public opinion through relentless propagandizing.
Sad bastard! You should want their babies!
Further to what I said earlier about the balmy wionter over all of canada, here is what Environmernt Canada has reported over the past few days:
"From the balmy Arctic, to the open water of the St. Lawrence and snowless western fields, this winter has been the warmest and driest in Canadian record books.
Environment Canada scientists report that winter 2009/10 was 4 C above normal, making it the warmest since nationwide records were first kept in 1948. It was also the driest winter on the 63-year record, with precipitation 22 per cent below normal nationally, and down 60 per cent in parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario.
âItâs beyond shocking,â David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, told Canwest News Tuesday. Records have been shattered from âcoast to coast to coast.â
âIt is truly a remarkable situation,â says Phillips, noting that heâs seen nothing like it in his 40 years of weather watching. He also warns that âthe winter than wasnâtâ may have set the stage for potentially âhorrificâ water shortages, insect infestations and wildfires this summer.
âItâs like winter was cancelled in this country,â he says.
Sunspot was saying?
now that is weird, I think twoofy spat a timing belt.
recommended advice @ 652
the action plan is ?
Jeff, whats the action plan ?
don't ask any of the numbnuts in here
they are too concerned with protecting the data and models
Now that's weird, now I will lie down there.
Did someone say teacup?
Fruit and fun for all!
.
And when doing that, here's a framework that one might peruse to see if it has any explanatory power.
whats the action plan ?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol
recommended advice @ 652
...
don't ask any of the numbnuts in here they are too concerned with protecting the data and models
Dunning and Kruger had something to say about this.
Brent, what you ought to do is look at the chronology of denialist response to the phenomenon of global warming. Twenty years ago global warming was a doomsday myth
[Just 8 days ago, for some](http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/3/8/the-insanity-of-greener…).
And when doing that, here's a framework that one might peruse to see if it has any explanatory power.
it has one of Brent's favorites, [Wait and See](http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/05/denialists_deck_of_cards_the_…), which he articulated numerous times here, as in #368:
And in the comments on that "card" is a fellow, Nick, who thinks much like our Brent and sunspot, and was pegged by Davis there:
This arrogance that Brent expresses with his nonsense about " imperfect but educated debaters [...] attempting a âcollective effort of mass networkingâ to get to the truth" showed up far earlier in #321, where he wrote
See, all it takes is a little googling to be on a par with "the elite" -- that is, a community of well-trained, hard working scientists who have individually spent years, and collectively spent millenia, researching and analyzing.
Brent, what you ought to do is look at the chronology of denialist response to the phenomenon of global warming. Twenty years ago global warming was a doomsday myth
Just 8 days ago, for some; see #397.
And when doing that, here's a framework that one might peruse to see if it has any explanatory power.
it has one of Brent's favorites, Wait and See, which he articulated numerous times here, as in #368:
And in the comments on that "card" is a fellow, Nick, who thinks much like our Brent and sunspot, and was pegged by Davis there:
This arrogance that Brent expresses with his nonsense about " imperfect but educated debaters [...] attempting a âcollective effort of mass networkingâ to get to the truth" showed up far earlier in #321, where he wrote
See, all it takes is a little googling to be on a par with "the elite" -- that is, a community of well-trained, hard working scientists who have individually spent years, and collectively spent millenia, researching and analyzing.
Wow, your expectations are so high! Isn't 20 years behind the times an entirely reasonable place to be? The glory days of Windows 3.1 and 28.8k dial-up modems. I'm sure they're eschewing that newfangled Windows 95 stuff when writing their thoughts, and if they wouldn't dream of posting them on "blogs" in places that could be found by "The Google". Right?
You can see a whole lot of this on some of the threads at The Drum. Graeme Bird keeps asserting that it's all rubbish and there's no evidence, de Brere reckons the climatologists have got it all wrong from some prognostications about how the Antarctic should be essentially isolated from other major climate influences therefore you can figure out CO2's impact from it alone, some engineer from Texas quotes old experiments that do not apply to the atmosphere to prove there is no radiation-based greenhouse effect, Jo Nova asserts that vacuum is a good insulator in a planetary context...
Hi fellers!
Itâs good to see the unsceptics keeping abreast of the debate on Jo Nova and Bishop Hill.
If I may, Iâd like to summarise my position, although I still think that the laymanâs debate here is for our personal benefit and has no effect on the great decision makers.
1.Whilst acknowledging that if we had been having this debate 20 years ago I would probably today be a warmist, we are where we are in 2010, and I await with interest what the thermometers will be telling us in the next decade. If the warming trend since 1975 is set to continue as the IPCC forecasts say, well letâs see if the Earth actually warms.
2.The greenhouse effect is proven physics, and more CO2 must increase temperatures to above their otherwise-would-have-been levels.
3.There are other drivers, and itâs entirely valid to enquire what are the relative contributions of each of them. If CO2 PPM is a consequence of temperature shifts rather than a driver, weâll have been barking up the wrong tree. There is a logic behind the claim of positive feedback â that the extra CO2 may trigger a vicious circle, but thereâs evidence that its effect tails off (that extra CO2 causes extra dT, but d2T declines).
4.The Hockey Stickâs veracity hinges on the accuracy of ground-based temperature measurements which may have been skewed by the Urban Heat Island effect.
5.The scientific papers I looked at all say that they canât explain the recent uptick unless CO2 is factored in. But they all use the suspect GISS record. And so rather than a ârotten edificeâ about to come tumbling down, we have a house of cards tottering on a single shaky card: groundstation measurements. Last week I was on the brink of announcing that the moon was being attacked by a giant insect, but then realised there was a fly on my telescopeâs lens. Moral: robust source data is essential.
6.There is widespread concern for the health of the ecosystem, and thereâs political support to spend vast sums of public money on reducing the carnage. If the AGW hypothesis turns out to be bunkum, I hope that the monies deployed in combating it will be diverted to nature conservation. I would nominate Jeff Harvey as chairman of a UN Nature Conservation Council with the following brief: To select twenty projects, each with $200m funding, to address the 20 most pressing problems. If AGW does turn out to be bunkum, one might argue that windmills kill rhinos.
I just discovered a site called Icecap. A piece entitled "When to Doubt Scientific Concensus" puts the case for how we got into this mess beautifully, I think.
http://www.icecap.us/
If any of you guys take a peek, I'd be interested to hear if you contest it. In my view, we sceptics are not anti-science; we're pro-good-science.
*we sceptics are not anti-science; we're pro-good-science*
B*s. As I have said before, IMHO the motivations that drive denialism in the vast majority of cases have nothing to do with science and everything to do with political agendas. There is plenty of evidence for this but it is rarely aired by the largely corporate-owned msm.
Besides, Brent, given your less-than-basic understanding of climate science, why inded are you are 'sceptic'? Is it not wise for laypeople like yourself to side with those doing the science who are in broad agreement over the causes of the current warming? If not, why not?
Shorter Brent @ 665:
_1. I haven't bothered to inform myself about this subject, so everyone else should discard what they already know in order to level the playing field._
_2. I accept the greenhouse effect._
_3. I don't accept the greenhouse effect._
_4. I still don't know what 'the hockey stick' refers to._
_5. If I dismiss the GISS temperature analysis with the wave of a hand, and pretend not to know about the others, the whole problem disappears!_
_6. I really care about environmental issues, except when it comes to doing something about them._
Shorter Brent @ 666:
_Being gullible enough to be taken in by the tripe on icecap.us shows that I am a sceptic._
Brent, the web site you linked to,""Icecap", is staffed bny the usual discredited denialist suspects: Balinuas, Balling, Carter et al.
And the main guy is a weather man. Ouch.
Three strikes and you are out.
Go away.
Shorter Brent : *The GISS record is a rotten edifice due to UHI effect, no evidence is require to support this claim. I just believe this claim must be true.*
Simple question Brent, what is the evidence that is so strong that you could make such a claim with such faith and certainty?
the unsceptics
Troll. Scientists are skeptics; GW "skeptics" are ignorant ideologues.
our personal benefit
How does anyone other than you benefit from your repeated trolling?
Whilst acknowledging that if we had been having this debate 20 years ago I would probably today be a warmist, we are where we are in 2010, and I await with interest what the thermometers will be telling us in the next decade. If the warming trend since 1975 is set to continue as the IPCC forecasts say, well letâs see if the Earth actually warms.
It has been repeatedly pointed out why this sort of statement makes you an incredibly stupid and foolish person. You're the frog saying that, since you didn't pay any attention to the fact that the water was getting hotter and hotter all this time, you'll just ignore all that evidence and start measuring now to see if it really does reach the boiling point..
In my view, we sceptics are not anti-science; we're pro-good-science.
Your view is inconsistent with the evidence.
Go away.
Brent, the only person here that you seem to respect thinks that you're an ignorant fool and wants you to go away. What reason do you have left not to?
Jakerman (672): Please have a look at Roy Spencer's recent work on UHI. If the thermometer's in the exhaust gases of a Jumbo Jet then questions need to be asked.
Jeff Harvey (668): "Is it not wise for laypeople like yourself to side with those doing the science who are in broad agreement over the causes of the current warming? If not, why not?"
Well, Jeff, we're getting mixed messages. Here's Dr. William Gray, professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University:
"...the [models] do not make official shorter-range global temperature forecasts of one to 0 years, which could accurately be verified. If they wonât do this, why should we believe their forecasts at 50 to 100 years? Any experienced meteorologist or climate scientist who would actually believes a long range climate model should really have their head examined. They are living in a dream world."
and
James Lovelock: âI think you have to accept that the sceptics have kept us sane - some of them, anyway,â he said. âThey have been a breath of fresh air. They have kept us from regarding the science of climate change as a religion. It had gone too far that way. There is a role for sceptics in science. They shouldnât be brushed aside."
You say that the Icecap people are "the usual denialist suspects", as if what they report is tarnished by who they are. This reminds me of one reason why I first started looking into this: The outraged screams by unsceptics like you resemble the rantings of orthodox churchmen against heresy. Methinks the doommongers doth protest too much.
The name Willie Soon popped up in this thread, and was sniffed at. I now see that he's a solar and climate scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Heretic to you, no doubt. To me he sits on one side of the scales. He says, "Published papers [analyzing ice core data] clearly, clearly show that it is always temperature that rises first by at least several hundred years . . . then the CO2 curve response follows. It is a very clear scientific consensus on this issue."
And you reckon that the science is settled?
Can you not at least concede that there are scientists who challenge the orthodoxy?
If any of you guys take a peek, I'd be interested to hear if you contest it.
It's a dishonest, ignorant, stupid, fallacious (affirmation of the consequent features prominently) piece of garbage. That you credit it is enough to establish you as a fool.
If the thermometer's in the exhaust gases of a Jumbo Jet then questions need to be asked.
This, like your other questions, has already been answered here, troll.
Methinks the doommongers doth protest too much.
Ideology-driven troll.
Can you not at least concede that there are scientists who challenge the orthodoxy?
That has been "conceded", troll. 97% of climate scientists accept AGW; that leaves 3% who challenge it. But their challenges are scientifically invalid.
@Brent:
"He says, "Published papers [analyzing ice core data] clearly, clearly show that it is always temperature that rises first by at least several hundred years . . . then the CO2 curve response follows. It is a very clear scientific consensus on this issue." "
Very good, Soon is aware of that consensus. But what does consensus refer to in reality? Well, this:
1. In the past CO2 rose as a feedback
2. This CO2 feedback resulted in more warming
What does it NOT mean:
1. First it warms, then CO2 rises
2. Current CO2 increases are due to warming several hundred years ago, and are not anthropogenic in origin
3. (Additional) CO2 does not result in warming
Soon tries to obfuscate people and doesn't mention what the consensus actually says. He only mentions something that can be understood, in the face of insufficient knowledge of the receiver, as what the consensus does NOT say. Or rather, what the consensus resoundingly rejects.
clearly, clearly show that it is always temperature that rises first by at least several hundred years . . . then the CO2 curve response follows
Which has already been "conceded" and explained, troll; see, e.g., #23. In #156, you wrote
. Come on, guys, it is claimed that CO2 reaches a peak 800 years after temperature peaks. Now this may well be duff information, in which case point me to somewhere that contests it.
Well, that was done, and yet here you are back on it again. That's trolling, and bad faith. From T. Edward Damer's 12 Basic Principles of Rational Argument,
What does it NOT mean: 1. First it warms, then CO2 rises 2. Current CO2 increases are due to warming several hundred years ago, and are not anthropogenic in origin 3. (Additional) CO2 does not result in warming
This has already been explained to Brent repeatedly. He's trolling.
I took a peek at the icecap.us link, and found the first two paragraphs to be completely misleading:
"Anyone who has studied the history of science knows that scientists are not immune to the non-rational dynamics of the herd.
A December 18 Washington Post poll, released on the final day of the ill-fated Copenhagen climate summit, reported âfour in ten Americans now saying that they place little or no trust in what scientists have to say about the environment.â Nor is the poll an outlier. Several recent polls have found âclimate changeâ skepticism rising faster than sea levels on Planet Algore (not to be confused with Planet Earth, where sea levels remain relatively stable)."
So, in one fell swoop, it supposes that the laws of physics can be changed by popular opinion, and adds tired old ad hominem denialista propaganda with no qualification.
So, in answer to "do you contest it?", all I can say is, "Argumentum ex recto as usual".
Brent writes:
>*Jakerman (672): Please have a look at Roy Spencer's recent work on UHI. If the thermometer's in the exhaust gases of a Jumbo Jet then questions need to be asked.*
Please direct me to the evidence of Spencer's has that convinced you that global temperature anomaly is produced by waste heat from jet engines?
Does Spencer show how the UHI melted the sea ice, or changed ecosystem response to temperature? Or How the UHI cooled the stratosphere? Or how the UHI warmed the oceans? or How the UHI reduced the diurnal temperature range?
>*if the thermometer's in the exhaust gases of a Jumbo Jet then questions need to be asked.*
>This, like your other questions, has already been answered here, troll.
And,
>This has already been explained to Brent repeatedly. He's trolling.
Oh I see, then I'm likely just wasting my time asking Brent how the UHI effect the Arctic more than urban centers. Perhaps its a magic UHI effect Brent?
There would need to be pretty clear and quantifiable flaws for Brent to make such strong faith based claims about the flaws in GISS, wouldn't there. I mean who would make such strong statements as Brent without having clear and quantifiable evidence to make the case?
J Bowers (681): "Argumentum ex recto". Ouch! A hit, a palpable hit! (Shakespeare)
Well, as for the herd-thing somebody above was saying - intelligently - that great reputations in science are won by splendid new innovation or discovery which smashes the prior art. But surely there's a good point here: that the 'concensus' at any point in time has a certain (laudable) momentum or inertia, and revolutionary new ideas meet resistance, quite properly, but these concensuses are sometimes wrong. There's the story of a couple of hundred good-men-and-true ganging up on Einstein to refute his newfangled ideas on relativity, and his famous reply, "Well. if they're right surely one would be enough!" Continental drift used to be a heresy; thank heavens that science is bigger than scientists!
As for the US opinion poll thing, you're right of course. That paragraph in Jay Richards' article hinders - rather than helps - the main theme: that the AGW programme has all the hallmarks of a toppling house of cards being desperately propped up by unsceptics. If an opinion poll shows that most people believe that the oxygen atom is lighter than the hydrogen atom, it has no bearing. You're right.
The article's main thrust is looking at science politics, not scientific fact.
On the subject of 'advocacy in science', I've just seen that our friend Jeff Harvey has a Wikipedia entry. He is described as specialising in "research concerning [ ] science, ecology and advocacy". Respect!
My earlier suggestion that some of the monies being frittered away on global warming might be better spent on pressing ecological issues has been suggested before by a Dane called Lomborg. In a bestselling book he advocated that we should instead "spend money on research and development for longer-term environmental solutions, and on other important world problems such as AIDS, malaria and malnutrition." Respect to him too!
What the Brent's seem to forget that AGW is the revolutionary new theory.
Brent writes:
>*Continental drift used to be a heresy; thank heavens that science is bigger than scientists!*
Shorter Brent: AGW science might be wrong, some positions in science were wrong at least once over the years. Therefore I can make what ever claims I like with the flimsiest if any evidence.
Jakerman (682):
The reference to Jumbo Jets was a figure of speech, of course. You can find some of Dr. Spencer's thoughts at:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/16/spencer-direct-evidence-that-most…
Surely you'd agree that accurate temperature measurement is a key part of the Global Warming Debate, and that any instrumental error should be identified and rectified?
You asked whether Spencer can explain things about sea ice and stratosphere. No, I think he's just trying to ensure that the data record is clean of spurious effects.
Brent, for someone you consider such a luminary in my opinion Willie Soon has a pretty poor publication and citation record: 32 on the Wos since 1995 with only 541 citations. Moreover, his 2003 paper with Baliunas in Climate Science Research was considered so appalling that half of the editorial team resigned in protest. After publication, 13 authors whose work was cited wrote to the journal disputing their conclusions. It was also funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute. His publication record is also pretty meager, which makes you wonder why he is such a celebrity.
And the very fact that he and Baliunas are associated with right wing think tanks like the George C. Marshall Institute that act as conduits for corporate political agendas should wave a huge red flag in front of you. You'd think these people would have some common sense and avoid these groups like the plague - but they don't.
Second, you can hand pick a small coterie of denialists whilst ignoring many thousands of others doing vastly more science whose research supports the hypothesis of AGW. The fact that many nof the denialists are known by name should be a warning - it means that there probably are not that many of them. Just about every time a new astroturf climate change denial site pops up on the web, I can guarantee that I will probably know half of the names on it. Just like ICECAP. It is par for the course! By contrast, the thousands of scientists with opposing views are anonymous for the most part.
Most importantly, beyond a reasonable doubt the science on climate change is settled. It was settled 15 years ago, and it is even more settled now. But mark my words. No matter how much the empirical evidence accrues in support of AGW, the corporate-funded denialati will be out there distorting, mis-interpreting, and basically mangling science in order to influence public policy.
[What's wrong with Lomborg](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/so_whats_wrong_with_lomborg.php)? *scientific reports that Lomborg uses say the opposite of what he makes it appear they do*.
684 Brent: "My earlier suggestion that some of the monies being frittered away on global warming might be better spent on pressing ecological issues has been suggested before by a Dane called Lomborg. In a bestselling book he advocated that we should instead "spend money on research and development for longer-term environmental solutions, and on other important world problems such as AIDS, malaria and malnutrition." Respect to him too!"
Have you checked the sources in Lomborg's, what turns out to be, work of opinion and fiction, as demonstrated by Sharon Begley in Newsweek, where she actually decided to do what the rest of the planet didn't bother to do; check his sources. Please, read on:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/233942
Book Review: The Lomborg Deception
Debunking the claims of the climate-change skeptic.
Still stand by Lomborg?
As John Mashey said:
"According to what [John] Mashey describes as the Lomborg method, you can avoid almost any spending issue that doesnât suit your political or economic preferences. You begin by proposing a list of alternative priorities that include useful, desirable items that everyone must agree deserve attention â the treatment of AIDS or the provision of food and water to the desperate. Then you make sure that these are items that, for political reasons, will never get funded (foreign aid is a low political priority, especially in difficult economic times). Finally, you invoke the false dilemma: you suggest that your audience must accept your prioritization, because if they canât (or wonât) pay for the items on the top of the list, it would be irresponsible to start thinking about paying for the items that are a lower priority."
So, I stand by argumentum ex recto as usual.
Michael (685): "What the Brent seems to forget that AGW is the revolutionary new theory."
Yes, you're right. And if it's correct we're in trouble.
âExtraordinary claims,â the late Carl Sagan often said, ârequire extraordinary evidence.â
It seems to have been getting a bit warmer since the mid-1970s. The famous theory extrapolates that trend for decades to come. Well, we've had a bit of a pause since 1998, which doesn't invalidate the theory. If the thermometers are dodgy, that might invalidate it. And if the planet doesn't play ball in the coming decade.... we'll all say, "The end isn't nigh. Let's all go down the pub instead!"
691 Brent: "1998">/i>
Thanks for that. I'll get my popcorn.
Actually, I'll put the popcorn away.
