SteveC screams "As if. You're a fucking troll, as confirmed by..."
Well hush your Getup mouth.
"So Australia has the reputation for the highest rate of species loss of any "developed" nation for no reason? So your "the biota is back" claptrap is based on verifiable data comparing diversity and abundance now with times past? So there's no such thing as rabbit plagues, house mouse plagues or feral animals, or weed intensities increasing sharply?"
And the resurgence is also alongside ferals and toads. Climate isn't the concern - it's the animals out of place. Including feral greenies and Getup delusionals.
BTW doofus - mouse plagues are an episodic grain industry phenomenon not climate change
spottedquoll and steveC, CO2 is only a feeble excuse to make you and me pay more for hydrocarbons.
Do you really think that any country or any government anywhere in the world will stop digging, drilling or fracking for hydrocarbons ?
I can assure you that they don't want anyone to stop using these resources, they only want more money, CO2 is the excuse and they (the bureaucrats) do not give one flying fuck about the environment, you all are simply tools suckered in to help the agenda move forward.
If you want to stop the mining for fossil fuels you have to find an alternative, all efforts by your trusted governments so far have been pathetic, maybe they don't really want an alternative ?
Thanks Anthony David #45 - Two apologies are required at least. One from the owner of this blog and also his namesake the mad lunatic wandering this wide brown land sprouting doom from 'global warming'.
"The dams will never fill again". Indeed.
Sack him now.
I would like to take this opportunity to raise awareness of a process afoot to undermine any progress made in the UK with respect to reducing GHG levels and pursuing a low too none fossil fuel based economy.
The is to have selected 'skeptics' brief members of our legislature through the machinations of non-legislature members such as Christopher Monckton.
The second was just this last February 22 2012 with Richard Lindzen delivering the message, which message was almost a boiler plate copy of his testimony to the US House Subcommittee on Science and Technology hearing in November 2010.
A pdf of his presentation was available at Curry's house but strangely missing one of the slides.
Well I made an interesting discovery a few days ago :
One of the many howlers in Plimerâs book that struck me as an unfathomably bad one even in my former climate contrarian phase was this one :
âIn 1998, the Hubble telescope showed that a moon of Neptune (Triton) *had warmed* since it was visited by the Explorer(!?!?!) space probe in 1989.â
- Page 129, Ian Plimer, Heaven & Earth, Connor Court, 2009. (Unbolded brackets original â not the emphasised WTF one!)
Which, as someone whose love of astronomy was inspired in part by the 1989 Voyager II fly-by of Neptune immediately had me thinking âExplorer?" Huh?!? What the ..?" There was one & only one spacecraft to ever fly past Neptune and that space probe â as I thought everyone knew â was âVoyager 2â².
It was a well known fact and such an incredibly basic error that a minutes research would show that I found it hard to understand how Plimer could possibly make it or allow it to stand.
Well, recently I was reading - out of morbid curiosity - contrarian Christopher Booker's The Real Global Warming Disaster and guess what I read on page 188 of that :
"This had first been noticed in 1998 when researchers at MIT reported that, according to observations by the Hubble telescope, Triton the largest moon of the planet Neptune seemed to have heated up significantly since it was visited by the Explorer space probe in 1989." (Lack of italics for Explorer original.)
- Page 188, Christopher Booker, The Real Global Warming Disaster, Continuum International Publishing, 2009.
Aha! The exact same dreadful, unfathomable basic error in misnaming Voyager II as Explorer and since that's a fairly unusual and basic mistake I'd never encountered before it surely couldn't be co-incidence and must mean that Plimer copied Booker.
Or did it? Because the next thing I did was check the publication date and realised that Booker's book and Plimer's came out in the same year. So was it Booker copying Plimer, Plimer copying Booker or perhaps both copying a third source that started making that mistake with both blindly copying and failing to check something that should set off alarm bells instantly as erroneous?
Either way, an interesting piece of info that I thought I'd mention here in case people were interested or could enlighten me further.
Does anyone know which book came out first or have seen a further source(s) older or newer of this "Explorer" for "Voyager II" mistake meme?
Scientists to construct artificial human brain by 2023; rat brain by 2014
Uh, no ... Markram is prone to ridiculously grandiose claims. And consider that we have no idea what the structural difference is between a functional human brain and one that is comatose ... or worse, the brain of a global warming denier.
Of course the whole "other planets are warming" thus its not us causing Global Overheating canard has been frequently and long since debunked in many places such as here :
Or to put it another way, it's crap. Please don't propagate this nonsense, which unfortunately has a serious chance of sinking â¬1 billion that could be put to much better use.
seems to be the original (probably?) press release on Triton warming - and it names the craft as "Voyager" (they could've added the 'II' suffix but oh well) and also notes :
The moon is approaching an extreme southern summer, a season that occurs every few hundred years. During this special time, the moon's southern hemisphere receives more direct sunlight. The equivalent on Earth would be having the sun directly overhead at noon north of Lake Superior during a northern summer.
So as with Pluto it is almost certainly a seasonal warming effect that we are witnessing.
(Incidentally Voyager II only saw about half of Triton due to the fly-by geometry and lighting conditions. Wish there was another mission so we could get as good a view of the the rest of that small, fascinating world.)
Take two temp measurements of a moon of Neptune, compare them to the massive and growing temperature record of the Earth (surface temps, OHC, global heat content, etc) and try to tell us the former is of more significance than the latter?
I have no words to describe how shameless Booker & Plimer would have to be to propagate such flim-flam.
Any Australians remember a deodorant ad for "Uncle Sam?" I can still hear it in my head:
"You need Uncle Sam, you need Uncle Sam the deodorant protection in the stars-and-stripes can!"
"It's the perfect connection for fellows and girls, and under your arm it's the top of the world!"
It had a groovy guy and girl and was kind of psychedelic
Bob "discount" Carter provides a sworn affidavit in support of NZ deniers a month before the Heartland budget document was made public in which he says:
"I receive no research funding from special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments."
MikeH, he would be correct in his claim, in a very narrow way. You see, the money he receives from Heartland is for co-writing the NIPCC report, which involves no research.
And if that is too weak, he can still point out that Heartland is not an environmental group, energy company or government department...
marion@17. Ohhh yes. It was rare that I watched the commercials in those days, but that ad seemed particularly crass after the Moratorium marches and the Whitlam dismissal. I am showing my age.
But then there's also a manufactured excitement in the contrarian blogosphere every week. Nose-ring led consumers need product.
What was the name of that German 'father of the Greens' a while back? It hardly matters, or matters about as much as who had the No.1 single the week after Christmas. I suspect from our Scandinavian visitors' comments that next week it will be a new paper from Svensgard.
It's all part of the process that let's them kid themslves they're 'making progress'.
I understand Lindzen warned against "science in the service of politics" in his address to a bunch of politicians at an event organised by a political lobby group.
StevoR: Those are howlers indeed. Take two temp measurements of a moon of Neptune, compare them to the massive and growing temperature record of the Earth (surface temps, OHC, global heat content, etc) and try to tell us the former is of more significance than the latter? I have no words to describe how shameless Booker & Plimer would have to be to propagate such flim-flam.
Well, the howler I was referring to was getting the name of the one & only spacecraft ever to visit Neptune so terribly wrong - but you're right, there's certainly that too! Good point.
I'm sure we can think of a few apt words to describe Plimer & Booker even if we can't print them.
Strange. I totally skimmed over your original comment without reading it. Perhaps because it contained the word "Monckton", leading my brain to temporarily shut down in self-defence.
The video is just terrifyingly bad, from how much I've been able to bear to watch so far. Seriously, they need someone with half a brain sat there pointing out the errors and lies.
He actually said that there is nothing in the IPCC reports about species loss. He actually said that, and its plainly not true. Really, that's a lie. I mean, we're used to dissembling, and misrepresentation, and distortion and omission, but that is just a flat-out lie.
As your ideological 'sun' sinks slowly in the west, well, actually it's sinking everywhere but you're all so busy trying to make excuses for your own "very naughty boy", 'On yer bike' Gleik, you maybe haven't noticed but, alas, the fact is no-one is listening to you anymore and a lot of your erstwhile supporters are quietly sidling out of the nearest exit - 'splitters', I know!
However, talking of the sun sinking - it really is! We all love the sun when it has a severe dose of acne, you know, spots all over its face, but just at the moment it looks as though its acne has been cured because Cycle 24 is pathetic! And fewer sun spots *probably* means a chilly, not to say, icey, future. I only tell you this, in strict confidence of course (well, hardly anyone outside your sect reads this blog anymore so there's not much risk of a leak), now is the time to practice one of those imperceptible shifts from global warming to global cooling, you know, just like the reverse one you did back in the '70s.
Either that, or chuck it in altogether and find a new hobby. I do realise how important 'end of the world' scenarios are to your inner well-being so if you ask me nicely I can tell you about a big lump of space rubble due to 'hit' earth in about 40 years. Of course, in this context you need to place inverted commas around the word 'hit' because it's about as likely as, er, well, global warming really. Anyway, I'll be dead by than so I don't care but if it cheers you lot up then I'm happy.
If we can find out if any MP's attended the lecture in the HoC, we can then write to them pointing out how they have been lied to. The problem seems to be finding out who was there.
Reduced to wishful thinking now, eh DavidWank, you silly old duffer? And so in that vein perhaps Gleik may get a Congressional Medal for uncovering a subversive plot to dumb down future citizens by corrupting them with Heartland branded pseudo-science lies.
Seriously Wankybabe, if every time one of you morons proclaimed final nail in the coffin or its ilk, the proverbial coffin would now be approaching the centre of the Earth at speed under the accumulated weight of iron.
Slowly, due to other commitments but one thing I had bother with was getting a fresh copy of his page 32 chart of AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent for October 11 2010 from IJIS , I set up all the numbers in the left pane, Submit and get the map but then 'Data of Sea Ice Extent' lands me at a October 3 2011 chart. Not that this matters that much in the grand scheme of things considering his cherry pick on a cherry.
"He actually said that there is nothing in the IPCC reports about species loss. He actually said that, and its plainly not true. Really, that's a lie. I mean, we're used to dissembling, and misrepresentation, and distortion and omission, but that is just a flat-out lie."
I have watched the video Dave and that isn't what Lindzen said. He was talking about advocates putting 'spin' on the full IPCC report. Lindzen knows that WG2 deals with, amongst other things, species loss. He was a lead author on AR3 WG1, he is familiar with the process and the full range of the subject matter.
In this context he was being supportive of the actual 'science' in the full IPCC reports and bemoaning the distortions subsequently related by advocacy groups for "the greater good".
Youshe people, hey what, I mean youshe people, well you're just, you're ideo-logic-'l, that'sh what you aresh, an' your wrong, juss dead wrong, ideo-logic-'ly. N'anyway I don't care 'cosh I'll be dead soon 'n' it's the Sun 'nyw'y 'n' all that. 'N' there'll be an iceberg soon. Whoopsh; age! Ther'll be an ageberg soon. Rememmer I told youshe...
I bigger geek than I would need to track down the dates with certainty, but Plimer and Booker both copied it. I don't know which, if either, copied from the other, but the meme dates from a year before the publication H&E and TRGWD (if not earlier). I've narrowed the window slightly, but there's still more digging required
Most frequently cited is a financial news email called the The Fleet Street Letter. I haven't managed to get an exact date, but by mid-March 2008, several I'm-a-well-off-but-angry-white-guy-with-a-mid-life-crisis blogs were citing a a mailout from the FSL (mostly via another such mailout, "The Daily Reckoning":
>Global warming - a new religion By Brian Durrant: "However, there is an inconvenient truth for Mr Gore. Astronomers have noted in 1998 that Triton, Neptune's largest moon, seemed to have heated up significantly since it was visited by the Explorer space probe in 1989. Moreover, in 2002 it was reported that the temperature on Pluto had risen by two degrees Celsius in 14 years."
The page below dates to some time after early 2009, but appears to be a rehosting of a page written in or shortly after December 2007:
>"It had first been noticed in 1998, when researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that, according to observations by the Hubble telescope, Triton, the largest moon of the planet Neptune, seemed to have heated up significantly since it was visited by the Explorer space probe in 1989. Frozen nitrogen on the moon's surface appeared to be melting into gas". http://world-news-research.com/contrarianview.html
He cites as the source for this comment, the revelant news report from MIT
>"A Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher has reported that observations obtained by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based instruments reveal that Neptune's largest moon, Triton, seems to have heated up significantly since the Voyager space probe visited it in 1989. The warming trend is causing part of Triton's surface of frozen nitrogen to turn into gas, thus making its thin atmosphere denser". http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/triton.html
I wonder if Plimer or Booker provide citations - if they point to the original MIT release, what are the odds of them independently making the same boner?
> What has become commonplace in this, is for somebody to say "global warming is going to destroy the habitat, its going to get rid of species, its going to do this, that", and they will cite as their authority the IPCC - and you can't find it in there.
IPCC AR4:
> Overall, climate change has been estimated to be a major driver of biodiversity loss in cool conifer forests, savannas, mediterranean-climate systems, tropical forests, in the Arctic tundra, and in coral reefs (Thomas et al., 2004a; Carpenter et al., 2005; Malcolm et al., 2006). In other ecosystems, land-use change may be a stronger driver of biodiversity loss at least in the near term. In an analysis of the SRES scenarios to 2100 (Strengers et al., 2004), deforestation is reported to cease in all scenarios except A2, suggesting that beyond 2050 climate change is very likely to be the major driver for biodiversity loss globally. Due to climate change alone it has been estimated that by 2100 between 1% and 43% of endemic species (average 11.6%) will be committed to extinction (DGVM-based study â Malcolm et al., 2006), whereas following another approach (also using climate envelope modelling-based studies â Thomas et al., 2004a) it has been estimated that on average 15% to 37% of species (combination of most optimistic assumptions 9%, most pessimistic 52%) will be committed to extinction by 2050 (i.e., their range sizes will have begun shrinking and fragmenting in a way that guarantees their accelerated extinction). Climate-change-induced extinction rates in tropical biodiversity hotspots are likely to exceed the predicted extinctions from deforestation during this century (Malcolm et al., 2006). In the mediterranean-climate region of South Africa, climate change may have at least as significant an impact on endemic Protea speciesâ extinction risk as land-use change does by 2020 (Bomhard et al., 2005). Based on all above findings and our compilation (Figure 4.4, Table 4.1) we estimate that on average 20% to 30% of species assessed are likely to be at increasingly high risk of extinction from climate change impacts possibly within this century as global mean temperatures exceed 2°C to 3°C relative to pre-industrial levels (this chapter). The uncertainties remain large, however, since for about 2°C temperature increase the percentage may be as low as 10% or for about 3°C as high as 40% and, depending on biota, the range is between 1% and 80% (Table 4.1; Thomas et al., 2004a; Malcolm et al., 2006). As global average temperature exceeds 4°C above pre-industrial levels, model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% species assessed) around the globe (Table 4.1).
What a massive liar. Your interpretation is funny - as an example of "advocate spin", Lindzen chooses something that very definitely *is* in the IPCC report.
Hey, if PLuto or triton or wherever had a 2 degree temp rise caused by the sun, that means that, since we are a lot closer and inverse square law and all that, we must have had an 18 degree increase!!!
(based on roughly 3 times further out and so 9 times greater surface area).
You've still missed the point. It isn't whether or not WG2 discusses "species loss", everybody knows it does. Lindzen knows it does.
He is talking about specific claims that are made in the form of "Enviroporn" which are not supported by, or are misrepresentations of, the papers that the IPCC bases its analysis on.
He politely refers to this as 'spin'. But it's "lost in translation" + "chinese whispers"- journalists not reading or understanding the papers or IPCC reports, merely repeating the words verbatim from advocacy group press releases.
It isn't a hard point follow, especially if you actually watch the video.
A reminder of what Professor Tim Flannery actually said about rainfall in southern Australia, instead of the quote-mining being bandied about once again.
So, what you're saying is, that when Lindzen said:
> What has become commonplace in this, is for somebody to say "global warming is going to destroy the habitat, its going to get rid of species, its going to do this, that", and they will cite as their authority the IPCC - and you can't find it in there.
He actually meant to use entirely different words that mean what you want them to mean?
> It isn't whether or not WG2 discusses "species loss", everybody knows it does.
Really? Everybody? Lindzen was addressing a non-technical audience, and your best bet is that only a tiny minority (if any) will have read *even part* of the IPCC reports - are you absolutely sure that nobody will have been misled in any way by his choice of words?
> Lindzen knows it does.
Which is why I'm calling this a lie, and not just being ill-informed.
Duff @ 28 echoes the argument of solar crank David Archibald.
from Duff
Cycle 24 is pathetic! And fewer sun spots probably means a chilly, not to say, icey, future ...
From Archibald (2009) in the climate crank's journal of choice, Energy and Environment
As at late 2008, the progression of the current 23/24 solar minimum indicates that a severe cool period is now inevitable, similar to that of the Dalton Minimum. A decline in average annual temperature of 2.2° C is here predicted for the mid-latitude regions over Solar Cycle 24."
A reminder of what Professor Tim Flannery actually said about rainfall in southern Australia
Of course, whenever you put this to denialists, they claim Flannery was saying the same things about more northerly parts of Australia too. When asked to supply a citation for their claims, they vanish in a puff of smoke.
It's not drought, it's climate change, say scientists
"SCIENTISTS studying Victoria's crippling drought have, for the first time, proved the link between rising levels of greenhouse gases and the state's dramatic decline in rainfall.
A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed what many scientists long suspected: that the 13-year drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change.
Scientists working on the $7 million South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative say the rain has dropped away because the subtropical ridge - a band of high pressure systems that sits over the country's south - has strengthened over the past 13 years.
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These dry, high pressure systems have become stronger, bigger and more frequent and this intensification over the past century is closely linked to rising global temperatures, they found.
Climate data from across the past century shows the subtropical ridge has peaked and waned, often in line with rising global temperatures.
But to see what role greenhouse gases played in the recent intensification, the scientists used sophisticated American computer climate models.
When they ran simulations with only the ''natural'' influences on temperature, such as changing levels of solar activity, they found there was no intensification of the subtropical ridge and no decline in rainfall.
But when they added human influences, such as greenhouse gases, aerosols and ozone depletion, the models mimicked what has occurred in south-east Australia - the high pressure systems strengthened, causing a significant drop in rainfall.
''It's reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,'' said the bureau's Bertrand Timbal.
''In the minds of a lot of people, the rainfall we had in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was a benchmark. A lot of our [water and agriculture] planning was done during that time. But we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again as long as the system is warming up.''
But not all experts agree. Murray-Darling Basin Authority chief Rob Freeman told a water summit in Melbourne last week he believed the extreme climate patterns that have dried out south-east Australia would not prove to be permanent.
''Some commentators say this is the new future. I think that is an extreme position and probably a position that's not helpful to take,'' he said, expressing confidence that wetter times would return.
Dr Timbal believes 80 per cent of the rain loss in south-east Australia can be attributed to the intensification of the subtropical ridge. If the next phase of the study is approved, the scientists hope to work out exactly how rising temperatures result in a stronger subtropical ridge.
The research program, supported by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, the federal Department of Climate Change and the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, was set up in 2006 to solve the puzzle of why south-east Australia had experienced such a dramatic loss of rain.
The program covers the Murray-Darling Basin, Victoria and parts of South Australia.
Monash University's Neville Nicholls, a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who has also published on the subtropical ridge, said he believed the program's results were right.
''We did think that the loss of rain was simply due to the [rain-bearing] storms shifting south, off the continent,'' Professor Nicholls said.
''Now we know the reason they have slipped south is that the subtropical ridge has become more intense. It is getting bigger and stronger and that is pushing the rainstorms further south.''
The scientific results have implications for many state government water programs and drought funding, some of which factor in climate change. Projections for the water coming to Melbourne in the north-south pipeline are based on the assumption that Victoria will return to rainfall levels of last century.
Melbourne's dams get roughly a third less water than they did before the drought began in 1996."
Just a whispered prayer of thanks to my imaginary friend, Jeebus, for showing the Bible belt states the Sinfulness of Denial and the Reality of Global Warming through the Awakening of Conciousness through Holy Tornado. Amen.
A group of scientists is raising alarm about "incorrect science" in a course at Ottawa's Carleton University that was taught for three years by a climate change skeptic.
"We describe a case in which noted climate change deniers have gained access to the Canadian higher education system through a course taught at Carleton University," the Ottawa-based Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism said in a report this week.
But the course instructor, Tom Harris, denies there are any problems with the science he taught.
CASS, which says its goal is to "critically [examine] scientific, technological and medical claims in public discourse," said its audit of video lectures and course materials for the second-year course called "Climate Change: An Earth Sciences Perspective" found the course to be biased and inaccurate. {...}
He appears to assert that the post is wrong, but seems to have difficulty in stating precisely why. I wonder whether he'll hang around and try to argue the Op-Ed's case...?
Correction: the comment I referred to was on the "Free Speech and Academic Freedom" thread - but it seems more likely to have been intended to address the Bickmore response to the WSJ Op-Ed.
The relevant quote from "A Special Climate Statement from BoM" in February 2012 quoted by Pittock to help with your reading comprehension
By contrast, dry conditions persisted during the 2010 and 2011 April to June period (the start of the early winter rainfall period) across southern Australia.
Here follows a more detailed discussion.
However, models and the paleo-climate record indicate that these systems will be located further polewards in general in a warmer world. This has been observed in recent decades. These systems produce rain over southern Australia predominantly in the colder months, so winter rains in southern Australia are likely to be less frequent, with heavier rain occurring further south.
A Special Climate Statement from BoM in February 2012 summarised the real observed situation in 2010-2011 thus:
âIt was notable ⦠that the bulk of the above average rainfall of the past two years fell during the northern wet season ⦠with tropical influenced weather systems bringing monsoonal-like rainfall to much of the continent. By contrast, dry conditions persisted during the 2010 and 2011 April to June period (the start of the early winter rainfall period) across southern Australia.
â¦
The high 2010 and 2011 rainfall was therefore not associated with winter-time storm systems, and did not represent a return to normal conditions over the southern Australian winter season. In this way, the recent trend of rainfall reductions in autumn and winter was not reversed by the back-to-back La NiÅa events.â
Karen/Sunspot - Do you have that sinking feeling that comes from being identified as an idiot or are you so obtuse that it has no effect?
You may still pretend to be 'Karen', but your obsession with the Australian floods and their causations reveals you for who you are.
Tread carefully grasshopper, or Tim Lambert might tire of your escape from the only thread on which you are permitted to post, and summarily execute your tresspassing blather.
Oo, and as Chris O'Neill and Mike H observe, you are worse than wrong. There is one compensation however for your state of being - it permits you to live in deluded bliss.
> Mr. Harris is a MechE; as we know, the Earth's climate is governed by a system of sprockets, springs and chains similar that found on bicycles so it's wise to defer to his judgement. In the case of "negative discovery" I think he's trying to use nontechnical terms to explain that we have to pedal backward in order to go forward.
(It also notes that the lecturer's highest degree appears to be a M.Eng. which doesn't seem particularly relevant to teaching Earth Sciences.)
Tom Harris was hired by Tim Patterson, head of the Department of Geological Sciences at Carleton. Tom Harris and Tim Patterson go a long way back in Canadian AGW denerism.
To "paraphrase" *Pointman*:
> Every one of the skeptics was a lone brainless zombie, who needed absolutely no logistical support of any kind to continue the fight indefinitely. The alarmists never understood this, preferring to think that there simply had to be some cerebral matter leading the resistance. While they wasted time and effort attacking targets that had no head, each of the zombies chewed on them mercilessly in their own particular way.
You can watch John Mashey talk about Heartland, Seitz, Singer, Wegman, and various other points of interest over at Hot Topic in the latest Climate show.
