Naomi Oreskes appeared on The Drum on Tuesday. Lotharsson has written a handy summary. I want to comment on a couple of extraordinary claims by Tom Switzer in that episode. First (at 31:56):
"Interestingly, the IPCC models, there is a great deal of uncertainty, because the rate of warming has not increased to the extent that the IPCC models suggested it would in the 1990s -- there has been some tapering off. To the extent that that is true that does lead one to believe that there is more uncertainty.
Switzer provides more detail in this column in the Spectator:
I can name no better book to read over the summer vacation than Mark Lawson's A Guide to Climate Change Lunacy. A senior journalist at the Australian Financial Review, Lawson has provided a valuable antidote to what passes for climate science. ...
Mark Lawson highlights the perils of the forecasting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We learn that its first report, in 1990, was dead wrong. It forecast a minimum temperature increase of 0.4 degrees centigrade over 20 years, and a maximum of 0.8 degrees. Lawson shows that the most favourable estimate is for an increase of only 0.25 degrees.
Well that's easy to check, since the First Assessment Report is on line. Here's the relevant passage (my emphasis):
under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A)
emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of
global mean temperature during the next century of
about 0.3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of
0.2°C to 0.5°C per decade), this is greater than that
seen over the past 10,000 years This will result in a
likely increase in global mean temperature of about
1°C above the present value by 2025 and 3°C before
the end of the next century The rise will not be
steady because of the influence of other factors
Lawson came up with his "minimum temperature increase of 0.4 degrees centigrade over 20 years" by assuming that the IPCC had predicted a steady rise even though they specifically said that the rise would not be steady. What did they project for the next twenty years? You can read the numbers off their graph below, and they are a minimum increase of about 0.2°C and a best estimate of about 0.4°C.
And how much did temperatures rise from 1990 to 2010? Look at the graph below -- it's about 0.3°C.
So it was Mark Lawson who was dead wrong, not the IPCC. And he wasn't wrong about a prediction of the future but what was clearly stated in easily obtainable public documents. Switzer will no doubt now declare his confidence in the IPCC and his lack of confidence in Mark Lawson.
Second, Switzer continued with another extraordinary claim:
"In this country, especially during the time of 07 and 08 and 09 it was conducted in a heretic hunting and anti-intellectual environment where sceptics were hunted and hardly heard and indeed it was not only impermissible to question the science, it was impermissible to question the response.
During that time, Switzer was the opinion editor of The Australian, one of its generals in its war on science. Far from not being heard, Switzer would publish everything and anything they produced, for example this, or this and even a front page headline declaring that global warming was a "FRAUD". That last one was based on the discredited Wegman report. Has Switzer completely forgotten everything he published at The Australian?
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That was a great interview with Oreskes. She did seem to tell off Tom Switzer rather nicely. For an agnostic he was remarkably fast to jump on the glaciergate issue. He has the mantras down well.
I'm glad that Tom Switzer is with United States Study Centre and not the Canada Study Centre. since is knowledge of Canada seems a bit either seriously lacking or out-of-date.
Where DID he get his ideas about the Canadian election "where a Conservative Canadian Prime Minister gained seats on the back of opposing a carbon tax or ETS"?
With the exception of the Green Party who, finally, got their first elected member of parliament this time rouond, there was basically no discussion about AGW and certainly no discussion of a carbon tax at the national level.
The Liberal Party took a beating on carbon pricing in 2008 but probably more due to the fact that the policy was very poorly presented. Properly presented it "might" have sold. Switzer is only one election and 3 years out of date. The Conservatives got a minority,, then, despite a bungled Liberal campaign.
I don't think there is any doubt that P.M. Harper is vehemently opposed to a carbon tax but it had little or nothing to do with the election outcome.
It's pretty clear from policy initiatives (well, lack thereof)that he is amongst the deniers though I think he gives lip service to carbon reduction.
I think Switzer said what he said about the Canadian election because Australians don't know much about what goes on in Canada, and vice versa. So I guess Switzer figured he could get away with it inorder to divert Oreske's lead in the discussion.
He failed again with bringing up Pachauri and the so-called-glaciergate but Oreskes is too smart and wasn't able to be diverted. Good on her, plus having worked in Australia she knows how to 'hear' what Australians mean when they speak and thats most probably useful.
Saw that interview. Switzer is a dishonest ideological bully.
@ Jeremy C
I suspect that too. Most people would never catch it.
I imagine most Canadians would be very hard pressed to name the Australian PM or know anything about Australian politics. Mind you I suspect quite a few Canadians might have a problem naming the Canadian PM.
We did get fairly good coverage of the Queensland floods though. They were much more dramatic than our current floods in Manitoba.
Former believers are now the voting majority and the new denier is anyone who still thinks voters will now vote yes to taxing the air to make the weather colder. So scientists saying climate change is real, can study the effects of a crisis that never happened all they want but it still wonât make climate change real. Donât forget, it was scientists who also brought us cruise missiles, cancer causing chemical cocktails, land mine technology, nuclear weapons, germ warfare, cluster bombs, strip mining technology, Y2K, Y2Kyoto, deep sea drilling technology and now climate control. And how ironic is it that it was the scientists themselves that originally polluted the planet with their pesticides and cancer causing chemicals they created, thus making environmentalism necessary in the first place.
Obama didnât even mention the crisis in his state of the union speech and all American IPCC funding has been pulled and since the countless thousands of consensus scientists have been silent after having their warnings ignored, one can only conclude that it was all media hype. You know itâs all hype when the media takes the crisis more seriously than the scientists who should have been marching in the streets to bring back support for CO2 mitigation.
Life is good. We are living longer than at any time in history as a species and with climate doom gone we can now look forward to the future of progress with courage, not fear. We can celebrate a half century of environmental achievements that defeated the smoggy 70âs when a river caught fire in Ohio and celebrate environmental laws, awareness, standards and legislation that will continue to protect and conserve the Natural world.
Now is the time to celebrate the environment, not condemn it and our children to a death by CO2.
@mememine
[snip babbling]
A bore hole, Tim....please, I'm begging you.
If Mark Lawson is considered an authority any semblance of arguments by Switzer being based on their merit go out the window; I recall some of the drivel Lawson - supposedly a leading journalist - published on www.onlineopinion.com.au . I presume he continues to publish opinion pieces there, probably with urgings to buy his book but I have tended to avoid OLO. The site's ready willingness to publish whatever nonsense the reality warping think tanks want foisted on a gullible public caused me to withdraw from involvement there. Lawson is a good example of what's wrong with journalism on this issue.
Is comment no. 5 against curbs on CO2, for them, or talking about something else entirely?
Glad they finally put the FAR online. Now it's easier to debunk the skeptics who have been lying about it for years and years.
ben, yes, the scientists involved in preparing the report and the scientists who then reviewed it all believe that is what the available data is telling them.
What do you know that the scientists don't? Please share.
#5 also posted the same exact thing today at this site:
http://www.care2.com/causes/global-warming/blog/new-voices-in-climate-c…
and essentially the same post here:
http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/05/birther-debate-dead-could-climate-c…
There's more of the same going back months. Nothing is going to get through his thick skull.
Mark Lawson here:
Although Tim Lambert's attempt to deconstruct me has some interest, in fact his excuses for the original IPCC forecast are ridiculous, even feeble. Plainly the 1990 forecast is wrong, even on the material he presents. Sure the IPCC may have said in 1990 that the rise would not be steady, but one would expect for the result to at least keep within the forecast range. For that 20 year period Lambert put the increase at 0.3 degrees, or below even the minimum of 0.4 degrees set. By any reasonable criteria that's a gross failure. Although his graph is not sourced I assume he's using GISS. I used either Hadley or UAH (it slips my mind which) for the lower result. Both are now recognised as being more authorative than GISS. If Lambert really wants to pick problems, he should do so where the facts are on his side.
"[Hadley and UAH] are now recognised as being more authorative than GISS."
Sez who? Hadley's reasonable, UAH has had significant problems, but I don't know of a general recognition of being more authoritative. I think they also might lack some geographic coverage that could explain part of the temp discrepancy.
Regardless though, there's a tiny point: .3C/2decades is less than .2C/decade. Not catastrophically different, but it could use some explanation.
Mark Lawson again.
Yep Brian, more authorative. GISS is known for being different to the others. It puts the peak at 2005 rather than 1998 like the others, and gives larger temperature increases than the others. Also, the land-based instrument network has been criticised very soundly on any number of counts, which I won't bother to repeat here, while the satellite-based UAH data is audited. UAH and Hadley broadly agree, incidentally, although Hadley uses much of the same basic data as GISS. However, we can agree that the differences aren't very great.
All of the sites agree, incidentally, that temperatuers have been basically steady state since 2000 give or take la nina-el nino. (Temps are down at the moment due to a la nina.)
Tim: Thanks for the opportunity to respond. On the question of the uncertainty of the science, Mark (and Nigel) Lawson and I are hardly alone. Take Professor Chris Rapley on the BBC three years ago. When asked whether Lord Lawson was right to say that global temperatures have not gone up in the 21st century, Rapley replied: âThat is factually true.â He then went on to concede that there is ânatural variabilityâ in the system. To the extent that he is right, it contradicts the more alarmist predictions about the science. Professor Rapley, remember, is no climate sceptic. A former head of the British Antarctic Survey and director of UK Science Museum, Professor Rapley is a leading climate scientist who accepts the majority view. I readily concede I am no authority on this question, but I do accept there is wide range of opinion on the science -- views that the likes of Naomi Oreskes would like to shut down.
For what it's worth, I think the climate enthusiasts are on much weaker ground when it comes to the costs of decarbonising the economy as well as the prospects for a global policy consensus to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is the issue today: the debate has shifted from science to economics. Which is why the popular policy plans to decarbonise the economy â carbon taxes, cap and trade â are unlikely to have much impact on the climate. For example, during the first three years of the EU ETS (2005-08), emissions went up! What did bring them down was the GFC. And that's the point: Decarbonising the economy is not cost free. It is expensive, which is why so many nations, especially developing nations such as China and India that want to grow their economies and reduce poverty, won't sign any legally binding deal. The respected environmentalist George Monbiot has written about this issue at length, and he is deeply depressed about the prospects of global action to tackle global warming. Who can blame him: The Kyoto protocol expires next year: what will replace it?