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/how-not-to-falsify-a…
"The (D'Aleo) graph purposefully starts at a record high temperature (1998) to maximize the visual impression of âfalling temperaturesâ. It also strongly depends on the specific datasets used. This is a clear example of cherrypicking.
Using the same logic as this graph is based on, one could also falsify the theory of gravity by pointing to a bird in the sky (conveniently forgetting that there are more forces than gravity and that the bird has wings)."
Brent:
>*You asked whether Spencer can explain things about sea ice and stratosphere. No, I think he's just trying to ensure that the data record is clean of spurious effects.*
I also asked about the rate of Artic warming, the ocean warming, the indicators in the biosphere, the diurnal temperature range. All support rapid warming.
Spencer has needed to make major corrections to his temperature record, bringing his ever closer to the other satellite and the major surface temperature records. And with to fixing of multiple errors, Spencer is currently showing the warmest start of a year on record.
Or do you believe that Spencer make this case convincingly is his tentatively titled [blog post](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/16/spencer-direct-evidence-that-most…) *"Spencer: Direct Evidence that Most U.S. Warming Since 1973 **Could** Be Spurious"*?
Here is a clue from Spencer:
>*Complexity in data analysis should only be added when it is required to elucidate something that is not obvious from a simpler analysis. And it turns out that a simple analysis of publicly available raw (not adjusted) temperature data from NOAA/NESDIS NOAA/NCDC, combined with high-resolution population density data for those temperature monitoring sites, shows clear evidence of UHI warming contaminating the GHCN data for the United States.*
He is using raw data, though the raw data is riddled with bias. such as upgrade (change) in thermometers, change in housing of sensors, growth of ornamental trees (following initial clearing), change in time of observation and or transitioning to MMTS sensors.
Do a [bit of research](http://www.skepticalscience.com/On-the-reliability-of-the-US-Surface-Te…) on why these biases need to be controlled.
>Investigations into the impact of the MMTS on temperature data have found that on average, MMTS sensors record lower daily maximums than their CRS counterparts, and, conversely, slightly higher daily minimums (Menne 2009). Only about 30% of the good sites currently have the newer MMTS-type sensors compared to about 75% of the poor exposure locations. Thus it's MMTS sensors that are responsible for the cool bias imposed on poor sites.
>When the change from CRS to MMTS are taken into account, as well as other biases such as station relocation and Time of Observation, the trend from good sites show close agreement with poor sites.
I found this wonderful maxim courtesy of Google translate (OK, I made it up!):
Perhaps a native Swede could verify/improve the translation.
Brent,
Carl Sagan would turn over in his grave if he knew how you were mangling his quote. By extraordinary claims he, and esteemed scientists like him, are referring to those whose data trails go quickly very cold. To those who make certain claims not backed up by the vast majority of the evidence or by the scientific community at large. Sagan would have distanced himself from the climate change denialati in a microsecond.
Look at the qualifications of most of the so-called sceptics. Aside from their links with polluting industries or right wing think tanks, many of them, like Soon, have very mediocre publication and citation records. Look at Plimer or Ball or many of the others. Hardly well published, even in their own fields. Yet they get disproportionate amounts of attention from the mainstream media. Why is that? IMHO there are a number of reasons. First, there are few truly well published sceptics. Most are on the academic fringe. Given the low number, it is no surprise that many become household names. Second, many have powerful vested interested funding them. They get invited here, there and everywhere at think tank shindigs and are feted by the media. Third, many are emeritius professors who were hardly well known in their own fields of research during their own careers. Now, they find that by jumping onto the CC denial bandwagon, they are suddenly becoming instant celebrities. This, irrespective of the fact that they have little or no pedigree in climate science.
As far as Lomborg is concerned, he is creating straw-man aritificial choices which in my view are despicable on his part. Of course there are the finances available to alleviate much of the gap between the rich and poor in the world, but, given that the poor have never been a priority to the world's rich, they will always be ignored and they money spent elsewhere, often on killing people in industrial numbers, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan well demonstrate. Read up on policial history man, and stop parroting elite explanantions. Lomborg has been milking the hell out of the 'limited money' story for years now, arguing that 'we must prioritize' when the poor will always be expendable - "Unpeople" in the words of brave British historian Mark Curtis.
I co-reviewed Lomborg's book in Nature in 2001, and let me say the that less there is said about what is in my view an opus about as shallow as a puddle, the better.
Shorter Brent @ 691:
_I still haven't watched the video at the top of this page._
Jeff Harvey @ 696:
>Carl Sagan would turn over in his grave if he knew how you were mangling his quote.
Indeed. Sagan talks a bit about global warming in [this interview](http://blather.net/globaleyes/archives/2007/04/carl_sagan_on_global_war…) from 1989.
Brent,
>Well, we've had a bit of a pause since 1998, which doesn't invalidate the theory. If the thermometers are dodgy, that might invalidate it.
Not at all. The land instrumental record is just one of several pieces of orthogonal corroborating evidence that all tell the same story. Even if Spencer was remotely correct about the US record, it is less than 4% of the globe, and whatever uncertainty he might discover will move the overall level of confidence by a very tiny margin. He has actually discovered none but merely raised some spurious and nonsensical questions, feeding the ignorant but persistent beliefs of lynch mob at WUWT.
As to the fallacious 1998 trope that denialists have cling to with such religious tenacity, recall that Phil Jones recently said there is no statistical significance at the 95% level for the trend, in the HADcru series post 1995. It follows that even less statistical significance can be ascribed to any trend since 1998, especially since 1998, being an outlier, imposes a strong end-point bias on any trend calculated from it.
If you are really an engineer, you should understand this if you hope to attain any competence in your field.
As Stevie Wonder sang:
>When you believe in things
>That you don't understand,
>Then you suffer,
>Superstition ain't the way
Luminous Beauty, thank you for your kind words and career advice.
You rightly say that the falling temperatures since 1998 are not statistically significant. And thank you also for the Stevie Wonder lyrics. Has he maybe recorded the song that goes:
"I'll pretend my ship's not sinking,
'Cos I'm the king of wishful thinking."
Lumie, I know it must be hard for you waiting for temperatures to hit the heights of 1998 again. Twelve long years waiting for a new record, hanging on grimly and telling yourself that it's only a matter of time. The 1998 record anomaly of 0.75C was so, so nearly matched last month! You must have groaned when it came in at a lousy 0.62C.
Still, keep on hoping, eh? Keep that bottle of Champagne in the fridge. Who knows, next month or next year you may hoot, "Yesssss! Get IN there! Nought-point-NINE!" Your poor wife looking in anxiously from the kitchen and smiling kindly at you as you say, "Darling, I KNEW it! We're all gonna die. Fan-TASTIC!" And she rings her Mum, who sympathises with her, and she says, "But Mum, he's gone out in the car with a banner saying that it's a sixth of a degree hotter than in 1998. The neighbours are offering me the names of their psychiatrists."
Why don't you buy a thermometer... you could be more useful. But - naughty, naughty - no holding your thumb on the bulb as you're reading it please.
I'm glad I've now heard of Lomborg and his book The Skeptical Environmentalist.
It's getting some good reviews on Amazon, but there's a lowly one-star awarded by a guy who says it is "a blinkered view of reality".
He signs off (get this...) d.viner@uea.ac.uk
What was Jeff saying about "the usual suspects"?
Brent needs a history lesson. 2005 beat 1998 in the GISTEMP record.
Brent,
If you want to play stupid number games, [Monday's](http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps+002) TLT anomaly was 0.84C. OMG!!
(Note that Spencer can't correctly convert from celsius to fahrenheit.)
dhogaza,
As it does in the [NCDC](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/global-jan-dec-error-bar-…) record.
Ignoring data that doesn't fit their preconceived notions is what denialists do best.
Brent,
Do you need an itemized list of Lomborg's [errors](http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/)?
Dhogaza, it seems I got you wrong.
I just got through reading the Deltoid thread on "Mockton's Latin". A couple of decent rational polite people - Walter Manny and Anthony Brookes - popped in for a chat and got treated abysmally by the pack of rude scornful headcases, yourself included.
One of them wondered why so many unsceptics are so foul-mouthed. If it weren't for the occasional deer like James entering these woods, the wolfpack would have nothing to savage.
And so many of you have been spending your lives in this debate. The above muggings were 2008. OK, we believe you, you have the faith. Time to move on...
Montaigne said: "Nothing is so fervently believed as that which is not known." Maybe this is the source of unsceptics' anger. When the bottom drops out of the Apocalypse market, how will you fill the void its passing will leave in your lives?
Gentlemen, thank you for your time. I'm going down the pub.
So Brent,
You are reduced to arguing tone in lieu of substance.
Epic FAIL.
But surely there's a good point here: that the 'concensus' at any point in time has a certain (laudable) momentum or inertia, and revolutionary new ideas meet resistance, quite properly, but these concensuses are sometimes wrong.
It's not a good point, it's affirmation of the consequent. What is true of some consensus is not true of all; to discern the truth, one must look at the details, not truck in these moronic generalities based on misleading instances.
There's the story of a couple of hundred good-men-and-true ganging up on Einstein to refute his newfangled ideas on relativity, and his famous reply, "Well. if they're right surely one would be enough!"
Fallacious appeal to authority.
Continental drift used to be a heresy; thank heavens that science is bigger than scientists!
The opposition to continental drift was in part based on science -- the arguments for it given at the time were bogus -- and in part not. The part based on science was valid, even if mistaken. The same is true of the Big Bang, which was originally argued for on religious grounds -- resistance to that argument was valid, even though the Big Bang is fact.
that the AGW programme has all the hallmarks of a toppling house of cards being desperately propped up by unsceptics
Only a gullible and intellectually dishonest fool would make such a claim.
It seems to have been getting a bit warmer since the mid-1970s. The famous theory extrapolates that trend for decades to come. Well, we've had a bit of a pause since 1998, which doesn't invalidate the theory. If the thermometers are dodgy, that might invalidate it. And if the planet doesn't play ball in the coming decade.... we'll all say, "The end isn't nigh. Let's all go down the pub instead!"
You seem determined to remind people that you are a fool.
Dhogaza, it seems I got you wrong.
You do so much of that. Despite your tendency toward generalization, a certain conclusion seems to elude you.
Montaigne said: "Nothing is so fervently believed as that which is not known."
Again with the fallacy of affirmation of the consequent. I fervently believe that humans landed on the moon, that the Earth is not flat, that there are no unicorns or fairies, that OJ killed Nicole, that gays and the religious are entitled to the same rights as those who are non gay and non religious ... is that because these are things that are not known?
Gentlemen, thank you for your time. I'm going down the pub.
Your appropriate venue.
And so many of you have been spending your lives in this debate. The above muggings were 2008. OK, we believe you, you have the faith. Time to move on...
To the pub bloke, it's all just a "debate" ... the sort of thing you do in a pub between drinking bouts. Brent has repeatedly sung the song "If it turns out there's nothing to AGW, let's go down to the pub". Unsurprisingly , that's where he's headed, because that's what he fervently believes.
If it weren't for the occasional deer like James entering these woods, the wolfpack would have nothing to savage.
That's what it's about in Brent's warped little mind.
Brent since your [rash critique of GISS](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…), was built on a [Spencer's flawed analysis](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…), how do you justify not labeling yourself as one of the all too common 'unsceptics'.
Evidence suggests, more specifically, your strong claims lacking robust supporting evidence, qualify you as one among the ranks of the unsceptics.
I quite like that term actually, its easier than "so-called-sceptics" and less interpretation than ""sceptics"" (that is in quote marks).
The unsceptics are useful for somethings, they brought us the useful term, 'Post-Normal-Science', now the "unsceptic".
Lumie, I know it must be hard for you waiting for temperatures to hit the heights of 1998 again. Twelve long years waiting for a new record, hanging on grimly and telling yourself that it's only a matter of time.
Brent, you ignorant dishonest moron and drunken fool: the last decade has been the warmest recorded in 160 years. The 15 hottest years on record have occurred during the last 20 years. (Which does not mean that they are the hottest ever, but the fact that it was hotter eons ago doesn't do us any good.) To pluck out 1998, which is an outlier for a well known reason, is cherry picking to the highest degree, grossly dishonest and intellectually incompetent. And you know this because it has been pointed out to you repeatedly. You call yourself rational; you are anything but. You complain about your treatment; you deserve far worse than you have received.
Evidence suggests, more specifically, your strong claims lacking robust supporting evidence, qualify you as one among the ranks of the unsceptics.
On evidence: #699 once again reveals Brent as a troll, a loon, an ignorant dunce, and a giant gaping ahole. In #593 he writes "Please stop insulting me" and yet here he is claiming that we want it to get warmer. Really, nothing else needs to be said about or to him. Someone got it right about him way back in #144.
I think a new term of art is required, and hence I hereby dub Brent a Goldfish Troll.
He makes simple-minded arguments which are debunked forthwith. He shows signs of understanding why his arguments are bogus at the time - but then swims around the bowl a couple of times and breathlessly repeats them again.
This nomenclature has the advantage that we now know that goldfish are not (as famously believed) limited to a whole three seconds of memory - one suspects Brent's behaviour is not driven by a grievous lack of long term memory either.
Brent #705, Dhogaza may have once given you the benefit of doubt that you've by now shown everyone you never deserved.
Now that Brent's discovered that delusional arguments were being addressed here years ago will it dawn on him that perhaps he's not as special as he's hitherto thought? Will it occur to him to wonder whether his presumptuous trolling wouldn't be refuted even were he far more capable than he is? No and no, of course. He's a "skeptic", dude, and he's due back down the pub.
Because he keeps carping on about nothing?
He makes simple-minded arguments which are debunked forthwith. He shows signs of understanding why his arguments are bogus at the time - but then swims around the bowl a couple of times and breathlessly repeats them again.
Yup. Dave R wrote
I think Brent did watch the video, but he forgot everything in it because it didn't confirm his ideologically held beliefs, which he repeatedly returns to.
People like Brent, and James before him (so alike they could be clones; see [#311](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…)) are educational in re the psychology of the Denialati. Folks like [Erasmussimo](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) and [Bruce Sharp](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) could especially learn a thing or two.
WAH WAH WAH WAH, hahahaha, you all repeatably show how shallow, inept and semiconscious you all are, brent has once again wiped the floor with your shattered ego's, suckers.
You won't gain any respect either if you continue with this infantile banter,
get to work on solving your aGW instead of being parasitic to it !
yeah yeah I know, your too busy gate keeping the cult.
Did something just make a whining noise? Must have just been wind.
:-) And because he keeps falling for it - hook, line and sinker?
TruthMachine, why would I be concerned about the psychology of the Denialati? Trolls are not going to change their minds. I'm not concerned about trolls; I'm concerned about the people who are not trolls.
If you want to focus on trolls, well... which do you suppose Brent enjoyed more? Your reaction to his comments, or mine?
TruthMachine, why would I be concerned about the psychology of the Denialati? Trolls are not going to change their minds. I'm not concerned about trolls; I'm concerned about the people who are not trolls.
Your sharp distinction now is rather asinine given your previous comment, the one I had in mind but you apparently have forgotten:
My point was that you could learn something about people like Brent, people about whom you are apparently incapable of making such a determination.
Sheesh.
Bruce, looking back over your other point-missing posts, I see
That is not at all Chomsky's point -- for instance, he doesn't say that our main concern should be the things the peace movement does and not what the warmongers do. Rather, his point is that our priority should be on the crimes of our own nation, rather than the crimes of other nations, because we are best placed to address those crimes. So you're abusing Chomsky's ideas to support something he would never support -- to "Go easy on" dissemblers and obfuscators.
why would I be concerned about the psychology of the Denialati?
See http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/flogging_the_scientists.php#com…
TruthMachine, unless you are right 100% of the time about who is and who is not a troll, your approach is counterproductive. Refer back to my first post: I posed the hypothetical that 9 out of 10 times, the person who seems like a troll really is a troll. The benefit you get from heaping abuse on nine guilty people is vastly less than the harm you do to your cause, the one time that you are wrong. You think I'm missing the point; meanwhile, I think you're missing the point. That suggests that we're talking past each other: you're concerned with the right way to treat Brent, and I'm concerned with the right way to persuade people who disagree.
Regarding Chomsky: why would you think this concept should be limited to nations? By that peculiar standard, any force opposing a government would have carte blanche to resort to any means necessary. The same dynamic applies on a smaller scale: just as I should be more concerned with my own nation's crimes, rather than enemies' crimes, I should be more concerned with my own intemperate behavior, rather than the similar behavior of people who disagree with me.
It may make you feel better to be rude to people who disagree with you, but it doesn't help your cause, which presumably is more important.
You seem to think that being intellectually dishonest helps your cause. Perhaps you're right.
To make the point: you ignore "he doesn't say that our main concern should be the things the peace movement does and not what the warmongers do". You stupidly and dishonestly harp on "nation", but I didn't say that it was limited by size. The point, again, is "because we are best placed to address those crimes". And you can't possible actually agree with Chomsky on what you claim you agree with, else we should not have been concerned about the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, just as your interpretation of what he meant implies that he should not have been concerned with the crimes of the U.S. elites, but rather the "intemperate behavior" of the anti-war movement.
You say "I should be more concerned with my own intemperate behavior", but it isn't your behavior you're concerned with, it's mine. Because you're a tone troll, a pompous patronizer and you have this absurd fantasy that, if we're just polite to trolls, we'll win over the hearts and minds of the 1 in 10 who aren't trolls. But you have no rational basis to believe that, and there are actually studies showing that your sort of accomodationism doesn't work.
it doesn't help your cause, which presumably is more important.
Thank you ever so much for your concern. Now bugger off.
Sunspot actually thinks Brent has 'wiped the floor with us'?
Wow, talk about delusional. Methinks sunspot has been spending too much time under the sun....
As for Brent's method of estimating public reviews of Lomborg's TSE, this tells me all I need to know about Brent. Yes, I am sure that the lay public are well able to evaluate the empirical evidence behind such divergent processes as human welfare, epidemiology, biodiversity and species extinction rates, various forms of pollution, changes in global forest cover, acid rain, climate change etc. etc. Given that Lomborg has a single peer-reviewed article in his academic career (on iterated prisoner's dilemma, about 6 billion light years away from the material covered in TSE), and that he wrote his opus in only 15 months, one has to wonder how deep each of the fields was covered. Here's the truth: about as deep as a puddle. One cannot write a book covereing so many complex fields in 15 months, fields which take experts in each field many years to master, and then package it as the 'real state of the world'. The positive reviews on Amazon.com have little to do with substance but reveal what people utterly are desperate to hear: good news. Optimisitic scenarios. Even if Lomborg's world is a complete illusion.
All Brent does do is reveal here is both his blatant ignorance of science and his political views which he wears on his sleeves. He also revels in winding people up which frankly I find amusing. I debated Lomborg on the biodiversity chapter back in 2002 and gave him a very rough time (hence why he has avoided subsequent debates with me), and thus debating someone like Brent in a public forum would be a waste of time because Lomborg by comparison is a master. I've faced off with enough contrarians over the years to realize that they are all bluster are little substance.
TruthMachine,
I agree with you 100% with respect to Chomsky. The man is a national treasure IMHO. He has tirelessly exposed myth after myth with respect to U.S. foreign policy and the hypocrisy associated with it. For instance, the notion that the U.S. supports democracy, freedom and human rights abroad, as well as other 'necessary illusions'. I've read most of his work and what surprises me (or perhaps not) is how much his views have been made to appear 'radical' by the state-corporate msm. Manufacturing Consent is a classic work; reading it makes one aware of how much the media is warped in supporitng elite ideology. With no disrespect to Bruce, I think he has taken the apparent controversy over Chomsky's views of Cambodia during the U.S. carpet bombing period (1969-73) and then the subsequent Pol Pot years and this has clouded his own views of the man. I think that this is unfortunate.