So the climate pro's were wrong about rain in 2008, so were you Bernard
Tim Flannery was named Australiaâs Man of the Year in 2007-for predicting that Australian cities will run out of water. He predicted Perth would become the âfirst 21st century ghost city,â and that Sydney would be out of water by 2007.
Then we have the polar bears, disappearing temperature gauges, missing data (and Micheal's emails), glaciers not melting, snowmaggedon, low hurricane occurrence, sea levels not rising fast enough, in context emails that are out of context, hockey sticks, sheezzzz.
âCorals will become increasingly rare on reef systems.â Dr. Hans Hoegh-Guldberg, head of Queensland University (Australia) marine studies.
In 2006, Dr. Hoegh-Guldberg warned that high temperatures might kill 30-40 percent of the coral on the Great Barrier Reef âwithin a month.â In 2007, he said global warming temperatures were bleaching [potentially killing] the reef.
But, in 2008, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network said climate change had not damaged the âwell-managedâ reef in the four years since its last report.
Most in here can't or won't see these things for what they truly are, or they move the goal post and twist the fairy tale's, you are only fueling the public's rejection of the "cause" or "the team's" consensus science.
That aside, in what way am I "wrong" about the magnitude of this year's and last year's floods?
How do you know that Flannery is wrong in predicting that Perth may become a "ghost city" this century? When did he predict that Sydney would run out of water by 2007?
What about the polar bears?
Which "disappearing temperature gauges", and what does their absence mean?
What "missing data"?
What about "Micheal's" [sic] personal emails?
Which glaciers are not melting and which ones are, exactly? What do you think that this means?
Which hockey sticks do you believe are invalid, and which ones do you accept for their demonstration of global temperature trajectory? What do you think that this means?
Do you have the primary source for Hans Hoegh-Guldberg's statement that:
>...that high temperatures might kill 30-40 percent of the coral on the Great Barrier Reef "within a month."
because I have seen a lot of denialist regurgitation of the words, with no context supplied.
>Bernard J, your foul mouth, bullying and innuendo are surely your most treasured attributes.
Diddums.
Now grow a set, lose the glass jaw, and get thee back to your own thread, where you actually have permission to discuss these matters.
And stop pretending to be female: it's offensive to women.
I just came across this Science Daily article that found a minimum impact of land cover change on the glaciers of Kilimanjaro. Here is the original article from Nature Climate .
For the last 2 years the Virginia Attorney-General, Ted Cuccinelli has pursued climate scientist Michael Mann (he of âhockey stickâ fame) and the University of Virginia, demanding they hand over all e-mails and other correspondence related to research undertaken at the University. This modern-day version of McCarthyism has just come to an end (on 2 March), when the Supreme Court of Virginia decisively ruled against Cuccinelli.
This is not only a victory for Science but no less importantly a win for academic freedom. The ruling throws out the politically motivated attempt by Cuccinelli to destroy the right of climate scientists and University faculties to confidential correspondence. Without such confidentiality, scientists working in institutions such as universities, could have felt intimidated in what they could say or write in discussion with other scientists.
The Harper Government of Canada, has effectively gagged all climate scientists in its employ from speaking about their work or publishing their views without first obtaining clearance from the Prime Ministersâ Office. This dangerous bid to curb freedom of speech among climate scientists should be the next target brought before the Courts.
I see that Michael Kelly outs himself as a cornucopian.
He is a discredit to the engineering profession, as a consequence of the simplistic thinking that he displays when he claims Malthus, Jevons - and implicitly Hubbert - are all wrong to predict the finiteness of both renewable and non-renewable resources. The truth is that the first two gentlemen have not been proven "wrong": they simply haven't yet been proven right, because they were unable to foresee certain applications of technology. However those applications are not infinitely postponing those inescapable limits, as much as Kelly might fantasise otherwise...
As for Peak Oil, Hubbert and the modern commentators have been pretty much spot on. If Kelly imagines that there will be any significant deviation from the contemporary trend and future predictions, he's living in la-la land.
I'm surprised to see yet another supposedly educated person succumb to illogical analysis. This cornucopianism seems to be the technological equivalent of religosity - the atheists' version of sky fairies, if you will, just as interstellar colonialism and cybernetic evolution seem to be the rabid technophiles' version of immortality and heaven.
If there is any 'god' that directs our lives, it is thermodynamics, and it has only one dictum: "I win". Kelly would do well to remember that, and to remember that the forecastings of Malthus and his heirs are ultimately entirely consistent with thermodynamics, even if Faustian humans have managed to fiddle the calendar a little in order to stave off the inevitable 'judgement' day.
Firstly he said Warragamba Dam had two years supply of water (something easy enough to figure out, take the volume in storage and divide by daily use + evaporation). I've got two years supply of water in my water tanks, hardly a controversial statement.
He was then asked what the worst case scenario would be and he answered "Well, the worst-case scenario for Sydney is that the climate that's existed for the last seven years continues for another two years. In that case, Sydney will be facing extreme difficulties with water...".
So there we go, that's what the fuss is about. Other claims about what Flannery is supposed to have said don't stand up to scrutiny either.
It does look fairly damning when you see all those past statements from Karoly and others listed together. Do you think there is any possibility they have more of a clue now than they did then?
Why so sensitive chek? There's no harm in going back to look at past claims. Nobody made them say these things at the time. It's useful bearing them in mind when they make future pronouncements.
Do they know what they are talking about? it's a fair question.
re: #79 Bernard J
Hat-tipping Eli, or not:
That wasn't Eli, it was Brian Schmidt.
Eli owns the Rabbett hole, but Brian and John sometimes post there. [Brian was a big help for Fake science, ...
The visual style may not make it as obvious as one might like, since the author is at the end not the start.
(forgot to add - it does continue on the theme that we assert we've caught Flannery out thus all climate science is the hoax, Fourier and his minions unmasked crap)
Dave @90,Franks has tried this 'the experts get the physical relationship between wrong' argument before,but it's facetious. He seems to suggest that higher temperatures are a result only of drought,and that they cannot further dessicate already dry soils. He ignores the observation that the long term rising temperature trend overlies dry and wet periods.
@80 "He was then asked what the worst case scenario would be and he answered "Well, the worst-case scenario for Sydney is that the climate that's existed for the last seven years continues for another two years. In that case, Sydney will be facing extreme difficulties with water...".
So there we go, that's what the fuss is about. Other claims about what Flannery is supposed to have said don't stand up to scrutiny either."
Which is why they need to lie when they continually beat up on him. If they actually quote him, they have nothing. All the major cities in Australia were facing extreme difficulties, which is why they all built desal plants.
I must admit I don't fully understand the ins and outs (still trying - got a couple of text but ohh I am so struggling - I'm good on the IR blocking, I love lasers, so happy with CO2 laser and the operation of a CO2 IR gas analyser, and good with satellites measuring the absorption bands deepening and hence the energy being trapped that must be taken up by the ocean/atmosphere). But the meteorology bit. I have to defer to CSIRO/NASA/NOAA etc
But my BS detector is OK.
Here's someone I've never heard of before, Franks, who has never published a climate related paper (not in any reputable journal anyway) ripping into Karoly + CSIRO flinging about terms that sounds wizardry. Then after that, you're left with the conclusion that he has just disproved Fourier's Greenhouse Gas Theory. Yet the genius has never published.
I did expect this rot to get a go in The Australian - but so sad to see pseudo-science getting into The Conversation. Why couldn't the editor ring AMOS or CSIRO and/or say UNSW and have it checked over by a climatologist or 3 rather than assume he's got in his hot paws the scientific discovery of 2 centuries. That's the dumb bit :(
Stewart Franks subscribes to the Bob Carter/John McLean theory that climate change is all down to ENSO. His claims that climate has returned to normal are nonsense. We are getting monsoonal rain in southern Australia while our winter rainfall continues below average.
The last 2 years have set a La Nina inspired rainfall record for Australia! That's normal?
He makes the claim "If the observed history of ENSO and Australian flood risk is any guide to the future, then we might expect further La Niña for the next decade or so."
Like most climate change deniers he sees cycles in ENSO like creationists see JC's face in their toast.
Yes,Mike,Franks frowns at climate experts making nuanced attributions from long term data,yet is happy to declare the return of normalcy after two abnormally wet years and gaze into his own crystal ball. He obviously has some axe to grind.
Didn't he co-author a recent paper in this area with a procedural error that undid his conclusions?
StevoR, A bigger geek than I would need to track down the dates with certainty, but Plimer and Booker both copied it. I don't know which, if either, copied from the other, but the meme dates from a year before the publication H&E and TRGWD (if not earlier). I've narrowed the window slightly, but there's still more digging required. Most frequently cited is a financial news email called the The Fleet Street Letter. I haven't managed to get an exact date, but by mid-March 2008, several I'm-a-well-off-but-angry-white-guy-with-a-mid-life-crisis blogs were citing a a mailout from the FSL (mostly via another such mailout, "The Daily Reckoning":
Global warming - a new religion By Brian Durrant: "However, there is an inconvenient truth for Mr Gore. Astronomers have noted in 1998 that Triton, Neptune's largest moon, seemed to have heated up significantly since it was visited by the Explorer space probe in 1989. Moreover, in 2002 it was reported that the temperature on Pluto had risen by two degrees Celsius in 14 years."
The page below dates to some time after early 2009, but appears to be a rehosting of a page written in or shortly after December 2007:
"It had first been noticed in 1998, when researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that, according to observations by the Hubble telescope, Triton, the largest moon of the planet Neptune, seemed to have heated up significantly since it was visited by the Explorer space probe in 1989. Frozen nitrogen on the moon's surface appeared to be melting into gas". [Link snipped -ed.] He cites as the source for this comment, the revelant news report from MIT
"A Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher has reported that observations obtained by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based instruments reveal that Neptune's largest moon, Triton, seems to have heated up significantly since the Voyager space probe visited it in 1989. The warming trend is causing part of Triton's surface of frozen nitrogen to turn into gas, thus making its thin atmosphere denser". [Link snipped -ed.]
I wonder if Plimer or Booker provide citations - if they point to the original MIT release, what are the odds of them independently making the same boner?
Thanks for that.
Turns out that Booker's book came after Plimer's one - later on Booker refers to H&E (page 336) as a "best seller" & refers to going to press August 2009 on P. 324 FWIW.
Citations~wise, I've returned TRGWD to the library now but don't recall seeing any cites for that whilst Plimer cites :
MIT News Office 24th June 1998.
Which matches the original MIT press release I linked in comment #15 (1st of March 2012 10:23 PM) here - and which correctly names Voyager as the spacecraft involved.
Plimer also cites :
"Global warming onPluto puzzles scientists", www.space.com, 9th October 2002.
Over the (seasonal though Plimer doesn't note that natch!) warming on Pluto debunked at the 3 minutes 45 sec's mark on the 'Mars Attacks" Climate Denial Crock of the Week clip linked at #13. Seems Plimer didn't actually read the article either.
As your ideological 'sun' sinks slowly in the west, well, actually it's sinking everywhere.
It is? Try telling that to the peer-reviewed literature and melting glaciers.
However, talking of the sun sinking - it really is! We all love the sun when it has a severe dose of acne, you know, spots all over its face, but just at the moment it looks as though its acne has been cured because Cycle 24 is pathetic! And fewer sun spots probably means a chilly, not to say, icey, future.
Funny, solar storms like this one from a month or two ago :
That seems to show the solar influence on the Little Ice Age was less than we used to think with volcanic activity playing a more significant causative role there.
I only tell you this, in strict confidence of course (well, hardly anyone outside your sect reads this blog anymore so there's not much risk of a leak),..
Yet here you are. Are you then a sect member? Strict confidence on a public thread? Really?
..now is the time to practice one of those imperceptible shifts from global warming to global cooling, you know, just like the reverse one you did back in the '70s.
Bzzt. Wrong. That climate canard is debunked here :
Among many other places. To sum up, no, a majority of climatologists *always* thought global warming was more likely than global cooling even back in the 1970's. Our understanding has of course moved on since then and the evidence for Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating (HIRGO) has grown ever stronger.
Either that, or chuck it in altogether and find a new hobby. I do realise how important 'end of the world' scenarios are to your inner well-being so if you ask me nicely I can tell you about a big lump of space rubble due to 'hit' earth in about 40 years.
Or alternatively we're capable of hearing about such things as the close pass of asteroid 2011 AG5 and asteroid 2012 DA 14 and asteroid Apophis and other such space rocks for ourselves and assessing their risks calmly.
Also, FYI I'd be much happier if HIRGO wasn't real bI used to be a contrarian myself but was eventually convinced otherwise by the weight of evidence. It'd be great if we could keep on with business as usal consequence free - but the science shows we can't.
Of course, in this context you need to place inverted commas around the word 'hit' because it's about as likely as, er, well, global warming really.
Ironically enough an asteroid or comet impact on Earth is eventually inevitable - unless we act to prevent it. Due to thermal inertia we're already comittted to and bound to have more global overheating as well. So David Duff, you are actually correct here although not in the way you think. Both are very likely although one is caused by Human activity and the other can perhaps be stopped by it.
Anyway, I'll be dead by than so I don't care but if it cheers you lot up then I'm happy.
How very charming - not.
Got any children or grandchildren? Don't give a durn for the future beyond your lifespan at all?
If David Duff has any younger relatives, I'm sure they'd be delighted to know he's been keenly hoping they have a socioeconomically impoverished future.
I wonder what my family would say if I went around spouting off that I didn't care about my 5-month-old's future.
Nick @ 95
You are probably thinking of this [paper](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/07/ahh_mclean_youve_done_it_again…) authored by John McLean and Bob Carter which has been the source of great amusement over the years - particularly when McLean predicted on the basis of the "its all ENSO" view he shares with Franks that "it is likely that 2011 will be the coolest year since 1956 or even earlier".
Franks has coauthored an ideological rant with Carter that appeared in Quadrant.
One of Mann's main accusers has written a "book review" over at Amazon. Funny enough, the entire review revolves around what the reviewer, Hu McCulloch, wrote and Mann's response.
I just got to the part of the book that briefly mentions Mr. McCulloch and read the notes. I still do not feel well versed enough to tackle it directly.
I am hoping one of the more erudite forum members here can take a look.
No,Mike I'm thinking of Lockart et al 2009? "On the recent warming in the Murray-Darling Basin: Land surface interactions misunderstood" which Franks co-authored. This paper claimed a drought/reduction in cloud cover mediated increase in sunshine hours accounted for the rise in average temperature across the basin. It got a swift rebuttal from Cai et al who pointed out they had failed to handle their data correctly
"The conditions were so bad that Tim Flannery, now Australiaâs Chief Climate Commissioner, declared that cities such as Brisbane would never again have dam-filling rains."
without providing a source that backed up the claim.
According to Matthew Thompson, one of the editors at The Conversation
In consultation with the author, we've removed a reference to Tim Flannery saying that dams in cities such as Brisbane would never again have dam-filling rains. No direct quote could be found,...
We all love the sun when it has a severe dose of acne, you know, spots all over its face, but just at the moment it looks as though its acne has been cured because Cycle 24 is pathetic!
Very hot off the solar corona and just in via the Bad Astronomy blog and Solar Dynamics Observatory from earlier today (7th March 2012.)
"PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: We're already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we're getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that's translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That's because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that's a real worry for the people in the bush. If that trend continues then I think we're going to have serious problems, particularly for irrigation."
mmm... "isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems", I wonder what he meant?
Franks has made this statement in The Conservation thread:
>With all due respect - you do misunderstand the physics. Higher temperatures do not cause higher evaporation - this sound right but is completely wrong.
>Boundary Layer Meteorology is what you are lacking.
Utterly disingenuous. While it is true that temperature is not the only variable affecting evaporation, e.g., relative humidity, pressure, and available liquid water; without a transfer of sensible heat into latent heat, there is no evaporation. Though turbulence in the Terrestrial Boundary Layer makes the relation of surface temperature and evaporation highly non-linear for any given small area of land (much less so over the open sea), it doesn't eliminate the ceteris paribus causal relationship between temperature and evaporation.
>Higher temperature is caused by a dry land surface.
While dry land will accrue sensible heat more than wet land (given relative humidity >100% and constant pressure) it isn't the cause of temperature change, it is the effect of the transfer of sensible heat into the latent heat of evaporation. The cause is an external source of energy.
I can't seem to find a way to register for comments there, but I feel this casuistry shouldn't go unanswered.
Great Slimy Weasel @ 104
Why don't you drop the weasel act and tell us what it means.
Franks tried the "Bolt" interpretation and was forced to withdraw. What is yours? Before you do, I suggest that you get your atlas out and look at the latitude difference between northern and southern Australia. Bolt can be excused for not knowing the science because he is an ignoramus who repeats what he is told by Carter, Franks et. al. Let us see if you know any more than him. Come on. Stop with the bluster. Let us see what you have weasel.
LB @ 105. Go to the bottom of any article where the comments start and you will see a Sign Up link. You only need an email address to register.
Honestly I don't have a horse in this race (Don't live in Oz). From what I can gather, Flannery has opportunistically made all kinds of statements about water/rainfall in various regions, at various times, and tried to pass it off as the new "climate shift" norm. It's what Climate Change Commissioners do I suppose.
If you want to know what he meant, I suggest you ask him. Although I suspect he doesn't know either.
GSW, I'm intrigued to know if Brad Dourif understudied with you (unlikely, but possible) or if your chosen public performance on blogs just channels his LOTR Grima Wormtounge performace, yet uncannily taps into the vast natural reservoirs of slime which already exists within you.
It positively ooozes from your very text, which is an incredible talent you possess.
Obvious and stupid lie. You've been fellating an abject ignoramus in his own little dungeon for over half a year now. I doubt your horse is financial, but it is most certainly emotional and most definitely to justify your cognitive difference.
So no, you are not objective. Objectively proven to not be objective. You are a cheerleader.
Shorter GSW: I don't really know what I am talking about outside the memes I repeat, and the more I read on the subject the more I realise I have been mislead so I will try and ungracefully back out of this conversation.
Professor Michael Ashley has complained that Franks was allowed to withdraw his Bolt inspired accusation against Flannery.
Ashley argues
I strongly disagree with the Editors that the logic and substance (such as they are) of the article is little affected.
Franks originally stated "[Tim Flannery] declared that cities such as Brisbane would never again have dam-filling rains" and then Franks went on to say "How is it that Tim Flannery could have got it so spectacularly wrong?" The original quotation is central to Franks' claim that Flannery was spectacularly wrong.
I believe the editors should have either left the original text in place, with a note saying "no evidence has been found to substantiate this quotation", or else the entire article should be withdrawn
For Aussies and Kiwis: DC's latest sounds like it might be about Canada, but it has
Tom Harris (ICSC, which includes Bob Carter), NZCSC (Carter & Warwick Hughes, Heartland funding, Bali 2007, and a certain Viscount. It also has the Canadian equivalent of a newspaper Tim loves to tweak.
Follow the money... these days, across many borders.
Prof. Gordon Hughes also has another report out: "The Myth of Green Jobs". Funnily enough that's not available through his university press either, but can be had for free through the [GWPF here](http://thegwpf.org/search-site.html?searchword=hughes&ordering=newest&s…) along with other august authors such as Donna Laframboise.
Professor Hughes, a commissioner on Britain's Infrastructure Planning Commission and a former World Bank senior adviser, conducted his study for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which is chaired by former Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson.
Crow(e)ing too much about a study that probably isn't that thorough. One more strawman in the making.
Another affiliate of Heartland (GWPF) strikes again.
The article includes a comment from Anthony Owen, Santos Professor of Energy Resources at the Adelaide based International Energy Policy Institute established with a grant from BHP, owners of the Olympic Dam uranium mine.
Not questioning the prof's integrity but that must get a laugh when he disses renewable energy.
I am thinking of establishing the Clubs Australia Centre For Gambling Reform with a few dollars I have cadged from the local pokies venue.
Today Iâll take a close look at the beginning of the Harris-Heartland connection in 2007, based on Heartlandâs publicly available 2007 tax declaration and December 2007 press releases, as well as the illuminating full recorded interview of Harris by Suzanne Goldberg of the Guardian. Taken together, these provide compelling evidence that Heartland funded Tom Harrisâs Natural Resource Stewardship Project right around the time that Harris was organizing the Bali contrarian petition attacking climate science, part of a broader attempt by Heartland to disrupt the December 2007 UNFCCC conference.
National Post financial editor Terence Corcoran essentially provided Harris the sole (but very powerful) PR channel for the petition, while hiding Harrisâs involvement, a fact that the Post has never publicly acknowledged to this day. Now that it turns out that the effort was likely funded by the Heartland Institute, the Postâs credibility has been compromised even further.
Professor Michael Ashley isn't happy with the ABC's Mr Newman.
"What has me fuming is your speech last week to ABC staff in which you accuse your senior journalists of "group-think" in favouring the scientific consensus on climate change. You refer to "a growing number of distinguished scientists [that are] challenging the conventional wisdom with alternative theories and peer reviewed research" and you claim that these poor folk are being suppressed in the mainstream media.
Who are these distinguished scientists? I don't know of a single credible climate scientist who doubts human-induced climate change."
For those not in Australia, the replacement of Newman with Spigelman would, in the States, almost be akin to replacing Limbaugh (or Watts) with Hansen.
And for me. I realise it won't happen overnight, but I have a lingering fondness for Insiders which I abandoned some time ago due to the 'balanced' approach including some of the more unpleasant representatives of the right wing flappermouths. (If they were truly interested in 'balance' they'd be hosting assorted wild-eyed, unkempt street marchers as well.)
And there are a couple of other venues in various media which would do better with real, serious reporting and analysis rather than the constant hesaidshesaid dragged down by relentless trying for a gotcha moment and tedious flourishes of 'and how did you feel about that'.
Whew! Its good to get back to sanity and away from that he-who-must-not-be-named megalomaniac on his 'own' thread.
Here is an outstanding TED lecture presented by James Hansen (courtesy of Joe Romm at Think Progress). As we all know here, Hansen is perhaps the world's best known and leading climate scientist. And, contrary to the rantings of the resident fruitcake on his eponymous thread, Hansen is an immensely respected 'real' scientist. Deniers loathe him for precisely that fact: his integrity, wisdom and because his views carry so much weight. Hansen makes it clear that we are approaching the precipice:
I just watched "The Greenhouse Conspiracy", the Channel 4 (UK) documentary from 1990. Aside from the amusingly bad graphics and dodgy dress sense, it was remarkable to see how many of today's denialist talking points were floating around then. I compiled a list while watching:
1. The urban heat island effect.
2. Focusing on very short term timescales for both temperature and sea level rise. No consideration of statistical significance.
3. Cherry-picking start and end dates (and remember this was before the 1998 El Nino!). Cherry picking small areas of the world as representative of the whole.
4. Wine was grown in medieval Britain.
5. CO2 levels lag temperature, so temperature causes CO2 rise.
6. Models are bad!!!
7. Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas.
8. CO2 is good for plants, so more is better.
9. Global cooling was predicted in the 1970s, so how can we trust scientists now?
10. Allegations that scientists are promoting global warming so they can get incredibly rich.
11. Allegations of "McCarthyism" against opposing views.
12. The idea that if we don't know everything, we don't know anything.
13. An uncritical acceptance of opposing views (e.g. Lindzen, Michaels, Spencer, Idso).
14. Finally, a laughably cocksure air of certainty.
I see he-who-must-not-be-named (hwmnbn) is spewing out his typical vapid invective on his own sad little thread. To be ignored. Since hwmnbn has no scientific qualifications whatsoever, it takes remarkable hubris for him to think he possess the acumen to be able to separate 'real' scientists from pretenders. I'd hate to see the names of people he considers the real deal. Its a scary thought. Baliunas? Soon? Lindzen? Singer? Balling? Idso? Himself?