As for the debate being conducted in an anti-intellectual environment, I think that was, with rare exceptions, the case for several years following the release of Al Goreâs movie, the Stern Report and indeed Rupert Murdochâs insistence that we need to âgive the planet the benefit of the doubt.â (As the Spectator Australia has documented, the ABCâs Lateline â notwithstanding its hostâs claim to be fair and balanced on the subject -- dedicated a one-on-one interview to only one sceptic (but scores of enthusiasts) from 2001 to 2008: see http://www.spectator.co.uk/print/australia/5912178/maurice-newman-is-de… ) After the News Corp chiefâs sermon, virtually all his papers, including the Australian, backed the science (though, to its great credit, it still tolerated dissenting views: we do, after all, live in a liberal democracy.) Still, in 2008-09, it was deemed blasphemy for any major political figure to dare question Canberraâs policy response. Remember the media conventional wisdom at the time. It predicted that the Liberal partyâs âill-judgedâ opposition to the ETS (Michelle Grattan) would amount to âelectoral oblivionâ (Peter Hartcher), âhumiliation at the pollsâ (Laurie Oakes) and a âpolitical suicide missionâ and âthe road to ruinâ (Paul Kelly). Today, the consensus view is very different. Polls show 60 per cent of the Australian people, although they support the science, oppose the carbon tax. And the Gillard Governmentâs political problems are primarily linked to its backflip on the unpopular carbon tax.
This is a great debate among enthusiasts and sceptics, and for those who are genuinely undecided on what is a very complicated subject. As it happens, on August 3 the Spectator Australia is hosting an Oxford-chamber-style debate in Sydney about the carbon tax and global warming. Lord Nigel Lawson, the former UK Chancellor, will be coming out for it. Please encourage your readers to save the date. Details to come. Thanks again, Tom tom.switzer@spectator.co.uk
Why don't we compare them?
They all show 0.3 or more.
>All of the sites agree, incidentally, that temperatuers (sic) have been basically steady state since 2000 give or take la nina-el nino.
All scientists agree that ten years is not enough to show statistical significance.
Um, no, it is not "plainly" wrong. A forecast of 0.3 degrees per decade over the next century does not mean that you will see 0.6 degrees in the first 20 years unless the rise is expected to be linear. It's obviously not expected to be linear. You get slower warming in the earlier decades, and faster warming later on.
If you think their forecast is "plainly wrong", you need to show us what their forecast was for the year 2010, not interpolate from a 100 year forecast.
It is disturbing that Mark Lawson would respond to a post which includes the IPCC's 1990 minimum projection for the next 20 years of an increase of 0.2C by claiming that their minimum projection was 0.4C. He's moved from being wrong about the content of a publicly available document to being wrong about something that is right in front of his eyes.
Tom Switzer, doesn't this bother you? Or is your faith in Lawson unshakeable?
>I do accept there is wide range of opinion on the science -- views that the likes of Naomi Oreskes would like to shut down.
I'll think you'll find she rather the science be reported accurately, or are you unaware that the Australian's War On Science section of this site runs to 61 parts?
>When asked whether Lord Lawson was right to say that global temperatures have not gone up in the 21st century, Rapley replied: âThat is factually true.â
Of course it is "factually true" but that doesn't mean anything when the century is only eight years old (I'm surprised you didn't go the whole hog and claim "no warming this millennium")
>This is a great debate among enthusiasts and sceptics, and for those who are genuinely undecided on what is a very complicated subject.
Thanks for separating the "sceptics" from "those who are genuinely undecided". I'm glad you see the difference there too.
Your misdirection towards policy noted, but ignored.
Shorter Tom Switzer: "I'm happy to keep telling lies till the cows come home."
TL;DR
Tom Switzer:
>Take Professor Chris Rapley on the BBC three years ago. When asked whether Lord Lawson was right to say that global temperatures have not gone up in the 21st century, Rapley replied: âThat is factually true.â He then went on to concede that there is ânatural variabilityâ in the system. To the extent that he is right, it contradicts the more alarmist predictions about the science.
Provide a cite please, so we can see the context. [Here's what I found from Rapley on this topic](http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/1804889/met-office-slams-climate-s…):
>The UK's Meteorological Office has issued a damning attack on climate change sceptics, arguing that recent slow down in warming trends is entirely in line with scientists expectations.
>"Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand," said the organisation in a brochure published last week.
>The Met Office was responding to suggestions that global warming is a myth because of slower warming in the past decade, and recent years that have been consecutively cooler.
>"Over the last 10 years, global temperatures have warmed more slowly than the long-term trend. But this does not mean that global warming has slowed down or even stopped," said the Met Office, which also said that 2008 was thus far the tenth warmest year on record. "It is entirely consistent with our understanding of natural fluctuations of the climate within a trend of continued long-term warming."
The declaration came as professor Chris Rapley, director of the UK's Science Museum and former head of the British Antarctic Survey, warned that recent research showed global warming was occuring faster than climate change models suggested.
>Speaking at a conference in London yesterday, he also warned that efforts to curb global carbon emissions since the turn of the century had no discernable impact. "The tanker isn't even moving in the right direction," he said. "We are completely on the business as usual track. In fact, emissions are growing slightly faster than expected."
> Switzer will no doubt now declare his confidence in the IPCC and his lack of confidence in Mark Lawson.
Hah, hah - you kidder, Tim!
What I didn't write in the rough summary was how amusing it was to see two merchants of doubt trying to sell doubt to Oreskes and the viewers. I guess if your job demands avoiding the application of intellectual integrity, well a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do...?
I would also like to know, given that IPA-associated advocates frequently appear on The Drum website plying their trade (in doubt, if nothing else), why the TV show did not report Switzer's IPA affiliation? Would it have seemed too obviously unbalanced? Or is the cadre of merchants of doubt that small these days?
It's difficult to imagine the self-delusion required to pen the following, as Switzer does:
Why would anybody need to "concede" that there is variability in climate systems? Do you have to "concede" that the sky often looks blue?
Which "alarmist predictions" claim there is no variability in climate?
I think there is a mental process going on here which is an utter stranger to evidence-based analysis. I do not understand how Switzer could write what he does. It is nonsense.
Area Man and John - fellas, backtrack a little. the original forecast in 1990 was, basically, for a MINIMUM increase of 0.4 degrees over two decades. The actual increase, using the prone-to-exageration GISS was 0.3 degrees.
The IPCC graph which Tim produces is difficult to interpret but basically doesn't seem to be saying anything different. In any case, it even historically wrong - although that may not have been known at the time. Remember the peak in the 1940s and fall to the mid 70s? Not on the graph.
It problably is best to simply admit that the original forecast was wrong, and move on. This sort of arguement just draws attention to the fact that it was wrong.
> [Hadley and UAH] are now recognised as being more authorative than GISS.
Good grief! You apparently don't even know that UAH measures something different from Hadley and GISS. That suggests you don't know what you're talking about.
So what reason do you advance for your claim?
> GISS is known for being different to the others. It puts the peak at 2005 rather than 1998 like the others, and gives larger temperature increases than the others.
Good grief! If that's your case, then you reveal you have no valid basis for arguing that the others are more authoritative - and worse still, you seem to think you do.
One quick hint: comparing which year was the highest in different datasets isn't very useful in a system with noise. If you can grok the implications of that - firstly about your lack of understanding of valid scientific comparison, secondly about what happens when you switch to a valid comparison -
then you can start considering other areas where your argument might not be as robust as you seem to think it is.
So, yet again it appears that you don't know what you're talking about.
But wait, you have more!
> Also, the land-based instrument network has been criticised very soundly on any number of counts, which I won't bother to repeat here, while the satellite-based UAH data is audited.
LOL!
Saying it does not make it thus.
Citing criticism is useless unless you can demonstrate that the criticism is valid. There have been a lot of invalid criticisms over the years - and some entirely valid ones, and development of the land-based reconstruction methods to address the latter. Are you ignorant of these issues?
You should note that UAH was also roundly criticised for a number of years for provably valid reasons. If that's all it takes, then why aren't you ditching UAH?
And it's strange that you think the auditing of one data set makes it better than the others.
Firstly, how exactly do you think it was audited? When Christy (IIRC) refused to make corrections for a number of years - on what basis was he roundly criticised for doing so?
Secondly and far more importantly, have you ever heard of independent replication and cross-checking different methods in science? Ever wondered why science does so much of that and so little "auditing"? Have you tried cross-checking here? What happens when you compare all three datasets (and RSS while we're at it)?
And speaking of independent replication of methods, ANYONE can go get the data and create a temperature reconstruction themselves, if they think that (e.g.) the GISS methodology is dodgy. Everyone who has done so has found essentially the same results. Amateurs have done a rough version in a weekend.
And more - the BEST project was intended to address the kinds of criticisms that I suspect you had in mind. Have you heard what it is reporting?
Heck, even Anthony Watts has now published a peer-reviewed paper reiterating that land-based average temperature measurements in the US are pretty accurate. Frankly, it would be hard to argue with someone who claimed that this effort did not comprise, at least in part, an audit in some fashion of US ground-based records. So you'll be citing his reported average temperature trends as authoritative now, I take it?
How on earth can you pretend that you're making an authoritative case when you are this ignorant and lacking in basic statistical and scientific skills?
> When asked whether Lord Lawson was right to say that global temperatures have not gone up in the 21st century, Rapley replied: âThat is factually true.â
And also misleading, because 8 years of data is too small to be statistically significant - and fallacious, because you are arguing by appeal to authority. Do you see how you attempted to sell false doubt right there? (If you don't, might I suggest that you reassess your advocacy efforts so as to make you seem less of a gullible mouthpiece?)
See, you could equally well note that the last decade was warmer than the previous one, which was warmer than the one before, and so on for several decades - even though decade by decade measurements are still a bit too short to be statistically significant. Why didn't you cite that observation?
Or how about citing something actually scientifically rigorous, such as the trend over the last 20 years or so, which does rise to statistical significance? Or as Oreskes nailed you on, do you prefer to skim over the science so you can confidently say that you're agnostic on it? What kind of idiot thinks it's convincing to argue that a field you don't understand is not very solid?
I guess understanding the science and hewing to scientific rigour would never do, because it puts the lie to your uncertainty meme.
> To the extent that he is right, it contradicts the more alarmist predictions about the science.
Er, no, Tom. And if you actually want to find out why, you'd have to learn a bit about the science. It's not too hard - there's plenty of accurate online resources for those who are interested.
It does however demonstrate that you're pontificating from a position of ignorance and incompetence. You self-admittedly don't understand much about the science - but you are self-vouching that some of it embodies "alarmist predictions". You can't know this yourself - so you create false appeals to authority by quote-mining.
The interesting thing is that if you feel that appeal to authority is legitimate, then you better sit up and take notice of the vast majority of national science bodies whose collective authority vastly exceeds that of any handful of scientists you'd like to (misquote or) quote.