@James #7: the effect of CO2 alone is actually fairly straightforward to calculate; the really fuzzy numbers come about when the modelers pretend they know more than they do and guess at the "enhanced" effect. At the moment most governments are not doing anything useful at all to reduce CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. The EU has its emissions trading scam in which people pretend something useful is being done; unfortunately Australia seems to want to ape that worthless policy. It's great for setting up worthless government departments and wasting taxpayer money, but as far as the science is concerned it has no significant effect. Norway has put a large tax on CO2 emissions from natural gas processing, so their national gas company is scrubbing CO2 and injecting most of it back into the sands beneath the sea - that is obviously a technique that works well (despite denialist and 'green' camps claiming that it is 'unproven' and 'dangerous' technology). However, whether such schemes can be employed at a large enough scale to make a difference remains to be seen.
@Mikeh #14: The switch to gas fired plants is 100% bullshit; it's the sort of thing to do if you want to pretend you're doing something good. For the same amount of energy released, burning natural gas results in less CO2 than burning coal, but the reduction is not big enough to have a significant impact on future CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere - power plants have to cut a hell of a lot more than what is gained in switching from coal to gas. Gas is also a far less plentiful resource compared to coal - guess what will happen to your gas bill when the major power generators all want that gas to keep their turbines spinning. So if the government hands out money to switch from coal to gas, that's a huge waste of money with enormous negative economic effects down the line as well.
>*Norway has put a large tax on CO2 emissions from natural gas processing, so their national gas company is scrubbing CO2 and injecting most of it back into the sands beneath the sea - that is obviously a technique that works well (despite denialist and 'green' camps claiming that it is 'unproven' and 'dangerous' technology). However, whether such schemes can be employed at a large enough scale to make a difference remains to be seen.*
This is the easy kind of CCS. Gas producers scrub their fuel of CO2 to improve their product. I assume it sometime aides gas recovery to pump the CO2 back underground and force out gas.
South Australia's big gas company SANTOS has feasibility plans for this already. It would likely be one of the first projects enacted if we could put a price on carbon.
My understanding is that the economics and capacity of this type of CCS is different to many other types such as required to for coal fired power.
...because if one single strategy doesn't solve the ENTIRE problem, it is 100% bullshit. Interesting concept.
So if I'm nearly broke and I can't pay my entire phone bill by saving a few dollars on groceries, I shouldn't bother making the savings and see what ELSE I can do to attack the problem?
TruthMachine, you say that I'm concerned with your behavior instead of mine. You'd have a point if I had been rude to someone in this thread. But I don't believe that I have.
You don't seem to be able to think beyond your one-size-fits all arguments. Let's consider the point of whose crimes we should be concerned with: ours, or our enemies? I think, you, Jeff, and I would all agree that generally, the answer is "ours." But the scale of the crimes we're discussing comes into play. Suppose my neighbor and I are both lousy drivers: at a least once a week, he backs out of his driveway, and runs over the mailbox of the house across the street. The poor guy across the street has no idea who keeps hitting his mailbox. And at least once a week, I do the same thing. My first concern should be the instances when I've run over his mailbox, don't you think?
But what if, one evening, my neighbor backs out of the driveway and hits the kid across the street? Should I still be worried about the times I hit the guy's mailbox? Or do I now have a greater concern?
Throughout this thread, your stance has been: "You are either with me, or against me. If you criticize anything I do or say, you are against me." It's as if you can't get your head around the idea that we might have the same goals, but different ideas as to the best strategy. In the post above, you first describe me as a "tone troll," then claim that I believe that "if we're just polite to trolls, we'll win over the hearts and minds." Those are conflicting claims, and neither one is correct. On the first claim, I doubt if anything I could say would sway you, since you're still in that "with me or against me" mindset. On the second claim, however, I already stated, point-blank, that "Trolls are not going to change their minds."
Jeff, one minor point with respect to your comment on my opinion of Chomsky: while I think his work with respect to the Khmer Rouge was pretty awful, I've noted previously (here and elsewhere) that I very much agree with his main point regarding US involvement in Cambodia. If the US had not intervened in Indochina, I don't believe the Khmer Rouge would have ever come to power; and consequently, the US bears much of the responsibility for the subsequent deaths.
TruthMachine, you say that I'm concerned with your behavior instead of mine. You'd have a point if I had been rude to someone in this thread.
Logic fail.
Throughout this thread, your stance has been: "You are either with me, or against me. If you criticize anything I do or say, you are against me."
Uh, no.
On the first claim, I doubt if anything I could say would sway you, since you're still in that "with me or against me" mindset.
Uh, no, what you say won't sway me because I don't agree with your premises.
You're way deep here in ad hominem land and it's boring. Ta ta.
P.S.
"if we're just polite to trolls, we'll win over the hearts and minds."
Nice quote mine; the inversion of meaning could be intentional or not but neither speaks well of you. I wrote "... of the 1 in 10 who aren't trolls", in reference to your I posed the hypothetical that 9 out of 10 times, the person who seems like a troll really is a troll. So your On the second claim, however, I already stated, point-blank, that "Trolls are not going to change their minds." is non sequitur, as is most of your response. Your illogic could be intentional or not but neither speaks well of you. In either case it's a waste of my time to correspond with someone so inept or dishonest.
P.P.S.
Let's consider the point of whose crimes we should be concerned with: ours, or our enemies? I think, you, Jeff, and I would all agree that generally, the answer is "ours."
No, I do not think that at all, and neither does Chomsky, as I tried to make clear repeatedly by noting that Chomsky is concerned with the crimes of U.S. elites -- who are surely enemies of some sort -- and not the "intemperate behavior" of the peace movement of which he is a part. Chomsky's position is that our primary responsibility is to address those crimes that we are well situated to affect. As he says, of course other nations commit crimes. But we don't vote in their elections, we don't participate in their policy debates. If Chomsky had lived in the Soviet Union, it would have been their crimes that he would have made his primary concern (he certainly made them a concern, contra many of his critics) -- not because they were his crimes, but because he would have been better situated to affect them.
You blather on about rudeness and intemperate behavior, but I don't give a flying fig about those. What I care about is dishonesty, intellectual and direct, the spreading of false information, FUD, the denigration of science and the slander of scientists, and the other crimes that people like Brent, sunspot, and James commit.
twoofy,
'the denigration of science', would you like me to show you instances where science has done this to itself ? There are many !
twoofy,
given your previous statement where have I 'the slander of scientists' ?
twoofy,
some science is good and some is bad,
I wouldn't hold a grudge against a whole race of people because one of them stole my car ?
Whether you like it or not Bruce Sharp seems like a decent and honest human being where as you appear to be a fascist pig, should I hate all humans because of you ? I don't think so
twoofy, 'the denigration of science', would you like me to show you instances where science has done this to itself ?
Tu quoque fallacy and category error.
twoofy, given your previous statement where have I 'the slander of scientists' ?
[#448](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) is quite an example.
I won't waste my time addressing the mass of non sequiturs, ad hominems, and strawmen of your last paragraph.
twoofy,
under that mask and cape I see a scared
little boy trying to be a bully, go see if mummy will buy you a lollie. Then come back and let me know your thoughts on how to solve aGW
sunspot, your childish ad hominem evasions sway no one. As for how to solve AGW, I already responded to your question at [#662](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…). As I said previously, you are a bad person, and you continue to demonstrate that. Since you are self-refuting, I won't bother to any further.
twoofy,
What's your back-up plan ?
Disclaimer:I neither support nor deny the allegations made at this web page !!
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3m2
Bruce, your points IMHO are misguided, and I think that Truth Machine has answered them quite well. But I wil clarify.
First of all, do not underestimate the scale of 'our crimes'. I think Ward Chruchill summed this up quite well in the introduction of his book, "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens". Churchill, quite an astute academic in my opinion, argued that people in the west appear to take little interest in the crimes committed 'by us' in far away countries for what is in effect policies that ostensibly benefit western elites. Our entire media apparatus is largely totalitarian and effectively pays little attention to western crimes of which there are many. The New York Times, for instance, supposedly a bastion of liberalism, fully backed the Iraq invasion and not once in the lead up to the war was a single mention made of the words "International law". This is because reporters generally say things which are a service to power.
Your analogy is a non-starter. I think it is utterly hypocritical to suggest western crimes fall into the category of knocking over a neighbour's mailbox once a week whereas another neighbour runs over a child; this is absurd. Since the end of the second world war, western foreign policy has, as British historian Mark Curtis has pointed out in several of his books, probably led to the deaths of tens of millions of people around the world. This has occurred either through economic policies that have accentuated the division between rich and poor, or else through direct military action or through the action of proxies with a green light provided by Washington. This is hardly trivial. Many western policies, mostly aimed at benefitting commercial elites, have resulted in carnage, senseless butchery and democracy deterred. At the same time, many of our citizens do not have a clue what is actually being done effectively in their name, and instead we rely on the necessary illusions to which Chomsky, Robert Fisk, John Pilger, Tom Engelhardt, Ward Churchill, Edward Herman, Paul Street, Andrew Bacivich, Greg Grandin and other brave journalists and historians describe. Given that they represent a dot on the media landscape, it is not surprising that their voices have been vilified (look at what happened to Churchill) and they are hated by many who prefer to see our nations as upholders of freedom, democracy, and noble values. Of course it is all a bloody illusion, and were it not for some brave individuals we would not be aware of any of it.
Chomsky, Curtis and others have done what few journalists ever do, and that is they have gone through many declassified planning documents written over the years by government beaurocrats. These documents brazenly lay out western political agendas more clearly than anything else does, given that IMHO many of our politicians appear to be paid liars. I have read quite of few of these declassified documents which are freely available at many libraries, and they unambiguously show that the real concern of western planners has always been the threat of indigenous nationalism: that countries rich in resources that our elites covet may embrace movements that attempt to use their own resources to benefit their own people. It was never about communism duirng the cold war, but about nationalism. This was the real enemy. This cannot be allowed because this will conflict with the interests of western corporations. It is all there in black and white. Curtis has gone through hundreds or thousands of these documents from the British archives and the theme is consistent. Almost never are the noble aspects of human rights and democracy discussed as motivations for British foreign policy. It is almost always about ways in which the British government can interfere in the decidion making processes of other countries in ways to influence policies that benefit western elites. Without doubt, as Chomsky and others have shown, the same strategy has underpinned US foreign policies. For their efforts at getting to the truth I salute Chomsky and others like him.
So my advice Bruce is to take off those idealogical blinkers and start looking more widely for your information. I have no idea how much you read but I read a huge amount of literature on all sides of these issues. I do not think the way the world works is that complex or controversial, so I think it is quite an achievement of our western media elites to have been successful in marginalizing dissenting views to the fringe.
Jeff, you've completely misunderstood the point of my analogy. TruthMachine had implied that I'm dishonest, because I said that we should be concerned with our own actions, even though I have an obvious interest in the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. Now, I could have taken the easy way out, and simply pointed out that my wife is Khmer, and much of her family died in during the Khmer Rouge reign. That, however, is a superficial explanation. The broader point I was trying to make is that moral concerns are not driven exclusively by our own role in the actions in question.
I ought to be more concerned with my actions... and those of my allies... rather than the actions of others. To me, that seems like a very obvious, very simple point. Now, if someone agrees with that point, but also thinks it's important to study the Holocaust, would you accuse them of hypocrisy? How dare they write articles about Shoah, while claiming to be concerned with their own actions!
It was not, I repeat, not my intention to make any statement about the scale of the crimes of the West in comparison to the crimes of our enemies.
You think I have "ideological blinkers." Well, OK, I can understand why you might have misinterpreted my analogy. But Jeff, take a look at my comments in this thread. My remarks can be distilled to this: we should try not to be rude to people, even when we think they are trolls, because it's counterproductive.
And now you're lecturing me about Ward Churchill, brazen Western political agendas, and motivations for British foreign policy.
Which one of us is ideological?
Bruce Sharp @ 741:
>we should try not to be rude to people, even when we think they are trolls, because it's counterproductive.
But you haven't provided any evidence that it is counterproductive, nor addressed the arguments [already made](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) that the reverse is true.
Bruce,
OK, OK, I apologize if you think I have misrepresented you. Some of my comments were over the line. But where does Chomsky fit in with this?
It would be easier to sit down and chat with you about this and to try and get at the gist of your arguments. The thrust of what I have said about others is that we have more power, or we should have more power, to influence actions closer to home. But I still do not understand what you are driving at. If it is what I think, then we are all in agreement here and there is just some inability on my part (?) to see that. In no way do I belittle the crimes of others, it is just that I find it brazenly hypocritical for western pundits to focus laser-like on crimes of officially designated enemies (a designation that can change as quickly as political and military allegiances change) whilst giving crimes committed by our own countries a free pass.
Rarely is this hypocrisy discussed by our media. Yet examples are everywhere although connections are seldom drawn. Moreover, the real agendas - outright expansionism, subjegation of other countries assets, and nullification of alternatives to certain economic models, are almost impossible to find if one relies on the state-corporate media in the west for information. Somehow we are still led to believe that the cold war as all about preventing the spread of communism and about promoting freedom and democracy abroad; we are told that there is a 'war on terror' which is actually a smokesscreen for an expansionst political agenda in the middle east; we are told that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are part of this agenda even though anyone with half a brain should realize that the wars were all about control - not access - over the world's most important regions of oil and natural gas. There are pages and pages of documents originating from the State Department to the Council of Foreign Relations to influential individuals like Kennan and Kissinger to Brezinski to the PNAC which lay it out in gory detail. Yet we are still indoctrinated by our media to believe that we are noble defenders of democracy. I think that this very belief in the minds of many people shows how successful mendacious propaganda can be. It is the likes of people like Chomsky who have challenged the prevailing myths and I champion him and others like him for it. No doubt many loathe him and people like Pilger, Fisk, Herman etc., but that tells me that they are hitting the right nerve. The truth hurts, especially when you have been drip-fed myths about our inherent benevolence for your entire life. The tendency is to deny it and to feel antipathy towards the person or people responsible for shattering your world-view.
This is in no way meant to say that we not have the freedom to study human actions in a more holistic way. Certainly one is not a hypocrite if they condemn polcies close to home but also examine the terrible deeds committed by others. On that I agree with you 100%. But I do not think this is controversial at all. I just still do not understand what point you are exactly trying to make.
One last point, Bruce, and then I move on.
I think that you are a tad too sensitive when it comes to your interpretatioin of what is being rude and what isn't. You would not believe the things I have been called by some - many in fact - in the anti-environmental lobby. I dust myself and move on. The lkanguage on here is totally civilized by comparison. Given that the likes of Sunspot and Brent are technically (with no disrespect intended) non-entities in this debate, I find them irrelevant in this regard. In my opinion they are just time-wasters whose minds were made up some time ago and they come into sites like this not to learn but to annoy. If that pleases them, so be it. But from my vantage point they are not interested in the science. No more than many other contrarians are.
I would like to ask you this: do you think that one should forever be polite to those with influence who cheat, lie, deceive and do so in full knowledge of it? To be honest, I find many in the anti-environmental lobby to be utterly repugnant, because to be their agendas should be patently obvious. Moreover, the costs of their influence on public policy may be profoundly high. Those sowing the gospel of doubt are certainly lauded by powerful elites anxious to retain the status quo. Some are well funded by them; others do it because of their own inherent political motivations. A few (very few in my view) do it because they actually have doubts as to the human fingerprint over climate change. But they are the outsiders.
To reiterate, how polite do you think we ought to be on those who are distorting science to promote primarily political agendas? Given that they are exceedingly well organized and funded, and that the costs of their influence on inaction amy be catastrophic for human society down the road, do you not think it is now prudent for those of us knowing what they are doing to take off their gloves? I do not believe for a second that the debate about climate change is a scientific one. Science is a side issue here. The science, as I said earlier, was settled 15 years ago. It is about profit, power and priviledge. About ensuring capital flows remain in the 'right' direction.
I for one do not think that there is too much enough emotion in this debate on the part of the scientists. On the contrary. While I was debating contrarians 5-10 years ago, I realized that they often lie, while I was trying to tell the truth, at least as I saw it. This is the risk in debating them. Many are well-oiled in PR techniques whereas the cautious scientist is not. Whether one is rude or not is not the issue. As I said, you ought to read some of the things envrironmentalists and scientists have been called by the denialists (including me).
Dave, for trolls, I think the best approach is "[no feeding](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/leakegate_on_stovepiping_and_p…)." If Marcel is correct that their goal is to create the impression that there is a legitimate debate, treating them with contempt doesn't help. You are still engaging them in debate, but now you're also giving them ammunition to claim that their opponents are closed-minded and intolerant.
But more importantly, what about the ones who aren't trolls? There is a well-orchestrated campaign to obfuscate the reality of climate change. Should we abuse people who fall victim to professional charlatans like Monckton?
I think the best approach was outlined by [Bud in #312](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…). Of course, your mileage may vary.
Jeff... no worries. Looking back at what I wrote, I can see why you interpreted my comment the way you did. Sometimes I forget that the context in my head doesn't magically appear in my posts.
Hi fellers!
This is just a flying visit. You may remember that my initial interest on this thread was in why the two camps find it so hard to debate politely, to seek common ground, and to concede valid points to their opponents.
I've just come across this lecture by Cambridge Maths Professor, Dr. John Barrow:
http://physicaplus.org.il/articles2/barrow_eng.html
In it he relates a little talk given by Maxwell when many around him were hoping to use Newton's laws in a deterministic model of the world. Barrow writes:
"Maxwell talked about something unexpected. The precision of Newton's laws were well known. They gave very accurate descriptions of the motions of the planets and the Moon. But, Maxwell argued, people had been brainwashed into thinking that the world was totally predictable because they only paid much attention to situations where that was true. They thought that just because there were exact mathematical laws of motion that all motion was completely predictable. Yet, there were many situations where a small change produces a large effect. Moreover, a little uncertainty in what the small change is like, will create a correspondingly large uncertainty in its future effect. Of these "unstable" situations, Maxwell said that
'It is manifest that the existence of unstable conditions renders impossible the prediction of future events, if our knowledge of the present state is only approximate.'
He suggested that his audience would learn much more important things about Nature if they concentrated their attention upon its instabilities and uncertainties rather than the strict determinism of the laws of motion themselves." Unquote.
I think that the grand philosophical divide between us hinges on this. Maybe rather than badging ourselves AGW Skeptics v AGW Rationalists (polite labels) or Denialisti v Apocalypse Merchants (impolite), something akin to Chaoticists v Determinists (yeah, I know it'll never catch on!) is closer to the fundamental differences of view which leads to so much anger and feuding.
Is this helpful? Seen through the lens of the majority here -Determinists - the phrase 'business as usual' is not only wrong, it is an attempt to negate justified alarm. Seen through my lens (influenced by Mandelbrot and his chaos theory) IPCC's confident predictions in a fractal climate is overextrapolation and alarmist.
Is this the core of our dispute? If so, maybe this is where we should be debating.
For all his faults, Donald Rumsfeld's statement about 'known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns' was far from mumbo-jumbo. When Jeff stated above that "The MWP is an artificial construct", he might've added that it was a known known; others might legitimately reply "we don't know why it happened, but there is ever more compelling evidence, so we view the MWP as a known unknown" and polite debate could have continued.
Is there any profit in examining the two opposed worldviews through this dichotomy between Determinism and Chaos?
Jeff, I didn't see your last post before I wrote my reply. I don't blame you for being irritated by the abuse directed at you and your colleagues, which is why I allowed in #500 that you had raised a valid point.
My [comment re Chomsky in #500](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) was, in hindsight, ill-conceived. My goal was to demonstrate that we can find some common ground even when we have disagreements within a larger context. I wasn't trying to make broad generalizations about Chomsky's work on general, or American foreign policy, or anything else. I was trying to underscore the point that we should hold ourselves to a higher standard than Deltoid's resident trolls.
While I still think it's more constructive to address arguments calmly (and with massive supporting evidence), I do understand why people are angered by trolling, and, I can even understand why people might be more bothered by "concern trolls" than the more generic trolls. There's a line from a magnificent epic Vietnamese poem called The Tale of Kieu: "The angry face shows its true heart, but deep and dark are those who hate and smile."
No, Brent.
The divide is between evidence-and-analysis based approaches and those not based in evidence. Guess which side you're on?
We keep pointing you (et al) to the IPCC reports and the primary literature referenced within. We point you to resources like the video at the top of this thread. We point yo to the evidence, which is massive in amount an dcompellign in import.
Yo ignore it, and make absurd claims in return without any serious substantive evidence-based support.