To reiterate, the Hansen lecture is outstanding. Hansen's 1981 Science paper is also mwell worth a read. Essentially, Hansen lays it out as clearly as someone can in a little under 18 minutes. Most chilling was the fact that extreme weather events affected a miniscule 0.23% of the globe in the early 1960s; now they affect 50 times as much area, some 10%. As Hansen pointed out, there's little doubt that the global extinction spasm currently underway will be - is being - exacerbated by AGW, particularly since the rate of warming is incredible and other attendant changes (precipitation, drought etc). are occurring over vast spatial scales across the biosphere. The field of climate-change related effects on biodiversity and ecosystem functions is already large and growing. Here we are studying rapid range shifts that are occurring amongst plants and their consumers as a result of recent warming, and we are finding that thermophilic plants arriving from the south are leaving their soil-borne pathogens behind, leading to changes in community assembly patterns. Three weeks ago I presented a lecture at the University of Toronto in Canada on part of my research with invasive species and it is clear that warmer conditions in Canada are enabling alien plants to spread north of where we might expect them to be limited. Ontario was experiencing a record warm winter: conditions in the North Bay area were more akin to those found in the central U.S. over the winter period. Of profound concern is that areas at the southern edge of the boreal forest zone, north of Lake Ontario are going to be hard pressed as warmer conditions force a shift in their biota north. Soils in this region are acid and the forests are dominated by spruce, hemlock and cedar; to the immediate south the soils are lime-based and have a much higher pH. Northward shifts of plants in the eastern deciduous forests will certainly be impeded by the presence of acid soils, so we are talking about a potential ecological 'squeeze' in which communities of plants and animals are hard-pressed to colonize new areas. Colleagues at the U of T are examining this area which is vitally important because of (1) the rate of warming which is quite remarkable and (2) polewards migration is not a simple, linear process. There are kinds of complex impediments that account for the high projected extinction rates.
In any event, Hansen lays it on the line. I praise him and others in the scientific community who have the courage to speak out in the face of a well-funded and organized denial machine that routinely smears them. Hansen speaks for the vast majority of scientists - myself included - who fully realize what is at stake.
it is clear that warmer conditions in Canada are enabling alien plants to spread north of where we might expect them to be limited.
People at our local garden centre in Manitoba (zone 2) consider that it is often worth while trying plants rated as being hardy to zone 4. Some will die, but many will survive. In part, this is because more is known about how to overwinter them, but also the winters are less severe than formerly. There is also concern over the movement of formerly-unknown pests into the area.
Sunspot and others who are obsessed by weather rather than climate might like to know that later this week the temperature is forecast to go 20C warmer than normal. That'll put paid to the outdoor skating rinks.
Welcome back to sanity, Jeff. And I thank and admire you for not taking offense at my comments and even defending them. You are so much better than those guys ... I understand well how hard it is to let go but, as I said, you are powerless to change them.
#73- if the Virginia investigation found Michael Mann et al not guilty on March 2, why is Monckton still crowing about it as "proof of conspiracy"? Is that libel from the famously libel-sensitive Viscount?
[WUWT sycophantic review of Monckton's Schenectady talk](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/10/moncktons-schenectady-showdown/#m…)
and a ["recorded live"](http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/20909681) video from March 6. You'd think that if you are going to make an accusation of guilt based on the fact that someone is being investigated, that you'd bother to check that the accused party has not been found innocent in the meantime.
Still, baseless accusations, distortion of facts, using outdated information, and never ever ever retracting or admitting error is pretty much what I expect from Monckton and his toadying glee club.
> You'd think that if you are going to make an accusation of guilt based on the fact that someone is being investigated, that you'd bother to check that the accused party has not been found innocent in the meantime.
If your purpose is to persuade people to take up pre-canned positions rather than seek truth, it's far more useful to induce your audience to infer guilt from the accusation. You don't have to bother with any of those pesky facts and tedious testing of evidence. And it relies on the vast bulk of your audience not remembering to go back and check the facts when they finally become available.
This also works well bi-weekly hyperbolic touting of a new "final nail in the coffin of AGW" which is almost always touted before the claims can be appropriately tested...and which thus far have never stood up to sustained scrutiny.
In this fashion, you certainly can fool some of the people all of the time. (Especially the ones who want to be fooled by your schtick.)
Thanks ianam. You were right and I finally woke up. I was completely out of my mind in responding to the puerile utter rubbish being spewed out 'over there'. The reason I like to contribute to weblogs like Tim's excellent blog is to interact with rational, intelligent people who may as of yet be undecided on the seriousness of the situation that looms in front of us. Climate change and its attendant effects represent one of the biggest challenges humanity has faced. Its time to move on beyond those anxious to promote a business-as-usual policy because these people are playing roulette with our planet's life support systems for the benefits of short-term gains for the privileged few. We are engaged in the biggest struggle our species may have yet faced, and that is why I find those politically-driven deniers to be such a disgusting lot.
Mate - wasn't just Flannery - all the others were all there too - and face it Flannery wouldn't know about AGW and should bugger off. The fact is that climate change projections for Australia are hopeless - why would you believe any of it? Whether you are rabid greenie, warmist, sceptic or denier. Face it when you're in big drought sequence objectivity declines - it starts to get to everyone even the pros. So what are we left with - no trend in rainfall, warming minima not much in maxima and about half of the official line if you don't weak the data, reducing not increasing evaporation, downward trend in tropical cyclones making landfall. Baa!
The monckton video is worth watching just to see how little the standard monckton talk has changed over the last years. Apart from the pink portcullis which was probably changed after the UK House of Lords "cease and desist" letter. Pink portcullis? Lovely bit of work that. Wish I had one for my house.
Watch for the best (worst?) example of a "Strawman argument" I've ever seen.
It goes a little like this...
- put the IPCC temperature projection onto a chart
- add your own extrapolations, way beyond the IPCC ones
- point out how ridiculous the extrapolations are
- this proves the IPCC are idiots! (well actually proves anyone falling for this is an idiot)
Following on from earlier, Australia's drought/floods, who said what, and what did they mean, does Flannery know what he is talking about?
We have similar issues with "what the experts said" in the UK.
Recent article from Farmer's weekly - as far as I am aware this is not a Peer reviewed journal.
Cue to all those here struggling to defend Flop Flannery: Give up. His alarmist rubbish, inspired by and concocted from published pseudoscientific pap, was persuasive enough to cajole obscenely dumb state governments to build desal plants that will forever stand as pitiful, though hideously expensive, monuments to global warming/climate change/climate disruption malarkey.
You clearly belong on another thread with another D-K acolyte sharing similar views. Let me guess - you also have no background in science and thus have formed your views on the basis of your won political bias. From under what rocks do you guys emerge?
Needless to say, Grima 'Suckass' Wormtongue's reference to Farmer's Weekly's suddenly indispensable folk wisdom is a hot topic at Bishop Dill's and currently with all GWPF stooges. Because obviously a farmer in one specific Southern England location will intuitively understand everything about the British Isles. Or so GSW would have us believe.
Chris O'Neill - there's trend there is it? ROFL !
Mate come on ... it's a series of ENSO and anti-ENSO x IPO - you might have got some SEACI research in there if you'd squeezed harder. If you're going to make an argument at least get over the target - Fig 4 http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs16.pdf but who says in our very short run of climate data that it's a record anyway? http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1848641.htm
But don't forget - it's not just Victoria - Sydney and Brisbane dams were all were supposed to be empty forever more.
The article cited by GSW was, as expected, pure and utter garbage. It wouldn't pass muster at as a primary school essay let alone as 'science'. Predicting extreme weather events that are linked to AGW of course is problematical. What we can expect, though, as has been pointed out numerous times, and which are being borne out across the biosphere, are more extreme weather events: droughts, heat waves, extreme rainfall events. Last year much of western Europe experienced a near record warm and dry spring, followed by the a summer with record rainfall, in turn followed by an autumn with near record warmth and lack of rainfall. All in keeping with model predictions. As James Hansen said in his TED lecture, areas of the globe experiencing extreme meteorological conditions has increased 50 fold since the 1960s. As conditions are forced out of relative long-term stability, a constant prediction in global-change scenarios is to expect surprises. Often very nasty ones. And events such as heat waves in Europe (2003) and Russia (2010) or the prolonged drought in the south-central US, as well as record floods in Pakistan (2010) are all part of the package.
Its hardly surprising that the anti-science brigades the dominate the ranks of the denial community would make a big deal out of a kindergarten-level article in Farmer's Weekly. Talk about grasping at straws.
Wakey wakey MikeH - remove gummy bear from mouth - it has bucketed down since. 2008 report. 2 whopper La Ninas since. And although BoM may have put the worst on record story in that report - they always start the clock at 1900 and conveniently confound the history of the 1985-1902 worst ever Federation drought. The Australian AGW story is a mess of imprecise science and flakes like Flannery haven't helped.
Stewart Franks subscribes to the Bob Carter/John McLean theory that climate change is all down to ENSO. His claims that climate has returned to normal are nonsense. We are getting monsoonal rain in southern Australia while our winter rainfall continues below average.
The last 2 years have set a La Nina inspired rainfall record for Australia! That's normal? ... (snip -ed.)
.. Like most climate change deniers he sees cycles in ENSO like creationists see JC's face in their toast.
I think it is worth noting in that context that last year 2011 was the hottest La Nina year ever recorded as well as the ninth hottest on record with 2010 being the (equal with 2005) hottest year on record according to NASA among others.
RELEASE : 11-014 NASA Research Finds 2010 Tied For Warmest Year On Record
Note that whilst there is the "noise" of El Nino-La Nina variations from year to year the decadal trend "signal" of ever rising global temperatures is very clear. The Earth is heating up.
and then searching for 2010 Hottest year and you'll get the page I was citing as the first entry on the search.
NASA has some good climate and environmental articles there on their website too although I'm not sure how often their climate change evidence page gets updated.
The comments section of Climate Spectator articles have been hijacked by a group of deniers, some of whom like Peter Lang also feature regularly at BNC. I get the impression that Edis has had enough.
>I think it is worth noting in that context that last year 2011 was the hottest La Nina year ever recorded as well as the ninth hottest on record with 2010 being the (equal with 2005) hottest year on record according to NASA among others.
But what you don't get is that Flannery said by 1980 water would never exist again and ner ner ner, look, it's coming out of my tap nothing to worry about here CLIMATE SCAM!!!
Once again, these clowns demonstrate that they're only capable of being sucked in by Bolt's selective quotation. Here is what Flannery actually said:
"We're already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the WINTER rainfall zone across SOUTHERN Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change".
Seems these clowns don't know the difference between winter and annual, and also between the southern winter rainfall zone of Australia and the whole of Australia.
Sydney and Brisbane dams were all were supposed to be empty forever more.
He just can't help being sucked in by Bolt's lies.
>I just watched "The Greenhouse Conspiracy", the Channel 4 (UK) documentary from 1990. Aside from the amusingly bad graphics and dodgy dress sense, it was remarkable to see how many of today's denialist talking points were floating around then.
And they will be the same talking points used in 30 years from now when the average temp is much, much higher. It will be "cycles". It will be "not as warm as the MWP!". It will be "Rain means global warming is a SCAM!".
Nothing will change. It goes without saying that the out-of-context quotes these clowns are mangling (even in their out-of-context form!) originate from a political blog. Go figure.
MikeH - you don't have to be a denier to be sceptical. Of course the Las Ninas are warm - they're on a warmer background. It's just an interesting factoid. In fact back to back Las Ninas are uncommon but not unheard of http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/products/australiasvariableclimate/en…
But given the palaeo-flood histories of much bigger floods than we have hitherto experienced have we seen anything yet? Even in recent history three floods in the Brisbane River in the 1800s are 2-3 metres above 1974 (pre-dam).
Mate - wasn't just Flannery - all the others were all there too - and face it Flannery wouldn't know about AGW and should bugger off.
Really? Question for you "out of ammo" - have you actually read Flannery's book(s) on the topic notably his award winning The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change published in 2005?
How much of Flannery's works have you personally read or have you only heard second hand quotes about these from others?
I have read many of Flannery's books including The Weather Makers and he did come across there as informative and as someone with a good knowledge and understanding of the subject matter. The fact that he has written a book - actually a few books - on the topic seems to strongly contradict your assertion there that he "wouldn't know" about it.
The fact is that climate change projections for Australia are hopeless - why would you believe any of it?
Because such projections are put together by scientists, mostly I presume climatologists, using scientific evidence and techniques and science is the best method we have for understanding reality and developing technology. Because science works in creating computers, mobile phones, telescopes such as the Hubble, has landed humans onthe Moon, modern medicines, and so very much more.
Because these climatologist have spent years of study and passed climatology class exams and published peer-reviewed papers and written PhD's showing their understanding of issues that are complex and involved and often, frankly, over my head as well as most other non-experts. IOW, there is good reason for assuming they do know what they're talking about.
Because these projections are constatly checked with the evidence and reassessed and improved as further data and understanding comes in.
That's why I trust them or at least consider them worth taking seriously.
Whether you are rabid greenie, warmist, sceptic or denier.
Far as I'm aware few environmentalists have ever been diagnosed with rabies and those suffering that almost invariably fatal disease do not live long therefore the chances that a more than minute percentage of "greenies" are rabid is vanishingly small. I find your use of that adjective applied solely to "greenies" interesting and telling of your seeming bias here. Are no deniers presumably metaphorically "rabid" in your eyes?
Face it when you're in big drought sequence objectivity declines - it starts to get to everyone even the pros.
Maybe. In some cases. But does the same not happen in the other direction when there are consecutive years of heavy flooding and is that affecting our biases now?
So what are we left with - no trend in rainfall,
Citation needed. It is not clear to me that that is actually the case.
..warming minima not much in maxima..
I think there's a clarifying word missing there. To what are you referring there? Solar activity? Seasonal temperatures? Diurnal / nocturnal temperatures? Something else again?
..and about half of the official line if you don't weak the data,
Er, "weak" the data? You mean weaken? Work? Tweak? Your evidence supporting your your contention that this has happened being what precisely and from where?
.. reducing not increasing evaporation, downward trend in tropical cyclones making landfall. Baa!
My internet searching can't seem to find very much on ABC or SBS about it or too much elsewhere either (couple of places online had the whole thing but NOT viewable from here in Australia. Dangnabbit! :-( ) but this :
on Youtube is part of that Arctic artists doco. Titled simply 'Art from the Arctic' where a group of artists, educators and well people sailed into the region - Svalbard island mostly - to do some strange but evocative arty things to explore & express their views on Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating as I call it ie. climate change. This show had some interesting and different takes on it.
Indeed. The whole point of the anti-science arguments is that the past two Northern wet seasons supposedly prove Flannery wrong. They do no such thing of course and that is what the arguments were about. But no-one is claiming the data has proven Flannery right either. That is not being argued.
Basic comprehension is obviously not one of out of ammo/shooting blanks/small calibre,large bore/popguns better skills, lets look at what some of the horrible government departments have had to say:
Let's start with a couple of quotes from CSIRO's publication "Climate Change" (2011)
"It is also likely that the most intense rainfall events in most locations will become more extreme, driven by a warmer, wetter atmosphere."(p38)
"There is potential for significant increases in flooding due to higher mean sea level and more intense weather systems. Studies in the Australian region point to a likely increase in the proportion of tropical cyclones in the more intense categories (category 4 or 5)....." (p43)
And what about the Queensland Government "Climate Change in the South East Queensland Region"
"In contrast to the overall rainfall declines, more intense extreme storm events are expected to cause increases in flooding impacts" (p10)
And from the Queensland Government's "Climate Change in Queensland. What the Science is Telling Us" (2010).
"...despite a projected decrease in rainfall across most of Queensland, the projected increase in rainfall intensity could result in more flooding events.' (p30)
And from "NSW Climate Impact Profile:
The impacts of climate change on the biophysical environment of New South Wales" (2010)
"Potential increases in the intensity of flood-producing rainfall are also likely to affect flood behaviour." (p xi)
"In lower portions of coastal floodplains, the combination of rises in sea level and catchment driven flooding is virtually certain to increase flood frequency, height and extent. More broadly, increases in the intensity of flood-producing rainfall are likely to affect flood behaviour." (p34).
And just for a little balance, here's something the IPA said about Flannery: "Although Flannery has avoided directly attributing the recent floods in Australia to climate change, he has said that extreme weather events like the floods are more likely to occur as a result of climate change."
Damn experts, never said anything about flooding, no sir, no they didn't.
Cripes SteveoR - the big appeal to authority doesnât work - what gets funded and good enough for govt work is the meme. Check CSIRO's non-helpful plus or minus in their AGW rainfall predictions - ye gads and not even any IPO representation. It's loose as. Have you looked at the reports yourself?
You can do the max and min temperature spatial Australian plots from BoM yourself. But this site has made a hobby of it http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/
Sorry it should have been "tweak" and you need to roll your own analysis to know. Done that? Get the raw data and find out for yourself. Whether the tweaks are all justified - who knows. A lot of work to really know.
*The science on AGW and rainfall in Australia is totally unconvincing. Decadal variation rules*
Where to begin dismantling this mastication of science and a complete inability to understand the importance of scale? Decadel variation IS the consequence of AGW, given the size of the system that makes it more deterministic, making trends of < 10 years impossible to elucidate. As Hansen explained in his TED lecture, extreme weather-related events - tornadoes, heat waves, floods, droughts are increasing in frequency across the globe, but this is only discernable at longer time scales. Its also accepted that warming will result in more unpredictable events based on the interplay between a range of abiotic and biotic responses. One of the rules of global change scenarios is to expect surprises. Trends will show - as they are - that nasty surprises are increasing in frequency over time but are difficult to predict at short-time scales because of these are stochastic.
"Trends will show - as they are - that nasty surprises are increasing in frequency over time but are difficult to predict at short-time scales because of these are stochastic." or not
do you find averaging a bunch of GCM runs to a mean as "scientific" - ye gods
"Its also accepted that warming will result in more unpredictable events based on the interplay between a range of abiotic and biotic responses. " - no it's ASSERTED
"Decadal variation is the consequence of AGW" says Jeff - what rot - the PDO records in coral cores and tree rings go for at least 400 years.
Well Chris - Flannery also raved about the MDB, Sydney and Brisbane and alas we seem to have a surfeit of water. Fail.
Get a new climate commissioner - someone who actually knows about climate.
Decadal variation is swamping any AGW signal and we can't even well model it.
Trouble is, Ammo-less, that you seem to think that discernible natural variation in climate cycles is generated at time scales that collate with a very small segment of a human life-span. What is rot is to think that climate control is a stochastic system, at least at the scales you are suggesting. How can you prove that decadel variation in temperature and rainfall is not a fingerprint associated with AGW? And that this variation leads to trends that are discernible only when measured in the appropriate time-frame? Your arguments assume linearity in climate regulation. Moroever, 400 years for a largely determinsitic system is nothing; it would take some massive forcing to shift a system out of the stasis in the scales we are talking about.
I'd like to ask you: do you think the planet suurface is warming? Do you think there ia a profound anthropogenic signal in the warming? How much time do you think is necessary to elucidate a significant trend, either locally or over a larger geogrpahical scale? How might this warming affect precipitation regimes? When does decadel variation become more than natural?
Who's talking temperature ? stop verballing me. But OK global temperature is increasing at low end of AGW projections consistent with some anthropogenic influence. Profound - yawn.
Did I say the climate is stochastic - our knowledge of PDO and La Nina clumping behaviour would suggest anything but. There are periods of intensity. There are 10000 year PDO palaeo records.
"How might this warming affect precipitation regimes" give me a break - the IPCC is uncertain on ENSO under AGW and silent on decadal. Wait for AR5 I guess.
*But OK global temperature is increasing at low end of AGW projections consistent with some anthropogenic influence*
Incorrect: its increasing at the expected mid-level range, as first projected by Hansen in 1988. Moreover, try telling people in the Arctic and those at other places where local temepratures have increased dramatically (> 3C) since the 1980s. And given the time lags involved, we won't see the real global effects borne out for at least another 10-20 years. By then the procrastinating will have led us down a dead end road with no exit. Given the potentially serious repercussions of doing nothing, and in light of humanity's utter dependence on the natural economy via a range of ecosystem services, it doe not seem prudent to continue a blind experiment on our ecological life support systems, does it? Those advocating a wait-and-see approach are, IMHO, gambling with the livs and welfare of future generations. But then again, ammo-less, I guess you dont'think that we shoudl insure our homes and valuables, do you?
Moreover, we know that AGW is increasing the magnitude of extreme events, if Hansen's data are correct. Just because we don't know where the next weather-related calamit will be doesn't mean that we should do nothing, does it? As I said, one of the predictions of tinkering with natural systems is to expect surprises. Nasty ones. To approach and then pass tipping points. Moreoverm we don't as of yet rerally understand the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, not which species play the most critical roles in maintaining systemic functions. Similarly, our understanding of how much redundancy is built into the system is also poor. Does that mean we should continue to plough, pave, dam, dredge, eutrophy, slash-and-burn, overharvest natural systems etc. until we better understand the consequences? By the time the effects kick in, we will be in shit up to our necks and unable to get out of it.
The point is that your 'we don't know much' arguments are redundant.
Oh what pure indulgence Jeff - we don't know very much about extreme events - for example WMO put the tropical cyclone/hurricane science as highly contested. LOcally we haven't even seen a Mahina again http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahina_Cyclone_of_1899
Recent temperature trends are under Hansen C. It's not going expected to plan and everyone knows it.
And so Australia has a stupid hide the pain by 90% being a winner (how does that work again), force big industry off-shore, no mandate, might as well piss in the ocean for an effect, carbon tax just as the carbon price shits itself. Great move. I'm sure our valiant effort will motivate everyone else on the planet (or probably not).
What utter hysteria about "life support" systems. It's simply indulgent greenie wank. You've never had better times. Do something serious like invest in soil conservation, biosecurity, new genetics, build a dam, study climate variability mechanisms.
And now it's a tipping point again, it's worse than we thought, just you wait the trend will become obvious in ANOTHER 10-20 years. So every 10 years it will be another 10-20 years. Good lord.
If you want good national parks and healthy waterways - you need a good economy to pay for them. Anything else is pure indulgence.
If you're seriously interested in biodiversity - get a gun now and go to northern Australia and start blazing away at ferals like cats and foxes that are causing a major mammal extinction on our watch. Don't sit around talking shit about ecosystem services. What a ridiculous concept anyway.
And isn't it funny that the "ecosystem services" have evolved in an environment that rages between massive droughts and massive floods and we're all hot and bothered that it won't cope? Oh diddums. How did the ecosystems get on without our vital assistance during the "at least" 10,000 years of ENSO and PDO shifts herniating the climate every 10-20 years.
The Australian climate change story is a limp lettuce.
> The point is that your 'we don't know much' arguments are redundant.
It's stronger than that.
"We don't know much" leads straight to "We must stop fucking with it. NOW!"
Funny how those arguing uncertainty is too large **never** draw that conclusion. Why, it's almost like they're trying to justify a particular policy position rather than follow the data where it leads...
*If you're seriously interested in biodiversity - get a gun now and go to northern Australia and start blazing away at ferals like cats and foxes that are causing a major mammal extinction on our watch*
O of A: your first point is appropriate. No doubt invasive species are major threat to biodiversity. Your second is pure garbage. Just because you don't understand the concept is no reason for anyone to consider it bunk. In fact, the field of valuing the conditions that emerge from natural systems is in itself taking on a whole new life in the field of ecological economics. The Constanza et al. (1997) paper in Nature estimated that these supporting services - pest control, pollination, nutrient cycling, climate control, renewal of soil fertility, waste disposal, flood control etc - are worth tens of trillions of dollars to the global economy, and certainly more than the combined GDP of every nation on Earth. More importantly, the conditions emerging from natural systems through the interplay of trillions of interactions involving billions of organisms and millions of species permits humans to exist and persist (Levin, 1999). Our civilization is exists because natural conditions permit it to be so. So take your big foot out of your mouth for a minute and try to envisage human evolution and survival were there to be no nitrogen fixing bacteria, detritivores in the soil, insects to pollinate the plants, etc.