Either way your argument does not hold up.
And thus far you're giving a good appearance of exhibiting the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Why don't you just cite the section of the 1990 IPCC report that says this? It should be easy enough, assuming you actually got this number out of the report. I would think that after several comments, you would seize the opportunity to provide evidence for your claim. Just show us where it says that temperatures would be a minimum of 0.4 degrees higher by 2010.
> The actual increase, using the prone-to-exageration GISS was 0.3 degrees.
You just can't help throw in a bit of anti-GISS bias, can you? It doesn't work anywhere near as much for people who know a bit and/or check things themselves.
Go click on the link someone provided earlier. All three data sets you earlier cited report a trend that amounts to > 0.3 degrees over that time period. They're all very similar.
Sound advice Mark... take it before catching your death of pneumonia
> wrong about something that is right in front of his eyes
So, he's reading from a script? Is this advertising/PR work?
This stuff is so wearing and I grow increasingly weary. So, in the face of graph after graph (leaving aside statistical analyses) showing increases in temperatures, measured in various ways, graphs that, you would think, blind freddy couldn't misread, but apparently blind deniers can, it continues. And in the face of all the other climatic, biological, geographic changes evident around the world as a consequence of those temp changes. Still the deniers trot out their hair splitting-nonsense. Really, a forecast in 1990, differs by 0.1 degree or some such from actual measures? Really - there have been no further measurements, development of models in the last 21 years or so? It isn't also evident to blind freddy that the IPCC and scientists in general have been bending over backwards, in the face of massive pressure, to make their estimates and predictions as conservative as possible, only to see the real world outpace those models?
At what stage, Mr Lawson, are you and others like you going to sllnk quietly away, your damage done? After another 10 years of rising temperatures and ecological and meteorological changes? Twenty years? Thirty? When will you feel that you can't run these delaying tactics any longer? If the next El Nino outstrips 1998, will you put this down to "natural variability" and therefore quite meaningless? The one after that? Do you think any of us don't recognise that natural variation is occurring but occurring around a steadily rising mean? Do you really not see this?
You and your ideological warriors for unfettered unregulated corporate activity as it damages the planet are making the rest of us pay a heavy price for your grand vision of an Ayn Rand-inspired 21st century. And I bitterly resent it. At least the religious Rapture ideologues tend to go quietly after their ancient text-inspired madness proves wrong. And their babbling doesn't affect the rest of us and the world we live in. If only that were true for the climate deniers, a little group of clear-eyed fanatics with secret handshakes and knowing nods meeting in little rooms above tobacconist shops, savouring the harmless cigar fumes. Sadly the damage they have done is extensive and is going to live for generations after they have gone. Proud boast eh Mark? Tom?
In short: Mark Lawson is a climate crank.
He got a free chance to spruik his book in the Australian Skeptics magazine.
The quality of the reasoning and scholarship (CO2 is saturated! Climate sensitivity is low!), bare assertion (The IPCC is wrong about everything!) and fake references (overinterpreting graphs from Lamb's climate book) should have been enough to convince people not to buy this latest turgid offering from Conner Court press.
> The actual increase, using ... GISS was 0.3 degrees.
Of course, if you wanted to know what the trends in all three cited temperature records were, [you could have found out](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1990/to:2010/trend/offset…).
Go ask any first year Uni student in science or statistics why measuring trends are better than comparing endpoints, Mark.
Oh, and in case Mark doesn't read graphs very well, the trends over this period increase by about 0.33 (UAH NSSTC lower tropical global mean, HADCRUT3 variance-adjusted global mean) and 0.37 degrees (GISTEMP global land-ocean mean), which is certainly between the low and best estimate in the FAR graph.
(And yes, you can get differences in trend values if you cherrypick the endpoints, which is why longer is better and testing for statistical significance really does matter. But the same applies in spades if you try to compare any two single years and pronounce the comparison meaningful.)
I think that many of the overwhelmingly hysterical responses to this blog might perhaps suggest why the climate enthusiasts are losing the policy debate in Australia and the rest of the world, save the EU (where the ETS has been a debacle) and New Zealand (which emits .2 per cent of global emissions). You are talking to yourselves and lecturing the community. Hardly a good sales pitch in a liberal democratic society. Whether or not you like it, the fact is the public opposition to potentially dangerous and expensive policies to combat global warming is increasing, both at home and abroad. Take the US, which accounts for more than 20 per cent of global emissions. Under a liberal Democrat president and 60-Dem senate in 2010, a cap-and-trade bill that consisted of little but loopholes to those big polluters, could not even be debated, much less passed, in the Senate. And prospects for any genuine economy-wide carbon pricing system in the US are virtually zero. Meanwhile, China -- the largest emitter of greenhouse gases -- is chugging up the smokey road to prosperity! Despite investments in renewables and non-carbon energy, its net emissions are steadily rising. In the absence of a genuinely global deal to reduce emissions, the onus will increasingly be on policy makers to do what humans have done since time immemorial: adapt to climate change.
But areaman the reference to the original forecast is in the original post by Tim. He presents a graph saying that reduces the stated minimum forecast but it doesn't seem to.
Lotharsson - of course I was aware Hadley and GISS measure different things, but they both tell basically the same story. the problem is that GISS has different somewhat, more dramatic story to tell with the peak in a different year to everyone else. It is irrelevent to complain that's not a good way to compare data sets. The rest of your comments are mostly irrelevent, or confirm my original arguement.
Take this sample: "Oh, and in case Mark doesn't read graphs very well, the trends over this period increase by about 0.33 (UAH NSSTC lower tropical global mean, HADCRUT3 variance-adjusted global mean) and 0.37 degrees (GISTEMP global land-ocean mean), which is certainly between the low and best estimate in the FAR graph."
This makes things worse for your case. Go and look at the forecast set out in the original comments by Tim. The MINIMUM for a 20 year period given in the IPCC is 0.4 degrees. Clearly on all measures, as you have so kindly confirmed, the increase was well below the minimum. Tim brandished a graph claiming that said something different but it doesn't. So clearly the IPCC 1990 forecast is wrong.
Best to admit it and move on. Also best to admit that GISS is different - although this has nothing really to do with the issue at hand - and move on, and save your lectures for when you are not clearly on a losing arguement.
I repeat my question to Tom Switzer:
It is disturbing that Mark Lawson would respond to a post which includes the IPCC's 1990 minimum projection for the next 20 years of an increase of 0.2C by claiming that their minimum projection was 0.4C. He's moved from being wrong about the content of a publicly available document to being wrong about something that is right in front of his eyes.
Tom Switzer, doesn't this bother you? Or is your faith in Lawson unshakeable?
> I think that many of the overwhelmingly hysterical responses to this blog might perhaps suggest why the climate enthusiasts are losing the policy debate in Australia and the rest of the world...
Many thanks for descending to tone trolling. It is almost exclusively employed by those without a leg to stand on. And it too often relies on dubious assessments of "hysteria" based on written words sans body language.
I note that you continue to avoid the science. Neither do you correct your earlier fallacious arguments after having been called on the embedded fallacies. I guess that's too much to expect - you don't give the appearance of being at all interested in the best knowledge to drive policy, but rather in skewing policy in a certain direction regardless of the knowledge we do have.
> In the absence of a genuinely global deal to reduce emissions, the onus will increasingly be on policy makers to do what humans have done since time immemorial: adapt to climate change.
That's a conclusion I can agree with you on provided that your assumption holds.
Now how about you go and figure out whether it is more "potentially dangerous and expensive" to attempt to mitigate or to adapt.
Unfortunately to do that robustly you'll need to get more than skin deep into the science - or read summaries created by scientists for non-scientists - rather than "remaining agnostic" in the hope that she'll be right, mate, if you just ignore what the science says.
Feel free to report back here on your methods and conclusions. Or have you not even considered the question of the risks and costs of the strategy that you seem to be advocating?
> ...the problem is that GISS has different somewhat, more dramatic story to tell with the peak in a different year to everyone else.
Mark, the peak year in a noisy system does not matter. If you don't understand this, you are incompetent to comment on the science.
> It is irrelevent to complain that's not a good way to compare data sets.
ROFLMAO!
Now you're digging in and being deeply foolish. You appear to have already forgotten that YOU cited the peak year as one support for your assertion that GISS was less authoritative than the others. Have you forgotten already or do you hope that no-one [looks a couple of pages up](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/05/oreskes_and_switzer_on_the_dru…)?
> Yep Brian, more authorative. GISS is known for being different to the others. It puts the peak at 2005 rather than 1998 like the others...
That means pointing out - accurately, whether you brand it a complaint or not - that it is not a good way to compare data sets - is entirely relevant. Even if you continue to assert that it is not.
You have given one more reason why you should disqualify yourself from commenting on the science. And you clearly don't even understand the depths of your own lack of understanding.
> The MINIMUM for a 20 year period given in the IPCC is 0.4 degrees.
Graph comprehension fail.
I checked with a ruler on my screen - twice now, and the MINIMUM for THE 20 year period you cited is at roughly 0.3 degrees - certainly not much above, could be argued slightly less, but definitely not as much as 0.4. You are either lying or mistaken about reading a basic graph, even after your mistake has been pointed out by multiple people - which once again would suggest that you are not competent to comment on the science.
Hint: you want 40% of one x-axis division either side of "2000", because each division is 25 years. If you're using half a division, you're doing it wrong.
> Also best to admit that GISS is different - although this has nothing really to do with the issue at hand - and move on, and save your lectures for when you are not clearly on a losing arguement.
I love it when people declare victory and then rapidly advance in a rearwards direction.
And I'm going to have to dryclean my jacket from rolling on the floor so much. To which address may I send you the bill? ;-)
Not hysteria Tom, anger, there is a considerable difference. The hysteria it seems is all on your side with the responses to any suggestions that humans can damage this planet and that we might need to adjust the way we do business a bit to allow for ecological imperatives. I also find your tone of triumphalism relating to the success of denialism in preventing action by the US even more offensive than hysteria. Oh and good luck with that whole adaptation thing - obviously much better to fix a broken planet than take action to prevent it falling over the edge in the first place. That was a sarcastic remark by the way, in case you mistook it for hysteria.
I seem to recall Roger Pielke Jr saying the first IPCC report predicted a 0.6 degree rise in 17 years from 1990 to 2007.
> overwhelmingly hysterical responses
You know Mr Switzer, some of us have an "issue" with lies and liars. On an emotional level. If that makes us "hysterical", I am happy and proud to plead guilty as charged.
In a related matter, do you ever feel shame? Just curious.