Lets look at MWP, your example. The evidence is that there was a substantial prolonged warming in a part of the northern hemisphere. There was lesser warming in other parts of the world, and it was not synchronous in much of the world. The evidence is that , globally, the MWP was not as warm as the globe is today, and there are several lines of evidence that point to this conclusion, and various people have referenced those, and they are all in the scientific literature and reviewed in depth in the IPCC reports.
Even locally, for Greenland, Europe, the eastern north Atlantic where the MWP was most pronounced, there is good qualitative and quantitative evidence that we are currently as warm or warmer. That evidence is frequently pointed out, to you and others.
And y'all ignore the evidence, or bring up the one paper that can be interpreted to dispute it while ignoring the mass of articles that all point to one conclusion. And you try to pretend that the stated uncertainties, the range in the published results - which en mass all point to the same conclusion - that this stated, quantified, analyzed uncertainty means that we are ignoring the uncertainty.
Fuck that - and there is no way to be polite about this, Brent. Your strategy here, your attempt to slide into the conversation this "divide" between your opponents, whom you claim to be ignoring the uncertainty, and you, whom you claim to be properly considering the uncertainty, is either willful ignorance or dishonesty. That is why people are rude to you.
But even if there WERE substantial uncertainty, even if the MWP WERE globally warmer than today, we get to the analysis part - and it turns out that a MWP substantially warmer than today implies a climate sensitivity substantially greater than we currently think it is. If the MWP was in fact substantially warmer than current global temperature, we are MORE fucked, not less. Y'all simply stop the analysis before you get to that part - so you can scream "uncertainty!!! !!111!!11!"
You refuse to put your (moderately delusional and unsupported) claims into the context of everything else we know - which is why the deniers so often must make mutually exclusive arguments to keep the "uncertainty" meme going.
So Brent - and I'll say this as politely as I possibly can - fuck off.
Well, that told me!
I'm grateful that your recommendation to fuck off was at the polite end of your vocabulary. Off, I will indeed fuck.
Well, that told me!
So what Lee seems to be saying is that:
(i) If there was no MWP, current temperatures are unprecedented and we're in trouble. If on the other hand there was a worldwide MWP then the climate is more sensitive than we thought (to... er... would that be to manmade C02 in the 7th century?) and we're in trouble.
(ii)His worldview is indeed deterministic, because he dislikes uncertainty. I think he said, "Y'all [ ] can scream "uncertainty!!! !!111!!11!" Well, I'm not too sure about the screaming bit but, yes, I do wonder how accurate the predictions will be, and so that's an admission of uncertainty.
Lee, I'm grateful that your recommendation to fuck off was at the polite end of your vocabulary, and if a man of your talent and intellect says that the science is settled, well you must be right and Maxwell's astonishing insight a century before the birth of Chaos Theory must be wrong.
Off, I will indeed fuck.
Don't let the door hit you in your uninformed ignorant ass on the way out.
['Cause we don't want ass prints on our new door!](http://www.gotfuturama.com/cgi-bin/EpisodeReview.cgi?action=show&Page=1…)
TruthMachine had implied that I'm dishonest
I state outright that you are dishonest, because you ignore my point and my illustration of it -- that you have outrageously abused Chomsky's dictum, to argue that I should pay less attention to the crimes of trolls and more attention to my crime of ... being rude! Which, as I have made clear, I don't consider a crime.
Dave, for trolls, I think the best approach is "no feeding."
The ineptness and/or dishonesty of your arguments is immense. You came in here whining about how Brent was being treated, and suggesting that "maybe he's just a guy who is trying to make sense of some very complex issues, and he's not doing particularly well at it". If you cannot tell whether someone is a troll, then you are in no position to suggest what approach one should take toward trolls. The fact is that you yourself are clearly a troll -- a tone troll. You admit to knowing little about the subject at hand, and you have nothing to say about it; all you're here to do is make stupid, ignorant, patronizing statements about how we should conduct ourselves.
But more importantly, what about the ones who aren't trolls?
I addressed this and then you idiotically and dishonestly quote mined my point, and dishonestly failed to acknowledge it when I pointed it out. Again,
you're a tone troll, a pompous patronizer and you have this absurd fantasy that, if we're just polite to trolls, we'll win over the hearts and minds of the 1 in 10 who aren't trolls. But you have no rational basis to believe that, and there are actually studies showing that your sort of accomodationism doesn't work.
Again, as Dave R said, there is no evidence to support your contentions. There are, however, studies about "new atheists" and their effect on people's beliefs about evolution that show that the accomodationist arguments don't hold empirical water. Basically, the claim that taking an aggressive stance loses hearts and minds is a fantasy of cowards like yourself who quake and quiver at the thought that -- oh dear, we might give the other side ammunition! The fact is that the other side is completely corrupt and will grossly misrepresent even the most innocent statement, and a little rudeness to trolls on a blog will not turn a additional single heart and mind away from acceptance of AGW -- such folks are already disinclined to believe.
I was trying to underscore the point that we should hold ourselves to a higher standard than Deltoid's resident trolls.
But this was not at all Chomsky's point -- it had nothing to do with such priggish notions as being polite, and everything to do with the moral responsibility to address crimes that one is well situated to address rather than furthering them.
When it comes to holding ourselves to higher standards, we do: we do not lie and misrepresent and quote mine ... perhaps you could learn to emulate us. "higher standards" consists of a lot more than being polite, you pathetic twit.
to concede valid points to their opponents
Your goal here from the very beginning has been to try to get people here to concede to some point. But none of your points has been valid; they have all been based on false premises. From the very first, you wrote
If, despite this great research work, the forecasts of temperature rise don't materialise (say, the UAH MSU satellite temp stays below the 1998 peak anomaly of 0.75C), would it be fair to consider the hypothesis refuted?
This is the structure of your arguments: "If [misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the facts], will you concede you're wrong?". Each of your misunderstandings and misrepresentations has been addressed, but that hasn't kept you from coming back and repeating them.
I think that the grand philosophical divide between us hinges on this.
What divides us is a) familiarity and/or respect with the work of science, vs. the arrogant view that one can get a better understanding than the entire scientific community just by a little googling, and b) going wherever the facts take one, vs. starting from fixed beliefs (about economics, scientists and their motives, etc. as you have repeatedly expressed here) and trying one's darnedest to find arguments that support them.
Chaoticists v Determinists
Chaos theory is deterministic, dummy. Perhaps you should build your denialism on Quantum Mechanics instead.
If on the other hand there was a worldwide MWP then the climate is more sensitive than we thought (to... er... would that be to manmade C02 in the 7th century?) and we're in trouble.
Is snark that illustrates your utter ignorance of pertinent matters part of your grand philosophy? See
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-…
When Jeff stated above that "The MWP is an artificial construct", he might've added that it was a known known; others might legitimately reply "we don't know why it happened, but there is ever more compelling evidence, so we view the MWP as a known unknown" and polite debate could have continued.
Why do you think the MWP is relevant, Brent? The denialist argument seems to be "it was really hot once before when there was no human activity releasing CO2, so the heat now can't be due to human activity releasing CO2", but that's so transparently stupid that you must have some better point, yes? Perhaps it's "we don't know what caused the MWP, so perhaps the same thing is causing GW now", which is less stupid, but only slightly. It's like if you go to the doctor with abdominal pain and the doctor diagnoses pancreatic cancer, and someone says "Oh, don't worry; uncle Bert had some abdominal pain too; we don't know what caused it but it went away".
Brent,
>Is there any profit in examining the two opposed worldviews through this dichotomy between Determinism and Chaos?
First, as tm stated, chaotic behavior is deterministic. Furthermore, modern chaos theory began with the empirical observations and additional mathematical development of Edward Norton Lorenz at MIT while developing early computerized Atmospheric General Circulation Models. It is one of the central reasons why we can have some confidence these models provide a credible simulation of the real world. One of Ed Lorenz's leading doctoral students was a native Kiwi by the name of Kevin Trenberth, who is a lead author of the 2001 (TAR) and 2007 (AR4) IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change reports.
So, to answer your question; I don't think so. I think we have to examine these opposing worldviews as the dichotomy between those who know their shit and those who are just talking out their asses.
I stand corrected. I've been thinking of determinism as an outmoded Victorian hubris, and chaos as a newfangled way of dealing with fluffy, irregular, untidy, nonlinear systems. Never compared or contrasted the two words before.
But, surprised at your statement that 'chaotic behaviour is deterministic', I look it up and see it confirmed. Mea culpa!
So, provided the initial conditions are known, weather and climate can be forecast in minute detail? So Maxwell was wrong, then? We can hope to forecast conditions in your home town on Tuesday November 6th 2011, with an accuracy similar to that of Mercury's position on that day?
Funny kind of determinism if you need precise initial conditions (man, that would be an expensive monitoring system that tracked every atom) and a bit more computing power than a Cray has got.
So let's see if I've got this: AGW Rationalists (if you're OK with that title) consider that the art of forecasting has been mastered? Or is on the brink of being mastered? If that is your position, please confirm. More likely, you'll say that it's sufficiently well mastered to produce the IPCC graphs with their various error bands.
TM once said something about science 'having a crystal ball', so I guess this was his point. (Truth Machine, I've been assuming that you're a 17 year-old boy who once read a book on philosophy. I now guess that you're a girl and your Mum cuts your hair. Which are you?)
Despite the abuse hurled at me (I'll write it off as a form of Tourette's), I'd be interested to know the bretheren's thoughts on the limits of forecasting in nature. Just how confident are you in the experts' forecasting capability, and if we'd been having this debate in 1997, would the 1998/2010 cooling period have been among the possible scenarios?
I see the Goldfish Troll has completed his lap around the bowl and is (largely) recycling old arguments again.
Although it was grimly amusing that he's now trying to claim some sort of high ground by cloaking himself in uncertainty and using labels like "determinist" to pretend that the scientists have none.
Obviously he STILL hasn't read the IPCC AR4 and wondered why they keep using terms that quantify uncertainty, nor (in a discussion of the MWP!) has he even looked at the grey regions on that original hockey stick graph and wondered what the heck they were there for if scientists were so certain of the black line in the middle.
Any bets on how long the next lap around the bowl takes?
Brent, all this time and you STILL don't know the difference between weather and climate? Or between forecasting the exact path taken by a chaotic system and a range of likely outcomes?
And you aren't even savvy enough to go find the predictions made by earlier (and much simpler) climate models to determine whether the 1998-onwards measurements are within their forecast? It's like you perennially want someone to do your homework.
Sheesh. And I thought you were smarter than the average dittohead.
Now that Brent has been making repeated confident forceful arguments about the impact of chaos on the state of climate science, its good to see that he has decided to go back and actually read something - a Wikipedia entry, perhaps? - and educate himself sufficiently on the topic to confirm for himself that he was right despite having been wrong.
Clearly, his 5 minutes of internet research qualifies him to take on Kevin Trenberth (for example), who clearly must simply be wrong because his science shows something that Brent firmly believes must be wrong.
I wonder, though, if Brent's stunningly deep and detailed 5 minute excursion into chaos theory has led him to the concept of boundary vs initial condition problems?
Perhaps Brent is right after all, and the next time I visit Death Valley in August, I'll bring a winter jacket and umbrella as well as shorts and a sun hat - because clearly, weather being chaotic, anything could happen.
Wherever Brent travels, failure inevitably follows.
>Just how confident are you in the experts' forecasting capability, and if we'd been having this debate in 1997, would the 1998/2010 cooling period have been among the possible scenarios?
Yes. Except there hasn't been any [cooling](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend/plot/giste…)
Luminous (765): Thanks for the link to Wood-for-Trees. (It allows us to view the WTI-index(the mean of HADCRUT, GISTEMP, RSS and) UAH MSU) over any chosen timescale, and helpfully plots a trendline).
It does indeed show an upward trend since 1998. That's a surprise! The 'Mark 1 Eyeball' suggests downwards.
Out of curiosity I changed the timescale to 1998-2007, and 1998-2006. In every case the green trendline points up. You're right!
I then shamelessly cherrypicked, just to check out the gradient that this clever software calculates. 1998-2000: upward trend. 1998-1999 (as I'm sure you'll agree, the raw data look like Roadrunner falling off a cliff): still an upward trend!
Could this be a coding error? How about you bake a cake, measure the temperature every minute, and punch the data into this cunning website. You can then tell your family: "No, you can't have a slice yet! It's getting warmer!"
I begin to see your influences....
Could this be a coding error? How about you bake a cake, measure the temperature every minute, and punch the data into this cunning website. You can then tell your family: "No, you can't have a slice yet! It's getting warmer!"
you do understand that you will have to change the years on the temperature graph AND the linear trend one?
wood for trees is fine. the problem is with you.
Brent, people can check these things for themselves...
WTI 1998-1999 - no upward trend.
Care to retract your claims to "begin to see your influences"?
There may have been a user error in the graphs you generated but since you failed to post a link no-one else can tell. (FWIW you need to put the "To (time)" step BEFORE the linear trend processing step - otherwise it doesn't even plot a trend line. Perhaps you misinterpreted a different trend line.)
At Wood-for-Trees
GISS or WTI
1 From (time) 1998; 2 To (time) 2007; 3 Linear trend (OLS)
gives a positive trend, as does a "To (time)" date down to 2002.
GISS or WTI
1 From (time) 1998; 2 To (time) 2000; 3 Linear trend (OLS)
gives a negative trend.
GISS or WTI
1 From (time) 1998; 2 To (time) 1999; 3 Linear trend (OLS)
gives a negative trend.
You are doing something wrong.
Oops! Lotharsson got there first.
Oh, and I use the term "trend" lightly, and inadvisedly, in a few instances above
I second that. I'm using it in the WoodForTrees processing step sense - because that was what Brent was referring to - noting that it is not appropriate for detecting climate trends over short periods.
I think this post from Brent was an example of PEBKAC, compounded by failing to provide decent evidence and jumping to unwarranted conclusions.
I was thinking more like PICNIC :-)
PICNIC works too :-)
What's impressive (for someone who attempted at least some 2nd year Uni physics) is that Brent jumped on the first conclusion ("coding error?") he came up with without even considering whether other conclusions were more likely or testing his premise.
And then he jumped to an outrageously more unjustified and unlikely conclusion ("begin to see your influences").
It's like he's TRYING to demonstrate a lack of critical thinking skills. Maybe it's an obscure kind of performance art?
However I'm guessing it was a good career move for him to drop the physics.
Brent.
You seem to be struggling with visualisation of temperature trends.
I suggest that you [have a look at the widget in Gareth Renowden's kitchen](http://hot-topic.co.nz/keep-out-of-the-kitchen/), although be warned - it might be warmer in there than you are able to stand...
"Could this be a coding error?"
Never has 'a bad workman always blames his tools' been more apposite.
The sarcasm about said tools just adds insult to injury...
Sod (767): "you do understand that you will have to change the years on the temperature graph AND the linear trend one?"
Aaaargh! No, I didn't see the right-hand box.
"wood for trees is fine. the problem is with you."
Yes, you're right and I was wrong.
Lotharsson (768): "Care to retract your claims to "begin to see your influences"?"
Yes, I retract it.
And, used correctly, the Wood-for-Trees tool shows a positive trend from 1998.
PEBKAC indeed!
You all seem surprised that Brent can't use a basic tool.
Brent,
I might have missed it but you still haven't explained why you think something that happens only once in 8,000 years is "usual". I'm begining think you're dishonest.
Yes, you're right and I was wrong.
Every. Single. Time.
What's impressive (for someone who attempted at least some 2nd year Uni physics) is that Brent jumped on the first conclusion ("coding error?") he came up with without even considering whether other conclusions were more likely or testing his premise.
And then he jumped to an outrageously more unjustified and unlikely conclusion ("begin to see your influences").
Impressive? Nah, it's common for people who are ideologically driven. Part of his wacky ideology is that the entire community of climate scientists is possessed by "an outmoded Victorian hubris".
if we'd been having this debate in 1997, would the 1998/2010 cooling period have been among the possible scenarios?
As MapleLeaf noted way back in #141,
It seems that you don't understand what that means or how it relates to "among the possible scenarios".
And that wasn't the first time this particular foolishness of your was addressed; see MapleLeaf's #131 as well.
But around and around the goldfish bowl you go.
brent this might interest you,
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3o4
You know it's credible because like most scientific reports there's an animated GIF in the header.
Nah, that's just to show its credibility to the scientifically unsophisticated layperson.
Real Scientists⢠know it's credible because it comes from an "Institute"
...that was self-founded and self-financed by the author
...with no apparent website or staff other than the author (which throws the scientists off the trail :-)
...who was an astrologer (which gave him more insight into how the sun affects the earth than the astrologically denialist scientists)
...and an amateur climatologist
...who named certain predicted solar events after himself
...and who predicted increased cold after 1990 due to sunspot minima and a "stronger minimum and more intense cold that should peak in 2030". ">Check out his prediction for yourself!
You don't get Real Science⢠from professional scientists - they all suffer from groupthink and spend all their time patting their colleagues on the back congratulating them on their theories, never ever considering that those theories might not be the last word. For goodness' sake, they flat out reject astrology - which fortunately the South Dakota Legislature has has quite rightly called them on!
That's why you need a committed amateur whose professional standing does not rely on toeing the party line! And surely only a truth teller would risk a scientific backlash by evoking key indicators on the physicists' elitist Crank Index to keep the professionals at bay - this just proves that he was right!
Yeah, sunspot, I reckon Brent might be interested.
Crap, screwed up the link on his predictions. Check them out for yourself!
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3pc
Sunspot, thank you for the link to the Landscheidt page.
Unfortunately, he does seem tainted with some astrological associations. I am on the lookout for further work linking solar activity to climate - people building on Svensmark's work for instance, but thanks anyway.
On several occasions you have asked what concrete actions should be taken if the AGW hypothesis is correct, and mentioned your past ambitious solar installation. I began some trials in mineral sequestration of CO2, but had to drop it for cost reasons. In that vein, have you seen what the UK's Royal Academy of Engineering is suggesting?
http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/releases/shownews.htm?NewsID=553
They say that "If we are to achieve [an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050] the scale of the undertaking will require the biggest peacetime programme of investment and social change the UK has ever seen."
Their first "scenario" envisages building 80 Nuclear or Carbon Capture power plants AND 9,600 more onshore 2.5MW wind turbines AND 38 "London Arrays" (an array of 341 offshore turbines planned for the Thames Estuary) AND 25 Million 3.2 kW Solar Panels AND 1,000 miles of Pelamis machines (for wave power) AND 2,300 Tidal Stream turbines AND the largest proposed Severn Barage AND 1,000 Hydro Electric schemes AND and enormous increase in the use of Biomass AND capping electricity use at current levels by achieving fantastic domestic energy savings.
Makes your lousy Apollo programme look like a walk in the park, yer Manhattan Project kids' stuff. Brooklyn Bridge? Hoover Dam? Panama Canal? We Brits do things BIG.
The tree huggers had better be right. Imagine if the above actions came to fruition, and in 2051 they said "Oops. It was the sun, not the carbon. Sorry, folks!"
I don't believe that the engineers are actually advocating implementing the longest suicide note an economy could write; I believe they're saying: "If you REALLY want an 80% reduction, these are the implications."
The Germans and Danes have stolen a march on us in the windmill market, but I foresee excellent export opportunities for Britain in wattle-and-daub huts. Buyer collects.
Quote:
Kevin Trenberth to Michael Mann, Oct 12, 2009:
The fact is that we canât account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we canât. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
Pisst, wanna see some secret science? Here is something the CRU has been trying to hide:
THE SOLAR WOLF-GLEISSBERG CYCLE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE EARTH is interesting
tiz a PDF
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3pu
What game is Spotty up to? [Here is a clue](http://www.skepticalscience.com/Kevin-Trenberth-travesty-cant-account-f…) to expose Spotty's disingenuous quote mining.
Fits well with Spotty's trait of pushing bogus information that [he knows to be false](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…).
[More background](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) on Spotty's tactics.
the brit's are losing their hold on energy reserves anyway
Russiaâs New Geopolitical Energy Calculus
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3px
akerz, are you Pisst ?
Jakerman (791): Thanks for the link to an abstract by P. D. Jones and A. Moberg.