As for your follow-up gibberish: ecosystems themselves evolved over billions of years in complex adaptive systems that bridge ecological communities, ecosystems, and biomes. The reason for biodiversity and natural systems to sustain themselves through transient (or not) extreme abiotic conditions is through natural selection to local conditions and because functional redundancy was 'inbuilt' into the system. Redundancy involved multiple species fulfilling similar ecological roles. Some species are better adapted to changing conditions, whereas others are better competitors. I have no clue what you are going on about when you ask 'how ecosystems got on without our vital assistance'. The answer is just fine: no anthropogenic assistance was necessary. The real question that is still unknown is how we can survive in a world of mass extinctions caused by a huge array of threats caused by mankind. Certainly we are pushing natural systems towards a point beyond which they will be unable to sustain life in a manner that we know. And before you spew lout some more crapola about hum,an ingenuity., how our species is exempt from the laws of nature etc. etc. etc. don't bother. The scientific community by and large knows full well that humans and nature are on a collision course. Let me guess - you aren't a scientist. Surprise! surprise! How could I know that? Its simple. Because all of your posts thus reveal a complete inability to understand basic concepts in Earth science. Your latest musings on ecology are an abomination. My advice is to stick at whatever it is you do as a day job. That isn't in a science department at a university, for sure.
You need to do some field work Jeff - what academic wankery. No serious ecologist believes this shit. Despite your bedwetting Australian flora and fauna survive massive extremes and swings of climate of climate at interannual, decadal and centennial scales. And now the biota is now back after the big wet. A big reset for the bush. Funny that those nitrogen fixing bacteria, detritivores and pollinators are back doing their thing.
And here we have yet again - the spectre of extinctions from hysterical wrong species projection models. More crap. Waiting for the apocalypse. So how much actual work have you done on saving biodiversity Jeff - got your hands dirty or been spending your time reading one of those predictably drivelly Nature overview papers.
What an abomination is post-modernist wankers doing virtual ecology instead of science. Meanwhile some of us are doing real science and trying to make a practical difference.
Perhaps if ecosystem services are worth so much perhaps someone or maybe the Gaia bank can send me a cheque?
If knowledge truly is a weapon then he's well named. What an egregious, fatuous yobbo.
We could always save time and assign him to his natural home with the Scandinavian Tyre-Swing Troop right know, you know. If he persists in loitering it's only where he'll end up anyway...
People generally give back what they get, Sunshine. You barge in and act the galactic buffoon, you're only going to get exactly what you deserve, little man.
But, wow, how I forget myself; I'm speaking to a Genius; you're out there doing 'real science' as a bona-fide super-smart brainy I-used-the-word-'detritivore' manly no-ivory-tower-for-me super-duper real-world science guy and all, right?
Personally, I suspect that when I've been out 'in the field' all day I've subsequently found smarter things than you in my socks.
But do go on, amaze us with your actual qualifications and all round brilliance. Judging by your own gish-gallop recycling of 'only fit for the worms' mouthbreather talking-points above I'm still going with 'finger painting', but do feel free to prove me wrong.
Remember, if you make it up - many of you do (yep, we've seen many a self-aggrandizing boorish blowhard before) - you'll only get found out, and even though your advanced Dunning-Kruger won't allow you to actually acknowledge it's happening, well all get to laugh and point as your pants tangle around your ankles...
Last time I heard the phrase "Real Science" around here it was David Duff claiming that biology wasn't a science and the there was a massive international conspiracy in which scientists tilted sea level measuring equipment. Ammo is in good company.
I can't imagine what "practical difference" Ammo believes he is out there making since there is apparently nothing to worry about. No shifting agricultural zones, no early springs, no species loss due to the non-existent warming...
Just out of curiosity Ammo, what "real science" are you practising?
Yes, that very well describes your `#`180 ... with fallacies of No True Scotsman, affirmation of the consequent, and false dichotomy added to that ad hominem stew. If you ever wanted people here to take you seriously and not consider you a troll, you totally blew it with that very revealing rant that displays your narrow, cramped worldview. You're like one of those crotchety old farts who berates college students, telling them how, when he was a youngun, he went out and got a real job.
I can't imagine what "practical difference" Ammo believes he is out there making since there is apparently nothing to worry about.
Let's be intellectually honest. Feral cats and foxes do real harm (no snark). I believe that OOA is doing useful work. But unlike him, I don't believe that it's the only sort of useful work or that feral cats and foxes are the only sort of threat to biodiversity.
a bona-fide super-smart brainy I-used-the-word-'detritivore'
Jeff used the word. OOA just repeated his terms in his anti-intellectual anti-science rant. How hypocritical that he followed up that ad hominem dismissal of science with a complaint about abuse and no science.
And what I repeated the word detritivore. Oh gee willikers - I'm so sorry. I'll ask permission next time.
It's not an anti-science rant at all -you lot have made few cites or science points and basically are uncritical overcommitted ideologues. Big on appeals to authority and vacuous post-modernist data-free nonsense. I'm out of ammo defending the indefensible establishment position.
You could have picked on many science points and discussed but you're so tightly handing on to your pinko positions that you're unable to actually think.
If you think it's a gish gallop you're just low bandwidth and are upset there are so many science papers that invalidate your ill-considered philosophical position. Cognitive dissonance hurts doesn't it.
All mouth; no trousers. Established in record time. 'Shooting Blanks' might make an even more apt moniker. Next.
Ianam - I should have realised the word would be borrowed, along with everything else!
On the topic of 'post-modernist wankers', I thoroughly enjoyed this:
The reality is that we frequently have direct intervention explicitly designed to break the link between knowledge and policy; we have seen just how easy it is for power to trump and corrupt knowledge, on a global scale. In fact, organised climate change denialists, and the political figures that support them, have done more to damage the ideals of the enlightenment than any so-called postmodern theorist.
>I'm out of ammo defending the indefensible establishment position.
Cigars all round. Inform the World President and leader of our faith, Reverend Gore, that another true, honest freedom fighter of real science has been defeated by the militant foot soldiers of Greenpeace.
Seriously though, Jeff Harvey gave you one thousand words of science. You concluded it was "shit" and "academic wankery". No citations were given, to the deep shock of us all.
>you're so tightly handing on to your pinko positions
He's onto us!
>there are so many science papers that invalidate your ill-considered philosophical position.
But I thought "science papers" were "drivelly" and "academic wank" from people who need to do "field work".
Still no science. You're not very good are ya's. One time you could come over and be sent packing with scintillating witty repartee and on point science rebuttals. But now it's just a coven meeting for warlocks.
Yes SteveoR - I have read Flannery's Weather Makers - my copy has a drill bit hole in it. Along with many denier texts with multiple holes. He got off lightly.
You could have picked on many science points and discussed but you're so tightly handing(sic) on to your pinko positions that you're unable to actually think.
Ah - this sounds very similar to another recent visitor who believes in thinking for yourself, which would be quite the achievement for the moron in question. So, with that in mind and having skimmed a couple of Wiki articles, I'm now off to harangue some Japanese government agency about Fukushima.
I'll bet they're sick to death of self-interested advice from pinko nuclear careerists more eager to enrich themselves from the grants trough on the gravy train with their post-modernist, post-normal, post-graduate, post-colonial, post-early-for-xmas 'science'.
"two key government documents have been dug up â which tell us that Arctic sea ice extent was much lower prior to 1979.
In 1990, the IPCC published the graph below based on NOAA data. It shows us that Arctic ice extent in 1974 was almost two million km^2 less than 1979" http://www.real-science.com/arctic-fraud-worse
Thanks for the link. That was seriously funny. You deniers may know squat about science but you do know how to tell the joke. Very convincing too - I thought I was at [Climate Depot](http://climatedepot.com/). Actually I notice Climate Depot has a link to Real-Science - maybe it was a co-production.
[This comment](http://www.real-science.com/arctic-fraud-worse) is too good not to re-post. 'Karen' should first and foremost rememeber that "Steven Goddard" is as unreliable as John O'Sullivan, which is about as unreliable as it can possibly get.
If the ice was at 2007 levels back in the 60â²s then how did we miss the Northeast and Northwest Passages being open? Especially since we were trying to gauge the feasibility of shipping oil across the arctic.
Oh, maybe it *wasnât* at those levels:
On Sept 2, 1969, the S.S.Manhattan turrned her huge armored bow toward Baffin Island and started encountering her first ice floes at approx. 14 feet thick. The Manhattan, cracking off half-acre floes, sailed on without a quiver. As the blocks grew larger, more power was required and the Manhattan broke though ice floes as thick as 60 feet. When in the McClure strait howver, ice 15 to 20 high and sometimes as deep as 100 feet proved too much for the Manhattan. Ploughing into thick ice, backing out and going forward again and making very little headway and requiring icebreakers to relieve the pressure on the side of the ship caused a change in direction on Sept. 11th and the Manhattan changed course to the Prince of Wales straight, the more normal route for the Passage. On Sept. 14, the prow of the Manhattan cracked the last floe at the southern end of Prince of Wales Strait and ahead lay 1,000 miles of open water. Upon reching Prudhoe Bay, the Manhattan took on a ceremonial barrel of oil.
Ice 35+ meters thick. They just donât make ice like they used to â at least not in the arctic. By the way, if the Manhattan made the same voyage today (or any year since 2007) they wouldnât even go through Prince of Wales Strait, thereâs open water *north* of the strait in most years now â not ice 35 meters thick.
Flannery also raved about the MDB, Sydney and Brisbane
Flannery wasn't talking about average rainfall for these places. He was talking about the increased risk of reservoirs running dry because of increased variation in rainfall which is indeed what happened: Wivenhoe dam got down to 15%. One more summer the way things had been going for 6 summers and Brisbane was stuffed.
On the subject of ecosystem services, which he so casually belittled, I types the words 'bidoversity' and 'ecosystem services' into the biggest scientific search engine, Thompson's ISI Web of Science. There are 2,428 articles published in the peer-reviewed literature linking these terms, and these studies have been cited 44,170 times, including more than 11,000 last year alone. Forty one of these papers are published in Science, 17 in Nature, and 32 in the top Ecology journal, Ecology Letters.
What does our new resident moron call this - oh yes, 'scientific wankery'. I'd like him to go through the 2428 studies in the scientific literature and please point out where the 'wankery' can be found. If truth be told, research on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and in turn bridging functioning with the supply of critical ecosystem services, currently lies at the heart of system biology and ecology. Out of ammo is in truh out of brains - in true, tried and trusted fashion of the ignoranti he camouflages his lack of knowledge of the field in sematics and smears. No substnace necessary: if he doens't usnderstand it, the least he can do is belittle it. There is an infamous clown on another thread who is a maste rof the technique. You guys must have been joined at birth.
As for extinction models, which are you referring to? Storks 12 mosels (1997) or Lomborg's kindergarten-level take on the subject? The truth is that the most reliable models are those projecting decaying exponential rates based on habitat loss. Originally formulated by Rober t MaCarthur and Edward O. Wilson, and later updated by John Terborgh and Michael Soule, they have actually proven to be highly accurate is estimating regional extinctions of habitat specialists on the basis of area of habitat loss. IN North America they actually underestimate avina extinctions, whereas in Peurto Rico and coastal Brazil their accuracy is uncanny. In fact they are often too conservative because they ignore other anthropogenic stressors, such as inavsive species, overharvesting or pollution that also have negative impacts on biodiversity. The additional problem is that 95 or more percent of species have never been formally identified. Thus many species have almost certainly been lost without being classified. Given that species in tropical regions are often locally rare and have distributons some 70% smaller than their temperate counterparts, there's little doubt that the loss of 50% of the world's wet tropical forests has resulted in the loss of huge numebrs of species and populations. Like other loony deniers (I have met my share) ammoless argues that without 100% incontrovertibel evidennce then the problem does not exist. This trick has been routinely used by deniers to downplay a range of other environmental problems: acid rain, pesticide toxicity and also climate change.
Finally, O of A shows his hand with his 'pinko' comment. So here we have another far right libertarian who cannot hide his politial bias which accounts for his 'scientific' position. Its amazing how many of those deniers claiming to have profound interest in science ultimately cough out their guts and let everyone know that their views are far to the right. No need - it appears that this expalins about 99% of them. The truth is that they routinely deride the science that they hate.
I wasn't sure before now, but "Karen's" latest proves she really is Sunspot! No one at Deltoid, on any thread however inane, has mastered the art of the pie-in-your-own-face quite like the resident clowntroll.
I normally wouldn't bother with a Goddard article, but as a fan of Sunspots art, a little deconstruction shows the true genius of the self-administered cream pie:
1. A one-off -900,000 sq km anomaly in 1974 cannot mask the trend over the period of observation, any more than a one-off -1.1 million sq km in 1995 does.
2. The two graphs that Goddard would like us to mentally stitch together both measure anomalies, but from different baselines. To the extent that you can splice them together, that 1974 anomaly translates to approximately -500,000 sq km on the 1979-2008 baseline graph. So a notably deep anomaly in 1974 is about the same as a notably high anomaly now. That's pretty bad for anyone trying to argue the ice is fine, mmm, you betcha. It's...why it's like someone claiming that a abnormally warm year in, say, 1998 being the same temperature as an abnormaly cold one now means that we are not warming overall. But who'd be stupid enough to try that on?
3. Goddard then says Arctic ice is 10% higher in 1974 because the CIA say that global snow and ice was. Anyone who doesn't know the difference between Arctic sea ice and global snow and ice should just shut their fuckin' yap and try to learn from those who do.
4. But even if Goddard's leap was legit, it still leaves the problem that he blunders when he stitches that 10% onto 1974. The CIA report was written in 1974, so its hardly likely to refer to earlier that same year as "in the early 1970's" - clearly, even if it related to Arctic ice (and it doesn't) it would have to be referring to some earlier high point, most likely no later than the zero anomaly in 1973. But since the IPCC FAR Goddard draws his bollocks from refers to 1972-1975 as a period of relatively low Arctic Ice cover, it is probably earlier (and higher) than that mark.
So what can we conclude from the actual material Goddard uses? The worst state of 1974 roughly equals the best state now. The early 1970's were quite a bit higher than that. Arctic Ice recovering? Only on the other side of the mirror...
As a final dose of self-inflicted farcical goodness, that CIA report, which deals with reports on the possibility of global cooling and concludes - in the very section Goddard quotes! - "Most meteorologists argued that they could not find any justification for those prections."
So much for the "In the 1970s, scientists predicted a new ice age" meme!
Really, you can't make up clowntrolling genius like this...
More pseduo-science tugging from Jeff - you know you're right among it when they start using new fashion words like libertarian - WTF - all part of the meaningless greenie speak. And when you don't really have a clue or anything to offer wave your arms with vacuous comments about ecosystem services. Blugh !
I typed dickhead into Google and got over 7 million hits and over 27 million for wanker.
So Jeff more importantly what is the current rate of Australian mammal and avian extinctions. What are the drivers. And what are you doing about it.
Hmm. Ooa is starting to sound VERY familiar. IP check?
new fashion words like libertarian
Not new, not fashion, and why are you debating this?
all part of the meaningless greenie speak
Only a libertarian would say something as dense as this. Could you try to not contradict yourself within the same sentence, precious? People might actually start to pretend to take you seriously if you can only manage that.
I can't say I've noticed too many 'libertarians' around these parts for a few seasons now. Not your actual swivel-eyed, name your kids 'Rand' type of barking but relatively honest loonies.
Of course, the recent Lindzen and Heartland debacles really has brought the fellow-travelling corporate whores and apologists out of the woodwork. And those poor diddums also tend to get offended when they're not taken seriously.
Just like ... oh.
I typed dickhead into Google and got over 7 million hits and over 27 million for wanker.
The dreck just keep getting dreckier.
This one will doubtlessly turn out to be known to us already, but who cares? It's just the sound of the last noxious jets escaping from a punctured carcass...
I'm not so sure about the familiarity of out of allknownuniverses.
It might be a newborn reincarnation, not fully briefed on the task yet. I thought the all too familiar looneytunes representatives at least know who Jeff Harvey is.
I typed dickhead into Google and got over 7 million hits and over 27 million for wanker.
That would be the ultimate vanity Google.
"Egosurfing (usually referred to as Googling yourself and sometimes called vanity searching, egosearching, egogoogling, autogoogling, self-googling, master-googling, google-bating)"
"Especially importantly, satellite
observations have been used to map sea-ice extent
routinely since the early 1970s. The American Navy Joint
Ice Center has produced weekly charts which have been
digitised by NOAA. These data are summarized in Figure
7.20 which is based on analyses carried out on a 1° latitude
x 2.5° longitude grid. Sea-ice is defined to be present when
its concentration exceeds 10% (Ropelewski, 1983). Since
about 1976 the areal extent of sea-ice in the Northern
Hemisphere has varied about a constant climatological
level but in 1972-1975 sea-ice extent was significantly less."
I guess that this must be another mistake to put into the long line of IPCC mistake's, it didn't fit the narrative so they changed it in later reports.
ps, I do find your abstractions and confabulations most amusing.
Despite your bedwetting Australian flora and fauna survive massive extremes and swings of climate of climate at interannual, decadal and centennial scales. And now the biota is now back after the big wet. A big reset for the bush. Funny that those nitrogen fixing bacteria, detritivores and pollinators are back doing their thing.
So Australia has the reputation for the highest rate of species loss of any "developed" nation for no reason? So your "the biota is back" claptrap is based on verifiable data comparing diversity and abundance now with times past? So there's no such thing as rabbit plagues, house mouse plagues or feral animals, or weed intensities increasing sharply?
And here we have yet again - the spectre of extinctions from hysterical wrong species projection models.
Yeah like the thousands of threatened species already listed here aren't enough to be concerned about. Or did you only just land here? Or is it wilful blindness? Or deliberate trolling? Hard to decide.
What an abomination is post-modernist wankers doing virtual ecology instead of science. Meanwhile some of us are doing real science and trying to make a practical difference.
As if. You're a fucking troll, as confirmed by...
Perhaps if ecosystem services are worth so much perhaps someone or maybe the Gaia bank can send me a cheque?
Me ME ME!!! That about sums up your entire contribution to the world.
Ah, 'Karen': Always a big fan of the 'What's a moider*?' ploy.
Sunspot is, ahem, 'another' Denier who deploys invective remarkably similar to your own, coincidentally cannot grasp the use of possessive apostrophe's, and also indulges in remarkable feats of idiosyncratic punctuation [gap] !
To be fair, I'm perfectly willing to believe these are all merely symptoms of the single personality disorder with which you are both afflicted.
'Karen', speaking of confabulation, two words for you 'extent' and 'volume': two very different things deniers love to conflate. The point at issue is the disappearance of the mass of ice at the poles - not how thinly spread whatever remains is. Sea ice extent refers to an area of water with at least 15% ice, i.e. 5/6ths open water.
And until the launch of the Seasat and Nimbus 7 satellites in 1978, monitoring relied on US Navy sampling. It's only with the launch of the GRACE satellites that truly meaningful measurements also able to determine mass that a clearer picture of what is happening has become available.
As with the Central England Temperature graph also used in early IPCC publications, the alacrity with which deniers jump on any old data thinking it means whatever they like to imagine it means without any caveats is a pretty tired routine. Goddard is yet again trying to sell a crock version of reality to the gullible. And you bought it.
As the voyages of the SS Manhattan excerpted previously show, there used to be a lot of thick, solid ice blocking the arctic ocean 40 years ago. Now there isn't. Get over it.
That's right Rick, crank theories about eugenics will help you capture the minds of the public. It's worked so well for you conspiracy theorists in the past.
@Karen:
>I suppose neither of you thought to have look at the graph depicting the sea ice extent in the IPCC WG 1 report ?
But since I referred to the exact paragraph you quote - "But since the IPCC...refers to 1972-1975 as a period of relatively low Arctic Ice cover, it is probably earlier (and higher) than that mark" - I suppose you didn't actually bother to read my post before replying to it. Or just didn['t understand it?
Either way, your "supposes" look to be about as accurate as Goddard's... What you think about him conflating Arctic Sea Ice with global ice and snow coverage? Pretty much a beginner mistake. What's your take on the fact that the exceptionally low area is now equal to our 12 month maximum? That means were headed downwards overall, right?
I mean, you linked to that piece of arrant stupidity, so let's hear what you have to say about it.
Or is it just another dud attempt at a driveby Molotov cocktail? I heard the glass break, but no boom...:-(
Even better - this is an adaptation strategy, not a mitigation one. And which "side" favours adaptation? Why, the "skeptics" of course! Put it off until it can't be denied anymore, then adapt.
So, Rick, it is *you* that favours this strategy you find so comically offensive.
Eugenics dusted off in the service of the Green movement
Yes Bradford, once us Greenz attain world domination one of the priorities is to make sure people like you are prevented from spawning any more generations of stupid. You and your ilk aren't entirely without purpose in Our Evil Dominating World Plan though - we intend to make the most of your otherwise irritating habit of pointing us to sources of Stupid.
I just saw a denier over at Boing Boing post this link. The link is the usual baffle-gab invoking PDO and citing the Oregon Petition and what ever to explain Alaska's temperature rise. The interesting thing is that it is on a NOAA web site belonging to the Alaska office of NOAA.
Anyone know what gives?
What comes across most powerfully to me in the [Guardian's "Green Eugenics" story](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/mar/14/human-engineerin…) isn't the Bradfordesque fearmongering, but how little effect bio-engineering humans would actually have in terms of solving the problem.
It seems to me it addresses only the most superficial of aspects, and has nothing to offer regarding ocean acidification, flooding and drought, poleward habitat migration, or species extinction. Whether that's a flaw with the article and not of the paper itself I can't say. But if the article is a fair summary, it seems to me the philosophers involved ought to be thinking at a much deeper level. Like for survivability splicing our DNA with cockroaches or bacteria.
Of course some might say that approach has already been tried on the evidence provided by the Bradfords and Sunspots and Jonases, and look how that worked out.
That link looks like a subterranean page put on the website by the author. It does not use the standard NOAA master page decoration, which makes me wonder just how official it is. You might want to notify the webmaster about it.
Interestingly, that PO Box is already registered to Olaris and Associates, an accounting firm specialising in tax accounting. Since most "charitable" foundations perform their best work in minimising the tax liabilities of their donors, one can hardly be shocked that their correspondence goes to their accountants as a point-of-contact.
In other news-that-isn't-news, the contact phone number on the Bunkum Foundation website belongs to Chris Dawson, managing director of Desaln8, and simulataneously was a Victorian Senate candidate for...drumroll...[The Climate Sceptics Party](http://climate-sceptics.com.au/the_team.html). Which seems to be a remarkable bit of unwitting cognative dissonance, when you think about it...
In checking out the previous I did stumble over [this hilarious submission](http://climate-sceptics.com.au/_files/Carbon tax submission TCS11.pdf) to the Senate on carbon pricing, at which I literally laughed out loud. Enough predictable "references" to fill everybodies Denial Bingo card.
The little network of confirmation bias is so cute!
Section 4: "The No Regrets Strategy" is my favourite piece of unintential comedy. Clue: "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" is the term preferred by people who blush when the term "Cold Fusion" comes up in coversation.
Great interview with Penn State's Michael Mann outlining the sordid tactics used by the extremely well-funded and organized denial lobby to smear scientists and downplay the effects of climate change.
Don't forget to read Monckton's entirely bonkers CV, an extrodinary list of boasting and history revisionism.
In brighter news, his claim to have won a Nobel Peace Prize has finally been removed from his profile at the SPPI website, while his CV claims it was all just a "joke".