Lurker - yes the 1990 IPCC forecast of 0.6 degres figure for 17 years cited by Roger Pielke is probably right, but that would be for a mid-point. The 0.4 degrees cited above is the minimum forecast for 20 years.
Tim Lambert points to a very large scale graph in his original post from the same report claiming that it somehow modifies the written forecast by the IPCC, although it would have been derived directly from those forecasts.
As other posters have so helpful shown the maxmum increase they can come up with over that period is 0.33 degrees. Therefore the original forecast is wrong. This very simple, incontrovertible point seems to have caused problems, but no-one has been able to counter it.
Mark Lawson @ 43, it's very simple. The IPCC said that "rate of increase of global mean temperature [b]during the next century[/b] of about 0.3°C per decade". This statement does not say [b]anything[/b] about their forecast for 1990-2000, which at the time of writing was manifestly not [b]the next century[/b]. It is a forecast for the period from 2000 onwards. If you want to know what their forecast was for 1990-2010, you look at the graph of CO2-caused realised temperature [b]rise[/b] (which is not a graph of temperature - hence why it doesn't show a peak and trough in the 1940s-1970s, as you claimed at 23 it should). The graph shows a non-linear increase - the rate of increase before 2000 is clearly [b]less[/b] than the rate after 2000. The graph predicts a rise of 0.2-0.4 from 1990 to 2010. The temperature rose 0.3. The IPCC was right, and you are wrong.
You are a disgrace to your profession - either a fool or a liar. Is your entire book full of this kind of wilful misreading and misquotation?
@ Tom Switzer @ 35: It's so nice of you to tell us that your approved way for us to participate in democratic liberal society is to shut up. Some might see that as a contradiction, but, as Mark Lawson demonstrates, the greatness of the Murdoch Press is unfathomably beyond such petty matters as logic. Stolen any phone messages lately?
"Lurker - yes the 1990 IPCC forecast of 0.6 degres figure for 17 years cited by Roger Pielke is probably right, but that would be for a mid-point."
No, it wouldn't, Mr Lawson, unless you have a copy of the 1990 IPCC report that is different from the one I have open in front of me on my desk. To which page should I turn to see if it is "probably right"?
Mark @ 43
Tim quoted directly from the 1990 IPCC report.
You refer to the "written forecast from the IPCC"
Given that as Tim pointed out the report is [available online](http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_spm.pdf), it should be easy for you to point to the relevant quote.
Over to you Mark.
> As other posters have so helpful shown the maxmum increase they can come up with over that period is 0.33 degrees.
[Liar, liar, pants on fire](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/05/oreskes_and_switzer_on_the_dru…).
> ...the trends over this period increase by ... 0.37 degrees (GISTEMP global land-ocean mean)...
You really expect to get away with that?! Or do you have problems understanding the meaning of "maximum"?
I should point out to Mark that his case may be far shakier than has been pointed out yet.
I'm simply reading the temperature rise of the "Low Estimate" curve from 1990 to 2010 the graph and reading approximately 0.3 degrees. If I printed it out - especially if I found a larger size - I could make my reading more accurate. And that's far and away NOT the most favourable interpretation of the graph.
A graph that depicts a range of outcomes is not "dead wrong" unless and until you show that the realised outcome started within the graph (hopefully at or near the "best estimate" at the starting date, which would be more likely if the predictions were prepared pretty close to that date) and falls at least far enough outside it to be statistically significant, taking into account the confidence intervals that are usually implicit in the low/high curves, AND the realised inputs to the scenarios used.
Mark's simplistic "I reckon it says at least 0.4 C and it wasn't quite that much so it's 'dead wrong'" is scientifically naive and misleading.
Depending what the graph actually purports to show, you could legitimately argue that the minimum predicted rise from 1990 to 2010 is given by something like the Low Estimate at 2010 minus the Best Estimate at 1990 (although this is still making several assumptions that are not necessarily accurate - and the _result_ is subject to a confidence interval as well).
When you do that, this difference is approximately 0 degrees.
Hmmm, that doesn't look good for Mark's argument!
Now it's possible the curves on this graph shows something else, and this interpretation is incorrect - I don't have the definitions at hand. But this interpretation is certainly quite normal for predictions that start from a known point and encompass upper and lower uncertainty bounds at some given level of confidence for future points.
I'm not even going to try and explain why the assessment of a single forecast is a suitable basis to imply that climate science is crap. I'm also guessing Mark hasn't talked to Oreskes about the forecasts from the 1950's using comparatively primitive models that her students assess against the present either, nor is he keen to present predictions from other models or IPCC reports...
> Is your entire book full of this kind of wilful misreading and misquotation?
Given Mark's digging in on the simple question at hand, I'd suspect so.
Martin: I doubt that mercenary propagandists, like Switzer and Lawson, can afford to feel shame. They are paid to lie. That's why they show up here to attempt to spin their public loss to Oreskes into something that they can tell themselves (and the other Murdorc's ) was less of a debacle. I rather enjoyed feeling Switzer's desperation in his sneering avoidance of Tim's very valid question. And as for Lawson's desperate (hysterical?) insistence that the accuracy of the IPCC prediction (It's NOT 0.4 degrees, it's 0.25, or 0.3, or 0.33, so the IPCC is WRONG! And Pachuri is Fat! And the Khumbu glacier is fat! And getting fatter!) is more important that its inflection (you do know what an inflection is don't you Lawson?) - pathetic.
@Mark Lawson: The fact that one dataset differs from two others doesn't automatically make the other two more authorative. You don't have to be a climate science to see that.
Also, even if uncertainty is bigger than was expected, that uncertainty works both ways, and the end effects by 2100 may also turn out to be much bigger than expected. But somehow, this possibility is never brought up by climate "skeptics".
> ...you do know what an inflection is don't you Lawson?
Isn't that where you try to modulate your tone when relating an unsupported or falsified assertion to a gullible audience so that they don't twig that you're "helping" them draw unjustified conclusions?
;-)
@Tom Switzer:
Thank you for admitting that to you this is all about sales pitches and not science.
Oh dear... Mark and Tom I'm afraid it is very clear you have this very very wrong. Post #44 from James H an absolute highlight.
One observation though... James I think if it is 1990 and I were to say "in the next century" it is not quite as clear cut as you would like that it means 2000-2100 not 1990-2090.
Especially if you only read that sentence and had not read any of the rest of the IPCC report to understand what was being said!
Mark Lawson:
>Roger Pielke is probably right
You have no way of knowing whether he was "probably right" or not -- your incompetence has been amply demonstrated in this thread. In fact, Pielke was definitely wrong.
>claiming that [the graph] somehow modifies the written forecast
He did not claim that it modifies the written forecasts, you liar. It is consistent with the written forecast, which was quoted in the original post. Both of them clearly show that you are wrong.
>no-one has been able to counter it.
It was countered in the original post, you moron. Since then you have continued to repeat the same lies over and over again without addressing the numerous responses that have shown you to be wrong.
This imperviousness to evidence that is in front of your eyes is something you climate change deniers share with anti-science lunatics and conspiracy nuts of all stripes.
Tom,
Please. I just gotta know !! It's been burning me for years now that I didn't copy or clip it at the time ... but ... were you the writer of that editorial in the Australian that told us all "... AGW is a fraud." ??
I think it was from back in 2007, just before Rupert started giving the planet the benefit of the doubt.
Mark Lawson, care to bet against the IPCC predictions for 2010-2020? I'll give you 10000-to-1. Wait, scratch that, with your obviously impaired reading comprehension skills, you'd probably end up betting with the IPCC anyway.
Mark Lawson:
>Tim Lambert points to a very large scale graph in his original post from the same report claiming that it somehow modifies the written forecast by the IPCC, although it would have been derived directly from those forecasts.
Precisely backwards. The written summary of the projection is derived from the graph. If you look at the graph you'll see that the total warming over the 21st century (ie from 2000 to 2100) is 2, 3 and 5 degrees in the low, best and high scenarios respectively. That's averages of 0.2, 0.3 and 0.5 per decade over the 21st century. Which is why they wrote:
>under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about 0.3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2°C to 0.5°C per decade)
If you want to know what they projected for 1990-2010 you do have to look at the graph.
re: Mark Lawson.
Wow.
It's one thing to be exposed to poor quality journalism in it's natural habitat, but it's an amazing experience to see it come here and flail about,'live', as it were.
Mark Lawson has the incontrovertible facts put directly in front of him and he still does not get it.
Shameless or stupid. Which is more concerning?
> under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about 0.3°C per decade...
I know it's not global - so don't misread it as such - nor is it for 1990-2010 - so don't misread it as such - but just for a ballpark (and regional) comparison, Watts et al just reported US surface warming averaging 0.32 degrees per decade for the period 1979-2008.
Here's my take on a fantasy (ie. ethical) Mark Lawson;
Dear Tim,
Thankyou for pointing out my error. I take my profession seriously, and am mortified at my mistake and moreso at my persistence in defending it.
I remain skeptical about political approaches to dealing with AGW and I will continue to voice my opinion on this. However, one is not entitled to one's own facts, and it is clear my statement about the IPCC forecast being wrong is simply unsupportable in light of the evidence.
I'm baffled at how I came to make such a gross error and plan to reflect on how I have been weighing the evidence in what is a complicated scientific feild, far outside of my expertise. In future I will run all my articles on AGW past a reputable climate scientist for basic fact checking.
Thanks for helping to improve the quality of my journalism,
Hugs and kisses,
Mark.
Tom Switzer's column is open for comments. I note from his column that Mark Lawson's book is based upon the work of Ian Plimer. That would explain his difficulty with interpreting basic graphs, or the flow of time.
More gibberish from Tom Switzer:
*Meanwhile, China -- the largest emitter of greenhouse gases -- is chugging up the smokey road to prosperity! Despite investments in renewables and non-carbon energy, its net emissions are steadily rising. In the absence of a genuinely global deal to reduce emissions, the onus will increasingly be on policy makers to do what humans have done since time immemorial: adapt to climate change*
Two points: first, China's economic growth is an ecological disaster. More than half of its rivers are biologically dead, the groundwater supplies underlying the China Plain are being drained at many times their natural rates of recharge, and both insect pollinators and biological control agents have been decimated by unsustainable agricultural practices. Thus China's economic 'miracle' is a bubble that will burst once their ability to tap into a shrinking global resource base disappears.
Second, the question is not whether humans can adapt to climate change, but the extent to which climate change simplifies natural systems and the concomitant effects on a range of ecological services that underpin the health of the material economy. Spitzer, like many technophiles, writes as if human dependence on nature is trivial. It is not. If climate change leads to the mass-unraveling of food webs and reduces systemic reslience and stability, then there is little doubt that the consequences for humanity will be dire.