Hang on a minute? Jones? Would that be the notorious Phil Jones? If so, what does the 'D' stand for?
The paper refers to a "gridbox dataset of 5° latitude à 5° longitude". That's quite a large surface area to base a model on, wouldn't you say? When we see the weather guys on CNN say, "Right, let's see how Asia's doin' today! Pretty warm, huh?" one can't help but wonder if their experience in contrasting LA with SF is relevant, whether it's a fair assumption that a certain chunk of the Earth can be considered small enough to be uniform.
A 5°Ã5° view might lose some subtlety, mightn't it? If 'the beat of a butterfly's wing' cannot be dismissed as a trivial detail (this is a reference to Chaos Theory), then a 5°Ã5° box lumps Cyprus with the Dead Sea, Hamburg with Amsterdam.
These models inevitably entail approximation and loss of detail. The underlying assumption of the models, and the dumb CNN guy, is that you can reach a level of detail which is fine enough to provide meaningful summaries and predictions. Wrong. The Met Office, now armed with colossal computing power, has just abandoned medium-term forecasting (again). Their knowledge of future decades is no more useful than an astrologer's.
The Jones paper states: "Cooling is significant during the intervening period (1945â76) for North America, the Arctic, and Africa." How very profound. Next they'll be telling us that the moon is brighter on clear nights than hazy, and I dread to think what they will conclude about the moon's albedo. Charlatans on the gravy train.
Shorter Brent @ 796: _I __still__ don't even know the difference between weather and climate, but that won't stop me smearing scientists._
Dave R(797):
You've got my dander up now! To correct the gap in my knowledge I googled "what is the difference between weather and climate?"
Bingo! No less an authority than NASA explain it:
They say: "The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time. Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere 'behaves' over relatively long periods of time."
Now, I had that bit figured already, but the real eye opener then followed:
"When we talk about climate change, we talk about changes in long-term averages of daily weather. Today, children always hear stories from their parents and grandparents about how snow was always piled up to their waists as they trudged off to school. Children today in most areas of the country haven't experienced those kinds of dreadful snow-packed winters, except for the Northeastern U.S. in January 2005. The change in recent winter snows indicate that the climate has changed since their parents were young."
So the absence of snow in the US is CLIMATE. Now I get it!
Some sarcastic commentator recently suggested that warmists use the c-word when the thermometer bobs up, and the w-word when it bobs back down.
And what's your view, dear Dave, on north American snow? And what's your view on the NASA statement?
Also re Brent at 796 - The Jpnes and Moberg paper isn't about model adn predictin - B rents' blathering about Chaos and model output - which is itslef intentioanlly ignorant and abusrd and fankly vile - his blathering isnt even on topic here.
Brent doesn't know the difference between weather and climate, between initial value and boundary problems, between models and observations.
Here's another hint, Brent, to follow up my earlier hints - Weather forecasting is an initial-value problem. Medium-term forecasting is an immensely more difficult initial-value problem. Climate forecasting is a boundary problem. They arent the same.
But Brent knows he's right and all those scientists are engaged in fraud. So he's in search of the published paper that will show that all those published papers are full of shit, and prove him right - because he knows it must be out there, because he's right, a priori.
How... illuminating.
Yes, it's becoming clearer thanks to NASA at
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/noaa-n/climate/climate_weather.html
They say "If summers seem hotter lately, then the recent climate may have changed. In various parts of the world, some people have even noticed that springtime comes earlier now than it did 30 years ago. An earlier springtime is indicative of a possible change in the climate."
Now the've had a hot winter in Canada, but the daffodils are only now emerging in England. So there's a "possible change in climate" in England, and Canada is... is... oh, hell, Dave, I don't know. You tell me which is which.
So now Brent., who has been making such assured statements about climate, informs us that he has finally gone and spent 2 minutes informing himself of the difference between climate and weather.
And he found a piece written by a NASA publicist that contains claims taht he can pretend are definitional. So there - science sucks and only Brent is right.
Brent, here's another definition, pointing to the question I asked yo earlier.
Weather is the trajectory that local conditions take, and is chaotic and an initial values problem. Climate is the boundary within which that trajectory occurs.
You clearly haven't a clue about this, and don't care to have a clue - you already know you're right, evidence be damned. But those of us responding to you do have a clue, which is why we find yo annyogn and willfullyignroant.
Brent @ 798 and 799
>So the absence of snow in the US is CLIMATE. Now I get it!
No, you don't. __"The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time."__
>Some sarcastic commentator recently suggested that warmists use the c-word when the thermometer bobs up, and the w-word when it bobs back down.
The bobbing up and down is weather. The long term average is climate. The change in the long term average is climate change.
>I don't know. You tell me which is which.
Canada had warm weather this winter. England had cold weather this winter. The Earth is [experiencing global warming](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif).
Science must bow to Brent's will and lack of understanding. If Brent is incapable of seeing what is right in front of his face, it must be the science that is at fault.
Brent,
You still haven't explained why you think something that happens only once in 8,000 years is "usual". I'm starting to become convinced you're dishonest.
May we continue on the subject of weather v climate?
Lee (800) dismisses the dumb statement on the NASA website as "a piece written by a NASA publicist". Although one should expect better from NASA, Lee's conclusion makes sense. The crap about grandad's reminiscences of snow is irrelevant to our search for truth. The US blizzards were weather.
Let's try the NSIDC for a better definition: "Climate is defined as statistical weather information that describes the variation of weather at a given place for a specified interval. In popular usage, it represents the synthesis of weather; more formally it is the weather of a locality averaged over some period (usually 30 years) plus statistics of weather extremes."
Let's quote Professor Jones again: "Cooling is significant during the intervening period (1945â76) for North America, the Arctic, and Africa." Quick mental calculation: 31 years. So that qualifies as climate cooling, yes? That period was climate change, not weather. Agreed?
Next definition comes from SkepticalScience,com (warmist camp): "Weather is chaotic, making prediction difficult. However, climate takes a long term view, averaging weather out over time. This removes the chaotic element, enabling climate models to successfully predict future climate change."
Now, if this is a fair reflection of warmists' view on the distinction between weather and climate (is it?), there is an important point here.
The statement âremoving the chaotic elementâ, reveals a misunderstanding of how chaos works. Chaotic variables vary at a variety of timescales and a variety of amplitudes. When their timescale is removed, the eye cannot tell whether a chaotic graph is at hour, day, month or century scale. Just when you think you have their measure, they surprise you.
So, I would argue, âclimateâ even with the 30-year quarantine period, is no less subject to chaos than âweatherâ.
I have seen this described as a âGaussian assumptionâ, a (wrong) assumption of normal distribution. (This assumption has caused some billion-dollar errors in the financial markets, but thatâs another storyâ¦)
Could it be, gentlemen, that we are zeroing in on the philosophical divide between us?
Chris (803):You say I "still haven't explained why you think something that happens only once in 8,000 years is 'usual."
I take it that you're still talking about the glacier approaching its 1300BC Tutankhamun Minimum. If it does go shorter in a decade or two, so what? A new record is not neccessarily cause for alarm. Happens all the time. Guinness Book of Records stuff: "Tallest giraffe record updated." So what? And didn't we say that glaciers are not the real-time thermometer we once thought, being more influenced by old precipitation than by new melt?
As you well know, "business as usual" is shorthand for "current situation is unexceptional and has either been seen before or, given past variation, an unsurprising new outlier".
Take your favourite sport, imagine a surprising score, then imagine a still more surprising one. Would the new record mean that something fundamental has changed in your sport? And would you expect more of the same on a regular basis, or chuckle and say, "Well, that's what records are for: to be beaten!"
Surprise, surprise, you're still bamboozling yourself. Go back and read this statement:
Then swim around the goldfish bowl until the light of understanding dawns, preferably keeping your mouth closed on the subject until it does. (Hint: if you're talking about a "graph", you're talking about a "trajectory".)
The philosophical divide was apparent early on - just not to you.
You think the science MUST be crap but you haven't really studied it in depth and you can't really put your finger on WHY - so you do a slow-mo Gish Gallop to see if you can find something to hang your "skepticism" on for more than five minutes.
Most commenters here think the science has a lot more evidence (and consilience) behind it than you know or are willing to admit - and a lot more than most of us know ourselves, with the caveat that some have deep knowledge in some areas of the science.
Oh, and for bonus points, Brent, think about trajectories and boundaries in a chaotic system with time-varying external influences (e.g. forcings). I'd bet your observations on chaotic systems to date are implicitly relating to non-time-varying systems.
I love that Trent, who two days ago realized for the first time that chaotic systems are determinate, is now lecturing us (and climate science in general) on the scale- independence of chaotic phenomena.
Brent, let me make this simple. You don't know what the f*** you're talking about.
The state space of chaotic systems is bounded. The boundaries are not themselves chaotic. Climate is a boundary phenomenon, and does not exhibit chaos. And you, rent, are continuing to be willfully ignorant.
No.
No.
You think AGW is an "obscene fraud". This fills you with "fury". We've been consistent. We think you're wrong, and no amount of "If we agree that is then can we all agree that is in fact correct?" from you is going to change our minds.
Your piddly attempts at trying to trap us into accepting your labels/theories are obvious.
Sorry if the mockery you face here fills you with more rage. Actually, I'm not really sorry at all.
Brent.
You seem to really be struggling with the difference between climate and weather.
Climate is the stuff that permits us to define things like plant hardiness zones, heat zones, and mappings of other parameters such as humidity and rainfall distribution. Weather is the variety of stuff that goes into the overall averages that define each of the zonations that delineate the aforementioned parameters.
In any of the zonations, and on any arbitrary day, it might be raining or not, cold or hot. However, these individual variations are not what defines the relevant zonation; it's their long-term average that does. You've had explanations provided to you of the difference between initial values and boundary conditions, but in case these complicated terms are confusing you, think of the long-term averages of the hiccuppy daily conditions as being the asymptotic means, maxima, and minima over time.
As all gardeners, farmers, and biologists know, it is the climatic (asymptotically average) conditions that most affect the capacity for a species to survive within their climatic envelope. Extreme weather events do of course play a random part, but by their very definition they are infrequent and most species are robust to such stochasticity - unless of course they have been previously stressed by some other impactor...
So, weather changes don't worry species (they are adapted to the range of weather within their bioclimatic envelopes), but climate changes do, when such change pushes local climate beyond the bioclimatic tolerance of said species. The tropical orchids in my greenhouse could easily tolerate an average day outside, but if I exposed them to average outside days constantly they would curl up their rooty toes and shuffle from this mortal coil.
Of course, you really do know the difference between weather and climate, but you're welded to your mission of denying that humans are impacting the trajectory of the latter. The trouble for you is that the biotic and abiotic spheres are better at calculus than you...
weird how low sunspot activity can freeze the nuts off a polar bear ? But high sunspot ativity only cause's "16 to 36% of recent warming"
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3ss
The Maunder Minimum.
Early records of sunspots indicate that the Sun went through a period of inactivity in the late 17th century. Very few sunspots were seen on the Sun from about 1645 to 1715. Although the observations were not as extensive as in later years, the Sun was in fact well observed during this time and this lack of sunspots is well documented. This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the "Little Ice Age" when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes. There is evidence that the Sun has had similar periods of inactivity in the more distant past. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SOLAR ACTIVITY AND TERRESTRIAL CLIMATE IS AN AREA OF ON-GOING RESEARCH.
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3su
The Modern Maximum reached a double peak once in the 1950s and again during the 1990's.
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3st
One study (Stott et al. 2003), argues that residual warming due to the sustained high level of activity since 1950 is responsible for 16 to 36% of recent warming while "most warming over the last 50 yrs is likely to have been caused by increases in greenhouse gases." BUT THIS ONLY CAUSE'S MILD WARMING !!! BULLSHIT !!!! I
The Ziontist's don't know enough about it so they minimize it's effect, avoid it and play it down. (no money in it).
âThe enhanced warming we have seen since the 1990s along with phenomena such as the widespread melting of glaciers could well be due to this increased intensity of sunlight compounding the effect of greenhouse gases,â said Professor Martin Wild of the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich, Switzerland.
"Being in the sun is like welding with your shirt off !"
The latest forecast revises an earlier prediction issued in 2007. At that time, a sharply divided panel believed solar minimum would come in March 2008 followed by either a strong solar maximum in 2011 or a weak solar maximum in 2012. Competing models gave different answers, and researchers were eager for the sun to reveal which was correct.
"It turns out that none of our models were totally correct," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA's lead representative on the panel. "The sun is behaving in an unexpected and very interesting way."
and
"According to the forecast, the sun should remain generally calm for at least another year. From a research point of view, that's good news because solar minimum has proven to be more interesting than anyone imagined. Low solar activity has a profound effect on Earthâs atmosphere, allowing it to cool and contract."
NASA DOESN'T KNOW AND IS ONLY GUESSING !!!!!!!!!
This 'might' explain why temperature did not rise along with rising CO2 as the poxy poohdah models predicted.
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3t1
If you are worried about aGW why do you only defend it ? Where is your action to abate it ?
Zionists! Sunspot is cast the conspiracy net further and further!
Interesting how we are getting record high global temperatures in a prolonged solar minimum.
I want [a widget](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/normalise/plot/sidc-ssn/normalise/…) so I can play silly buggers like Sunspot and Watts.
816, has seen the new hockey stick.
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3tk
Look at all [that cooling](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/plot/uah/trend/plot/uah/trend/offs…)!
Oh, look!
[Sunspot is talking to himself](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) through [one of his sock puppets](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…).
Bernard J (612): "Brent, You seem to really be struggling with the difference between climate and weather."
Yes, I am.
"Of course, you really do know the difference between weather and climate,"
No, I don't. I may be able to understand it if you will persist with me a little here, Bernard.
Itâs a little hard to avoid âbitingâ when people here so rudely accuse me of being thick, or uneducated, or disingenuous.
Maybe I am thick. If I am uneducated, then please enlighten me. I was for a brief period disingenuous (âtrollingâ) although when I pretended to become a member of the hockey team; it was pretty damn obvious.
If Iâm thick, well, thereâs no hope. Can we assume that Iâm so thick that I donât know it? [Rude boys: hereâs an open goal for you. Go on, shoot! As if I care! Be as rude as you fucking like: itâs your time youâre wasting not mine.]
Please explain Boundary Conditions to me. I have a mental image of the Lorenz Attractor and its boundaries. Also the Mandelbrot set with the black no-go areas. Yep, got that. But I have another mental image of stock market indices where oscillations appear to be within boundaries, and investors assuming that upon reaching a âboundaryâ a recovery or a âcorrectionâ is inevitable, only to then find that the index surges further or crashes further.
You refer to âplant hardiness zonesâ. Yep, got that bit, having read a bit of David Attenborough. If these zones are eternal then, say, the dividing line between oak forest and pine will be defined (yeah, I know it isnât quite a line). Yep, got that. And if climate changes, then the line will shift. (Have I got it right so far?)
Hereâs where I struggle: I donât see an absolute boundary. These zones have shifted down the millennia havenât they? The Earth has known great extremes from a steaming fetid condition to âSnowball Earthâ. Polite question for you: âOther than in timescale, in what respect is a centuries-long shift in a zone (climate change) any different to a decades-long species adaptation (weather)?â I appreciate that a too-rapid change can cause extinctions ('bioclimatic tolerance', you wrote - nice one). Is this the point I am missing? That unprecedented rate-of-change is a one-way ticket to extinction for entire hierarchies of species, and what we are seeing today is unprecedented? That it isn't 'y' but dy/dt?
[Rude boys: just butt out, will you? I'm talking to a gentleman here. Rude boys: I bet you lecture your poor kiddies on environmental responsability as you drive them to school in your gas guzzlers. Bernard here puts his money where his mouth is.]
For interested readers, Richard Alley [describes some boundary constrainers](http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml).
Without a counter balance (CO2) to snow ball earth she'd be stuck as a snow ball. Without a counter balance (silicate weathering) to CO2 EGHE she'd be stuck in a greenhouse world.
Bernard, did you catch [Tamino's comment](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/not-a-random-walk/) on the random walk meme?
Brent, I think you must have your head buried in quick-drying cement. The difference between stochastic and determinism is a matter scale. In ecological systems, species interactions at small spatial scales are highly unpredictable, whereas properties that characterize biomes are highly predictable. An individual molecule of a gas may be hard to predict, but the gas as a whole exhibits highly deterministic properties. Patterns in climate at the global scale generally require a 30 year period at a minimum to extrapolate trends; this is because a major forcing is required to push a determinstic system out of equilibrium.
My example of the record warm Canadian winter was merely meant to illustrate the utter hypocrisy of the denialati. This means that when there are below normal temperatures recorded soemwhere on Earth, you can be sure that Morano, Drudge, Milloy and their ilk will scream from the rooftops that this is occurring in a supposedly warming world. Of course it is meant to downplay what the general public think about climate change, and it works: witness Sunspot's clueless poll graph which tells us nothing about scientific truth about AGW and everything about the power of mendacious propaganda when practiced by well-funded PR hacks.
Note how the denialati respond wehn someone tells them some part of the planet is experiencing well above normal temperatures: they ignore it entirely, or else they bleat that the 'warmists' are mistaking weather for climate. Of course they are correct: it is weather and not climate. But they do it all the time and, hey, they see no problem with selectively citing short-term weather-related trends to make a point. But when their opponents do it they are cheating!
I wrote to a right wing journalist in Canada last week who wrote an article in 2008 during a short winter cold snap in eastern Canada asking his readers to question how this could be happening if global warming was true; I asked him when he was going to write a piece about the record warmth in Canada this past winter and if he would frame that as evidence for AGW. Of course both the cold snap and the warmth were WEATHER-related events, but I thought that if the shoe fits, wearr it. He replied to me asking how, as a scientist, I could mistake weather for climate, ignoring the fact that he did when it suited his narrative. How dishonest can one get?
This shows you how IMHO utterly despicable and dishonest many of the climate change denialists are. They see no problem with lying, misquoting, ignoring inconvenient empirical evidence. etc. in order to bolster their right wing political (= deregulatory) agendas. And they are happy to cite a freak winter storm or cold weather as proof that AGW is not happening; but when there are record heat waves occurring somehwere on the planet, they stay silent. And, as we know, over the past 30 years, significantly more warm-weather records have been set than cole weather records. Exactly as one would expect in a warming world.
A good light read on initial value, etc. is by Prof. Steve Easterbrook, and then his link to Zeke Hausfather on the role of parameterizations climate models bears reading.
Brent now:
Brent earlier:
Brent, you are thick, you are uneducated and you are disingenuous. You are a liar. You have trolled this blog under a variety of different names and you still continue to chuck a sobbing wobbly because people call you out on it.
Boo hoo.
*What is the optimal temperature of the planet?*
Good question. There really is no thermal opitima within defined boundaries. Beyond a certain threshold, however, species will fall outside of their physiologically adapted thermoneutral zones and will perish.
The major issue is not if the planet will 'cook' or not; its how fast the system is being forced beyond temperature ranges that would naturally occur. It is the rate of change that is of concern right now; not the mean surface temperature. Regional changes that are occurring are probably unprecented in many hundreds of thousands or millions of years; against a suite of other anthropogenic changes across the biosphere complex adaptive systems and the species that make them up are being challenged to respond in ways they have not been required to in millions of years, and probably in the evolutionary history of many species with shorter extant 'shelf' times.
Rapid warming threatens to unravel interaction network webs and to destroy vital ecosystem services that underpin human civilization. This is what makes the current warming of such great concern.
P. Lewis, nice links. The Hausfather link regarding the models made me wonder how they're doing over there at [Data Against Demagogues](http://data-n-demagogues.blogspot.com/), where Ken Burnside and Eric Raymond were all fired up to run a few models and show how screwed up they were.
Funny thing... as of this writing, they're still apparently [playing with their hardware](http://data-n-demagogues.blogspot.com/2009/12/and-first-we-play-with-ha…).
The statement âremoving the chaotic elementâ
Nice quote mine, troll. The statement was that averaging removes the chaotic element.
reveals a misunderstanding of how chaos works
No it doesn't, fool.