Here was the hilarious joke:
>His contribution to the IPCCâs Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 â the correction of a table inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise â earned him the status of Nobel Peace Laureate. His Nobel prize pin, made of gold recovered from a physics experiment, was presented to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York, USA.
Forgive me for missing the cutting satire in that paragraph.
Monckton also claims to have found a constitutional lawyer who backs up his claims that's he's a member of the HoL in that weirdly defensive CV. If that's the case I think the only option is to sue the the house for defaming his good name with horrid lies about his non-membership, and demand they repeal that nasty letter that denies what is rightfully his.
Among the many nuggets of comedy gold to be found within his CV is the following:
> An expert on the internet has said that the cost of giving the gibberish pages a ranking above the page with the genuine video was probably not less than $250,000.
That has to be one of the most unintentionally funny things I've read in a long time. "An expert on the internet"!
Since this is an open thread, I won't feel too guilty in this shameless self promotion..We just started a new project focused on providing the average citizen with topical information on environmental issues, and encouraging them to learn, discuss and participate - [Be Green](http://begreen.botw.org) We welcome any point of view and encourage any and all feedback. Keep on fighting the good fight.
I'd long been suggesting that Monckton's behaviour regarding the marketting of the Eternity puzzle fits the definition of fraud: it seems that either that or someone else's comments about it encouraged some revisionism. For the perverse it might be amusing to follow the Wikipedia history of the changing...
The shame for Monckton though is that it doesn't change history itself. If someone bought the Eternity puzzle on the basis of Monckton selling his house to fund the prize, they would still appear to have a case for seeking damages as a consequence of fraud. If there were a class action on this basis, it could be quite inconvenient for Monckton and Ertl Toys - to say nothing about his reputation amongst the Denialati as an 'honest broker'.
This pompous dweller in a happy land of magical ponies being taken seriously at all says everything you need to know about 'skepticism', including the notable dearth of convincing authorities to put forward.
Of course, their misplaced faith being so palpably ridiculous only makes them more attached to it!
It's well worth reading his original 'offending' 2009 article - particularly comparing its actual contents to the complaint Monckton made - and the long Observer interview with the Legend-in-in-his-own-Mind that's referred to, too. But, as I'm only too aware, 'too may links and it sinks'!
I had thought the saga of climate science critic Edward Wegman and the various allegations of misconduct in his recent work could not possibly get any more bizarre, especially in the wake of manifestly contradictory findings in two recently concluded investigations at George Mason University.
But in a shocking new development, it turns out that two problematic overview articles by Wegman and his protege and congressional report co-author Yasmin Said in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Computational Statistics (WIREs CS), have been completely revised. Those revisions saw the removal or rewriting of massive swathes of copy-and-paste scholarship, as well as correction of many errors identified by myself and others. In each case, the comprehensive revisions came âat the request of the Editors-in-Chief and the Publisherâ, following complaints to Wiley alleging wholesale plagiarism. But Wegman and Said also happen to be two of the three chief editors of WIREs CompStat, thus raising compelling concerns of conflict of interest, to say the least.
In fact, it is very clear that Wileyâs own process for handling misconduct cases was egregiously abused in favour of a face-saving âredoâ manoeuvre. And this latest episode raises disturbing new questions about the role of the third WIREs CS editor-in-chief (and âhockey stickâ congressional report co-author) David Scott, and indeed Wiley management itself, in enabling the serial misconduct of Wegman and Said.
DC, you may want to contact the people behind retractionwatch about this one. They've recently taken up the issue of "mega-corrections". This is definitely a new one to add to their list!
Congratulations to Deep Climate and John Mashey for their tireless work in pursuing Wegman's distortion, deception and obstrufication if there is such a word. As Adelady commented on Deep Climate 'Iâm amazed that anyone can put actual words together to comment on this'.
On the topic of disinformers, columnist Mike Steketee has a good article in [today's Oz](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/scientists-who-trade-in-do…) looking at the affiliations of Carter and Singer. Nothing new here but it is good to see this information making it into the public domain. If only the Murdoch Press had more columnists of the calibre of Mr Steketee.
However, Carter's biography on his website says: "He receives no research funding from special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments." Isn't the Heartland Institute a special interest organisation? "Of course not," says Carter. "They are a think tank."
Great interview with Penn State's Michael Mann outlining the sordid tactics used by the extremely well-funded and organized denial lobby to smear scientists and downplay the effects of climate change.
You beat me to it, Jeff. I was going to post that here.
Oh well, I'll have to be content with posting a link to this article on the Drum :
by Sara Phillips instead. There's an interactive sea level rise for Australia graphic thingummy at the end of that which may be of interest to folks here too.
Its kind of weird that gormless stupid wan*** (GSW) is arguing on another notorious thread that my discussion of >2,000 peer-reviewed studies and >11,000 citations in the empirical literature linking the effects of AGW on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is 'indulgent greenie wank'. In other words, as in keeping with nincompoops who are miles out of their depth in a field of science, *by all means do not engage in a scientific discussion of a field in which you know absolutely nothing*. Instead, mere ridicule and hyperbole are enough to de-ligitimize a field, no matter how empirically based it is. GSW and Out of Ammo consistently engage in this kind of bait and switching tactics. Neither can tell a dragonfly from a monitor lizard. Both sit in ivory towers wallowing in their own profound ignorance. Why they think their comments 'add to a discussion' on a site like Deltoid is anyone's guess.
Yes SteveoR - I have read Flannery's Weather Makers - my copy has a drill bit hole in it. Along with many denier texts with multiple holes. He got off lightly.
Um..what the!? You drill holes through and vandalise books after (during?) your reading of them? Really?
Thanks for the (eventual) straight answer I guess. But that leaves me puzzled because you earlier claimed in comment 141 (March 11th, 2012 7:33 AM) that :
"..face it Flannery wouldn't know about AGW and should bugger off."
So Flannery has written a book showing he *does* know something abut AGW and yet you obviously disagree and think Flannery is wrong because, well, why?
What specifically has Flannery got wrong in his book that shows he knows (in your view) too little about the topic to be taken seriously and listened to?
What makes you think after reading Flannery's book that he doesn't know about Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating?
I do believe Luke's comment is in English. It certainly has English words in it, he just appears to have plonked them down in some random order. Anyone care? Didn't think so...
What I am actually genuinely curious about is the other Tim - our Tim if you will. Tim Lambert, of Deltoid fame, where are you at? I'm almost certain I didn't imagine him...
Steveo - yawn - what Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating - "rapid"? - we're trundling along way at the bottom of the range.
Translated version: "we're trundling along way at the bottom of the range" of the predicted warming by AGW, so far in a low activity solar cycle also aided additionally by the warmest recorded El Niño cycle.
So, like ... duh ... obviously there will never be any future La Niña events or active solar cycles - especially not acting in concert - otherwise my admittedly fairly puny, futile attempt at an argument would likely fall apart into smithereens.
Prediction: deniers will be frantically making hay before the sun shines.
Now don't "denier" verbal me mate. You're the one that's rapidly and I mean rapidly overheating.
It's really that not rapid is it. It's the sort of not really as rapid as rapid would be. Sort of Luke warmish rapid sort of rapid. Mind you though it will pick up soon. We're all sure of that aren't we? Just as sure as we are of where the trend is now. Ahem.
Ah! Its sociological is it. Nothing to do with, Climategate, Fakegate, the "Travesty" of a lack of warming this century, Polar bears seem to be OK now, and the frogs, and the Coral reefs are recovering, and the Himalayas aren't doing too bad, and the fact that the Greenland ice sheet is likely to be around for a few thousand years more - Despite what the 'concensus' has told us in the past.
It is good to know that the Australian never lets us down. In response to Mike Steketee's article (#252), [William Kininmonth and Des Moore](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/climate-debate-must-be-unf…) have the first reply. These are very honoured fellows, gracing the Australian's letters page on such a regular basis.
Ah, I had a feeling 'Luke' was one of those devastating witticisms that we are periodically forced to withstand.
And how would you say the crysophere was going, vis-Ã -vis ranges and trundling? I mean, seriously, along with all the mouthbreathing Denialati you're going to play at 'angels dancing on the heads of pins' with short-term temp trends, rather than attend to the actual real-world impacts, eh?
Does everyone notice how one of our resident deniers (GSW) goes back to the Jonas thread her with his brainless musings? He thinks he is going to a 'higher intellectual authority.' (that's a laugh). His latest one is an attempt to belittle thousands of peer-reviewed studies on the Web of Science - the world's most respected scientific search image - that examine the effects between climate warming, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. The joke? Apparently to belittle this research on the basis that it does not draw causation.
The point I am making is that the causation has been established beyond any reasonable doubt. Pretty well every one of these studies accepts that the warning is anthropogenic. Science has moved on. Well on, for the vast majority of the scientific community. This little salient fact bypasses the likes of GSW and the little army of idiots.
Earlier above, and in spite of a point I already vanquished on the you-know-who thread, GSW downplays the effects of short-term warming on the demographics of polar bear populations. This is a clear example of burying one's head in the sand. I debunked this garbage elsewhere, and GSW dredges it up again. NO attempt is made by him or his idol to challenge a thing I said (because they cannot, so by not replying they attempt to think this legitimizes their arguments). No wonder only two people go there now.
Luminous beauty @ 273: thanks. So the take-home messages are:
1. The 1940s are now slightly warmer due to a correction for the fact that most sea surface temperatures around then were taken using buckets lowered over the side of ships, leading to a cooling bias. If I understand correctly, the data were adjusted based on correlations between these measurements and measurements from buoys.
2. The 2000s are also slightly warmer* due to the addition of extra stations in Russia and the Arctic. These regions have been warming more rapidly, so when they were omitted there was a cooling bias.
3. The overall picture has not changed much: a ~0.75°C increase since 1900. I believe this is approximately consistent with other records.
*I predict much oh-so-cynical eye-rolling from the usual suspects.
Lang is a hard core climate change denier who regularly refers to the "Alarmistâs CAGW scam" and describes renewables advocates including the editor of Climate Spectator as being from the "far left".
He does not make those arguments at BNC because of the comments policy (outlined by Christine Brook on the thread).
Christine expressed the following view
"Barry made it clear that, if CC/AGW deniers were willing to desist from espousing their views on BNC, their technical expertise on any source of energy, would be welcome"
I have a problem with that as someone who has had to regularly respond to Lang's vitriol directed at climate scientists, climate science and renewable advocates at The Conversation and Climate Spectator.
At the very least I believe it is dishonest to not make it clear at BNC where Lang is coming from. Lang leverages the authority that being a high profile poster at BNC gives him to attack climate science.
Note that there are also some over the top comments at the thread from Matthew Wright which I disagree with.
And yes - I know that this comment will result in an attack of the trolls - but I suggest you read some of Lang's comments which I have posted on the thread before passing judgment.
When the evidence changes I change my mind. When the evidence changes WUWT commenters go nuts:
>The answer is a question: Do you get more money from an increasing average global temperature or from a global temperature that stays the same?
>These guys are obviously frauds but what gets me is that they arenât even particularly good frauds. So why does anyone believe their crap?
>There are some of us âhard coreâ skeptics that question if the Earth has warmed at all over the last century. Looking at the magnitude of the one-way âcorrectionsâ, can you blame us?
>Surely fra*d charges have to be in the works by now. A new twist on âhide the declineâ or same ol same ol for âclimate scienceâ which btw is NOT science.
>This is just plain out wrong, we have OBJECTIVE SATELLITE MEASUREMENTS SINCE 1979 that have an accuracy of 99.99%, donât see no reason to change it, but organizations like NOAA, NASA, and CRU think itâs ok to make up data sand use it to prove their anti-capatialist, global warming alarmist agenda
>The Climatologists are in it to move the world into a âSocialistâ one world totalitarian government. CAGW is just the lever they are using to do it and lying, dishonest activities are perfectly acceptable if used in the furtherance of the âCAUSEâ We have had ample evidence that they lie and cheat, Gleick being just the latest.
>Its no longer a joke the fellow or anybody involved with thiss must be held to account by the American and Australian Justice Systems
'anti-capatialist' is priceless! If that's being opposed to very large and accomodating consumer items then it could catch on!
I never fail to be amazed by just how mind-numbingly, mouthbreathing, scarred-knuckle Stupid you can be and still stand upright, yet alone make little stabs at a keyboard...
The indignant responses to Singer's tactical repositioning as a 'lukewarmer' are another amazing example; the idiots are both empowered and entitled - in their quasi-post-modern inversiverse their pure and honest ignorance outshines decadent expertise and learning any day!
re: 278
"This is just plain out wrong, we have OBJECTIVE SATELLITE MEASUREMENTS SINCE 1979 that have an accuracy of 99.99%"
Whoever @ WUWT said that ought to read Fake science... pp.100-101 on satellites. In almost every issue, Heartland E&CN had a satellite section. saying:
âEach month, Earth Track updates the global averaged satellite measurements of the Earthâs temperature. These numbers are important because they are realânot projections, forecasts, or guesses. Global satellite measurements are made from a series of orbiting platforms that sense the average temperature in various atmospheric layers. Here, we present the lowest level, which climate models say should be warming. The satellite
measurements are considered accurate to within 0.01°C.â
These were the UAH numbers of course, in which the successive version of the algorithms changed the numbers far more than that.
By any standards, March 2012 is going to go down in the history books as an incredibly exceptional month. There has been a prolonged heat wave over the entire mid-west that is, by any standards, incredible and unprecedented. More than 2,200 warm temperature records have been set so far this month in the United States and more will tumble this week. The ratio of warm-cold weather records in the United States since January 1st is a whopping 14:1. Even weathermen - normally sceptics - are taking note.
Along with the revised HAD-CRU temperature records, its been a devastating week for the deniers. The evidence is swamping them, and they are now resorting to desperate smears and political attacks in an feeble attmept to dig themselves out of their own ideological hole.
I hope that a time comes when such blatant, anti-factual propaganda is seen for what it is, and that NewsCorp and its staff are brought to task for their contribution to greater damage to the planet than we would otherwise have had.
I'm sure that our grandchildren and their grandchildren will regard denial of human-caused warming as treason. I hope that they presecute accordingly.
I see our resident non-scientist is still sniping away at me in his own padded cell er... thread. He's down to one regular ally now - GSW. Sad.
He's really bitter now to learn that thousands of scientists working on climate-related effects on biodiversity take AGW as a 'given'. If one were to go through these studies one by one, they'd quickly realize that the authors are investigating the potential consequences on AGW, and not its causes. Why is that? Because as far as the vast majority of scientists are concerned (me included), science has moved on. There is no controversy whatsoever. Humans are the primary culprit. Just as we are the pirmary culprit for a range of processes affecting ecological communities and ecosystems across the biosphere. Only in the mindset of a very small subset of the scientific community is there any controversy whatsoever with respect to the causes of the current warming. And watch this space - as the evidence grows, and their numbers shrink even further, then they'll turn increasingly to the 'adaptation' canard.
I challenged the moron-who-must-not-be-named to discuss and debate ecophysiological aspects in space and time as this relates to declining biodiversity, with emphasis on polar bear demographics. Response: silence. Then GSW, in keeping with his own lack of even the basics, repeats the mantra, 'polar bears are doing fine'. But of course they aren't doing fine at all. The dynamics of polar ice loss will without any doubt decimate populations of this apex predator. GSW and you-know-you write as if the Arctic is in stasis, or else that changes in ice cover are either slow or non-existant. I could say that much of the Amazon's biota are doing 'just fine', whilst ignoring the fact that the forests are disappearing. Thus far about 15% of these forests have been felled with about another 20% affected by fire and high-grade logging with its attendant 'collatoral' damage. We have no way of knowing now or down the road if 15% is significant habitat destruction for many species (it almost certainly is for species reliant on intact forests) and at what point further extinction thresholds will be reached. Once 50% of the forests are gone, then this will certainly be catastrophic for many more taxa. The same goes for Arctic ice. If no more ice was to be lost over the coming decades, then polar bears will survive. But if, as projected, much of the ice goes, and eventually summers become ice-free, then this will condemn this species to extincton in the wild. No ifs or buts. This is what the deniers conveniently leave out. The dynamics. Its as if today the future stops. Its no small wonder that its virtually impossible to find an environemntal scientist or ecologist who writes the kind of drivel our resident deniers do here. They just cannot think in terms of dynamics or interactions. For them the world is static.
The final point is that I know I am on the right track when I am verbally abused by the likes of a few climate change deniers on Deltoid who have little or no pedigree in any relevant scientific field. I'd be much more concerned if qualified researchers were weighing in here, telling me that my arguments are without merit. Instead, I have yet to encounter one critic on Deltoid in all the years I have written in who possesses qualifications in climate science or Earth science. Instead they are all D-K intellectual wannabes.
The Swede is chock-full of sweeping but meaningless rhetorical statements devoid of any substance. There's never any science cite in sight.
But that doesn't matter one bit to his troupe of groupies because as is plain when they venture out of the cellar, they don't comprehend it anyway. As is the way of all adoring cretins and personality cults throughout the ages, they just like the cut of his jib.
Any chance you could confine the bruised ego love-in to another thread? I don't think there is much traction for your Special Pleading here. Honestly, WGAF?
Guys, it's best to leave the Scandinavian Troll Collective alone in their cave to lick each other's arse by themselves.
They don't do science. They don't reference it in the context of constructing a coherent and defensible case, and quite frankly they don't care about it. I think that we've all poked at the tar baby enough to prove that point.
They're only here to cause distraction and obfuscation. Best stop giving them a platform for attention, and hope that Tim Lambert tires of their drivel enough that he closed the thread completely.
For anyone who both remembers and cares, Alex Harvey made an appearance on the RC "Misrepresentation From Lindzen" [thread](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/03/misrepresentation…) more-or-less touting Lindzen & Choi 2011, much like he did somewhere around the Nov 2011 timeframe here on Deltoid.
There are a few interesting responses from Gavin (e.g. one along the lines of their method is useless if the feedback factor is positive, so any conclusions that feedback factors are negative are fallacious). Given that it doesn't appear that any of the key climate scientists could be bothered to respond to it (because it's in a low impact journal and it seems likely they think it's not even worth the effort), and that Alex somehow still believes this allows it to be credible (or at least portrayed as such), some of the commenters are now digging into it a bit more.
Given the lunacy going on over at the 'other' thread, which I wish to ignore (check out the latest drivel), I will make a single rebuttal and leave it it that. For good. The rest of the post is bile. Unsubstantiated nonsense. My advice to Tim is to shut down the Jonas thread once and for all and to put our self-righteous, self-educated 'God' out of his misery. Let him throw his ideas into the scientific arena where they will be chewed up and spat out.
This comment is made: "Arctic ice has been varying all the time. Has been both more and less. As have been temperatures. Only during this interglacial."
Sure it has. But it hasn't changed at the rate it is doing now. Not even close. The loss of Arctic ice in the space of less than a century is unprecedented. Seems to me most of the deniers - not scientists mind you which is hardly surprising - think 20 years is a long time, and 80 years is metaphorically geological. Most importantly, biotic shifts are occurring that are probably unique over many millennia. Is warming the major threat to polar bears? Yes. There is little doubt about this. Moreover, I never said all of the warming was due to human activities (who is creating straw-men now?) but that much of it is. Certainly enough to be driving the rapid biotic shifts we are witnessing.
Now, unlike our sad friend, I have science to do. You know - the kind done by professional scientists. He does not qualify. Unless he can tell me of his publication list on the Web of Science. But we know where that will lead.
"But it[Arctic ice] hasn't changed at the rate it is doing now"
How do you know? we've only been measuring it for 30yrs! and there are maritime reports claiming "unprecedented" Arctic variations before that. So, how can you be certain about what you say. I know the answer to that already, you just feel it's true, no supporting evidence required. So much for doing "Science" jeff.
GSW, you could, of course, check the scientific literature. We have been measuring arctic sea ice for much more than 30 years. You could start here and follow up on the references: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AnGla..46..428M
That paper alone already extends the record to almost 60 years.
As Marco says, there's a lot of information (National Snow and Ice Data Center founded 1957 for instance, integrating many local records) to be found out there, already known of course to scientists who take studying the subject seriously.
The problem is that there are many like Grima who aren't interested in the science, but are eager to be spoonfed political conspiracy garbage by the anti-science think tanks and their PR creatures, who have no interest whatsoever in presenting a rational picture of reality, particularly if it conflicts with their effort to discredit science and scientists. Hence the head full of similar tripe (cf #265) Grima sustains.
*WARNING* GSW's link takes you to the asylum: the Jonas thread. Nobody in his right mind wants to go there. Its a veritable padded cell. I wouldn't now touch that clown with a ten meter pole. Until I see their arguments published in the emprical literature, then they are to be avoided.
GSWs analogy is that any aspect of global change should be considered unworthy if we do not have historical records that are completely accurate. So here is an analogy. The populations of many Paleractic and Nearctic birds are in decline, in some cases in freefall. In Europe, tree sparrows, song thrushes, red-backed shrikes, pied flycatchers, corn buntings, yellowhammers et al. have declined markedly in recent decades. In North America, the same is true for Eastern Towhees, Bachman's Sparrows, Henslow's Sparrows, Loggerhead Shrikes, Olive-Sided Flycatchers, Barn Owls, Upland Plovers and many others. A number of factors are involved: habitat loss, compeition for nest sites with agressive invasive species like the starling, boord parasitism from cowbirds, and climate change. However, according to the logic GSW spells out here, we don't really have accurate demographic data for many of these species beyond 50-100 years, then it all may be natural and we ought to do nothing.
So goes his argument over the extent and loss of Arctic ice, which is projected to be gobe during summer periods within half a century or even less. Again, like most deniers, GSW wants a wait and see'approach whilst Rome burns. He appear to think that 30 years is a long time and that 100 years (the maximum time estimated between the commencement of the ice loss and its estimated summer disappearance) is a veritable geological time frame. And Polar Bear? Harp Seals? No worry. Highly k-selected species like apex predators will adapt in the space of 2 generations. Forget genetic bottlenecks, the very low chance of adaptive random mutation, and the normal time scales involved, these quadrupeds will simply move to terrestrial landscapes. They must have done it before, eh GSW? At least in your lexicon they did. And, if we are to believe you, maybe multiple times in the space of a century or two.
Earlier you wrote that coral reefs and amphibians are doing fine. B*. They most certainly are not. Here is a very recent (2011) study in Nature: "Bleak future for amphibians".
Next thing you know, GSW will run back in tears to his idol begging for help. And I will be smeared again. Fair enough. As I said earlier, if I was being attacked by a deluge of fellow scientists on Deltoid and elsewhere for my opinions on the causes and consequences of climate change, I would do a major rethink. But what is the status of those attacking me? Are they Professors at prestigious universities. NO. Are they fellow scientists working in relevant fields of endeavor? NO. Do they possess any relevant expertise in the field of climate or Earth Science. NO. At least not formally. Have they published anything in the empirical literature? NO, at least nothing they would admit to. That means almost certainly NOT. One of them is a genius in his own mind. But that doesn't count. Letters and titles after your name do. And these guys don't have any.
Next thing you know, they'll be claiming that every one of the thousands of scientists who are writing about the effects of AGW on biodiversity aren't 'real scientists' because they accept the broad consensus on the subject. If these guys had their way, there would hardly be a working scientist in any Earth or Life Sciences Department, because all those who accept the IPCC conclusions would be booted out. As I said, they are a joke.
I am too busy today to engage in any more of the comedic rants going on next door. As I said, the fact that a few no-names attack me relentlessly on a blog site means nix to me. Nada. If one of them had any pedigree in science, then I'd sit up and listen. But this sad little bunch are anonymous.
Frank: great post. Goddard clearly has NO grasp of even basic math. Quite embarrassing, really. But then again, hardly surprising.