Spitzer is either disingenuous or a credulous idiot - or both - if he recommends any book based in any significant fashion on the work of Plimer.
It is not possible to take a serious look at the scientifically testable key claims in Plimer's book and come away with a belief that they stand up to scrutiny. From the reviews one suspects that even a competent journalist without any particular scientific expertise could check on the references and see that Plimer was misrepresenting his sources.
The conclusions are left as an exercise for the reader.
And yet again the intellectual vacuousness of today's Right is exposed.
Come on Tom. Debate like a man.
Gack, apologies for the typo - that should be Switzer.
@Tom Switzer, Mark Lawson:
Simple question. How do you falsify a prediction for decadal temperature rises *averaged over a century amd expressly not constant per decade* with data from the first two decades only?
If I predict that an election will produce a Parliament split 50/50 between two parties, is it falsified by the first 20% of results splitting 12/8?
Coming late to this now, but ...
Ooh, look, a plot with the main global temperature datasets on, aligned to a common base period (1980-2010).
And ooh, look, a statistical comparison of the main global temperature datasets.
I wonder which people have it right and which people are purveyors of factoids and half truths?
> Come on Tom. Debate like a man.
But that would interfere with his real job! ;-)
FWIW, there is no need to eyeball the graph or break out a ruler to try to interpret the values. There are many graph digitization programs available online as freeware or trial versions.
Plugging the FAR graph into one of these (DigitizeIt) I get a y-value of 0.58 for 1990 and 0.89 for 2010 for the low estimate. That's a difference of 0.31 degrees. The actual trends over that period for UAH, HadCRUt, and GISS are all greater than 0.31. Lawson fail.
To inject a slight tangent here, I wonder if it was AGW or the torture issue which pushed right wingers into the habit of lying to our faces. We know they're lying. They know we know that they're lying. Everyone knows. And yet the lying continues. External reality isn't going to change in response to lying. Why do it?
> External reality isn't going to change in response to lying. Why do it?
Religion.
Simply that.
a) Rightwingers believe that the left wing are Bad Guys. Therefore ANYTHING that scuppers them is not only acceptable but morally just.
b) Leftwingers believe that they are the Good Guys. Therefore, they shouldn't do things that Bad Guys do.
So Rightwingers lie because any lie is acceptable and even mandatory if it makes leftwingers fail. Leftwingers won't take them to task over their lies because that wouldn't be nice (tm).
Of course, an leftwinger caught even faintly whiffing of a lie is pilloried by the Rightwing as PROOF of the leftwinger perfidity.
So even if they're not believed, there's no comeback for them.
So they lie.
> We know they're lying.
There are a lot of gullible people who don't, and a lot of not-gullible people not paying much attention to the topic who don't.
That's how propaganda works - endless repetition where the pushback is not matched in the same forums in equal measure. Businesses and "business unions" wouldn't pay for it if they didn't think it was effective - although many people of a particular right wing bent will cheer it along for free.
Just look at the number of people in the US who believe Saddam had WMDs, that torture works, that climate change is a UN plot to install one world government - or at least a liberal plot to increase government power and take away their freedoms, that Obama is a socialist, that the deficit is more important than getting the economy going, that tax cuts for the rich both improve the economy and magically lower the deficit, that Obama's interventions in both Wall Street and the auto industry were massive failures, that Obama created a massive deficit, that Obama raised taxes for most people, that the "hockey stick" is "broken"...the list of provably false beliefs goes on and on and on.
But most of these have been endlessly repeated in various forms of right-wing-friendly media, and people who aren't
fact-checking tend to get sucked in.
> endless repetition where the pushback is not matched in the same forums in equal measure.
And where it is, it is deemed "hysterical".
Switzer: I do not know if climate change is happening. I am agnostic.
Us: Climate change is happening.
Switzer: You are hysterical.
> I believe that the available data is not sufficient to make such a claim.
And there are people who believe Elvis is an alien. Do you have any evidence you're right?
No.
Why?
Because you're wrong.
"What, did they have temperature stations 10,000 years ago?"
No.
But that doesn't disprove AGW since it didn't happen 10,000 years ago. Therefore absent any previous data, all we have are the science we have now: and that says we're going to warm the planet between 2 and 4.5 C per doubling of CO2 and that this would devastate our developed civilisation.
"Wouldn't the same data sources from 10,000 years ago be good enough today?"
No, because we don't have thermometer readings from 10,000 years ago.
> I got in an argument here last week about melting glaciers and the "scientists" in that fight were perfectly happy to raise the alarm over a 5 year trend!
We note that you haven't managed to substantiate this claim whatsoever.
We also note that you haven't taken Lawson to task over his abuse of trends.
This is the same Ben who once argued that Obama is a socialist... most of his arguments are at kindergarten level, and his latest is no exception.
First of all, general trends can be extrapolated for local scale events, such as the loss of glaciers... in other words, if 2025 out of 250 glaciers studied show significant declines in ice extent over even a 5 year period, whereas the rest show little change, then it is possible to argue that there has been a statistically significant short-term trend. By contrast, it is impossible to generalize trends for large scale systems such as global surface temperature regimes unless the time scale is sufficient. Normally, forcing such a short-to-medium term deterministic system out of equilibrium would require many centuries. Yet changes in climate are being discerned over only a few decades.
Straw man. I've made no claim that any of this disproves global warming. Why do you people keep writing that I think global warming has been disproved? This is what I wrote:
I call bullshit. I don't believe that temperatures were known to this level of precision for the last 10,000 years. It's not my fault that they fail to convince. Their job is to demonstrate that the data indeed shows this. So, Wow, can you back this stuff up? I didn't make the original claim. You want me to believe it without proof? Show me the money or shut up.
For the record, the wiki page on Holocene temperature records agrees with me:
The data sampling is too limited to be useful without smoothing, and with smoothing fluctuations on 100 year time scales cannot be resolved. Which is exactly what I expected. So, Wow, you got nothing. I'm starting to think you are a snarky high school kid.
Kindergarten eh? Well your arguments are at the pre-school level, so there. And my dad can beat up your dad. And right, Obama isn't a socialist in the correct sense of the term, he's just a proponent of the highly regulated welfare state. This is what your average North American thinks of when they think of "socialism." If you asked 100 people at random across the developed world to define "socialism," I doubt you'd get more than one response that socialism is an economic system in which the means of production are owned/controlled by the public/government/whatever, and that wealth is distributed in some egalitarian manner. Ordinary people would call that communism. Not my fault public schools suck.
> > But that doesn't disprove AGW since it didn't happen 10,000 years ago.
> Straw man.
If you knew that, why did you bring it up?
Really, there are limpets with a better understanding than you.
> I call bullshit. I don't believe that temperatures were known to this level of precision for the last 10,000 years.
Again, strawman. AGW doesn't depend on it and what you believe makes no difference to reality experienced by the sane part of the population of Earth.
Current warming is fast. If it had been as fast before, it would have been visible as a different set of data.
> It's not my fault that they fail to convince.
Yes it is. To someone who believes Elvis is alive in Des Moines, any refutation fails to convince them not because the evidence given to them is not convincing but because they REFUSE to be convinced.
Just as you refuse to be convinced.
That IS your fault, not the fault of the evidence.
You are a True Believer in NOAGW.
> Not my fault public schools suck.
Well, since they don't suck and in fact you're just a moron, you are right, but irrelevant.
> This is what your average North American thinks of when they think of "socialism."
This isn't the fault of the public school. It's the fault of what is FALSELY attributed to "your average american" is in fact a bunch of morons who are desperate to believe they're no worse than anyone else, therefore project idiocy on everyone else to make them feel better.
   "There are a lot of gullible people who don't"
I've quit believing in the idea that there are people who don't know. It sounds too much like the whole Good German denial they they knew about what was happening in the camps. Not wanting to know isn't the same thing as not knowing.
The banal evil of pushing intractable problems onto future generations may not be as cinematic as racial superiority, but it'll do.
I see ben has ridden to the rescue of Switzer & Lawson. Keep your eyes on the ball people! S & L have the public's ear, ben is a nobody.
You have Lawson on the rack with this, don't let little ben distract you with OT bollocks.
Wow, this is getting old. I do not claim that there is no AGW. Also note that I didn't write "average American," but "average North American," which includes Canadians and Mexicans. And since I went through most of my public school education in Canada, my upbringing doesn't really reflect the average American.
Yes, it is getting old.
ben, a denialist, decries "too short for a trend" but not from Lawson.
Who'd have guessed, he had two faces.
Then, when caught out, goes off into pedantry to distract.
Lawson used stats you decried.
Where is your outrage at hims?
Hmm?
Wow, a lying sack of shit.
@36:
As I have pointed out to you, an average minimum of 0.2 degrees per decade from 2000-2100 does not mean that the minimum forecast for 1990-2010 is 0.4. In fact, it necessarily must be lower because the graph is highly non-linear; warming starts off slow and then accelerates.
I'm going to assume that the 1990 IPCC report didn't actually issue a forecast for 1990-2010 that had a minimum 0.4 degrees of warming. This is because it would contradict what Tim quoted above, and because you can't cite the forecast after having been asked several times to do so.
Ben opines:
*And right, Obama isn't a socialist in the correct sense of the term, he's just a proponent of the highly regulated welfare state*.
Yeh, sure Ben, if you say so. Obama is the most right wing "Democrat" in years (and that is saying a lot, since the Democrats and Republicans are largely indistinguishable from one another - more like one "Property Party" with two right wings, as Gore Vidal said a few years ago). His foreign policy agenda is straight out of the neocon handbook (e.g. in many cases he is more of a 'bomber' than even the abhorrent Bush regime was). And his domestic agenda has been characterized by bailing out the banks, cutting taxes for the rich and subsidizing corporate greed. His healthcare policy which so angered the brainless tea party crowd was written up, more-or-less, but the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
Now Ben wades here with his take on climate change. And yes, as I said, his views have Dunning-Kruger's fingerprints all over them.
Jeff, that Obama doesn't live up to your ideal leftist fantasy makes me laugh. I never liked the guy and he sure hasn't lived up to my libertarian fantasy, but then I didn't expect him to.
Well, I'm with you on the bailout and subsidization of corporate greed. I haven't seen any tax cuts for the rich though, much as I'd like to see them.
Dunning-Kruger, eh? Well aren't you clever.
If Mark Lawson @13 thinks that the "original IPCC forecast are ridiculous, even feeble", what on earth does he think about Lindzen's (cough) "projection"?
See SkepticalScience for more about Lindzen's miserable "projection".