Chaotic variables vary at a variety of timescales and a variety of amplitudes. When their timescale is removed, the eye cannot tell whether a chaotic graph is at hour, day, month or century scale. Just when you think you have their measure, they surprise you.
And your point? This has no bearing on the fact that averaging removes the chaotic element. Do you actually believe that it is impossible to fit a smooth curve to a fractal? Or do you just have no idea what you're talking about?
Maybe I am thick.
There's no maybe about it.
If I am uneducated, then please enlighten me.
As long as you absurdly attribute your string of stupid errors and misunderstandings to "philosophical differences", there's no point in making the effort.
Can we assume that Iâm so thick that I donât know it?
See Dunning-Kruger.
itâs your time youâre wasting not mine
Troll.
P.S.
Chaotic variables vary at a variety of timescales and a variety of amplitudes. When their timescale is removed, the eye cannot tell whether a chaotic graph is at hour, day, month or century scale.
This is only true of some abstract mathematical fractals, it is not true of real world phenomena. For instance, one can actually tell the difference between a tree and a leave, fool.
What's remarkable about Brent is that he can make such stunningly stupid claims that go against his own lying eyes. Over and over again, as recently as #817, there have been posted here charts of chaotic weather with linear trend lines; Brent has seen and even referred to them over and over again, claiming at times -- in support of his ideology -- that the data is unreliable. But now he is claiming -- in support of his ideology -- that, due to the nature of chaos, no such trends can be discerned. He idiotically says
Unless this just means that, if there are no units on a graph and one has no other basis for knowing what the graph represents, one can't know what the units are, it's mindbogglingly stupid. The raw data is chaotic; the trend line is not. Of course this could be a graph that represents chaotic data with a linear trend at any time scale, but gee, we happen to know what the time scale is.
P.S.
When their timescale is removed, the eye cannot tell whether a chaotic graph is at hour, day, month or century scale.
This is also obviously true of a linear graph. In fact, it's true of any graph -- one can't tell just by eye what the units of a graph are; one needs additional information. Brent's assertion seems to be that, because weather is chaotic, if you look at a graph of weather data, it will look the same at any scale. However, that claim is obviously false, so Brent's understanding of Chaos Theory must be mistaken. In this case, his mistake seems to be a confusion between [chaotic](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chaotic) and [fractal](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fractal).
Rude boys: just butt out, will you? I'm talking to a gentleman here. Rude boys: I bet you lecture your poor kiddies on environmental responsability as you drive them to school in your gas guzzlers. Bernard here puts his money where his mouth is.
Brent, you are such a stupid troll. Both of these points have been addressed earlier: Bernard, Jeff, Dhogaza, and the rest here do not live on different sides of your phony divides.
âOther than in timescale, in what respect is a centuries-long shift in a zone (climate change) any different to a decades-long species adaptation (weather)?â
All biological adaptations are to climate, not weather.
Is this the point I am missing?
The point that you seem to willfully miss or discount is that some biological adaptations (as well as failures to adapt -- extinctions) are bad for humans.
Truth Machine (if that's your real name): Tell us about yourself.
"What is the optimal temperature of the planet?"
As asked, that is an incomplete and unanswerable question.
I'll ask back - the optimum temperature for what purpose?
If you're asking what is the optimum temperature for this ball of minerals and fluids, then the answer is, it doesn't much mattter.
But if you're asking what is the optimum temperature for human civilization, an dfor for extant species, species assemblages, and ecosystems that supply ecosystem services upon which we are utterly dependent, then I would answer that the optimum temperature RANGE (it is going to be a range) is that within which this all evolved.
Which, going back for the couple million years in which our species evolved, seems to be a range between where we are now, and perhaps 6C cooler than here we are now - with the bottom end of that range pretty damn inhospitable for the civilization we have now. If we look back over the few thousand years during which we created our civilizations and cultures, we're looking at a range between where we are now, and perhaps 1 - 1.5 C cooler
Thing is, we're now looking at a world that is going to be some 6C HOTTER than the top end of those ranges, in the next century or two. There ain't much rational question that this ain't gonna be very optimum.
Tell us about yourself.
Over and over again you decry being called a troll, and then you troll.
Truth Machine, what do you do for a living, and what is your academic record?
Brent @ 835:
>what do you do for a living, and what is your academic record?
None of your business, troll.
Brent descends to this reverse-insinuated-argument-against-authority, now that it is clear that he is clueless and absurdly wrong on the substance.
I point out the ad hominem tactics of trolls, among other things.
This is why I said above that you're a stupid troll. Whenever you engage in these tactics, you lose credibility with anyone who might have been inclined to treat you seriously.
Gentlemanly Jeff Harvey told you in no uncertain term to "Go away", after repeatedly saying that trolls aren't treated harshly enough. What do you suppose he thinks of you when, instead of addressing substantive points about chaos and weather, you play these games?
What matters is not my credentials, but that phenomena that are chaotic one scale are often predictable on another scale, and that you have added denying this obvious fact to your stable of errors.
Lee, I assume that your confident statement on the next couple of centuries is more than guesswork. Such foreknowledge is pretty impressive.
You'll easily be able to tell us what year there will be water at the North Pole, then.
No, let me guess: you'll reply: "Why should I tell you, troll", or "it depends", or "look at this website, moron". And there is not the remotest possiblity that you'll reply along the lines of 2022 +/-3.
Truth Machine: I assume then that your credentials are too embarrassing to divulge, your livelihood a guilty secret and your identity too embarrassing to reveal.
Yes, all ad hominem-wielding trolls assume such things; that's the whole point of the ad hominem attack.
But it doesn't matter what you assume, and it doesn't matter whether your assumption is correct or not. Ad hominem is a fallacy of irrelevance; you're off in logically-incorrect-land, you pathetic loser.
Oh, wait, I just said that:
What matters is not my credentials, but that phenomena that are chaotic one scale are often predictable on another scale, and that you have added denying this obvious fact to your stable of errors.
So there can't be any question that you're either thick or you're disingenuous. Of course, there's plenty of evidence that you're both.
Brent's [pretending](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) to only troll a little bit is another example of his Goldfish trolling.
>*Itâs a little hard to avoid âbitingâ when people here so rudely accuse me of being thick, or uneducated, or disingenuous.
Maybe I am thick. If I am uneducated, then please enlighten me. I was for a brief period disingenuous (âtrollingâ) although when I pretended to become a member of the hockey team; it was pretty damn obvious.*
But remember when his was [sprung here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…)?
Then he pretended to [come straight](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…);
Before he started [reversing who was arguing what](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…);
Pushing the same disingenuous lines under a [different sockpuppet](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/open_thread_44.php#comment-2360…).
Brent stop prentending that we don't have good reason to think poorly of your behavior and distrust you.
You are correct, that's easy. All three phases of water exist at the north pole and have done for quite a while and will do so for quite a while.
Shorter Brent: You agree that you beat your spouse and steal from childrens' charities unless you convince me otherwise.
Shorter Shorter Brent: I've got nothing.
Good answer, P!
So the solid phase will continue at the North Pole for "quite a while". Any advance on that, gentlemen? Can we maybe pin it down a little more?
Lotharsson: You say that I've got nothing.
It is you people who are predicting the apocalypse, so the burden of proof is on you. I am merely trying to establish whether any of you have the courage to be a bit more specific so that theory and reality can be compared.
The first slippery customer reckons that the icecap annual minimum will result in an ice-free North Pole in "quite a while". Lotharsson, what do you say: years? decades? centuries? Best guess and error estimate, please.
Lotharsson: You say that I've got nothing.
It is you people who are predicting the apocalypse, so the burden of proof is on you. I am merely trying to establish whether any of you have the courage to be a bit more specific so that theory and reality can be compared.
The first slippery customer reckons that the icecap annual minimum will result in an ice-free North Pole in "quite a while". Lotharsson, what do you say: years? decades? centuries? Best guess and error estimate, please.
Shorter Brent: The burden of proof is not established because I have not understood it.
Ice will continue to form at the north pole during the boreal winter, as will the other two phases of water.
It is you people who are predicting the apocalypse
Troll.
so the burden of proof is on you
In other words, you've got nothing, other than ignorant denial, and to continue swimming around the goldfish bowl. Science isn't about proof, it's about inference from all of the available data to the best explanation, and the acceptance of AGW by 97% of climate scientists makes it clear where such inference leads; the burden of proof is on you to show that they are wrong. And when it comes to plausible large threats that require long lead times to address, "wait and see" and demands for proof are irrational to the point of insanity.
The first slippery customer
Brent, how can an asshole like you, who has challenged honest peoples' motivations from the get-go, complain about rudeness?
And this is the same POS who, just yesterday, wrote the ignorant garbage in #796, concluding with
But remember when his was sprung here?
Where, BTW, he used his "gravy train" language back in February. And in #231 John noted that Brent was writing, way back in November,
He uses the same phrases today; he has learned nothing and budged none in his beliefs since then.
Brent:
(a) you show no sign of having seriously and effectively engaged with the science itself, instead preferring to try your cute little "debating" techniques out here.
(b) Accordingly, your critiques of the science are superficial and generally based either on being ill-informed and scientifically unskilled. There's no problem in being ill-informed and scientifically unskilled - unless you attempt to lecture others on the shortcomings of the science that were somehow missed by the professionals.
(c) You show few signs of self-awareness - most people who've had their arguments smacked down about twenty times in a row might start to consider that their superior insight and scientific ability might not exist outside their own fantasy world.
(d) You recently started ad homming commenters on the basis that they hadn't provided their academic record. This is highly amusing, because you clearly don't judge arguments on the basis of the academic record of those who are making them (see (a) and (b)).
So by the time you exhibit (d) which undermines any claim to have been judging the scientific case on its merits, the only reasonable conclusion is "you've got nothing".
I fear I have egregiously smeared goldfish :-( The MythBusters showed that, despite popular belief, even goldfish can learn.
As I pointed out earlier, Brent doesn't need to be correct because he knows The Truth. We're nothing more than tools of James Hansen and Al Gore. Sorry Brent, "Al Bore". It sucks to be caught out by a lying warmist, doesn't it?
I thought you were seeking a "meeting of the minds" in the hope that the two "sides" could come together and find points of agreement?
Trolls are never consistent.
I would have that since you are challenging the scientific orthodoxy the burden of proof is on you to prove it wrong, something you've been unable to do.
Brent @ 839:
"You'll easily be able to tell us what year there will be water at the North Pole, then."
Brent, do you set out to illuminate your foolishness? Or is it natural talent..
No, I cant tell you what year "+/1 3) the north pole will be ice free. No one can.
Because picking a year would be precicting the weather, Brent, and climate models don't do weather prediction.
You STILL don't get that, do you?
Three days ago, Bent, you didn't know that chaotic systems were determinative. Yesterday, you embarrassed yourself on boundary vs initial value problems - which, btw, are not unique to chaos.
Climate is a bounday problem, Brent. The high-frequency trajectory of a given model run is not expected to mirror that of the real world - they are chaotic. But the boundaries do appear to mirror those of the real world. And you refuse to do the bit of work to learn the difference.
Trolls are never consistent.
This one appears to be bimodal (at least; he may even be [fractally wrong](http://www.fractallywrong.com/)). He goes back and forth between pretending to be sincerely trying to learn the science, and admitting that he's putting us through hoops, as in his post at Bishop Hill that you revealed in #397. He's done this several times here; I'm not going to bother to find them all. WhoTF does this little sh*t think he is to try to determine our courage, or our life styles, or our credentials? He acts all offended when we don't play his ad hominem troll games, and makes the standard demagogic argument that if we don't prove ourselves innocent of X then we are guilty of X. What intelligent person is swayed by such garbage?
I am :-)
I am swayed to believe that he has (and almost certainly will have) no valid argument with the science, if he needs to stoop to that "garbage".
I am swayed to a number of other beliefs about Brent too, but I'm guessing most intelligent readers can figure those out for themselves.
Lee (858): Regarding the disappearing icecap, you say "Because picking a year would be precicting the weather, Brent, and climate models don't do weather prediction."
OK, let me make this easy for you. Given your profound knowledge of the boundary conditions of the future climate, at what year will the summer ice minimum at the North Pole reach zero. At the one boundary this will tell us the earliest possible year and at the other the latest.
So far we have "quite a while". Can you firm up that prediction? The absence of an answer implies: "We don't even know if global warming will result in an ice-free pole at all."
You also write: "Three days ago, Bent, you didn't know that chaotic systems were determinative."
This theoretical determinism being based on a perfect knowledge of initial conditions (which would require infinite measurement), such determinism is in name only. If by "chaotic systems are determinative", you mean that the boundaries of future climate can be known, but only to an all-knowing supernatural being, then please say so.
Now that I have learned that the Aletsch Glacier is a poor proxy for current climate (being dependent on historical precipitation, not solely on current melting) I'm interested in the polecap. It unfortunately doesn't hold a historic record like glaciers do, but is a useful test of predictions. If only one of you slippery customers breaks ranks and offers a melt-date with error bands. What does it take to get a straight answer to a straight question?
Lotharsson, what do you say: years? decades? centuries? Best guess and error estimate, please. (Ice free North Pole at summer minimum.)
P. Lewis says: "Ice will continue to form at the north pole during the boreal winter", which is a useful contribution if he speaks with any authority: it tells us that the minimum frozen surface area is above zero at warmest climate boundary. Fancy a stab at the boreal summer, P?
Is flooding due to thermal expansion of ocean water another rumour ? I think so !
'The average temperature of the ocean surface waters is about 17 degrees Celsius (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
90 % of the total volume of ocean is found below the thermocline in the deep ocean. The deep ocean is not well mixed. The deep ocean is made up of horizontal layers of equal density. Much of this deep ocean water is between 0-3 degrees Celsius (32-37.5 degrees Fahrenheit)! It's really, really cold down there!'
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3wr
According to the "Thermal properties of water" at the publicised suspected rise in global temperature there would be effectively no sea level rise !
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3ws
You all can now put your water wing's on Ebay
Shorter Brent: Unless you yield to my demands I will put illogical words in your mouth.
And yes, Brent did this very same thing a day or so ago. He's acquiring additional distasteful habits as he goes.
Sunspot, in Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' there's the story of a learned Cambridge University student who tells his landlord, a carpenter, that a great flood is coming.
He rigs up a boat in the apex of the house, and has the carpenter spend all night sitting in it while he has his wicked way with the carpenter's lovely wife.
Now at least the student was decent enough to predict WHEN the flood was due, enabling a comparison between forecast and actual. (The flood did not materialise.) How's about you ask the student's modern counterparts when our own Great Flood is due? Antarctica must go the same watery way as the Arctic. They presumably support Al Gore's terrifying video showing Florida go under. If any of them have holiday homes in Florida you might talk them into an attractive deal - I suspect it's an investment risk you'd be prepared to take if the price is right.
Truth Machine: It isn't an ad hominem attack to enquire who you are. Who are you? I tried ignoring you for quite a while, but you kept sniping, so I'm now giving you the attention you crave. Give us a clue: tell us at least what country you live in and your age. It's difficult to weigh up your contributions here while you are cloaked in anonymity.
We established that "Dave" was Sir David King, and his words became weightier. How about you? You're clearly a pro. You owe it to yourself to come out.
Trend in [ice volume](http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/365871main_earth3-20090707-full.jpg) (-900 km^3/yr) suggests that it will be approximately 20 years, allowing for natural variation and acceleration with shrinking volume.
James Overland [calculated that](http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/arctic-summer-m…)
>by 2037 there will be about 1 million square kilometres of sea ice left in the Arctic region, compared with the 4.6 million square kilometres today.
>Much of the remaining ice is likely to be blown by the prevailing winds against the shorelines of Canada and Greenland where it will be forced into thick layers that could remain frozen despite the increasing temperatures.
More conservative estimates put it at around 2100. I'll go with Overland's more recent data.
Lotharsson, I don't want to put words into your mouth.
Please feel free to frame your answer as you wish.
Ice free North Pole in years? decades? centuries? Best guess and error estimate, please. We're not talking weather here: we're talking climatic boundary conditions. The podium is yours.
Phew, between Spotties link spam and Brent's reflection on Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' we can tell the scientist [they are wrong](http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5768/1747)! The sea level associated with higher temperatures are mythical like dinosaurs. Or dragons as Chaucer knew them.
Jakerman:
Your link quoted the NOAA: "The latest analysis found that virtually all the sea ice in the Arctic will have melted during the summer months by 2037, and that it may even disappear as soon as the summer of 2020."
Thank you.
You never thought to look for yourself Brent? Why do you think others didn't bother to do your homework?
Jakerman (868):
No, my point about the Canterbury Tale is that experts who make alarming forecasts need to be held to account if, despite their learnedness, the forecasts turn out to be wrong. Of course, we the public will not besiege the ivory towers with our pitchforks in autumn 2020, but it's good to know that summer 2020 is a possibility for an ice-free pole, and that by summer 2037 virtually all the sea ice will have melted.
I can now look for investment opportunities in companies developing ports in Canada and Russia, and pass a big chunk of the proceeds to charities such as "Save The Polar Bears" if they exist yet. The animation in Al Gore's video was pretty distressing.
More conservative estimates say 2100, you wrote. Thank you for firming up these boundaries.
And yet you continue to threaten to. You do realise that the choice is yours?
Bollocks!
Do you really expect people not see how this fails to describe your tale? The subtle smear that the experts are creating false forecasts in order to further their own interests?
Lotharsson, in Britain we recently had a panic over swine flu. A titanic effort was made to prepare for a great tragedy. I listened intently to a long radio item where the high-level manager explained the enormous disruption he was reluctantly inflicting on medical services, pushing medical staff to do overtime as they worked up large call-centres with hard-pressed and exhausted nurses being drafted in after their day jobs.
This manager, clearly sincere, clearly highly capable, believed that the efforts of his vast team was protecting the national interest. We have had military exercises in London, with troops and bodybags, with planning to shore up collapsing essential services.
And no disaster actually happened.
Unlike Chaucer's wicked student, the epedemiologists and the climatologists clearly believe their own forecasts whilst they're making them. Sincerity is not the issue; the issue is the misallocation of vast resources to counter illusory threats. Nary an epedemiologist now admits that we've pissed away hundreds of millions.
My enquiry: "If it's wrong, at what stage and according to what criteria should we declare 'panic over'?" is valid.
Brent @ 847:
>at what stage and according to what criteria should we declare 'panic over'?
[Back around the goldfish bowl](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…).
Shorter Brent 1: A potential disaster that never eventuates means that no precautions should have been taken.
Shorter Brent 2: A potential disaster that never eventuates means the threat itself was illusory.
I guess a career in risk management is out of the question.
Brent three requests:
first , what was the deadline for the impact of the swine flu?
second, what was the probability of such a major event happening? Can they support as specific evidence as AGW, or is more insurance risk management?
And third, what actions would you deem appropriate in response to that risk? Would you like a different response? Please provide what response you would like to a second season of swine flu or the next flu?
Shorter Brent,
Risk management and prevention is pissing money away, lets do nothing, that is much cheaper!
Lets stop vaccinations and all preventative early intervention. Lets fix our problems with prison rather than pissing money away on early childhood education and care.
Brent, most condoms are a waste of money, but some are worth the value of ones life.
Unlike most risk management cases the chance of dangerous AGW is odds on and well support with very strong evidence.
akerz thermal expansion of the ocean is a fairytale, more alarmist propaganda.
The future purported temperature rise's do not fit with the "Thermal properties of water". More bunkum for the growing list of aGW agitprop.
Shorter Brent: global warming isn't real because of its association with swine flu.
Second shorter brent: global warming ins't real, look at the evidence in Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'. Its a cautionary tale, mind you caution is pissing money against a wall.
Spotty, what ever you say. I'm not your support carer, you can flog yourself silly for all I care.
Sunspot, I think you've done too much of something, you seem blind to the blindingly obvious and gaping flaw in your little assertion.
[Sunspot](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…).
If thermal expansion of ocean water is a fairytale, you would win a Nobel prize for publishing the underlying physics that refutes accepted understanding.
And if you are correct that sea level rise is not due to thermal expansion, then the inevitable conclusion is that our glaciers and icecaps ar more sensitive to warming than estimated, and the direct consequence is that sea levels will most likely rise more rapidly in the future than is predicted.
Bummer, that.