For GSW (and while you are at it, please provide me with your 'proof' that coral reefs, polar bears and amphibians are 'doing fine'. Methinks you either made this up on the spot or else were told this by the resident loony).
Sigh. I guess none of these people are 'real scientists' either? FYI: check out the one who is begging his readers to believe him, who is making all the insults, false innuendoes, whilst claining that somehow the vast majority of contributors to Deltoid actually support him. One guess, people. He's nuts. Hence why I won't go there again.
GSW, care to tell me why I should take notice of Jonas' comments on Arctic sea ice? Who is "Jonas" that his comments should bear any weight similar to that of actual working scientists studying the subject on a daily basis?
BTW, these are rhetorical questions, I already know your answer: you believe Jonas should be listened to, because he has an opinion that fits your delusion-du-jour. Whether it is well-informed or not, fits the facts or not, matters not to you, as it is all about the conclusion that can be drawn from his opinion: "nothing to see here, just move on".
GSW, referring to that thread is verboten. You're just doing it to bait people, because you're a piece of denialist scum feces who should be banished to that thread along with your other sockpuppets.
I think I am getting inocculated against stupidity, because I am not even mildly disappointed that GSW does not give a substantial response. He's just hiding behind Jonas, the serial obfuscator.
I'm not sure if that's a good development, as it may mean getting indifferent when my own students don't know what they're talking about, or when nonsense is published in the scientific literature.
Um, could we get the Scandinavian Dunning-Krugerite League, and all that pertains to them, back in the specially-designed encosure, please?
I really find it hard to imagine anything more inconsequential than their opinion on any matter. They're a reliable indicator for where The Stupid lies in a debate, sure, but scarcely worth exposing oneself to in any detail...
>Mr Pearson, a retired New South Wales public servant, said his headware was a sartorial riposte to journalist Laurie Oakes for describing anti carbon tax protesters as "wing nuts."
>He said he'd gone to Bunnings, bought the biggest wing nut he could find, enlarged images of it on a photocopier, and made it into a hat.
Speaking as a South Australian, I'd just like to say .....
Oh, look. The grapes have been picked and this year's vintage from the premier wine state will be up for tasting pretty soon. And there's a terrific show on at the National Wine Centre beside the Botanic Gardens.
Otherwise I'd have to hang my head in shame. (At least he wasn't born here.)
> How is Tony going to demonise the Greens now that the whole world knows they're not a bunch of lentil eating flatulators bent on winding civilisation back to the days when we all lived in bark huts and ate bowls of bugs and twigs for breakfast? How will the Boltbrechston Hivemind portray them as enemies of the state when we now know every second person in the Greens party is not just an agent of the state, but a totally freaking awesome super agent with nano-missiles embedded under their fingernails and scramjet nozzles where the rest of us have a standard issue anal orifice[?]
I see that GSW and his idol still cannot substantiate their claim that 'polar bears, coral reefs and frogs are doing fine'. Just another example of their so-called 'scientific' discourse. The truth is quite different from that they make up on the spot.
Now, unlike the Scandinavian trolls (led by the self-professed God of Knowledge) and their single foreign worshipper, I have REAL science to do. This is what must really gall them - me being a real scientist and all, doing all the things a scientist does, and they, stuck in one tiny innocuous thread in the blogosphere, where their rants reach the very few. It must hurt, given the amount of time they spend here. So all that's left is more insults, smears, silly denigrating remarks that I have become used to receiving from anti-environmentalists over the years.
The thing is that honest and esteemed scientists - like Michael Mann, James Hansen, Paul Ehrlich, and even Edward O. Wilson - realize that in stepping into the public arena they were going to take hits from loonies on the far end of the political right. I have since I did so more than ten years ago. To reiterate what I said yesterday, the fact that I have raised the ire of the nutters here says that I must be doing something right. Note that the most strident deniers are generally those who are intellectual wannabes, and who are not practicing scientists. The other thread has proven that in spades.
"polar bears, coral reefs and frogs are doing fine"
Whats wrong with that? all these have been simplistically misatributed to CAGW at one time or another. Gore and his PBs, bleaching events and coral recovery have likely always occured, and the 80% decline in frog populations was due to a virus, not CAGW as you lot have unashamedly peddled.
Looking back, I mentioned the Himalayas and Greenland in the comment to Scribe, Not You, how rude! The fact you don't mention them now is some acknowledgement you don't think they are problem. Progress!
As for your work today, Good Luck with the Spells and incantations.
>Whats wrong with that? all these have been simplistically misatributed to CAGW at one time or another[citation needed].
>Whats wrong with that? all these have been simplistically misatributed to CAGW at one time or another[citation needed]. Gore and his PBs, bleaching events and coral recovery have likely always occured[citation needed], and the 80% decline in frog populations was due to a virus, not CAGW as you lot have unashamedly peddled[citation needed].
"80% decline in frog populations was due to a virus"
Citations needed, GSW, not information gleaned off the top of your own head. And now you are claiming that frogs aren't doing fine at all, just that in your opinion AGW plays only a small role in the global declines. So, in the end, you shoot yourself in the foot. No wonder you go crying back to wonder boy. If this is the level of your debating skills, then its no small wonder you need help from 'above'.
Besides, the various factors involved in the global amphibian declines are almost certainly not mutually exclusive but are synergized. In other words, different stressors work in concert - the organisms become more susceptible to viral infections when abiotic conditions - the amount of exposure to uv radition, climate change etc. challenge them physiologically. So to apportion 80% of the decline to a simple causative factor is wrong.
But why tell you this? You've already dug yourself a hole to deep to get out from.
I thought frogs were your area of expertise, never heard of the Ranavirus? or chytrid fungus? There's been a world-wide epidemic. I know you don't read the "Primary" climate science literature but I thought you may do slightly better in your own field!
And Yes, none of these potential Catastrophes are down to a single cause, it's a complex mix. The simplistic "The World's going to hell in a hand basket because of C02" is just downright wrong - No matter how ideologically you would like it to be so.
Signs are frog populations are recovering, good news I'm sure you will agree, Co2 levels still rising though, go figure.
You happy to agree the scares over the Himalayas and the 10's of metres of sea-level rise this century due to Greenland Ice sheet melt were somewhat over-stated (twas ever so)? - you seem to be ignoring this.
>I thought frogs were your area of expertise, never heard of the Ranavirus? or chytrid fungus?[citation needed] There's been a world-wide epidemic. [citation needed] I know you don't read the "Primary" climate science literature [citation needed] but I thought you may do slightly better in your own field!
>And Yes, none of these potential Catastrophes are down to a single cause, it's a complex mix. The simplistic "The World's going to hell in a hand basket because of C02" [citation needed] is just downright wrong [citation needed] - No matter how ideologically you would like it to be so. [citation needed]
>Signs are frog populations are recovering [citation needed], good news I'm sure you will agree, Co2 levels still rising though, go figure.
>You happy to agree the scares over the Himalayas and the 10's of metres of sea-level rise this century [citation needed] due to Greenland Ice sheet melt were somewhat over-stated [citation needed] (twas ever so)? - you seem to be ignoring this.
Grima Suckas the question is, why on Earth do you imagine that your inane, startlingly uninformed, klutz-brained opinions are of interest to anyone on a science blog?
Are you really that starved of attention trhat derision is good enough?
GSW, sure I have heard of the viral pathogens, and I never said they didn't play a major role in the global decline of frogs and other amphibians. Also, its a bit rich for you and your idol to repeatedly call me a liar when I never claimed that climate change was the major factor in these declines. But it is a major factor. And no, as the Nature article I cited yesterday shows, a large number of amphibian species and populations continue to decline. Most species are not receovering, because they face a number of environmental threats of which climate change is decidedly in the mix. Where is your list of citations reporting large-scale recoveries? These organisms have a semi-permerable mebrane and are therefore very susceptible to rapid changes in the environment - chemical, physical, biotic and abiotic. Throwing your hads in the air and leaving warming out of the scenario is plainly stupid. It is a factor that exacerbates the effects of other stressors, and will clearly become more important as biotic zones shift polewards.
I also never claimed C02 and its attendant climate change is the only - or even the most important - process with respect to human simplification of the biosphere. But it is certainly a major threat to biodiversity. Just because you and few other non-scientific right wingers here think otherwise does not make it so.
While you are at it, you might as well tell your sidekick over at his own thread to shut up. I don't go there anymore. It appears that the only people who read his guff are you, Olaus and a few other contrarians from Sweden.
You have to laugh when deniers like GSW point to the most extreme claims (divorced of context, of course) and decide that because the claims are wrong there is nothing to worry about.
>Where is your list of citations reporting large-scale recoveries?
GSW's thinking is:
1. Al Gore claims frog populations are falling because of global warming
2. Global warming is a hoax, therefore:
3. frog populations are increasing
Climate change is certainly an important factor, along with others described here. Teasing apart the causes is difficult, if not impossible to do independently. But more extreme conditions, such as droughts, heat waves, cloud cover, etc. will certainly impact amphibian populations. These organisms are the metaphorical miner's canaries: excellent indicators of profound changes in the environment mediated by human actions.
...and to top if off is the heatwave across the midwestern USA that is now reaching the east. Its unbelieveable by any stretch of the imagination. Some areas are breaking their old high records by as many as 15-20 degrees F - and Chicago is only one day shy of breaking its April record for days in that month over 80 F!!!
During the past few weeks, 3550 warm weather records have been broken against only 18 cold weather records. This is certainly a sign of things to come.
It is a shame Richard Bacon didn't do a bit more preparation. He might have picked Delingpole up on the no warming since 1998, more polar bears than 50 years ago (when they were being hunted to near extinction) and other nonesense. Even so, Delingpole does just come across as the preposterous and angry conspiracy theorist he is.
Hi Jeff, There was a regional record here for the 2011-2012 winter. Beat the previous average set in 1931-1932 by more than a degree F. The average was also 7 degrees higher than normal winter temps. We've been hitting over 70 degrees every day this week in rural NE Pennsylvania.
Pellston, Michigan in the Northern Lower Peninsula is called "Michigan's Icebox", since it frequently records the coldest temperatures in the state, and in the entire nation. But the past five days, Pellston has set five consecutive records for hottest March day. Yesterday's 85° reading broke the previous record for the date (53° in 2007) by a ridiculous 32°, and was an absurd 48°F above average.
"âMany cities across Western Oregon and Southwest Washington are setting all-time cold and snowfall records for this late in the season. Since Tuesday night, the Willamette Valley has been blanketed with anywhere from 2â³ to 9â³ of snow from Vancouver, WA. south to Eugene, Oregon."
The point that you seem to be willfully missing Grima is that these extreme and record weather events (and the record snowfall story is already covered in MikeH's link well enough without any further input from Watts' ignorati) are following a pattern as predicted by AGW.
Your alternative 'it's all natural' assertion is powerless, whereas AGW theory tells us such events will increase in frequency as planetary warming continues with hot weather events outnumbering cold weather events by [approx ten to one.](http://www.wunderground.com/climate/extremes.asp)
Watts is full of you-know-what. But we all know that. Check the ratio of warm-cold weather records in the US. More than 3500 of the former against 18 of the latter. And warm records are not only being broken, but as MikeH said they are being smashed to pieces. Like it or not, these conditions are well outside of any normal variance. By any stretch of the imagination what has transpired over much of the US and southern Canada is incredible.
Trust the deniers to grasp at their ever dwindling straw supply and to cite a few cold weather examples, as if there is a balance. There isn't. Like the heat wave that hammered Russia in 2010, we are seeing a broader pattern of exceptional conditions occurring over more of the globe that are probably unprecedented in a long, long time. And its almsot certain to get worse.
GSW and Watts miss the fact that the small number of cold weather records are linked to the large number of warm weather records. A high school level of understanding of synpoptic scale weather processes allows one to recognise that the warm weather has been driven by an unusual jetstream pattern, which basically consists of a cut-ff low forming a giant eddy above the Western US. This is responsible for the extreme temperatures across the east and for drawing in cold weather to the west.
In other words these cold weather records are indicative of a continental-scale exceptional weather event. It is pitiful to watch denialists trying to imply that cold weather records in some way balance the warm weather records elsewhere.
I thought this comment worth importing from RC where DanH is attempting the same BS
DanH says: "Yes, many of us here in Michigan are enjoying these four sigma above normal days â it is a real rare event for us to be this warm this early. On the flip side, my dad in Arizona is two sigma below normal.â
to which t-p-hamilton responds:
4 sigma 2 x 10^-8
2 sigma 5 x 10^-3
Not even close to the same. The number of record highs is increasing, the number of record lows is decreasing. The odds of that being just due to chance, and not a shift in the distribution, are google sigma.
GWB's Nemesis, here is a new paper for your perusal.
Environmental Research Letters Volume 7 Number 1 Create an alert RSS this journal
N Pederson et al 2012 Environ. Res. Lett. 7 014034 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/1/014034
A long-term perspective on a modern drought in the American Southeast.
abstract
"The depth of the 2006â9 drought in the humid, southeastern US left several metropolitan areas with only a 60â120 day water supply. To put the region's recent drought variability in a long-term perspective, a dense and diverse tree-ring networkâincluding the first records throughout the ApalachicolaâChattahoocheeâFlint river basinâis used to reconstruct drought from 1665 to 2010 CE. The network accounts for up to 58.1% of the annual variance in warm-season drought during the 20th century and captures wet eras during the middle to late 20th century. The reconstruction shows that the recent droughts are not unprecedented over the last 346 years. Indeed, droughts of extended duration occurred more frequently between 1696 and 1820. Our results indicate that the era in which local and state water supply decisions were developed and the period of instrumental data upon which it is based are amongst the wettest since at least 1665. Given continued growth and subsequent industrial, agricultural and metropolitan demand throughout the southeast, insights from paleohydroclimate records suggest that the threat of water-related conflict in the region has potential to grow more intense in the decades to come."
Sunsp.... er Karen, writes, "CO2 is rising and global temperatures appear to be on the decline, quite the contrary to the doom mongers predictions".
This is kindergarten-level science. To be ignored. It assumes that at very short time scales the relationship between atmsopheric C02 and temperature must increase linearly. But of course this ignores short term perterbations that can transiently mask the longer term effects. Its akin to saying that one week in one year is warmer in March than in May, hence there is no relationship between month and temperature.
Come on Spotty, you can do better than this. Its clear you've never set foot near a science class or lab in your life. Take your D- shinanigans elsewhere.
What a completely shameless liar that man (Delingpole) is.
Once again, some consensus are more equal than others in denier la-la land.
It's quite plain to hear, listening to the pompous little git, how easily Paul Nurse 'intellectually raped' him. Mind you Homer Simpson could likely intellectually gang-bang 'Dellers' too.
Delingpole acutally claims that there is a concensus among paleoclimatologists that it was warmer during medieval times than it is now. (Around 1:22)
Whilst also insisting science doesn't work by consensus! It would be fab to see Delingpole up against someone who knows their stuff. He got off really lightly when he came up against Paul Nurse.
Karen, thanks - that's interesting. First, I am really pleased that you now accept the veracity of dendrochronology as a technique - that is a big step forward as it means that you can no longer argue against the hockey-stick. Second, the paper indicates that the climate has been much drier even without warming (note that this work is about rainfall deficit not temperature). That suggests that the threats to SE USA from the combination of a return to drier conditions and increased temperatures from AGW are even more serious.
It is an impressive feat to shoot yourself in both feet with a single post, but then it is not the first time you have done so.
Glad to see the crazies are having fun in their little asylum. Stu, for heaven's sake let them wallow in their pit of ignorance. Its an incestuous thread: the three stooges bandying around drivel that no one else reads. Two of them (Olaus and GSW) veritably worship the third (Jonas). That's it. End of story. The scientific community pays them no attention. Not a single person with any scientific credibility will go there. What galls them is that scientists like Mann, Hansen et al. are listened to. They get a forum. They speak at international scientific conferences and prestigious venues like the TED lecture series. Heck, I have been invited to the Ecological Society of America venue in Portland, Oregon to speak in a session there in August. I recently gave an invited lecture at the University of Toronto. Don't hold your breath waiting for the three stooges to be invited anywhere soon. The only invite they'll get is to a local watering hole. There is justice is science after all.
It follows deductively from your own observation, "CO2 is rising", via basic physics.
Also try to the same with Sth America, China, Australia, New Zealand and Russia, it will be difficult.
Incoherent non sequitur.
global temperatures appear to be on the decline
Only to someone stunningly blind, stupid, and dishonest. After Mike H's post, a human being would hide forever in shame, but Karenspot, being a mere fecal stain, is unfazed.
It gets funnier. First, several of us counter Kar-spot's nonsense and he/she/it replies as if their C02-temperature argument had withstood scrutiny. It doesn't.
Then we have GSW on another thread claiming that he and his idol have 'done' me (heaven forbid what that means) when of course they've done nothing of the sort. GSW wrote in here claiming off the top of his head that 'frogs, coral reefs and Polar Bears are doing fine'. Of course this is nonsense. I counter it with empirical studies, then he changes his argument by saying that global amphibian declines are due primarily to a virus. But just a few days earlier he said these organisms were doing fine. Then when I argue that there are many causes for the global decline in amphibian numbers, he says that I'd blamed it primarily on AGW (which I never did; all I said was that it is an important factor amongst others). After this, nothing. Nothing on coral reefs or polar bears, and an admission by him that amphibians are actually not doing well at all. Now GSW thinks he is some kind of big guy because his posts are being pasted on Real Climate. He must think he's just published an article in Nature or Science. He runs off to his idol saying, "Look what I did! Aren't I special?!!!". And then expects a pat on the head. Its pathetic. And also sad.
I am used to this kind of argument from the anti-environmental fraternity. They ALL do it. Make unsubstantiated comments off the tops of their heads, then, when their arguments are vanquished retreat claiming some kind of intellectual victory. Note that in 7 months since Jonas entered Deltoid, there have been no more than half a dozen people who have written to support his arguments. At the same time, 30 or more think he's a loon. People like him claim to speak for science when science has already spoken, and it is not in support of their views. Otherwise, they would be publishing their ideas on the pages of the world's best scientific journals, and not in one little innocuous corner of the blogosphere. They'd be invited speakers at major conferences, and would be regular contributors to media reports. Note that the names of the most prominent climate warming deniers haven't changed in about 20 years. A few new ones have come along, but the denial industry still predominantly relies on the same old guys that it did in the early 90s to spread their gospel of doubt. Standing behind these deniers are a veritable army of D-K acolytes like the few who venture into Deltoid with their 5 cents worth of wisdom. These people are clearly ideologically driven because, when repeatedly asked, they never tell us what special institute of learning they gleaned their self-professed wisdom from. They consistently dodge this relevant little question. Instead, they routinely dismiss the qualifications of people who have worked in the field for more than 20 or 30 years as if they, somehow, possess the skills that are able to separate 'good science' from 'bad science', and, along with it, 'good [or real] scientists' from phonies.
Certainly I expect the usual barrage of 'Jeffie' posts on the other thread from the "Deltoid-3" along with the usual denigrating remarks and smears. But it comes with the territory. I have yet to be attacked over the past 10 years since I ventured into the public arena to discuss contemporary environmental problems by a single scientist with relevant expertise. I've been attacked by scribes and think tanks, as well as by laymen like those few on Deltoid, but I have received enormous support from scientists wherever I have spoken around the world. The only reason I persist here and elsewhere is to explain to people not familiar with the insides of academic establishments in the elusive search for the 'truth' that the vast majority of the scientific community are in general agreement over the causes of climate change. While we are uncertain as to how it will play out in the coming years on the functioning of complex adaptive systems and in turn, how this rebounds on human civilization, the truth is that the scientific community by-and-large agrees that humans are the primary culprit. So don't be take in by the snake-oil brigade who try to give the impression that they have some kind of intellectual authority. They don't. If they did, you'd read their articles on the pages of the best science journals and you'd see them getting media attention. And this particularly applies to the deniers who haunt the blogosphere. Their views are out of line with the scientific community. Bear in mind that every Academy of Science in every country on Earth agrees that humans are dangerously influencing climate patterns over the biosphere. These prestigious bodies do not reach these conclusions lightly. They are based on input from a large sector of their membership including experts in the field.
But I do know that birth certificate isnât genuine...It appears in layers on the screen in such a way you can remove quite separately each of the individual dates. You use Adobe Illustrator and each of the individual dates is in its own separate layer. This thing has been fabricated.
Monckton knows the certificate is a fake because it breaks into sub-groups in Illustrator (he wrongly claims various bits are on separate layers - not so, there's only the one with several separate (and messy) groups - but I suspect he's not talking from first-hand experience here! ;-) )
Now, PDF's created straight from software always have these individually selectable components, but they're not usually messy blobs and random gibberish as in this case.
So I scanned a document with text overlaid on a graphic background into a PDF via my Epson scanner, opened it in Illustrator, and got a PDF with only one layer and one group in the whole image.
So, I thought, maybe Monckton and Arpaio are on to something, but, hang on; maybe whoever scanned the original used something like OCR software to do it?
Lo and behold, I scanned the same text and background graphic document letting ABBYY FineReader handle the scanning to PDF, and what do I get when I open it in Illustrator?
An extraordinarily good reproduction of the background, and then various blobby shapes and gibberish snatches of text in separate groups. The Obama certificate has a clear 'non' a section of 'none' in the original, for instance, and the software has grabbed portions of some of the dates.
But, if you were faking the doc - and were, we note, very thorough, but inexplicably stupid enough not to just print it out and scan it - you would not, I'd suggest, end up with little snatches like 'non' where you'd actually typed 'none', or AUG 8 196' or DATE AUG 8 6' where you'd actually typed 'AUG 8 1961'.
(Unless you were trying to out Agatha-Christie Agatha Christie with some bizarre double-bluff. In Denier world this might make sense, in, um, reality, rather less so!)
No, that would all really only be likely to happen if you'd been silly enough to let OCR software handle a 'straight' scanning that should have been done as a simple image conversion to PDF!
I think some people were insufficiently skeptical here, they found the bits, jumped to a conclusion they liked, and forgot to check if it was possible to create the same effect by means by perfectly reasonable means other than creating - i.e. faking - the document!
Good stuff, Bill. This crackpot behaviour reminds me of the painful ["enhance... enhance... enhance..."](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk) routines beloved of crime dramas everywhere.
Jeff, Giving up on trolls is a bit like giving up cigarettes. Those nicotine patches help, but ultimately, you have to mentally reset yourself as an ex-addict.
It's great tyou've decided to stop engaging on the other thread, but that's only part of the way there - you actually have to stop reading it. As long as you post anything here about what they are saying over there, they know you are reading. They know they are getting a rise out of you, which is their raison d'etre. From their point of view, it doesn't matter too much whether you post there or here, you are still rewarding their time and effort. Posting about them here is just a slightly healthier form of the same addiction....
Now, everybody here knows you have better things to read than their twaddle. And better things to write than a critique of that twaddle (that no one else here read). We know because we have all read so many of your insightful and informative posts. But they are incapable of learning, and since almost no one else here reads their crap, no one can here benefit from your responses. So while you are venting your own frustration, you are guaranteeing future frustration. Only when they are denied the oxygen of publicity, will they eventually die.
And until then, believe me, when you can look at the side bar and leave it at "Hah - still posting crap in their own little twilight zone, like anybody cares" you will feel a lot better.
Sorry, post above loaded during proofing! (Bugger!)
To clarify; I scanned a printed document consisting of text on a patterned background - i.e. much like the birth certificate - to see if I could replicate the 'separate groups effect' similar to the one found in the birth certificate in Illustrator quite innocently.
I could. As detailed above.
And it's hard to explain the messy inconsistencies, gaps, and bits and blobs if the birth certificate was in fact cunningly generated 'whole cloth' in software. Not to mention understand how sweeping technical mastery in the original forgery could then collapse into such blatant stupidity in allowing the multiple 'group' artifacts to remain.