Why is Lawson going back to 1990? The latest estimates were released in the 2007 IPCC AR4 report. Cherry-pick much Lawson?
Funny how Lawson and cohorts are willing give the likes of Lindzen free pass. It seems to me that Lawson might just be a serial liar and professional misinformer.
Mark Lawson writes:
"Mark Lawson again. Yep Brian, more authorative. GISS is known for being different to the others."
It puts the peak at 2005 rather than 1998 like the others, and gives larger temperature increases than the others."
NCDC puts 2010 and 2005 as the warmest years on record, just like GISS. That leaves HadCrut the odd one out for the surface record. But who cares? Being "different" doesn't necessarily make a dataset wrong. Both also show about 0.35-0.4 C warming since 1990. Where you get 0.25 from is anyone's guess.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1991/trend/plot/hadcrut3v…
I assume you also realize that the surface data and full lower troposphere aren't directly compatible. The satellite record is more sensitive to large ENSO anomalies, and thus the much larger 1998 spike than any of the surface products.
With GISS, we get a little more warming the last decade, because they include the Arctic in their analysis. HadCrut doesn't.
"Also, the land-based instrument network has been criticised very soundly on any number of counts, which I won't bother to repeat here, while the satellite-based UAH data is audited."
You won't bother to repeat them because they aren't valid. I assume you also are aware that UAH data once erroneously showed cooling over its entire record in the late 90's, and has observed a series of upward correction. Not exactly pristine.
"UAH and Hadley broadly agree, incidentally, although Hadley uses much of the same basic data as GISS.
However, we can agree that the differences aren't very great. All of the sites agree, incidentally, that temperatuers have been basically steady state since 2000 give or take la nina-el nino. (Temps are down at the moment due to a la nina.)"
Since 2000, all trends are up. UAH and GISS actually match up very well during this period. HadCrut is the odd one out.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2000/trend/plot/uah/from:…
Note that HadCrut will soon see a modest upward correction, due to a cooling bias discovered years ago that affects the recent decade the most.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19772-ships-and-buoys-made-global…
What amuses me most is how deniers will put forth dubious arguments, often simply making things up, then complain about being treated as "heretics". Deniers are treated as such because of the poor quality of their arguments.
I do not think that Switzer has been able to answer a single one of Dr. Lambert's questions ;) Why am I not surprised....?
Happy instead to let devout and misguided acolytes like Ben go to battle for him.
This phrase "a lying sack of shit" seems to apply to more to Lawson and Switzer than it does to Wow.
Given the timing of his "intervention" Ben has to be a Tag Team Troll. He's evidently a Koch-sucker, paid to provide covering fire when one of "the team" gets out of the boat in the wrong place. Hmm. Canadian origins + Tea-bagger politics. Aha! "Ben"= Mark (the human) Stein?
Lawson and Switzer may be self deluded enough to believe what they write - even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff - but I remain surprised they make any effort to defend their drivel here; their efforts at persuasion are aimed at people with even less comprehension of the issues than they have so attempting to argue detail with people with greater comprehension (and ready willingness to check original sources) than them looks counterproductive. But I suppose they can go off saying how they sufferred scorn and abuse from closed minded 'warmers' whilst avoiding actually confronting the deep flaws of their own closed minded position - which includes explicit and implicit scorn and abuse for those that disagree with their biased and mistaken views.
Lawson's claim of the IPCC FAR projecting a min of 0.4 C is clearly wrong. This can be seen in Tim's graph if you magnify it sufficiently, but it's also laid out nicely in an RC post in Figure 1.1, although it's probably closer to 0.3 C than 0.2 C if you make a reasonable presumptive extension through 2010, with mean projection being around 0.45-0.5 C (also not 0.6 C as others claim).
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/04/model-data-compar…
Just as notable is that observations, while on the low side of FAR, are on the high side of SAR, and somewhat in the middle of TAR (extended through 2010).
And clearly all projections have demonstrated skill beyond the denier hypothesis (also known as the Switzer/Lawson/Lindzen Hypothesis), which is little to no warming, or the Super Denier Hypothesis (also known as the Bastardi/Watts hypothesis), which is mega-cooling, as can be seen by all cherry-picked cold and snowy weather events and population-weighted December anomalies.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/lindzen-illusion-2-lindzen-vs-hansen-19…
You underestimate their stupidity. They are simply too dumb to realize how obvious their foolish arguments are to people who have a clue.
Wow called me a "denialist." I already informed him that this is not the case, hence he is a liar. I only pointed out that a sentence in Tim's quote from the 1990 IPCC report appears to be in error.
Say wha? I have written nothing in support of Switzer. I only found a glaring fault with the Tim's quote from the IPCC. I haven't read past that and I'm out of the loop on the rest of the argument. Lambert and Switzer can have that one out on their own.
I've been around Tim's blog a lot longer than you, rhwombat, so bite me.
Real classy. Paid? I wish.
Keep on sucking, ben.
> Obama isn't a socialist in the correct sense of the term, he's just a proponent of the highly regulated welfare state.
How charmingly naive. But back to climate science.
> Because of the limitations of data sampling, each curve in the main plot was smoothed (see methods below) and consequently, this figure can not resolve temperature fluctuations faster than approximately 300 years.
Your argument does not follow, UNLESS "this figure" shows the maximum resolution available over the time period in question, an assertion that is not supported by the proffered evidence.
For example, here's a [report](http://hol.sagepub.com/content/21/1/163.short) of a 3-20yr resolution record, although clearly this one alone isn't enough for a hemispherical or global reconstruction. But it suggests that your assertion may not be justified.
Now back to Lawson & Switzer's feeble attempts to defend their "case".
Actually, the ball's still in their court, I believe.
No, fellas, I've glanced through your posts. The original point still stands unshaken. You cannot point to a very large scale graph from which it is difficult to tell anything, and say that it somehow modifies the written forecast in the same report, particularly considering that one would have been derived from the other.
Clearly the original forecast was for 0.2 degrees a decade minimum, or 0.4 degrees over 20 years, despite strenuous attempts by posters to redefine what was said. The system has not met that minimum.
By any common sense standard, the forecast is wrong and, I might point out, other global warmers I have mentioned this to have tacitly accepted the point and moved on.
"The original point still stands unshaken."
http://media.photobucket.com/image/ostrich%20head%20in%20sand/bgbill/os…
That's why we call you folks Deniers or Flat Earthers. When faced with clear evidence to the contrary, you stubbornly refuse to learn anything new or even address any of the points raised, sticking by refuted talking points, while groaning about being persecuted.
You are either an extremely stupid or extremely dishonest human being.
Here's one last chance to redeem yourself:
Please show us where the 1990 IPCC report forecast a minimum of 0.4 degrees warming between 1990 and 2010. You've been asked many, many times to produce the evidence. Alternatively, you could admit that it doesn't exist and that you made the whole thing up.
Is Mark confusing "a rate of increase" with "cumulative gain", perhaps?
He's clearly blocking out the words "in the next century", in order to misunderstand the report.
Mark, the rate of increase in the next century *could well actually be 0.5 degrees per decade*, for all we know. We won't know for sure until the century is over. We do know the rise is not likely to be steady.
Now go and have a think about what it is you are missing. All the world's relevant scientific research organisations say you are wrong. It should be obvious to you that it is highly unlikely that it is they who lack an understanding you have been blessed with.
> The original point still stands unshaken. You cannot point to a very large scale graph from which it is difficult to tell anything, and say that it somehow modifies the written forecast in the same report, particularly considering that one would have been derived from the other.
And you expect people to buy your book for reasons other than comedy value?!!!!
As others have pointed out there is good reason to believe your claim is false because the written forecast would have been derived from the work that also produced the graph.
But that seems too advanced for you, so let us merely note that if your claim is true then it shoots down your own argument.
You cannot legitimately take a written forecast for a hundred year time span and linearly interpolate to a 20 year period, UNLESS you can ALSO make a solid case that the forecast expects a linear progression. You have provided no evidence of the latter, and the quote Tim provided explicitly rules this out! I could find year 10 students who could explain why you are wrong - and maybe even a few in earlier grades.
(Never mind any of the other more advanced concepts that strongly suggest your assumptions are wrong, or that your generalised conclusion is not even close to being valid.)
I look forward to your continued assertion that "the rise will not be steady" implies that "the rise will be steady".
You are clearly incompetent to make the claims that you make about the science if you get something so basic so wrong - and CONTINUE to assert that you are write after having been corrected in any number of ways.
Assuming on the evidence at hand that this is the level of your competence and logic, then if you had any embarrassment you'd be withdrawing your book as we speak, pending a rewrite with a great deal of aid from people who actually know what they are talking about.
Doh!
> ...and CONTINUE to assert that you are write right...
Hmmm:
> It should be obvious to you that it is highly unlikely that it is they who lack an understanding you have been blessed with.
Shorter Dunning-Kruger: "should != is"
I wonder if it would help if the people who actually wrote the IPCC report told Mark his interpretation of what they wrote is wrong?
It's just basic science education.
says one thing to us, and something else to people who
. don't do science AND
. try to fit data to their ideas instead of the other way around
Mark Lawson, do you have any objection to me quoting you as claiming that the 21st century began in 1990? I have put this to other idiots and they have tacitly accepted it and moved on.
Ben,
"Wow called me a "denialist."
I know that ben. And yes he did, and on that count he was wrong, you did claim to support the theory of AGW before that. I was simply noting that the term in question (Lying sack of shit) that you used also seems to apply to Switzer and Lawson. Are you following me mate?
Maybe you are not openly defending Switzer and Lawson, I'm happy to concede fault if that accusation was false. But your posts seem to be trying to detract for their many failings.
So to get on topic let me ask you this: Do you agree with Switzer's and Lawson's antics as exposed by Oreskes and Tim here?
As we all surely know there's no hope of Switzer or Lawson even understanding why they're wrong let alone owning up to their misunderstandings. When Ian Plimer's your scientific reference there's no doubt that you're quite inept with statistics, little doubt that you probably wouldn't learn any even if you were taught, and I at least will be betting that you're quite possibly a brazen liar to boot (the malign Plimer influence; see Tim's extensive archive on him).
Scientific education? - these tools, like Monckton, need no education because they know it all already. They're out, loud, proud, and ineducable.
And Alan Jones has just launched something named after Galileo.
Tom Switzer:
When Switzer loses the argument, he just comes back with an ad hom.
@103:
"Is Mark confusing "a rate of increase" with "cumulative gain", perhaps?"
I think he's confusing "average rate of increase over 100 years" with "expected increase over the next 20 (starting 10 years too early)".