Sunspot, here's a children's experiment you may find interesting.
You know, I often dream that someone might actually one day conduct an effectively-designed random Interweb survey of the scientific understanding of climate change denialists, and analyse the resultant data for the proportion of correct versus incorrect statements of scientific fact, and for the level of basic scientific comprehension.
Most especially I would like to see how the overall level of scientific awareness (or lack thereof) of such a sample compares to the understanding of various levels of primary school education in any Western country.
My guess is that my 10 year old niece would wipe the floor with these clowns.
if, despite their learnedness, the forecasts turn out to be wrong
My enquiry: "If it's wrong, at what stage and according to what criteria should we declare 'panic over'?" is valid.
Every one of this moron's arguments, from the very beginning, has been of the form "if I'm right and the scientific community is wrong, then ...".
Skepticism: ur doin it rong.
the issue is the misallocation of vast resources to counter illusory threats
No, the issue is your own immense ideologically driven stupidity and ignorance. Even if you were right about swine flu, it would have no bearing on climate change (there's that fallacy of affirmation of the consequent again), because all the facts are lined up against you. Your examples and your literary references demonstrate that you are a committed ideologue who is unable to change his mind because you already truly believe that the threat is illusory despite all the evidence to the contrary. You assume that climatologists are unwilling to admit they are wrong -- you have offered numerous statements like "if you are wrong, what will it take for you to admit it" -- which assumes your counterfactual conclusion. Scientists, the true skeptics, constantly ask, if a hypothesis is wrong, what observation would invalidate it -- and the results of those questions can be found in the peer-reviewed journals.
No, my point about the Canterbury Tale is that experts who make alarming forecasts need to be held to account if, despite their learnedness, the forecasts turn out to be wrong.
And who is to be held to account if the forecasts turn out to be right but action was blocked and delayed? Are you willing to be held to account? Of course you aren't, you foul pustule of a troll.
I can now look for investment opportunities in companies developing ports in Canada and Russia
You had better get cracking ...
[Who Owns the Arctic? Canada, Says Michael Byers](http://opiniojuris.org/2010/03/06/who-owns-the-arctic-canada-says-micha…)
Truth Machine: It isn't an ad hominem attack to enquire who you are. Who are you? I tried ignoring you for quite a while
Ignoring my arguments and instead questioning my credentials is textbook ad hominem, as is obvious to everyone.
It isn't an ad hominem attack ... It's difficult to weigh up your contributions here while you are cloaked in anonymity
All one needs is the content of your contributions to weigh them ... they are fallacious, wrong, wrong-headed, dishonest, and stupid.
The absence of an answer implies: "We don't even know if global warming will result in an ice-free pole at all."
No, moron, it doesn't. Logic: ur doin it rong.
Bernard J: Did you see my #819 asking you about the weather-v-climate thing? I'd appreciate your help here.
>Lotharsson, what do you say: years? decades? centuries? Best guess and error estimate, please. (Ice free North Pole at summer minimum.)
[July 15, 2007](http://www.ted.com/talks/lewis_pugh_swims_the_north_pole.html)
This theoretical determinism being based on a perfect knowledge of initial conditions (which would require infinite measurement), such determinism is in name only.
Deterministic and predictable are different concepts, moron. But that's a side issue, because no one is claiming to be able to predict the weather decades hence, contra your idiotic strawman. In Chance and Chaos, David Ruelle writes of how perturbing a single electron at the edge of the galaxy would result in a visible difference in a rain cloud within two weeks (from memory; the actual distance and time scales may be a bit different). No one denies this, but it's completely irrelevant to people who aren't idiots. What do you suppose Ruelle would say if you asked him if this extreme sensitivity to initial conditions implies doubt about AGW? If the fact that weather is chaotic means that an increase in average global temperature cannot occur or cannot be measured because (you think) chaos implies self-similarity at every time scale? I think he would chuckle, and then start probing your muddled thinking for some clue as to the false assumptions and erroneous logic by which you could reach such absurd conclusions.
I'd appreciate your help here.
Why should anyone help a jackass who thinks they charlatans on a gravy train or should be held to account for false alarms and wasting vast resources over illusory threats?
Lotharsson, in Britain we recently had a panic rational concern over swine flu. A titanic effort reasonable trans-national medical mobilization was made to prepare for avert a great potentially severe tragedy.
Fixed.
Brent: Did you see [my #887 asking you](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) about swine flue? I'd appreciate your response here.
Jakerman, you asked: "first , what was the deadline for the impact of the swine flu?" I don't know about deadline, but in July Britain's CMO predicted between 3100 and 65000 deaths. We lost interest when the couple of dozen fatalities mostly had other conditions. I heard that the worldwide death toll was 200. As for 'deadline', well a repeat of the 1919 tragedy may occur in 2011 or 2012, but the population is not exhausted by years of war this time. Short answer: dunno, but I ain't buying no Duck Tape.
"second, what was the probability of such a major event happening? Can they support as specific evidence as AGW, or is more insurance risk management?" (a) Dunno. (b) The specific evidence was (as with the Gore Brigade) futurological: they said, "If this thing mutates [into an Armageddon Virus] we'll be dropping like flies". It was an "IF", as in "if a Halley II drops out of the Oort Cloud, we're all gonna die." So let's get a Bruce Willis and a trillion-dollar protection probe. I'm sure you can come up with some more "ifs".
"And third, what actions would you deem appropriate in response to that risk? Would you like a different response? Please provide what response you would like to a second season of swine flu or the next flu?"
Yes, I would take the mean flu deaths in the past 50 years, assume a new record by maybe 100% or 200% and man up accordingly. I would not treat the 1919 disaster as a relevant precedent for reasons stated. And most importantly I would tell the Chief Scientists that he is paid for his judgement, not for his worst nightmare; that gross overestimates are as unwelcome as the opposite.
There is an increasing desire in modern society for certainties. But Total Risk Aversion has its own costs, both financial and in other respects. You guys believe in this AGW poppycock, as you doubtless believed in the Millennium Bug, and the Great Swine Flu Pandemic, and will doubtless believe in the next great scare story.
Me, I've got work to do. They'll soon be paying premium price for home-generated wind energy in Britain. I've got to get equipped with windmills. And the electric fans to drive them.
Lotharsson (895): Thanks for the link to a guy swimming at the North Pole. So we're already there, then? Wow. I didn't know that, and presumably the people forecasting this for 2020 were also unaware.
Anonymous (879): You wrote: "Brent, most condoms are a waste of money."
This may seem a tad inconsistent, but can I join you guys in upholding the 'Precautionary Principle'? If only Truth Machine's parents had had a lifetime supply of condoms we'd have been spared a lot of grief. Now THERE'S a risk assessment that went badly fucking wrong.
[Aside: that wasn't me.]
But it illustrates your habit of missing the forest for the trees - and misinterpreting what the science says - rather beautifully.
You focus on one indicator (currently: "when will there be water at the North Pole") and the accuracy of the predictions of the date thereof. This is presumably in order to express/cast doubt on the wider science, as per usual. (And when your chosen indicator is debunked or shown to be a small part of the picture, you move on to the next...and the next...) Your focus is in stark contrast to your failure to assess the big picture - where doubt is small, although significant inaccuracies remain.
And yes - low levels of doubt about the overall outcome and significant inaccuracies about component outcomes are not mutually exclusive in the real world, although the way many people think they can't conceive of that being true. ("If AGW models are so good, how come they can't predict the weather in my town on Jan 15, 2043?" a.k.a. "If you can figure out climate boundary conditions, why can't you figure out the chaotic weather trajectory?")
That's why focusing on one (regional) indicator in a global climate system as some sort of bellwether is exceedingly silly, given the nature of the dynamics of said system...
Oh, and you don't even get that focus right. Most predictions about the Arctic are concerned about the AMOUNT of ice cover in the whole REGION, because
(a) albedo reduction is a significant climate feedback effect;
(b) sampling one point ("The North Pole") doesn't give an accurate picture of the magnitude of that feedback;
(c) forecasting the crossing of one threshold on the "amount" curve ("no ice") doesn't give an accurate picture either.
Well done - you packed three fundamental errors in one query!
Yep. The risk of posting that reprehensible ad hom outweighed the reward...oh, that's not what you meant?
[Brent](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…)
>I've got to get equipped with windmills. And the electric fans to drive them.
Off you pop then...
You guys believe in this AGW poppycock
Moron and troll.
Bretn continues to astoudn with his rank uninformed idiocy:
"Jakerman, you asked: "first , what was the deadline for the impact of the swine flu?" I don't know about deadline, but in July Britain's CMO predicted between 3100 and 65000 deaths. We lost interest when the couple of dozen fatalities mostly had other conditions. I heard that the worldwide death toll was 200."
A quick look at the CDC web site - this took about 20 seconds, Brent - reveals this for the US alone:
"CDC estimates that between about 8,520 and 17,620 2009 H1N1-related deaths occurred between April 2009 and February 13, 2010. The mid-level in this range is about 12,000 2009 H1N1-related deaths."
That is US only, Brent, and it's more than 200.
H1N1 'swine' flu was (and still is) a significant public health problem. It has an atypical fatality profile, killing young healthy people in disproportionate number, and making people really, really sick compared to 'normal' flu.
None of this, of course is relevant to AGW. but it's yet another example of Brent talking out his ass and getting it wrong, when its trivially easy to be informed.
as you doubtless believed in the Millennium Bug
Ignorant git. I myself fixed instances of the bug. It's a simple and obvious fact that years after 1999 cannot be represented as 19xy or 1900 + xy, so programs that represented years that way contained a bug.
That some people as uninformed and foolish as you are leaped to all sorts of conclusions about the consequences of such bugs doesn't change the fact that they existed. And of course no inference can be made from the facts around Y2K to the facts around climate change -- affirmation of the consequent and all that.
will doubtless believe in the next great scare story
You want to bet on how many of us think that vaccines cause autism, cretin?
It would help you immensely if you could get it into your noggin that affirmation of the consequent is a fallacy; what is true of some is not necessarily true of all. One must actually examine the evidence, not rest upon the sort of generalizations that you stupidly trot out.
We're aware that checking evidentiary claims that confirm your preconceptions is not your strong point. But you're happy to jump to conclusions in public on the basis of unchecked claims anyway - and castigate others who disagree!
You're again (ahem) denying evidence that is out there. (Because a disaster averted by action was never going to happen without those actions?)
Sure - if, by "specific evidence", you mean "my strawman caricature" rather than the actual and specific evidence and inferences gleaned from many years of medical research into viral outbreaks including investigations into this specific virus.
I leave determining the stupidity of basing your policy prescriptions on this caricature (disregarding some of the inherent stupidity, and the schoolboy howler of conflating "mean" with "record") as an exercise to the reader. It's a trivial exercise.
Brent, [very revealing](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) I note that:
1) your attempted link between AGW and swine flu showed that lack of comparable evidence;
2) you appear to be incorrect in your mortatility counts;
3) the period of swine flu impact has not passed;
4) you make up a weak global response plan based on nothing more than your ill informed prejudice;
5) you provide no link or citation of supporting evidence
6) you have no accountability;
7) you have no credibility and have shown yourself to be disingenuous and dishonorable in this thread;
8) you equate studying the evidence and risk of AGW and calling for action based on those findings with having a "total risk aversion".
You've [convinced me](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) Brent!
We recently had a mild version of this in Australia where many EFTPOS terminals could not process payments because the date was BCD-encoded and the server treated the year byte as hex and rejected future transactions (2010 was interpreted as 2016).
A.k.a. "black-and-white", or "all-or-nothing" or "binary" thinking. Using this as the basis for logic will lead one into fallacy after fallacy. Using it as a basis for rhetoric will brand one as disingenuous and non-credible.
Brent, speaking of "total risk aversion", why are you so averse to mitigation based on the overwhelming evidence? What is the risk you are averse to?
[Brent](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…).
I am glad that you brought #819 to my attention. I rather suspect though that you already know my answer, because you paraphrased it yourself.
The rate of climate change is a significant component of the threat that it poses to various species (including humans), and alterations in phenological histories indicate that many species are now responding to climate changes that are greater than the rate that defines their maximum capacities to adapt. There is only one consequence in such instances, if these species are unable to migrate to new, suitable bioclimatic envelopes...
I'm not sure what your nationality is, but one notable Australian example is the [mountain pygmy possum](http://www.wwf.org.au/publications/ntsd06-mountain-pygmy-possum.pdf), whose extinction in its natural environment is a matter of "when", not "if", if the current warming persists for a few more decades...
And if the world's scientists are correct, then the mountain pygmy possums are just one of countless species facing the same fate.
On another matter...
Your fixation with a spurious comparison between AGW and swine 'flu is bemusing.
Having worked for 15 years in medical research before changing to population biology I have a passing familiarity with the immunology as well as the ecology of viruses. It was apparent to myself and to many of my former colleagues only weeks after the scare started that the virus wouldn't cause death at the same rate as the early 20th century pandemic, but this is beside the point. The virus had (and still has) the potential for relatively minor mutations, and perhaps even single point mutations, to alter the severity of its virulence, and all the more so given that the H5N1 bird 'flu is still getting around and providing opportunity for genome exchanges.
The extensive vaccination program not only helped reduce mortality in the unusually at-risk demographic groups that [Lee mentioned at #907](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…), but the fact of the overall reduction of infection, especially amongst vulnerable groups who might have co-infections, helps to reduce the chance of the development of a more virulent mutation.
If there was any hysteria associated with the swine 'flu coverage, that is a media and a political issue, not a scientific one.
As to the Y2K matter, and as several people have already mentioned, it was not the problem that it could have been largely because it was well addressed ahead of time. In this it is similar to the swine 'flu example - prophylaxis did have a beneficial effect - but neither are comparable to our response to date on the AGW matter.
If you believe that the lack of a catastrophe after taking precautions indicates that the precautions were unnecessary, try telling anyone who has survived a car accident whilst wearing a seat-belt that they obviously hadn't needed to wear it in the first place.
They will probably disagree with you.
"AGW poppycock"!
Goodness!
The more real science frustrates Brent the more he shows his true colours.
What sane and rational human being would knowingly have themselves injected with thimerosal(Mercury), formaldehyde, aluminum hydroxide, aluminum phosphate, polysorbate 80, polyribosylribitol phosphate ammonium sulfate, formalin, the list goes on and on. Then I suppose something similar to this could happen, http://www.tinyurl.com.au/40v or this, http://www.tinyurl.com.au/40u ,did you notice that only a small proportion of the population had the swine flu vax,
the left over stock piles were huge in every country, how many people died of swine flu after being jabbed ? and there is much evidence that the swine flu virus was made in a lab ! Your institutionalized noodles have obviously been nuked with neurotoxins.
P.S. None of you dim wit's in here was able to prove that thermal expansion of the ocean water, due to a small rise in global temperature of say 5c, would in anyway be of ANY significance to water levels - ocean water expansion is pure hyperbole.
So now SLR deniers are becoming anti vaccine activists? It's more LaRouchian all the time.
Keep flogging yourself spotty!
Crank magnetism lives!
I propose that we harness them - along with dervishes of denial - to generate an endless supply of renewable energy ;-)
Speaking of cranks and magnetism, a post entitled Unified Theory of the Crank.
One more interesting observation about cranks, starting at about the 3rd last paragraph of this post about vaccine cranks:
And an interesting comment on that post:
(Although in this case this may have been because they were working on Wikipedia pages about themselves, so anonymity or lack of it was directly relevant to Wikipedia policy.)
[Vaccine fearing](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…), [DDT loving](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/zombie_ddt_ban_myth_lurches_on…), Sea Level Rise Deniers.
I think Loth has [called it correctly](http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/04/unified_theory_of_the_crank.p…)!
I reckons the Cranks are also testing the [infinite monkey theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem). Come up with every wacky science sounding claim possible and you can overwhelm real science with shear volume of bogusness.
Like the infinite monkey theorem they gain hope that with enough specious and spurious claims they must be right eventually.
jakerman, you can see that strategy at work in (say) US right-wing political mass-media communicators - where they have no concerns about attachment to reality or being caught making up bulldust - and accordingly keep inventing new faeces to fling in the hope that some of it will stick.
But back to the cranks - surely if they were serious they would be advocating the quantum infinite monkey theorem - every wacky sounding claim ALL AT ONCE, FTW! Or the many worlds infinite monkey theorem - in some universe perhaps not too far from our own they will have already been hailed by the masses as scientific gods!
I reckon the recent thread on the psychology of denialism at The Drum is largely overwhelmed by dedicated purveyors of bulldust (the many monkeys theorem?) - almost two weeks and 2000 comments and they're still going strong.
Yes I saw that Drum thread. Its speakes volumes (Pardon teh Pun). The denialist didn't get their way and though denialist employ the infinite monkey volume, it no substitute for clearly stated evidence.
;)
brent this graph should give you no idea of when the arctic will be melted.
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/41d
Lotharsson, jakerman re vaccines.
Of course vaccinations are important but...
The minute my first child was born they wanted to give her a Hepatitis B vaccination.
She wasn't going to share any needles or bodily fluid in a hurry... I couldn't help but think there was a fair bit of drug company marketing to get that one across the line.
Spotty this is classic:
>*brent this graph should give you no idea of when the arctic will be melted.*
Count on spotty to find you something that will give you know idea of the answer.
Andrew I had a similar experience with my bub and used the hospital resource to do a lit search. The evidence look pretty good that the vaccine scares had been properly investigated found spurious. But knowing that the shots were not going to be beneficial for some time I delayed them a few months.
I agree that big pharma marketing is a problem, as is the apparent dominance of their profit motive. This motive operates at quite different scale in Big Pharma and Biotech, than for most not-for-profit research science.
akers does it look to you that the arctic ice is diminishing ? The projections of an ice free arctic seem to be frozen, the extrication of this fact must be difficult for you I know.
Merely observing Arctic ice extent does not give the full picture - even though the rate of decline is (a) accelerating and (b) exceeding most model's predictions. Amongst other indications mean thickness of Arctic ocean one paper reports that ice has decreased from 2.6m to 2.0m between 1987 and 2007, and the albedo feedback (less sunlight reflected due to less ice cover and less older perennial ice => more melt) now dominates other factors.
That web page briefly discusses the 2007 weather patterns that contributed to the record low sea ice extent that year. This serves to further highlight the marginal relevance of Brent's focus on predicting the date of an eventual ice-free Arctic - especially when used as a (presumed) indicator of the accuracy of the models. (Never mind that - if anything - on Arctic ice extent (as well as sea level rise) the models have been too conservative, which undercuts his implied argument that there's nothing to worry about because the models are unrealistically alarmist.)
Sunspot, thank you for the graph which indeed gives no idea of when the ice will melt.
I still have no idea of the difference between climate and weather, and no idea what parameter if any can be used as a belwether.
Interestingly, the Director of the Science Museum in London has abandoned certainty. Much to his credit. He says: "âThere are areas of uncertainty which are perfectly reasonable to raise and we will present those. For example, the extent to which the climate is as sensitive to the CO2-loading that humans have put in or not.â
That phrase again which level-headed James wrote here back in #7: "...the extent to which...".
They have changed the name of a forthcoming exhibition from "The Climate Change Gallery" to "The Climate Science Gallery"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7073272.ece
The comments below that article are almost totally sceptical of AGW. Whilst public opinion cannot change the laws of physics, the public's increased perception of 'business as usual' speaks volumes about its ability to assess the apocalyptic forecasts.
The religious fervour with which the doommongers here cry 'wolf', is immune to reason. They have faith. If by 2020 or 2050 it's still business as usual on temperature, ice cover, sea level etc, and no slavering befanged moon-howling beast has yet appeared they will go to their graves saying, "ah, but there might have been, and still might be a wolf."
This whole scare story is based on a fraction of a degree uptick on some graphs. I'm bored. Goodbye.
Spotty and Brent seem to relish looking at information in ways that gives them no idea.
In fact looking at data in ways that gives them no idea is an assets for denial.
Brent and spotty, you possibly don't want to [see this](http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100303_Figure3.png), nor would you like a [recap of this](http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/365871main_earth3-20090707-full.jpg). They might present data in a way that is relevant to the question of "when" an ice free summer.