Now, less-than-the-best scanning practice was apparently employed somewhere along the line, sure, but can these artifacts in Illustrator be taken as incontrovertible evidence of a sinister conspiracy to fake an identity for global citizen No. 1?
Hardly!
People who are fond of playing Defence Lawyer - you know; all we have to do is create some doubt and then shout 'unproven' - when it comes to atmospheric pollutants might not relish the irony of being rather, I'd suggest, hoist on their own petard in this instance.
But some of the rest of us might find ourselves enjoying it a little more!...
You're right. I have to give that up. Its just that when I log into Deltoid, the recent posts list in filled with crap from there. But you are correct. Moving on time.
Overwhelming proof from every survey that the climate science community believes that humans are strongly influencing climate warming. The deniers can quibble all they want, but the scientific community is as strongly united on this issue as on almost any other. This explains why, as I said earlier, the denial camp depends on the same bunch of 'experts' that it did 20 years ago. They can't find new recruits to join them. So we are stuck with the Lindzen's, Singer's, Idso's, Balling's, Soon's, Baliunas's, Ball's etc. The same crew that spoke against warming back in 1990-1995. Their credibility is shot.
Also, note how the deniers use the same old canard: that without 100% proof of a process - in this case that the National Academies reached their consensus based on very broad support of their membership (which of course they do if anyone who is a member of these prestigious bodies will attest) then the position of all of these academies is to be dismissed entirely. Why this is even 'debated' is beyond a joke. The positions of these academies across the planet is a very important
As for my scientific achievements, well how many does you-know-who want? My former job as Editor at Nature? My 400+ citations in the literature annually? My several keynote and plenary lectures at conferences and workshops? My 115 (and growing) publications? My invitations as guest lecturer to >20 universities around the world? Now I will be accused of waving my CV. As I said before, at least I have one to wave. Note how most of the deniers don't. Hardly a coincidence.
I don't think anyone gives a damn jeff. Your verbose, indulgent, tiresome, rants about "jeff" are embarrassing to read.
"the truth is that the scientific community by-and-large agrees that humans are the primary culprit"
Yeah fine, no mention of C02 there, is it implied? 80% of predicted species loss in sensitive regions over the next 50yrs is due to land use changes - chopping down forests for economic development, draining marsh areas for farmland, building shopping malls, etc. Even in the worst case climate scenarios of "Climate Envelope Models", land use still dominates, C02 is only a bit-part player alongside agricultural practices and "traditional" pollution.
The "C02 biodiversity armagedon" rants you are so fond of completely misrepresent the environmental challenges of the coming century. Are "humans the primary culprit" yes, is Anthropogenic C02 the primary threat, No! - No matter how much you've tried to play it up here.
Why does your ineffectual whining oscillate between IGW and personal "background info" to support the over-inflated view you have of yourself? why does that matter to anybody other than you?
It just ain't pretty jeff. Another one of your "final ripostes"? we can only hope.
I've just written a piece [Climate officials and climate provisionals](http://http://www.brusselsblog.co.uk/climate-officials-and-climate-prov…) suggesting a categorisation of those that discuss climate should include a third group - the climate provisionals - alongside the sceptics and the official climate scientists. The climate provisionals think official science is behind the game. The official/provisional debate is the most relevant.
A troll using a sockpuppet to evade a restriction is extremely bad behavior. Given that, on top of the Karen sockpuppet so thoroughly demonstrating the qualities (and lack of them) that led to Sunspot's restriction in the first place, I urge Tim to enforce the restriction.
I think it's quite wrong-headed; there's a spectrum of legitimate scientific opinion on these matters and what one subscribes to is not determined by whether one is "official".
Are "humans the primary culprit" yes, is Anthropogenic C02 the primary threat, No!
The agenda behind this Lomborgian line is well known ... inaction. At least "out of ammo" is out there shooting cats, while people like Grima do their best to see to it that nothing happens.
Thanks for the reply and thanks for correcting the link.
If you confine your spectrum to "legitimate scientific opinion" are you excluding those commentators that have no peer reviewed publications in climate science?
One problem is the "officials" have pressures and instincts that make them conservative and less likely to be affected by emerging trends. I have been communicating with "official" science for a decade or so. I got a typical response from the UK Committee on Climate Change a few years ago:
"Thank you for your email. On the subject of methane and climate feedback; we do not assign probabilities to methane release because we do not yet know enough about these processes to include them in our models projections."
I read that as "we don't understand it so it doesn't exist".
Her estimates of the thinning of Arctic sea ice were much lower than those of the Arctic Methane Emergency Committee who gave evidence in an earlier session. She seems like an "official" to me.
It shows a sceptical group and a warmist group distributed along an axis Predicted Impact of Climate Change -from Slight to Catastrophe. The warmist group ("Slight cost" through "substantial cost" to "catastrophe") contains the IPCC (the officials) placed nearer the "slight cost" end of the range. I think that judgement is right but I think the warmists split into two, which I have called the climate officials and the climate provisionals. (I'm open to better names!).
I also think these that these two groups have significantly different sociologiocal and psychological characteristics - but that's a bit academic. What's important is that the policies that are implied by these different warmist groups differ greatly. (e.g. To geoengineer or not.)
I see the Environmental Audit Committee's enquiry a interesting start of a debate between the two groups.
Speaking as a thoroughly under-qualified "provisional", there is something of a false dichotomy in your observations here. "Provisionals" use "official" sources, so you need to be careful to consider whether a "provisional" argument is their own work, or a direct derivation of the "official" source.
Although Wadhams himself is probably best placed with the "officials", AMEG's arguments in this specific area are derived from the "provisionals". But while AMEG's arguments were weak, Slingo's rejection of those arguments, in the context of "officials" -v- "provisional", is equally weak.
With regard to Wadhams 2015 date, much of the "evidence" he uses was derived from some curve-fitting spitballing done at Neven's Arctic Sea Ice blog. The discussion has run on and off for 15 months, lack of physicality is clearly noted - e.g. we don't know what feedbacks will have what effects as more open water appears - and Slingo would have been right to reject AMEGs argument on the basis of physics alone.
But (based on the quotes on your blog) she rejects it for other reasons:
>"She also said that suggestions the volume of sea ice had already declined by 75% already were not credible."
That "suggestion" did not originate with Wadhams. Nor did it come out of the blogosphere discussion. It comes from the output of the PIOMAS model developed by the Polar Science Centre at the University of Washington - people whose expertise is not questioned.
Her dismissal of that figure as not credible is simply handwaving. In her oral evidence to the committee, the only "proof" I saw is that their model results differ from PIOMAS (to be fair, I only skimmed it). To determine why they differ would be an interesting exercise for the expert, but it is my understanding that PIOMAS results are well validated against as much thickness data as is available at present. If Slingo has any basis for preferring the Met's model over PIOMAS, she would have done well to discuss this.
2015 is a number from the "provisionals" and can be ignored at the readers discretion. 75% decline in volume is a number from the "officials", and can't be dismissed so easily.
In any case, even if Slingo is correct, shifting from 2015 to 2025 (her earliest possible) is hardly grounds for moving from "panic" (a bit of a cheap shot, IMO) to "don't worry".
Disclaimer: I am of the opinion that an ice-free Arctic is neither a necessary precondition for methane release, nor an automatic trigger for it. OTOH, while I believe increased methane release is more-or-less inevitable on our current trajectory, I'm not convinced geoengineering is a suitable response. The above blather is not related to the question of "panic", only whether Slingo rejected Wadhams claims for sound reasons. I don't believe that to be the case.
As a provisional you are putting forward the sort of argument that should be aired.
Getting the officials to do the same is like pulling teeth.
One problem with the officials is that, as a group characteristic, they are reluctant to express judgements that cannot be uttered with a high degree of confidence. Perhaps that is their role.
From my sample of contacts with officials I sometimes find that their wider knowledge is lacking and will assume the official line is correct without any specific knowledge. Also they avoid giving opinion by referring to a topic without any indication of their judgement . They may be waiting for "scientific facts" but if we can't get "scientific facts", we need some best calls.
I think officials often have their own judgements but they are reluctant to express them publicly. Geoffrey Lean once told me "They knew but they didn't tell us." Too right.
I'd put Peter Wadhams in the provisional camp.
Also I'd put James Hansen in the provisional camp. He has the confidence to express himself clearly. Another sign: One eminent "official" told me Hansen was mad - but as with all encounters with the officials there was no time to elaborate and I'm sure he won't respond to my emails.
What's good about the HOC Environmental Audit Committee is that some of them seem to have the urge to come to judgements that are useful to policy making and at last they can bring the officials to account.
Of course, all provisionals are not of one mind and neither are all officials but in declaring yourself as a provisional you are showing to me that the official/provisional dichotomy may be a useful one.
As an enthusiastic amateur, with the emphasis on enthusiastic and amateur, I'm happily free of the need to confine myself to 95% certain positions in this area. If I swung and missed as many times in what is supposed to be my area of professional competence, I wouldn't be employed for long... ;-)
I don't envy the scientists who find themselves living between "on the balance of probabilites" and 2-sigma "beyond reasonable doubt". I agree that there are more than a few who are privately deeply vexed, but through training and personality, are unwilling to voice their concerns beyond the scientifically "provable" position.
Wieslaw Maslowski is probably the only person who is simultaneously a professional in the field and a "provo" on the specific subject of Arctic sea ice decline, as Hansen is one of the very few in the field as a whole. He is fortunate in working for the US Navy, which is naturally more focussed on real-world balance of probabilities than a scientific gold standard. Maslowski's first projections was done in 2006 (when the "official" position was 2080+). Each new year of data adds confidence to that projection (and subsequent revisions), yet he is still an outlier compared to the "official" position (which has now moved to around 2040-2050, apparently).
And there's the thing - the argument is framed as denial versus very conservative (in a good way), yet there is a whole range of opinion beyond the consensus position, some of which has sound reasons for saying some things are probably much worse than the consensus, centrist, position. It's a bit like our ultra-right parties ridiculous framing of our fairly-right parties as a bunch of socialists...
One thing though; unlike in the troubles, few "provisionals" in this area regard the "stickies" as sell-outs, although I suspect the "officials" sometimes (as in this case) regard the "provos" as a nuisance and a distraction.
Off topic, if there is one, as this is an Aussie-based blog, could anyone who lives in Queensland please let me know if you can find anyone, anyone at all, who voted Labor (as you spell it 'down under there'). I understand that the Labor party were tremendous HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) and enacted all sort of anti-global warming measures. Sow and ye shall reap!
Duff, I understand that your reason for being here is to gloat that nobody believes in AGW anymore:
>Chicago has broken high temperature records for nine days in a row - though today is likely to end that streak. The temperature in Chicago this week has been sometimes 15 degrees higher than the average - more similar to June weather than March.
>Many Canadian cities including Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Quebec City, St. John, Windsor, Hamilton, and London, all broke high-temperature records on Wednesday. St. John's high of 25.4°C was higher than any recorded temperature in April.
>The low temperatures in Marquette, MI and Mt. Washington, NH, was higher than the record high temperature in the past.
>Lake Michigan has a water temperature closer to average June readings than March, reaching into the mid-10s in the middle of the lake.
>The server that handles NOAA's weather records has been down for days, due to unprecedented traffic. (Note: link doesn't work. See previous sentence for explanation.)
>New York City has had seven days of record-breaking temperatures, with yesterday's high of 25 breaking a 74-year-old record.
>The heatwave will strike the whole of Britain, with Sunday's high expected in Scotland, while the Welsh town of Aberystwyth will show the largest rise on average temperatures.
>"There is a high pressure system in the North Sea which is affecting the whole of Europe. There is another south of Greece and in combination the two mean unseasonably high temperatures across the continent. Western France is 6C above average for this time of year, some parts of Germany are 7C higher.
You have previously admitted your belief that cold weather proves global warming isn't happening. As you can see, by your own reasoning you are wrong.
At the very least I am sure the data is being cooked by Al Gore and there is nothing to worry about.
Yeah sure, Duffster, imagine a party that's been in power since 1998 (and has been out of power for only 2 years since the notorious pro-National Gerrymander was revoked in 1989) being comprehensively turfed out.
And climate was a huge part of the state-level debate, was it? You'd know this from your armchair on the other side of the world, wouldn't you? Hell, you've probably been reenacting the campaign over your whisky-fortified Cocoa, with the aid of your Napoleonic and Russian toy soldiers!...
I was waiting for some moron to trot this out. I'm little surprised it was you.
PS, Thicko, it's an 'open thread', so your cultural-smugness is as misplaced as everything else in your impoverished intellectual repertoire.
Now being locals, we know that the "mad monk" tailors his message on climate change depending on the audience but nominally the Liberals have the same carbon mitigation targets as the ALP. Both inadequate but that is a different story.
If you confine your spectrum to "legitimate scientific opinion" are you excluding those commentators that have no peer reviewed publications in climate science?
You seem rather confused. Whether someone's opinion is scientifically legitimate has nothing to do with what they have published ... but it certainly has something to do with what they base that opinion on.
I read that as "we don't understand it so it doesn't exist".
You need a course or twenty in basic logic. Hansen is an official ... does that disprove your position?
One problem with the officials is that, as a group characteristic, they are reluctant to express judgements that cannot be uttered with a high degree of confidence. Perhaps that is their role.
Um, perhaps it is a constraint on people who are held responsible for what they say. Scientists, as a rule, are reluctant to express judgments without a high degree of confidence, especially in peer-reviewed journal papers ... ah, but you seem to place all of those in the realm of "official", given your question about commentators with no peer reviewed publications.
Of course, all provisionals are not of one mind and neither are all officials but in declaring yourself as a provisional you are showing to me that the official/provisional dichotomy may be a useful one.
That's extraordinarily stupid when he described himself as a thoroughly under-qualified "provisional" (those quote marks mean something), and noted a false dichotomy. Frank simply spoke your language to say that he's not a professional climate scientist, which in no way supports your dichotomy, and your attempt to take it that way demonstrates that you're engaging in dogma, not reason.
Briefly, the officials are mostly hard core professional of academic scientists, who are cautious in their approach and chosen by governments to work on the science and publish or advise when they are sure of their work. Many of them are climate modellers, who are using computer programmes to predict the future course of our climate from a myriad of data sources.
Sigh. Not prediction, projection.
And then we have
A good quote from an honorary provisional âThe trouble with climate modellers [the officials] is that when there is conflict between their models and the real world, they believe their models.â
and
Tim Lenton and Julia Slingo are experts in climate models. Peter Wadhams is a scientist that measures ice thickness.
So we've got modellers = officials = cautious conservatives, vs. scientists = measurers = provisionals = alarmists/realists.
As I said, this sort of dichotomy is quite wrong-headed. What is useful is to point out that, in the face of uncertainty, the principles of risk assessment say that we should treat estimates of harm as understating it, and should act accordingly.
Also I'd put James Hansen in the provisional camp. He has the confidence to express himself clearly.
Ah, missed this earlier ... it goes to show how utterly irrational, dogmatic, and unfalsifiable this nonsense is, a textbook case of a No True Scotsman fallacy.
Not a bad summary. Except I think modellers would call themselves scientists. So would I.
"utterly irrational, dogmatic, and unfalsifiable this nonsense is"
I'n not a great fan of simple falsification in Popper's philosophy of science - his "simplicity" criterion does not work. Try Imre Lakatos.
Even so, my dichotomy can be put into a theoretical framework that contains falsification - and it would survive Occam's Razor.
Given more time than I've got at the moment, I cold predict the responses of the "officials" to new evidence - relative to the "provisionals" responses. These predictions would be falsifiable.
"Whether someone's opinion is scientifically legitimate has nothing to do with what they have published ... but it certainly has something to do with what they base that opinion on."
Today [Counterpoint attempted to discredit Mediawatch's piece](http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/counterpoint/murray-mouth/…). High on the list was Marohasy's overarching straw-man attempt to seed doubt about the salinity or otherwise of the lower lakes, as if an estuarine history here somehow invalidates any attempt to ensure that the thousands of kilometres of the rest of the Murray-Darling system are not hydrologically over-extracted.
Listen to the interview carefully, and see if you can pick the occasions where Michael Duffy asks Marohasy some pre-arranged questions, and where she responds with pre-written answers.
Oo, and John Mashey, you might be interested to know that there was a brief discussion of some funding arrangments for some of the astroturf organisations in Australia.
The importance of the Security Council to the maintenance of international peace and security is as great now as it ever has been. Not since the founding of the United Nations have we faced such uncertain times, when the contours of a ""new world order"" are emerging but not yet apparent.
Like David Duff, Jonas, Olaus, GSW and Pentaxz before him, Sunspot has outed himself as a ideologically motivated conspiracy theorist. I am shocked. I didn't see this coming at all.
The problem for you 'Karen' is that your private/individualistic outlook has conditioned you to think that public collective action is anathema, when in fact it has been the route by which many large-scale infrastructure benefits have been delivered to society.
You're the member of what is now a death cult with no answers except denial, because every attempt at a solution which requires collective action is off-limits to your ideology.
I just saw a this article from the Daily Fail claiming that a new paleoclimate article is disproof global warming. I took the time to contact the researcher named in the study and he said, "i don't think that reporter read my paper at all."
I have urged him to write a letter of correction to the Daily Mail and to contact Skeptical Science for a fuller response.
Right wing papers/media owned by giant media corporations that depend
on corporate advertising from industries with an axe to grind distorting science to downplay the prevailing scientific opinion over climate change? NEVER!!! Tell me it ain't so!!!!
John M - yep, that's the site you get - in a weird flash pop-up - from the link on the Australian CSC's website.
The two sites - whether nominally Australian or American - are very similar, with a virtually identical banner, which they share, I now note, with a third entity, the ICSC. ('I' is for 'International'.)
They all say they offer 'climate for laypeople'. (Actually, in the ACSC's case it's 'guidance for laypeople', which makes them seem a bit like Opus Dei or the Salvos!)
It's hard to escape the conclusion that the pretty-well the entire Denier edifice - at least its leadership cohort - consists of 2 or 3 dozen tireless windbags who must keep ceaselessly changing clothes and buying new megaphones, perpetually recreating and remanifesting themselves in order to present the illusion of a social and scientific 'movement' that's going somewhere.
I just checked that researchers Facebook page and he seems pretty mad about the distortions. Do not want to reply because I might give the appearance of being a stalker. Perhaps someone here can give him some feedback?
New Radio Ecoshock show looks into the record heat event in most of North America, dubbed "Summer in March".
Interviews with Joe Romm of Climate Progress, and Jeff Masters of The Weather Underground. The thousands of heat records smashed, appear to be a mix of weather variation, boosted by a changed atmosphere (i.e. global warming).
NASA's James Hansen has similarly said that heat events like the European killer of 2003, or the deadly Moscow heat of 2010 could not have occured without our added greenhouse gases.
G'day Alex, please consider this by way of feedback.
I thought I'd quickly provoie a fixed version of that link that doesn't work, but a cut-and-paste of the URL gives a scary list of warnings from my scriptblocker - never encouraging - and it still 404'ed when I temporarily allowed everything.
I don't enjoy being confronted with having to apparently subscribe to a podcast where I actually just want to listen to a single show, and I was unable to find the program you refer to on the link from the homepage that goes to 'weekly radio ecoshock show' which is titled 'weekly radio ecoshock show 2011' .
I have found a program with an interview with John M that looks interesting, but I keep finding my cursor disappears when I'm trying to use the Mp3 player on one of the numeric-IP-address-style URL's that the site utilises (another thing I don't enjoy) - at the moment I can't pause the bloody thing for that very reason!
I'm downloading this program now, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it, but a bit of attention to the site at some stage may pay dividends!
"utterly irrational, dogmatic, and unfalsifiable this nonsense is"
I'n not a great fan of simple falsification in Popper's philosophy of science - his "simplicity" criterion does not work. Try Imre Lakatos.
I said nothing about Popper's philosophy of science, and I'm well familiar with Lakatos. This isn't about scientific research programs, this is about a pet dogma of yours that is transparently unfalsifiable, in the trivial sense that you will do whatever is necessary, including blatantly ignoring the meaning of your own terms, in order to sustain it. By calling Hansen a "provisional" you establish yourself as a bullsh*tter and a fraud.
Given more time than I've got at the moment, I cold predict the responses of the "officials" to new evidence - relative to the "provisionals" responses. These predictions would be falsifiable.
I'm a "provisional", fool, and my responses don't fit into your tidy boxes, nor do those of a lot of other "provisionals" ... nor do those of a lot of scientists who publish in peer-reviewed journals -- the sort of people that you deem "officials". Of course official responses generally tend to be more conservative than the responses of bloggers and blog commenters, for the obvious reason that I pointed out -- the people who make them are held responsible for their statements. There's nothing at all novel about this, or about the blogger/professional dichotomy, which is a far more sensible division than yours.
@ "Karen", much as I hate to acknowledge it, yes, you are right. The megalomaniac Bob "Benito" Brown and his squadrons of black helicopters are out to get you.
Run Karen, run as far as and as fast as your little legs will carry you. Run far and hide - under a rock perhaps. This means that you will have to stop, cease and desist posting your constant barrage of witless pseudo-scientific and illogical dribble curb your philanthropic activities here, since you will give away your location to the zillions of BrownBots that infest the interweb every time you post.
Goodbye then "Karen", we shall do our best to adapt to life here without you, but it won't be the same...
Friends of the Earth spokesperson Bradley Smith said the decision was a âhuge disappointmentâ.
âWe demonstrated to the court and Xstrata that this project will exacerbate climate change, and they're going ahead anyway.
"Xstrata did not contest the reality or impacts of climate change. They're planning on building this mine knowing that it will create the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as 72 countries combined,â said Dr Smith. âIt's unfortunate that our laws allow multi-billion dollar companies like Xstrata to ignore the outcomes of their reckless actions.â
Hey - I don't know if any of you have been to Jo Nova's hive of gibberish lately, but I hadn't been there for a couple of months and just went to have a look - she's gone completely nuts.
Her site is just a big long series of insane right-wing conspiracy loon nonsense about economic conspiracies, Global governments, and so forth.
She's clearly associated in some way with the CEC and the other fringe-dwelling loons out there.
Somehow, I imagine her readership is drying up - you can't serve up that kind of crap and attract anybody but the hardcore cranks.
@ Scribe, the Qld decision is a complete mirror obverse of the (successful) challenge mounted (by an individual with the support of the EDO) in the NSW L&E Court against the Anvil Hill mine:
Centennial [Coal]'s environmental assessment... had omitted to assess the full impact of greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the project. Although there was a detailed assessment of emissions arising directly from the project and from its electricity use, the environmental assessment was held to be insufficient for failing to detail the indirect impacts of burning of coal by third parties (both locally and globally)
(my emphasis).
I am not familiar with this case, but there may be grounds to appeal to the Commonwealth Minister (DSEWPaC) on Matters of National Environmental Significance, in which case there may be an opportunity to raise the same issue at Federal level.
What most pisses me off with mining applications these days is their outright disdain for the other significant environmental impacts. Their EIAs frequently acknowledge the project will cause significant ecological impacts, so they spend a few hundred K (petty cash as far as they are concerned) on a Species Impact Statement, make a few trivially miniscule concessions (mostly minor tidying up after they have pillaged the place) and sod off overseas to enjoy the substantial (and mostly unburdened by taxes or imposts) profits while the rest of us wear the considerable, enduring environmental costs. The flora and fauna (endangered or otherwise) just get wiped out as if it didn't matter (even if it impinged at all on anyone's consicence) on the basis of a consultant's report, itself focussed largely on the increasingly lax requirements of ever-more watered-down environmental legislation.