As an analogy, the average increase in the Dow Jones Industrial Average was about 1000 points per decade during the 20th century. But if someone was told this in 1940, and he then predicted that the Dow would increase by 2000 points by 1960, he would have been off by a factor of 4. That's because the Dow didn't increase in a steady fashion, but rather exponentially. Which is roughly what global temperatures are expected to do.
Well, the thing that gets me, is that 0.3 degrees per decade is a really huge rate. That's 3 degrees by 2100! I can't imagine that it will continue at that rate - that is, I find it hard to believe. So I'm a skeptic!
However, the weight of science convinces me that my personal skepticism should be put aside in favour of action to reduce the threat.
Area Man - I reckon Lawson and Switzer will grasp their mistake if they read it the clear way you've put it.
John Brookes - you're an optimist, but as we see that crashing economies *do* noticeably reduce CO2 emissions, perhaps there will be a self-regulating (human) element to all of this?
Mark Lawson:
Mark Lawson's Theorem: I am Right and You Is Wrong
Method: Stick my fingers in my ears and go "LALALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU" really loudly.
Results: I can't hear you!
Conclusion: I Am Right. QED.
> >Mark Lawson:
> > > The original point still stands unshaken
This is because Mark is in denial. The point has fallen down but he just tips his head to one side and look! It's upright again! (of course, the world has now fallen, which just goes to prove how right he is!).
Winning an argument is pretty easy when you're nuts.
> Ben,
> "Wow called me a "denialist."
> I know that ben. And yes he did, and on that count he was wrong, you did claim to support the theory of AGW before that
Denial. Not just for AGW.
> Wow called me a "denialist." I already informed him that this is not the case, hence he is a liar.
How can I be a liar when you are a denialist ben?
> I only found a glaring fault with the Tim's quote from the IPCC.
No, you haven't. You've constructed what you want to believe is a glaring fault.
The fault is in your brain, ben.
> I never liked the guy and he sure hasn't lived up to my libertarian fantasy, but then I didn't expect him to.
Note how ben still hasn't answered or been on topic.
Why?
Because he likes what Lawson says.
He knows he can't say it, though, since his pretense at being no denier will crumble. Yet, such is is desire for Lawson to be right, he can't actually even pretend to censure him or even hint that maybe something, somewhere, he said has been slightly less than 100% accurate.
Denial.
Not just for AGW, for some, it's a way of life.
>"Clearly the original forecast was for 0.2 degrees a decade minimum, or 0.4 degrees over 20 years, despite strenuous attempts by posters to redefine what was said."
Again, I'll point out that there are graph digitization software programs designed specifically for the purpose of extracting data values from graphs such as this. The minimum forecast change from 1990-2010, as indicated by graph digitization software is 0.31 degrees, not 0.4. However, I'm sure you'll continue to pretend that this is a misreading of the graph by someone squinting at the screen with a ruler.
Also, does it look to you like your claimed 0.4 degrees per 20 years is a constant rate of change in the graph? Compare rate in 1990-2010 and 2080-2100. Do they look the same? Now would you care to explain to us why you think they included that graph with the written forecast if one was not derived from the other?
Switzer and Lawson haven't responded have they? Came here thinking they'd show these guys a thing or two, but after having had their collective arses handed to them on a plate they've slunk away. After that humiliation, anyone else would crawl off and die of shame, but I suspect shame is not an emotion they're familiar with.
Hi Mark and Tom
You appear to have misunderstood, and the angry crowds may not be helping to clarify the nature of the problem. Let me try.
1) The 1990 report does say an average of 0.3 degrees a decade (with a range of 0.2-0.5 degrees a decade) over the century.
2) As Tim has pointed out, however, the graph shows that the rate of warming will be lower in the first part of the century and faster after that. This is because the ocean acts as a heat sink (for a while).
3) Mark's interpretation is therefore incorrect, because he is assuming straight line growth, when we know (and the graph shows) curvilinear growth.
4) Tim's approach is much better, but hard because the graph does not have high resolution.
Does that help? If so, I think it would show that you are really concerned about truth, and not just trying to cause confusion (as Ms Oreskes alleges), if you would apologize to everyone for your mistake (Mark), and write an editorial about how you got all mixed up (Tom).
> However, I'm sure you'll continue to pretend that this is a misreading of the graph by someone squinting at the screen with a ruler.
If you're speaking of someone using a ruler, I did, and on the screen rather than paper where it would be easier - and reported that it looked pretty close to 0.3 degrees. Not bad :-)
And that suggests that Lawson could have done at least that well if he had actually cared to.
MikeG @120,
Thanks for taking the trouble to do what Lawson should have done in the first place. You mention the "minimum" projected increase was 0.31 C between 1990 and 2010, what was the "best" projected increase for the same period? Or am I asking too much. No worries if I am.....
It's not asking too much. It literally only takes a minute or two to check. The "best" projection for 1990-2010 is 0.44 C.
BTW, I wouldn't put too much faith in that second decimal place since the thickness of the line can affect the computer's precision in determining where the center of the line is.
>How can I be a liar when you are a denialist ben?
You are a liar because I am not a denialist. Can you find any quote of mine from the last two years that indicates that I'm a denialist? What is it exactly that you think I am denying? AGW? I'm saying right now that this is not the case. If you have a problem with that, GFY.
The thing is Tom Switzer and Mark Lawson kmow exactly what they are doing. They don't need funding to persuade them to deny, they would gladly pay to continue denying if that is what it takes.
On the other hand I just loved Switzer's 'agnostic on climate science' line during the session on the Drum. Oreskes must have a great deal of patience to deal with such a line, but then she has seen all the lies and twists and turns that the deniers put out and Switzer is most probably a cream puff compared with some of the ideological warriors found on the other side of the Pacific.
MikeG,
Thanks a bunch. So observed warming was near +0.37 C (+/- 0.05 C), projected best estimate was 0.44 C, with minimum projected warming of 0.31 C. Now contrast that with the projection based on Lindzen's ideas, here.
Are you using freeware or did you purchase the digitizing software?
The executive summary of [chapter 6](http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_06.pdf) (PDF!) gave the expected figures for 1990-2030: Low=0.7, Best=1.1, High=1.5. Even with the expected increase in the rate over that period, the Low estimate was still less than what Lawson claimed for 1990-2010, i.e. 0.7/2 = 0.35.
No, no, no. It ain't denial, it's rejection
> I just loved Switzer's 'agnostic on climate science' line...
...because he hasn't gone very deep into it - which is clear from his stunning lack of rigour on this thread.
But he also argues, hoping no-one will notice, that despite his lack of knowledge that we shouldn't bother doing anything about the concerns raised by the science.
> Even with the expected increase in the rate over that period, the Low estimate was still less than what Lawson claimed for 1990-2010, i.e. 0.7/2 = 0.35.
Ouch!
> You mention the "minimum" projected increase was 0.31 C between 1990 and 2010, what was the "best" projected increase for the same period?
It might be better to talk about the "Low Estimate increase" rather than "minimum projected". Sans more details of what the different estimates actually are one could argue that the confidence intervals implied by the graph accommodate a "minimum projected increase" of (say) "Low Estimate" at 2010 - "Best Estimate" at 1990.
But that's probably too advanced a concept for Lawson.
You'd think he'd be able to understand that graph comparing Hansen and Lindzen though :-)
Lotharsson @132,
Thanks...point taken. I was not being true to the original nomenclature.
Yes, that graph comparing Lindzen with Hansen and reality is quite striking. No doubt Lawson et al. do not wish to entertain such inconvenient revelations.
@128 As I mentioned in #68, I used a trial version of the program DigitizeIt. There are literally dozens of graph digitization programs available for download online though- mostly as trial versions. I can't attest to which one is the best since I've only tried this one.
WotWot nailed it. Switzer is a dishonest ideological bully; a politically driven sophist of the lowest order.
> You are a liar because I am not a denialist
You're denying like crazy, ben.
Note also how people like ClimateWatcher over at SkS insists they aren't a denialist but a "lukewarmer".
You're denying lots of things.
> Can you find any quote of mine from the last two years that indicates that I'm a denialist?
Apart from that one?
> I believe that the available data is not sufficient to make such a claim. What, did they have temperature stations 10,000 years ago? And if the data from 10,000 years ago is so wonderful, why do we need expensive measurement stations now? Wouldn't the same data sources from 10,000 years ago be good enough today?
> They claim know the rate of increase/decrease in global mean temperature for any 100 year window over the last 10,000 years to this level of precision?
> I got in an argument here last week about melting glaciers and the "scientists" in that fight were perfectly happy to raise the alarm over a 5 year trend!
> I call bullshit. I don't believe that temperatures were known to this level of precision for the last 10,000 years. It's not my fault that they fail to convince. Their job is to demonstrate that the data indeed shows this
> And right, Obama isn't a socialist in the correct sense of the term, he's just a proponent of the highly regulated welfare state.
See, it's not just climate you're in denial over.
I'm a little late to the party but there's a key point that everybody seems to have missed here. The whole discussion has involved the question of whether or not temperature observations match what was projected by the Business-as-usual scenario but nobody seems to have checked whether or not that was the scenario that actually happened. Here's the thing: it wasn't. Business, from the perspective of 1990 Man transported directly to 2011, has been decidedly unusual. To elucidate, I'll go over what happened regarding the three greenhouse gases highlighted in the FAR SPM:
1) CO2 - The collapse of the Soviet Union was surely a major contributor to the relatively stunted CO2 increase in the 90s. The BaU scenario had 2010 CO2 levels at over 400ppm. What really happened lies in between BaU and Scenario B.
2) Methane - Clearly Communism is a methane-heavy ideology... actually I don't know why methane levelled-off so abruptly during the 90s, but it did. 2010 levels are just about spot on for Scenario B.
3) CFC11 - The Montreal Protocol was implemented around the world and worked better than expected. 2010 CFC11 levels are significantly below even Scenario D.
Overall I would suggest that Emissions Scenario B is a better fit for what happened between 1990 and 2010, which means a best estimate of about 0.15 C/decade
Well worth saying, PaulS.
The best evidence that the IPCC 1990 predictions were wrong, is the IPCC 2007 prediction of 0.2C/dec warming from 2001. That's a 50% reduction in warming, which is a significant error.
IPCC 1990 predicts 1C warming from 1990-2025 which is 0.29C/dec. We are nearly 60% through to the end of this projection. Warming since 1990 is hadcrut 0.15C/dec and Giss 0.18C/dec.
So according to Hadcrut, the IPCC dataset, warming since 1990 has been half that projected by the IPCC in 1990.
Warming since 2001 is actually a cooling of -.05C/dec. Another IPCC failure.