Brent I don't think you need to [convince me](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) any further.
Brent, I've fixed your comment for you:
Because one thing we know for sure is that the climate scientists are dead certain about everything, right?
Er, not so much.
But we know the IPCC reports were completely bereft of any treatment of uncertainty, right?
Er, not so much either (PDF - count the number of occurrences of "uncertainty" and "certainty" and check their context).
Yes, because the IPCC is so inappropriately certain on that point, right? What is their conclusion and its uncertainty metric again?
Hmmm, what does seem certain from that evidence that Brent is again arguing against a strawman.
Brent,
You are only bored because you are too thick to be able to understand processes which have been explained to you in excrutiatingly simple detail by many posters here. In spite of volumes of empirical evidence that humans are simplifying natural systems in a variety of ways, and that we are headed in the wrong direction, you prefer to cross your fingers and hope that all will be well.
Listen, pal, this concern is also based on a lot more than an uptick on a graph. That remark is so symptomic of the inherent ignorance of those living in their own little glass houses. What is that 'uptick' represents the rate of species extinctions? Or the rate at which ecosystem breakdwon is occurring across the planet? Belittle it all you like, but that 'uptick' constitutes part of a larger data set which shows that humans and the natural world are on a collision course.
Everything hinges on the precautionary principle. People like you apparently seem to think its perfectly fine to endlessly tamper with complex systems that generate conditions permitting our existence, so long as 100% rock-solid evidence is not produced proving that the the current global experiment will not end in disaster. This is the same refrain that I have faced from just about every contrarian I have come across. "We want no-holds barred proof!"... they endlessly scream. "Without this then we must not change course!".
Its true that science is very rarely able to provide absolute evidence of this kind. All we can say is that beyond a reasonable doubt, current human actions are very likely to lead to the breakdown of natural systems, given that our species is maintaining a growing ecological deficit. The debt will have to be paid at some point, but what the consequences will be are difficult to predict. They will not be good, but the degree of impact on human civilization could vary from moderately bad to catastrophic. Either way, there will be many losers. If thyat pleases you, hoping that things will only get moderately worse, and to ignore worse scenarios, then so be it.
Against this background are the armies of the ignorant, utterly blind to the realities on the ground but anxious to believe that, irrespective as to what humans due to the planet, that somehow our species will generate technological fixes and will muddle through. This selfish generation is probably the last one to be able to successfully say that we employed a slash-and-burn approach to the biosphere and reeaped the short-term benefits (well, about 15% of the world's population did; many of the rest were consigned to endless poverty and misery). Given the mounting ecological debt, future generations will not be so fortunate. I am certain that, after we are gone, there will be those looking back to the current day asking, "What the hell were you thinking? Did you not consider the welfare of future generations while you were spending natural capital like there was no tomorrow"?
Lets tick off Brent's scientific evidence:
1) *They have changed the name of a forthcoming exhibition from "The Climate Change Gallery" to "The Climate Science Gallery"*
Obviously "They" must be in on the scam!
2) The evidence for global warming is just religion, and Brent knows that it is crying wolf without any counter evidence.
3) nothing: chirp, chirp (crickets).
Thanks for your contribution Brent.
I totally agree.
The public are awful at it, especially in (ahem) a climate of rampant disinformation and disingenuous arguments. Brent proves no exception to this observation.
And what John said. Although I'm sure Brent is off to boast in amusing fashion (somewhere else) about how he vanquished the dragon of deluded AGW disciples who were unable to demolish even a single one of his brilliant ripostes. I wonder if some quotes will find their way back to this thread in future? ;-)
I can't be bothered reading the rest of the thread, but this is the third or fourth time Brent has bade us farewell. He'll be back, possibly under another name.
I think I've said something like this before:
Idiotic.
I was about to comment that I thought this was the case.
I too think he'll be back.
Next time one of his sources posts a new "argument".
We could have a bet about when that will be - but we'd have to point out to some readers that the accuracy of those predictions has little bearing on the accuracy of the modelling of the overall trend ;-)
Andrew and Jakerman (in 928 and 930): deciding to delay the Hepatitis B vaccination is perfectly reasonable in your cases, but the recommendation to immunize immediately actually does make some sense. Nursing infants could very well be exposed to bodily fluids. I'm not sure whether breast milk is regarded as "bodily fluid" for the purposes of infection transmission, but many mothers will suffer bleeding nipples when first nursing.
And since the above is totally off-topic, I'll post a token link addressing climate change: via LGF, [What's the Worst that Could Happen](http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/35343_Video-_The_Worst_That_Cou…?).
[Sunspot whines](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…):
It seems that someone has been noncompliant in the taking of his medication, if the flying speckles of foaming spit are any indication. It also seems that the same individual is constitutionally incapable of using Google, and the phrase "sea level rise thermal expansion calculation" to locate [this](http://atmoz.org/blog/2007/10/31/sea-level-rise-due-to-thermal-expansio…), or [this](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7198/full/nature07080.html), or [this](http://ww2.coastal.edu/msci302/gwslr3.htm), or [this](http://cosmo.nyu.edu/Shoshana_Sommer.pdf), or [this](http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&issn=1520-0442…).
There are countless more examples. The beauty of them all are that the calculations and various assumptions are provided, for anyone to check.
And the result? Thermal expansion is "proved", and it reflects the relevant empirical facts (as if such basic physics is somehow not going to occur simply because a Denialist wishes it so), and it indicates a magnitude of rise that is agreed by all who are capable of basic mathematics.
Sunspot. "Ocean water expansion" is pure physics, and not hyperbole.
Your blatherings here are, however, hyperbole - where they are not simply complete rubbish.
Source
I'm another who delayed Hep B immunisation of their newborns by 6 months.
My kids were each premature, and we knew that neither I nor their mother had any detectable viral infections. We are "low risk" individuals, and our lifestyles are similarly "low risk".
Having worked in the past with HIV and Hep B positive blood samples for close to a decade and a half, I was also vaccinated for Hep B. I had a particularly florid reaction to the series of three injections, and given that an element of immunological reactivity is heritable, and that the children were not at full gestational maturity, I weighed the relative risks and decided to delay - there were potential advantages to doing so, and no conceivable disadvantage.
My kids are now fully immunised with all mandated childhood jabs, as well as for swine 'flu. Whilst I'm all for immunisation, I am also aware that there is a low risk of adverse effect in certain individuals and in certain contexts, and as [jakerman](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) noted, there comes a point where Big Parma interests are blurring into the interests of the population.
Of course, there are other physiological and also ecological considerations, but going there would be a philosphical rambling way too off-thread.
Having said that, I can't resist finishing with a completely irrelevant question - why is the contemporary reference to body fluids actually "bodily fluids"?! 'Bodily' is generally an adverb; in this context, 'body' is surely the correct adjective, current predilection notwithstanding.
Am I splitting my bodily hairs?
"Body" as a noun modifier in this instance is surely not wrong.
As to "bodily", one of the listed definitions is:
In that sense, I can see it's use with "fluids" is similar to it's use with "functions".
As to splitting hairs, you can get OTC treatments for that.
The religious fervour with which the doommongers here cry 'wolf', is immune to reason. They have faith. If by 2020 or 2050 it's still business as usual on temperature, ice cover, sea level etc, and no slavering befanged moon-howling beast has yet appeared they will go to their graves saying, "ah, but there might have been, and still might be a wolf."
Brent shows himself immune to reason by phrasing all his arguments as "If I'm right and the science is wrong, then ...". He is incapable of conceiving that the antecedent is false.
She wasn't going to share any needles or bodily fluid in a hurry...
So you're ignorant of why the vaccine is advised and yet you base your treatment of your child on that ignorance?
I couldn't help but think there was a fair bit of drug company marketing to get that one across the line.
Evidence?
The denialist memes are strong.
I suspect that the widespread use of the phrase "bodily fluids" stems from [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove).
Brent, I'll put you out of your misery.
Weather is the fluctuations of atmospheric variables over short time period, which form coherent structures ("weather systems"). It is chaotic as it has high sensitivity to initial conditions.
Climate is what you get if you average these variables over a long period of time, typically 30 years although definitions vary. It is not really chaotic because you'll wind up with near identical climates regardless of whether you happen to start your period of obervation (or simulation) in a period with warm weather or cold weather, for example.
Stu, this has already been explained to Brent numerous times, e.g., [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) and [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…). Brent's ideology apparently so overwhelms his mind that he cannot perceive or comprehend the word "average". It's funny that he has referred to thermometers; I wonder if he would now deny that the chaotic motion of air molecules can be translated into a linear measure of temperature. And given the chaotic orbit of the Earth, how can we possibly predict how long it will take to make it around the sun? Clearly buying a winter coat when it's on sale during the summer shows the irrationality of total risk aversion.
[Here](http://www.independent.com/news/2010/mar/23/unforgettable-mistakes/) is a nice little article that Brent ought to read.
Thank you bernard for your links, no one else was up to the task, if this (below) play's out then I may reconsider my views on the ability of aGW and CO2 above and beyond solar cycle variation's on our rock, although also needed to be taken into account is the time lag of the effects produced by the thermal mass of the ocean.
Supporters say that filtering of such "noise" makes long-term temperature trends visible. It also allows the NASA team to predict that 2010 will emerge as the hottest year on record. At first blush, it doesn't seem likely: The sun is near the bottom of deepest solar minimum in a century; this year's El Niño, while strong, is nowhere near as powerful as the 1998 cycle that drove temperatures higher across much of the globe. But the trend, Hansen and colleagues conclude, is up. "This new record temperature will be particularly meaningful," they wrote, "because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect."
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/43k
But if this guy is right then all your links would likely remain inconsequential.
hmm...sea temperature ?
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/433
Brent is stupid:
Brent is unfunny:
And here he is today, doing what I expected he was here for all along, boasting to his buddies about how he tricked the warmists and beat them at their own game with nothing more than some quotes and pluck:
And here I was actually believing him when he said he wanted to find common ground between us all and solve this problem once and for all.
Along those lines, check out some of the work of Nelson Repenning from the Sloan School of Business Management at MIT - generally the sort of place that's rather interested in optimising measurable financial outcomes. You know, like Brent was referring to with his concerns about a "trillion-dollar protection probe" when planning for maybe doubling the mean (or was that maximum) number of annual deaths over the last 50 years would be sufficient.
You might start with "this paper". I reference it not so much for the dynamics of organisational capability improvement - although the counter-intuitiveness is worth understanding. I'm more interested in the "Faulty Attributions" and "Superstitious Learning" sections which describe some common human foibles - but especially the dynamite quote in the first paragraph of p81 (18th page of the PDF):
Consider how that dynamic might play out in the fields of "poppycock" Brent mentioned (climate change, Y2K, swine flu...).
And then consider other papers that talk about how product development organisations can end up in a state where they are firefighting immediate crises 100% of the time and have no capability for working on long term strategic initiatives or heading off problems before they occur.
Or if you want, look at the studies that showed that businesses that understood these problems and trained their staff (and managers) to go against their intuition and fix problems before they turned into BIG problems...saved a bunch of money.
Hmmm, wonder if that might have any relevance to (say) global challenges?
Called it ;-)
Could someone please answer this qwesteyon ? Why is the global average temperature higher during a northern hemisphere summer
when the elliptical orbit of planet earth places it closer (3.3%)to the sun during a southern hemisphere summer ?
What forces are at play here ?
Daily global average temperature of near surface layer (ch04) at http://www.tinyurl.com.au/43t
click all the boxes.
>*"Cooling is significant during the intervening period (1945â76) for North America, the Arctic, and Africa." So that makes it official - 31 years - yesssss - there was Global Cooling in that period, whilst CO2 concentrations were rising. Nary a one of them had the decency to concede that point*
Pretty low bar to declare ones victory: slip in a statement that is not controvertial and when no one comments on it, Brent declares what ever Brent declares.
Those who called Brent go it rigtht.
Then again, what fair minded person would be reading Bishop Hill and take Brent's word without checking out the evidence in this thread?
Denialist are not denialists by accident.
That's why I posted a link to this thread there. A few curious people will click over only to see Brent make an ass of himself. If they don't, well, I have plenty of quotes of Brent conceding and admitting he was wrong before going off in a huff because we wouldn't reciprocate his concessions.
Sunspot, the global average temperature is higher in the NH summer because there is more land in the northern hemisphere. The larger seasonal variation that occurs over the NH continents means that JJA is globally warm (in absolute terms) and DJF is globally cool.
Does that answer your qwesteyon?
Thank you Stu, but no that doesn't answer my qwesteyon, the name/heading of that graph infers that it depicts "global temperatures", not "northern hemisphere" temperatures.
hence,
"Daily global average temperature of near surface layer"
?????????????????????????????????
Stu, yep the penny dropped, ok so its not an accurate depiction of global temperatures, only the land mass, so that means it is useless as a gauge to global average world temperatures,
correct ?
re spottie, 964.
It IS an accurate depiction of global temperatures. IT includes land and sea.
Land has a greater seasonal variation than ocean. The northern hemisphere has more land, and therefore more seasonal variation than the southern. Northern summers are hotter, and northern winters cooler, than southern temperatures are.
This means that the global average in northern summer, is hotter than the global average in southern summer.
Yes, what Lee said.
It's a graph of daily average global temperature. It does what it says on the tin. How, then, can it not be representative of the global average? That it has an annual cycle (with a physical explanation) doesn't invalidate the data somehow.
PS if you needed proof that Sunspot hits 'post' before applying any critical thinking, see the above double post :)
Everything that [Spotty misunderstands](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…) is evidence of the incompetance of hardworking people who do the real work on climate science.
Why does The Black Knight spring to mind?
"Your arm's off!"
"No it isn't!"
...
"You yellow bastards...I'll bite your legs off!"
Re John at 956
Mucho amusing seeing the clueless congratulating and back patting themselves on the mighty strength of their collective cluelessness over at BH.
It's almost like they imagine themselves to be the very definition of intelligence, whereas actually ... well let's just say any surrounding sea ice would be in decline.
Why does The Black Knight spring to mind?
Because it's a perfect fit?
I still find the distinction between weather and climate arbitrary
Fool.
Using that arbitrariness against them
Biting our legs off with his stupidity, his most potent weapon.
Raining and not raining are different weather; arctic and tropical are different climates. In any case, whether or not the distinction is arbitrary has no bearing on whether AGW is occurring.
So that makes it official - 31 years - yesssss - there was Global Cooling in that period, whilst CO2 concentrations were rising. Nary a one of them had the decency to concede that point
So Brent wants us to concede something that, he insists, cannot happen because of chaos theory? If it can cool for 31 years then surely it can warm for 31 years. And if it can warm for 31 years then surely it can warm for 310 years or 31,000 years or 31,000,000 years, because as Brent points out, you can't tell the time scale of a graph with no time scale on it.
Just what is Brent's point? What is his argument? He has no coherent argument, just a series of misdirected ankle bites; he's like a little yipping dog trying to keep science from delivering the news.
As far as I can tell, it's pretty much the same argument he had when he entered this thread. And if that's accurate, then he's learnt (or is prepared to admit to learning) precisely nothing.
Well, he seems to have learned that AGW is poppycock, not just for all the other reasons that he already knew, but also because of Chaos Theory. According to Chaos Theory, a temperature chart is self-similar at every time scale, so since weather varies chaotically, there cannot be any warming trends. Of course, there also cannot be any cooling trends, so I don't see how he can expect us to can concede that there was one.
Brent's argument is much like that of the Creationists who claim that evolution is impossible because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. They fail to realize that, if there argument were valid, life would be impossible.
theretheir
Brent's problem with his "30 years of cooling disproves AGW" idea is that it doesn't disprove it - understanding of the nature of all forcings means that aerosols account well for the cooling trend mid-20th century, when they were especially prevalent, even with underlying forcings that might have otherwise caused a warming signal then.
For someone who claims an objective, technical bent, his capacity for such seems to have stalled at the starting line.
As far as I can tell, it's pretty much the same argument he had when he entered this thread. And if that's accurate, then he's learnt (or is prepared to admit to learning) precisely nothing.
Remarkably, he appears throughout to have never watched the video, although he has played out the first 1.5 minutes of it.
As far as I can tell, it's pretty much the same argument he had when he entered this thread.
Oops, you're right, he made the same Chaos argument back on [Mar 3](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…), and Bernard J [observed back then](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…):
And that's precisely the point I made in response to his VERY FIRST POST when he framed his initial version of his future temperature anomaly test.
Goldfish indeed (apologies for the caricature to actual goldfish reading this).
HAHAaahahaha, you all have done it again !!!!
hahaha, brent dangles a carrot in front of the donkey's nose's and they chase it everytime !!! hahahaha, outsmarted, (wiping tears away) a kind suggestion - stick to science, not psychology
sunspot, we already know how morally corrupt and intellectually inept you are, there's no need to keep reminding us.
Shorter Spotty:
>I've embarressed myslef so much already on this thread, a little more can't shame me any deeper.
>So my lack of evidence and argument is no barrier to my declaring what every I want! (PS Brent is my role model).
While I was not engaged in your pathetic little quibble I repaired a car for a friend, mowed 2 acres for my elderly neighbor, sorted out 1000 native plants I have been growing to repair a damaged riparian area (at my own cost), continued some work on an energy efficient heater I am attempting to build and last night I went to a barbeque and had a very interesting conversation with 2 pollie's.
I see absolutely nothing being done about aGW by contributors to this rant, if you think you all are going to save the world by polishing your chairs with your arse's then there is little hope for the future ! aint that a laugh !!!
PS akers your attemp's at ESP are appalling
Right sunspot, and no one who posted here has done anything else for the last 3 weeks other than you. Calling you stupid insults the word.
twoofy, um... that was one day and every day is similar, my quote above stands,
your lazy attitude is that Kyoto will save the world, others think a carbon tax, others think the combination of the two. The fact is that if your science is as correct as you preach, it will be too little and too late, do you really believe that the conquest of the middle east is about terrorism ? The capture of the middle east is about politics, power and money. That energy supply will end up in the atmosphere whether you like it or not. If, as a few have postulated, that oil is abiotic then it may well continue on it's path above for a long time yet.
Whether you like it or not there is a nexus in our goals, difference being at the moment is that I've been doing a bit for years and your just all mouth.
Shorter sunspot: If I didn't see it, it didn't happen.
that was one day ...
You're a moron. Really.
Shorter spotty:
>I ain't got the science on my side so I'll just make stuff up about the actions of others.
Some more information that might be relevant to that question.
Note in particular that a new type of "rotten" ice has been observed that appears to be indistinguishable from more solid ice via remote sensing.
And for those who aren't Brent, there's a reasonably good high level discussion pointing out that predicting when the ice will disappear is difficult (if only due to natural variability), but the overall trend is fairly clear.
Comment #4 is also interesting, but I have no further data on the suggestion. Comment #12 points to data showing fairly dramatic thinning.
Awesome. Another epic, just like the last one with the legendary Grima.
Are you guys really trying to break that record?
FS, we're not even half way there. Dr O remains unchalleged for the time being. Perhaps to egg them on a bit you should ask Brent or spotty their views on Ayn Rand?
;)
F**k.
Wonder if Brent wants to bet on how well he can forecast when we hit four figures? ;-)
My thoughts precisely :-(
Maybe you should ask the locals why the sea ice is in the condition it is, things always seem to be omitted.
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/47s
So Sunspot, you seem to assume we're doing nothing which you lecture us about, before telling us there's nothing we can do anyway. All I ask of any troll is that they be consistent.
Still polishing your chair with your arse, eh sunspot, you hypocritical piece of trash ...
Maybe you should ask the locals why the sea ice is in the condition it is, things always seem to be omitted.
Maybe you should try reading and comprehending the articles you post, idiot.
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/483
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/484
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/485
and one of the hero machine
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/486
Spotty, you are giving it a right polish today!
Why should I bother clicking any of your links, since you push bogus falsehood that you [know to be wrong](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…). I think you are a time waster.
akerz, 2 reasons.
1/ you need someone to remind you that your tactic's are failing and you need to reassess your aGW strategy
2/ you like carrots
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/489
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/48a
Here's a link for you, sunspot: http://www.tinyurl.com.au/47s
Oh, wait, that was yours! Try reading it this time, idiot.