Lambert's clever misdirection would have you believe that we are on track for a rise over the next 15 years of 0.6C or 0.4C/decade. Remember IPCC 2007 project 0.2C/decade or half that. And we have cooled this century.
>cooled this century.
You're a liar. [Warming has continued as expected](http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2009/warmest-decade).
Dave R like most people here you are sadly misinformed.
The warmest decade is not inconsistant with cooling during that decade.
Take a look at the figures yourself before exposing your ignorance.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3gl/f…
>cooling during that decade.
And you're a moron as well as a liar. [Get yourself a basic education](http://web.archive.org/web/20100104072651/http://tamino.wordpress.com/2…).
Dan R are you too afraid to even look at my link with current figures?
Your link is a Deltoid post from 2009.
It doesn't even mention Hadcrut which is the IPCC dataset.
The datasets it does use are nowhere near 0.2C/decade.
Rss -0.04C/dec COOLING
Giss 0.04C/dec 20% OF PROJECTED WARMING
>Your link is a Deltoid post from 2009.
Neither of the links I posted are to a deltoid post, you liar.
>It doesn't even mention Hadcrut which is the IPCC dataset.
Yes it does, you liar. Here is what it says:
_New figures released today in Copenhagen show that - despite 1998 being the warmest individual year - the last ten years have clearly been the warmest period in the 160-year record of global surface temperature, __maintained jointly by the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia__._
>Rss -0.04C/dec COOLING
You are cherry picking a period that is [too short to determine the trend](http://web.archive.org/web/20081029173848/http://tamino.wordpress.com/2…), as explained in the link I posted that you either did not read, were too stupid to understand, or are deliberately lying about.
> The best evidence that the IPCC 1990 predictions were wrong, is the IPCC 2007 prediction of 0.2C/dec warming from 2001.
Wrong
PS you seem to be in disagreement with another denialist meme which insists that it's cooling since 2000.
Oddly enough, no mention of this difference of opinion.
I did mistake the Tamino blog for this one. Same rubbish though.
You are the liar. Post 143 link does not mention Hadcrut because there is cooling.
Your post 145 link shows even Tamino admits the cooling: "HadCRU data donât show an upward trend at all over the last decade." You are wrong again.
So first you claim no cooling, and now its too short a period.
I suggest you read Fawcett and Jones 2008 from the BoM: "Because of the year-to-year variations in globally-averaged annual mean temperatures, about
ten years are required for an underlying trend to emerge from the ânoiseâ of those year-toyear
fluctuations."
How many times can you be wrong?
>Post 143 link does not mention Hadcrut
No, it doesn't. Post 141 link does.
>"HadCRU data donât show an upward trend at all over the last decade." You are wrong again.
I did not say that you could not cherry pick a decade in which the noise masks the trend. I said that you _could_ cherry pick a decade in which the noise masks the trend and that's what you are doing.
It is profoundly dishonest to throw away nearly all the data in order to cherry pick a period which gives a misleading result, as you have done.
>I suggest you read Fawcett and Jones 2008 from the BoM
I suggest _you_ read it instead of just quote mining the abstract. It does not support your claim at all.
_We have noted that ten years is about the __minimum averaging time__ to remove the year-to-year variations in these global temperature data sets_
They use 11 year moving averages to filter out the noise, like the met office link I posted first. And their results show that you are wrong.
Factoid, as with most deniers you're relying on cherry picked data. You might want to acquaint yourself with the limitations of the hadcrut dataset and include other series for the [global picture](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/plot/gistemp/from…).
Even then, you should also be aware that a decade is too short a timespan to have any statistical significance.
We'll put this attempt down to yet another wannabee thinking they've overturned climate science with a few mouse clicks again. Not.
Wow your link to yet another blog is meaningless.
You and everyone else here don't understand the basic flaw of IPCC projections. The IPCC itself has revised down its projections from 0.3C/dec to 0.2C/dec.
That is a blatant admission that the 1990 projection was wrong, from the IPCC itself.
Another thing you guys don't realise is that not all sceptics think the same. You assume that because you are in groupthink, with consistant talking points and websites you can link with easy answers, that everyone else is like you. Sceptics are actually individuals with free thought, and often unique analysis.
>How many times can you be wrong?
It appears that you can be wrong _every_ time. How many more times do you want your nose rubbed in it?
>Sceptics are actually individuals with free thought, and often unique analysis.
Yes we are, and we certainly aren't taken in by your moronic anti-science talking points.
factoid said: "Sceptics are actually individuals with free thought, and often unique analysis".
ROFL.
Who somehow coincidentally just happen to repeat climate dunce Watt's failed canards
It's also an unique analysis that says that we're being led astray by lizard alien overlords.
The thing that makes it unique is also what makes it wrong.
> The IPCC itself has revised down its projections from 0.3C/dec to 0.2C/dec.
Nope, that's a load of bullshit from Bob Carter who ignored that there were several scenarios and Bob just "forgot" about all of them apart from the worst one.
The IPCC didn't revise its projections. We followed one of the scenarios the projections were on and Bob "revised" his argument to pick the scenario we didn't follow.
The meaningless thing here is you, factoid.
> You assume that because you are in groupthink
There's a reason why mathematicians all say that two plus two is four, and the answer isn't "groupthink".
"Another thing you guys don't realise is that not all sceptics think the same."
True. Some say there is no warming, and it's natural. Others say there is but it's the Sun. Others say it's ENSO. Other's say it's UHI. Other's say the temp data is all a fraud, and it unequivocally shows that the warming ended in 1998 (or 1995). Others say that climate scientists are all a bunch of alarmists, and that we are going to be entering into a LIA soon. Others like to pretend the Sun is made of iron. That the greenhouse effect isn't real.
And that's just sampling posts at WUWT. :)
I'm convinced you guys don't read IPCC reports.
Are you saying that AR4 does not project 0.2C decade up to 2030?
Are you saying we are on track for another 0.7C between now and 2025 according to IPCC 1990?
factoid:
I suggest you read it too. Ten years are required which doesn't mean the same as sufficient as you are implying. 30 years are normally required to establish an estimate of climate and would also be required to establish an estimate of climatic trend.
I suggest you go back to the cherry-picking fields to put your skill to some use.
Chris, you should read what is there, and not suppose what isn't there when you don't like it.
It clearly states 10 years are required to determine a trend from the noise.
>10 years are required to determine a trend from the noise.
You've already been given a reference which proves that 10 years is not sufficient. [Here's another one](http://web.archive.org/web/20100104074329/http://tamino.wordpress.com/2…). If you think those analyses were wrong, explain _why_ they were wrong instead of just begging the question.
If you can justify your claim that 10 years is sufficient, do so, showing your working. If you were not lying about Fawcett and Jones, it would be a simple task to copy their justification of your claim.
From the FAR Executive Summary:
"Based on current model results, we predict:
⢠under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A)
emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of
global mean temperature during the next century of
about 0.3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of
0.2°C to 0.5°C per decade), this is greater than that
seen over the past 10,000 years This will result in a
likely increase in global mean temperature of about
1°C above the present value by 2025 and VC before
the end of the next century The rise will not be
steady because of the influence of other factors
⢠under the other IPCC emission scenarios which
assume progressively increasing levels of controls
rates of increase in global mean temperature of about
0.2°C per decade (Scenario B), just above 0.1°C per
decade (Scenario C) and about 0.1 °C per decade
(Scenario D)"
From AR4 SPM:
"For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emissions scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all GHGs and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected. Afterwards, temperature projections increasingly depend on specific emissions scenarios (Figure 3.2). {WGI 10.3, 10.7; WGIII 3.2}
Since the IPCCâs first report in 1990, assessed projections have suggested global averaged temperature increases between about 0.15 and 0.3°C per decade from 1990 to 2005. This can now be compared with observed values of about 0.2°C per decade, strengthening confidence in near-term projections. {WGI 1.2, 3.2}"
I'm convinced you don't understand them, factoid.
But then again, your chosen mentors don't actually want you to either.
Factoid said: "It clearly states 10 years are required to determine a trend from the noise.
Good luck backing that claim up with an actual citation.
I'm happy with the analysis of the BoM in a published paper as quoted.
As opposed to the calculations on an activist blog.
chek thank you for confirming the IPCC revised its projections from 0.3C/dec to 0.2C/dec.
You really don't understand a damn thing, do you factoid.
Yet because of your overwheming arrogance, you insist on conflating your lack of comprehension as demonstration of intelligence.
You see, business wasn't as usual.
The IPCC didn't change their forecasts, businesses failed.
>I'm happy with the analysis of the BoM
Good. Let's see what they have to say:
So the source you are citing to support your claim __states precisely the opposite__.
> It clearly states 10 years are required to determine a trend from the noise.
FALSE.
You need at least 10 years to remove most of the noise.
But you need at least three points to determine a trend and give its variance.
Tell me, hemorrhoid, what are three 10's?
> chek thank you for confirming the IPCC revised its projections from 0.3C/dec to 0.2C/dec.
Wow, we've got a live one here. Doesn't understand uncertainty ranges, doesn't understand scenarios, doesn't even understand the accelerating nature of the predictions - and is *still* confident it's understanding is correct.
> So the source you are citing to support your claim states precisely the opposite.
So factoid == sunspot, at least as far as clown-trolling goes. Clown-trolling, as personified by sunspot in his own glorious thread dedicated to his uniquely enthusiastic pursuit of the art in the context of climate science, is the practice of pretending to substantiate your claims with references that almost every time refute the claims you are making.
Factoid, you've got a long way to go before you're even fit to lick sunspot's clown boots.
wow - businesses failed. LOL. That's the best excuse yet for failure. I guess it fits your evil business ideology, and lack of reality.
DaveR- The BoM was correct with data 1998-2007.
N0w with data 2001-2010 the same principles and methodology show cooling.
Oh good...more Troll-goring. Mind you, this one's a bit flat, not a patch on watching GWS do hockey puck impressions.
>N0w with data 2001-2010 the same principles and methodology show cooling.
[The same methodology shows that warming has continued as expected](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/mean:132).
factoid, you should take your own advice and stop being a hypocrite and learn some english while you're at it. You obviously don't realize that you are trying to conclude that 10 years is sufficient. Nowhere did Fawcett and Jones say 10 years is sufficient. They said that 10 years are required. "Required" does not necessarily mean that 10 years is enough. It just means that less than 10 years is certainly not enough.
Not disputing that. You just don't know what it means.
> wow - businesses failed. LOL. That's the best excuse yet for failure.
Well, maybe you didn't notice in your mom's basement, but:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union
So businesses failed so the BAU wasn't BAU.