TL;DR - if climate change provisions in the existing legislative paradigm cannot or will not force us to stop wrecking what's left of the planet, there is f**k-all chance that legislation "protecting" threatened species will.
I popped over there the other day because I assumed - wrongly, as it turned out - that there I'd find one of the parties who was publicising the SkS hack material.
No - there are bigger fish to fry! Instead I found it was all 'Gold, Gold Gold' (Ã la the dwarves in Terry Pratchett!), Hayek, more Hayek, 'Austrians' as a heroic accolade (unrelated to Austria, where they don't actually do 'Austrian', funnily enough) and the urgent realization that warmomarxosocialist undermining of the currency will sap all our vital bodily fluids.
Oh, and the concept of Conspiracy Theories is all a cunning plot hatched by the UN and its Regulating Class to ensure that no-one understands the appalling depths of the conspiracies involved.
And it's got worse - hell, now there's tungsten in the gold bars. Tungsten I tell you! Where will it end?! (Go and check if you think I'm making this up!)
You couldn't make it up, and, frankly, I'm glad I can't. The world beyond satire is equal parts depressing, scary, and amazingly dull.
Still, she's getting the standard massive approval ratings for each post from the discerning fruitcakes and the other de-institutionalised who are turning up (how many bloggers do you know who go in for this 'rate my post' thing, incidentally?), so I suppose at least its keeping them all off the streets for the time being...
An Australian billionaire, connections to Atlantic Bridge, legally questionable statements from a supposed charitable concern - there seems to be a pattern developing.
SteveC, unfortunately the Anvil Hill mine did get the go ahead and has been sold off to Xstrata and renamed Mangoola (and it is to my shame that one of the leading exec's of Centennial Coal was a Uni friend of mine). Winning a court case is not enough, many times there's been a win in court for the government to come along and change the rules of the game. Hunter vignerons had a win in the courts against one mine, the government of the day changed the rules and the mine went ahead. Moolarben number 2 is now in the planning stage and the EIS is, like most others, nothing more than a sales brochure and the offset areas they're proposing are totally inadequate just for starters, the local aquifers are going to be ruined, one of the last corridors in the upper Hunter will be removed and we'll be left with a void filling with ever saltier water.
Threatened species don't stop coal mines, exposure of dodgy EIS's don't stop coal mines, social impacts don't stop coal mines, disruption of aquifers don't stop coal mines and you can be guaranteed greenhouse gasses won't stop them. There was one coal mine stopped in the Hunter Valley, only because it was small and the horse breeders started flexing their bank books, unfortunately with the new state government it's back on the table.
Perhaps I misinterpret your responses, but I infer that you might have made the same mistake that I did when I first read Geoffs piece. In talking about "provisional" and "official" he is not talking about the degree of authority with which a person speaks - Hansen could never be a "provisional" by that standard. Rather, Geoffs blog article specifically refers to the "troubles" in Ireland, in which the IRA split into several different factions, most notably the "official" IRA and the "provisional" IRA.
That creates yet more scope for misapprehension ("climatologists = terrorists"), but the point for Geoff is that he sees two camps: those who, in focussing on statements that can be made with a high degree of confidence, become a more moderate or conservative viewpoint, and those who are prepared to chance their arms on a balance of probabilities position who in the analogy are the extemists. For reasons I can't really fathom, Geoff sees parallels with the "official" and "provisional" IRA respectively. Really, you simplify the whole thing by simply calling his second group "extremist" - I don't think its any more or less perjorative.
Personally, I think the analogy is bogus on many levels, most particularly because the relationship between Geoff's two camps is not remotely like the relationship between those two camps in the troubles. Nevertheless, if you reread his stuff with that view of "official" and "provisional" you get quite a different sense of what he means. Again, wrongheaded, IMO, but not quite as brainless as you interpret.
But perhaps you got all this, thought his analogy was even worse than I did and responded accordingly. Clarification or egg-sucking lessons...not sure...
Either way, thanks for:
>Frank simply spoke your language ...
That is exactly correct. Was happy to discuss within Geoff's framework for just long enough to think it through to "nope. doesn't work."
Yes, you're right, Anvil Hill (aka Mangoola) did go ahead, despite the successful LEC case. I should have been more clear above in stating that the key 'victory' (and I'm not at all sure that one individual supported by an organisation that relies largely on volunteer labour, public donations and pro bono work bringing a case against a Minister simply to get the Minister to do their job properly can be called a "victory") was the judgement that all reasonably foreseeable effects of the proposal must be considered.
Regrettably the Gray case only applies to applications in NSW. Qld and other states have differing so-called environmental protection legislation that I am not familiar with, but on face value Qld's is not even as rigorous as NSW. When it was introduced in 1979 NSW's EP&A Act (Environmental Planning and Assessment Act) was rightly proclaimed as one of the best and most effective pieces of environmental legislation anywhere in the westernised world, let alone Australia. Since about 1995 every successive NSW government (regardless of their nominal political stripe) has diluted and latterly gutted the EP&A Act, the 2005 Part 3A amendment being arguably the worst of the lot (whose involvement in which is the principal reason I loathe Bob Carr), if only for its appalling disregard for the role of public participation in environmental and planning matters and the obscene discretionary power it afforded the Minister for Planning. The very idea of retrospective legislation (that you mention) ought, to any society with claims to being 'civilised' and 'advanced', be anathema. Yet that's what any party with money and clout could and does get (remember the retrospective POS that Dilemma passed that allowed film companies untrammelled access to the Blue Mountains Wilderness areas?). Environmental legislation a problem? Got money? Clout? No worries, let us as Macquarie St fix that for ya. The rest of us just get to wear the consequences for decades to come, all the while bemused why anyone questions why the electorate is quite so cynical about the political scene.
At a personal level, having worked in and spent many months tramping around in the less accesible parts of the upper Hunter, and got to know and love the area and its stunning (if often obscured) plant diversity, any new mining proposal there shits me to tears, particularly given the wholesale destruction of unique areas like Wybong. These days environmental campaigns aren't - contrary to popular opinion - fought against greedy multinationals; they also have to fight state and federal government and the (in my view) unconscionable "laws" they pass. And all in pursuit of what?
But who cares. So what if jaded, cynical conservationists like me lose another argument and rail against something they don't like and can't change? Never mind the quality, feel the economic boom. We've got 300 years of coal reserves, so whaddaya f'kin' whingein' about?
Bill @ 408, "And it's got worse - hell, now there's tungsten in the gold bars. Tungsten I tell you! Where will it end?! (Go and check if you think I'm making this up!)"
It has been going on for some time Bill, your lack of knowledge doesn't surprise me.
"In October, the Hong Kong bankers discovered some gold bars shipped from the United States were actually tungsten with gold plating. This is the exact same Modus Operandi as the silver clad zinc dimes from 45 years ago."
I suppose the point is Bill, that when the GlenBeckian-type collapse comes (orchestrated by bitter greens anxious to say 'I told you so', natch), those that are planning to eat their gold will find they stocked up on entirely the wrong condiments if it turns out to be tungsten.
In this situation of extreme danger, where one group is called the "officials" what else would you call the other group? The situation in Ireland is not one I like to think about more than I have to so alternative names would be very welcome.
The latest reponse from "the officials" was obtined by my MP from the Met Office on my behalf:
"Carbon dioxide and methane release from permafrost is an area of active research at the Met Office Hadley Centre. A simple framework has been developed for estimating the amount of carbon dioxide and methane release from permafrost. and to estimate the impact of this release on the global mean temperature. We expect this work to be published within the next 2 months. This is a step towards full representation or the permafrost climate feedback within the more complex Hadley Centre climate models â the outputs of which are used by the IPCC - which we plan to achieve within the next 2 years.
Currently, no work has been undertaken to incorporate methane release from ocean hydrates into Hadley Centre climate models.
spottedquoll and steveC, CO2 is only a feeble excuse to make you and me pay more for hydrocarbons.
Do you really think that any country or any government anywhere in the world will stop digging, drilling or fracking for hydrocarbons ?
I can assure you that they don't want anyone to stop using these resources, they only want more money, CO2 is the excuse and they (the bureaucrats) do not give one flying f##k about the environment, you all are simply tools suckered in to help the agenda move forward.
If you want to stop the mining for fossil fuels you have to find an alternative, all efforts by your trusted governments so far have been pathetic, maybe they don't really want an alternative ?
*What an crushing takedown of all the skeptics, of which many are real scientists*
Really? Name several. Very few of the 'skeptics' have strong scientific pedigrees. Very few publish much in the scientific literature. Most are on the academic fringe.
End of story. Science has moved on, even if the right wing-nuts haven't.
"Current theories of the causes and impact of global warming have been thrown into question by a new study which shows that during medieval times the whole of the planet heated up.
It then cooled down naturally and there was even a 'mini ice age'.
A team of scientists led by geochemist Zunli Lu from Syracuse University in New York state, has found that contrary to the âconsensusâ, the âMedieval Warm Periodâ approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago wasnât just confined to Europe.
In fact, it extended all the way down to Antarctica â which means that the Earth has already experience global warming without the aid of human CO2 emissions."
Too bad Karen (Spotty) that you missed the boat. The senior author is apparently furious that the results of his study have been misinterpreted. But that's hardly news - the deniers have been doing this kind of thing for years. They routinely take the work of others and twist it to support their pre-determiend worldview (because so few of them do their own research or get it published in good journals). The site C02 Science did that with a colleagues paper here that was published in Nature a few years ago. She was shocked, to say the least, that the results of her study were used to support the stupid argument that increased atmospheric C02 benefits terrestrial ecosystems. Her study never said that at all.
And simultaneously, in his first day in the job the new Liberal-National (= conservative) premier of Queensland, Campbell Newman, wants the director of the Office of Climate Change to [dismantle all of Queensland's various current carbon reduction schemes](http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3464929.htm).
This is sure to thrill the vested interests and the ideologues, who can't see past their wallets, superstitions and/or paranoias, but is is a sad day for any hope that real action will gain a foothold in Australia.
Politics speaks louder than science, and louder than international, intergenerational, interspecies ethical defensibility.
> Oh, and the concept of Conspiracy Theories is all a cunning plot hatched by the UN and its Regulating Class to ensure that no-one understands the appalling depths of the conspiracies involved.
*CO2 is not a pollutant. Life on earth flourished for hundreds of millions of years at much higher CO2 levels than we see today. Increasing CO2 levels will be a net benefit because cultivated plants grow better and are more resistant to drought at higher CO2 levels*
Garbage. Happer should be embarrassed for writing such tosh. First of all, its not the absolute concentrations of atmospheric C02 that are important, but the longer term evolutionary trajectories of life under relatively stable C02 concentrations. Certainly life flourished under higher C02 concentrations than occur now back in the late Mesozoic and early Cenozoic, but that is completely and utterly irrelevant. Contemporary biota evolved under relatively low C02 regimes, and the rate of change is taking the atmosphere into concentrations that have not been experienced in many millions of years, all in the blink of an evolutionary eye. This is challenging species to adapt at rates far exceeding any natural changes that have occurred in millions of years. Moreover, of course C02 is a pollutant if concentrations cause asymmetric shifts in biotic responses. Not all plants benefit at higher C02 levels - r-selected plants and weeds might grow faster, but in many plants additional biomass will be accrued with a concomitant change in internal stoichiometry: N and P may well be shunted out of plant tissues leading to quite dramatic changes in the quality of these plants for herbivores. N is normally a limiting nutrient for first level consumers, hence (as has been seen in a number of studies) arthropod consumers will increase the amount of plant biomass consumed to compensate for N deficiency. Another important point is that plant defenses are generally either C or N based. Plants with C-based phytotoxins may become more toxic to consumers, whereas plants with N-based defenses will become less well defended against herbivores and pathogens. All of these non-linear effects will impact food webs and communities, eventually scaling up to ecosystems.
Essentially, Happer is rehashing Monckton's stupid 'C02 is plant food' meme. As I said, his article is an embarrassment.
Jeff:
Look Happer up in Wikipedia and do read the climate section, including Daily Princetonian quote.
As GMI Chairnan, he continues the efforts of Seitz, Jastrow and Nierenberg.
Try getting your info from someone other than fat Al.
Ah, in the inversiverse all information that does not hail from Ordained Sources emanates from the Prince of Darkness, himself, right?
I know none of you guys - sorry 'Karen' - can do context, but I frankly don't give a toss about your tungsten impregnated gold bars; I'm not calling in to question it happening, I'm calling in to question, in the first instance, whether it means anything at all to anyone outside of wibbleworld, and certainly whether it means anything like what you wibbleworldians are claiming.
I'm sure any explanation will turn out to be based firmly on good old fashioned Greed, and since that's the most natural of human activities by your lights, and caveat emptor is the core of your philosophy; well, no problem, eh? ;-)
Sunspot and GSW's only requirement for a reliable source is "do they say what I want to hear?"
Anyway Sunspot, I'm disappointed that I haven't heard a peep from you about the current northern hemisphere heatwave seeing as your entire argument is predicated upon weather.
As you once said:
>The IPCC is being proven wrong by the cold "CLIMATE" almost everywhere !!!!
Even resident village idiot GSW realises this argument is a loser.
>I can assure you that they don't want anyone to stop using these resources, they only want more money, CO2 is the excuse and they (the bureaucrats) do not give one flying f##k about the environment, you all are simply tools suckered in to help the agenda move forward.
So, how is offering a quote like that, and then providing a link to a news article (that says none of the things you say it does) based on a paper whose lead author flatly denies the very 'interpretation' of the quote you've given not simple and blatant dishonesty, then?
Lest there should be any doubt about what a truly shameful enterprise this whole pathetic effort is here's a quote from the lead author's Facebook page:
anyone knows journalism help me understand this? is this what reporters do these days? Add a conclusion, that they like, to other people's work remotly related to the topic, coin a flashy title, and make big news?
They stand alongside other high-quality and discriminating science outlets, such as Stormfront.org, Beast Watch News (get all your latest End Times bible prophecy tid-bits here, folks!), globalclimatescam.com (better named than it thinks!), freerepublic.com, climaterealists.com, and that eternal fount of wisdom, urbanprepping.com.
Oh, and the Drudge Report.
Frankly, I don't think much of your friends, 'Karen'.
Don't you feel just a teeny, tiny, weeny bit a bit of an ass?
Damn, lost one in moderation - not sure how long that might take to get out of it! - probably because I listed some of the dubious organizations that have swallowed whole the DailyFail's squishy little chum-nugget.
Credulous / undiscriminating outlets include The GWPF and Andrew Bolt, you'll be astonished to learn.
Isn't it telling that Sunspot's argument is so weak he needs to resort to sneaky tricks like pretending the Daily Mail's interpretation is an offical summary?
That post has appeared! Unlike 'Karen', who has been so blatantly caught out fiddling the books that I suspect the establishing of another (non)entity will be in order...
the Victorial Liberal (= conservative) government move to repeal the previous state Labor government's legislation to reduce emission by 20% by 2020 because the federal government is mandating only 5%, and Victoria can't "afford" to do better than the rest of the country
which just goes to show that "tragedy of the commons" works over time as well as space. What is the point of governments making promises for 10+ years in the future?
Thanks John @428. Yes, Happer is affiliated with some pretty notorious groups and think tanks. It never surprises me when I read an op-ed or column in the media by a so-called 'expert' deriding climate change that this person more often than not has links with some right wing groups or think tanks that are part of the denial industry. Have these people no shame?
"A team of scientists led by geochemist Zunli Lu from Syracuse University in New York state, has found that contrary to the âconsensusâ, the âMedieval Warm Periodâ approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago wasnât just confined to Europe.
In fact, it extended all the way down to Antarctica â which means that the Earth has already experience global warming without the aid of human CO2 emissions."
If any of you 2nd graders knew how to use a search engine then you might not so stupid.
I'll hold your little hands for you, here is what the study says, verbatim.
"Having constrained the depth of ikaite formation and δ18O of ikaite crystals and hydration waters, we are able to infer local changes in fjord δ18O versus time during the late Holocene. This ikaite record qualitatively supports that both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age extended to the Antarctic Peninsula."
I made no mistake. It's a dichotomy -- a pair of sets that together contain all members. One of the sets is "officials"; therefore, the other set (which he calls "provisionals") must contain all non-officials. Putting Hansen in the latter set rather than the former violates the definition. There's another dichotomy, the "conservatives" and the non-conservatives -- call them extremists, alarmists, realists, whatever. Geoff invalidly glues together the two dichotomies, equating officials with conservatives and non-officials with non-conservatives, when these sets simply are not coextensive.
Again, wrongheaded, IMO, but not quite as brainless as you interpret.
No, it is quite as brainless/fallacious/dimwitted/erroneous/dogmatic as I have noted and explained, and not worth any more of either of our time. Geoff asked if his categories are useful and we both indicated that we don't think so, but he's committed to them ... but he's going to have to play that game alone.
Karen, care to point out in the article, surely you have read it, where it states that the MWP was as warm as the current decade and that it was global?
Even better, care to show that the up-and-down motions during the MWP on Antarctica are synchronised on Antarctica itself, and with those in, just for the fun of it, Europe?
'Karen', I know you struggle with contextual reading, and you're angry because you're ashamed at having been caught out, but, seriously, get a grip.
We showed that the Northern European climate events influenced climate conditions in Antarctica
Is what the man himself said. That's why he's so bloody annoyed at the dishonesty of the reporting, as I referred to above;
Add a conclusion, that they like, to other people's work remotly related to the topic, coin a flashy title, and make big news
You then misleadingly posted that self-same wrong reporting in a manner that certainly looks intentional, further compounding the initial falsehood.
What you, and the remainder of your sad ilk don't get, is that, if you actually read the original post that you linked to - but didn't actually quote; unkind people might suggest that this is because Syracuse University has a credibility that the Daily Mail completely lacks, and you know it - is that he didn't say the warming extended to Antarctica.
Dummy!
He couldn't, could he, because he was examining a rare mineral that can only be found 'be found off the coasts of Antarctica and Greenland'?
Hence the original article's 'are climate changes in one part of the world felt half a world away?'.
We showed that the Northern European climate events influenced climate conditions in Antarctica
Is not the same as 'We showed that the Medieval Warm Period extended all the way to Antarctica', is it? And if that's what he meant, why is he clearly pissed-off?
Or are we about to go into one of those looking-glass-world things, where the 'interpeters of interpretations' and 'pal-reviewers' understand the meaning of a paper better than the author does?
> The next iteration will probably be performed by the moronic unpaid henchmen of the denialist machine - the readers and commenters of their blogs and media articles - who will exaggerate the misinformation even further to it's logical end.
SteveC @ 412, it is entirely possible our paths have crossed at some stage, I too have done much wandering and swearing at plants in the upper Hunter over the past dozen or so years. A fantastic place for botanising.
Zunli Lu:
It is unfortunate that my research, âAn ikaite record of late Holocene climate at the Antarctic Peninsula,â recently published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, has been misrepresented by a number of media outlets.
Several of these media articles assert that our study claims the entire Earth heated up during medieval times without human CO2 emissions. We clearly state in our paper that we studied one site at the Antarctic Peninsula. The results should not be extrapolated to make assumptions about climate conditions across the entire globe. Other statements, such as the study âthrows doubt on orthodoxies around global warming,â completely misrepresent our conclusions. Our study does not question the well-established anthropogenic warming trend.
As was blatantly obvious to anyone with even the most basic literacy skills who'd actually read the very article 'Karen' linked to, but didn't quote from!
I'd be inclined to cool my heels for a while, too, if I'd made such an utter ass of myself in a public arena.
And I note, yet again, that while hundreds, indeed thousands of papers, confirming warming are unconvincing, speculative, premature, overstated, limited in their implications, even questionably honest, etc. etc. it only takes one bloody paper - and only this solitary one is required - to prove the absence of warming beyond doubt.
And you don't even need to actually read it!
You lot calling yourselves 'skeptics' is the most grotesque irony since, as Tom Lehrer was wont to point out, Henry Kissinger won his peace prize.
So, Karen, even though others have shown that the media articles spectacularly misrepresent the study, lets do a little thought experiment. Lets imagine that all these disparate and non-synchronous warming events over the Medieval were, contrary to the actual studies, actually all synchronous ... ie the whole globe warmed at the same time at some point in the Medieval. The whole globe warmed synchronously ... yet it did so in response to relatively slight solar and volcanic forcings.
In the real world, that logically must mean ...
wait for it ...
climate sensitivity is very high!
Perhaps you should stop and think and evaluate if what you are arguing for is actually what you want to argue for.
And to reiterate, actual studies do not show a globally synchronous MWP, meaning we have half a chance at slightly more moderate sensitivities being correct.
Quite frankly, anyone who pays good money to a rag such as the Daily Mail, that publishes obvious scientific untruths, is a mug.
The hacks who write for the Mail are either flagrantly and deliberately misrepresenting climate science, or they are so inept that they do not deserve to be granted the title 'journalists'. 'Propagandists', perhaps, or certainly 'shit-stirrers', but nothing that even hints at professional, objective reporting of fact.
Cigarette packets have health warnings, and television programs have viewer warnings: tabloid papers such as the Daily Mail should mandatorily have warnings of unreliable and nonfactual content. That way the suckers who buy such rubbish might have half a chance to understand that they're being had.
There's a new report out from the IPCC. It's been making the rounds in newspapers. The report is available from the IPCC Home page (Top Right- News and Events).
Here's a comment from WUWT on the Ikaite issue, in response to mandas pointing out that Watts' conclusions were incorrect, and that the lead author had gone on the record saying so -
Whatâs your point? That the author is now tap dancing? No doubt he was given a talking to. But nowhere does the author deny that the MWP was global.
Michael Mann is the reason people still try to erase the MWP, or call it an âanomalyâ, and claim it was regional, not global. This paper is more strong evidence that the MWP was a global event.
In the Inversiverse all these spin-doctors and their drones do indeed believe they understand the implications of a paper better than the authors do!
In the Inversiverse the author is only responding like this now because he's scared of the power of 'the team'; perhaps if he refuses to knuckle under to Mike Mann he'll lose grant-funding? This isn't defamatory, of course - otherwise Anthony would surely remove it? - it's just telling it like it is.
In the Inversiverse it's up to the author to prove that his paper doesn't disprove current anthropogenic warming and doesn't show that the MWP was global, despite the minor technical detail that he was studying a rare mineral found only in frigid water in limited areas of the Acrtic and Antarctic, and the fact that 'we clearly state in our paper that we studied one site at the Antarctic Peninsula.'
In the Inversiverse Watts is apparently under no obligation to publish Zunli Lu's press release specifically responding to his own misinformation.
Hell no! In fact, in the Inversiverse Watts follow-up post is entitled 'Yes, I know, I covered it first: The Medieval Warm Period was Global'. The troops can stop telling him about his very own coup, because he knows it all already! After all, in a very real sense, he wrote it...
In the Inversiverse 90%+ of the readers at Watts will only recall this whole episode along the lines of 'remember that Ikaite mineral paper that proved the MWP was global?' 'yeah, that's right, the Warmist were all squawking and they tried to make him retract it or something, but he never denied that the MWP was global in the paper and it proved it anyway!'
And outside the Inversiverse the disengaged public will pause only to note 'oh, they still can't make up their minds about global warming, no point in doing anything about it, then...'
*Sigh*. Does our resident 'genius' never give up in his little corner of the asylum? Another one of his long-winded 'Jeffie' rants. I must be worth the effort for him to spend hours on Deltoid with his hyperbole and rhetoric. Fact is I have much better things to do with my time than engage with a pseudo-intellect who in fact has not made even the tiniest dent in the scientific arena.
Tim: any chance you can close the door on the notorious Jonas thread once and for all?
He not only does he apparently understand the import of Zunli Lu's paper better than the author himself does, he is under no obligation to draw attention to the author's own statements in the matter in response to the very meme that Watts is happily claiming credit for inaugurating.
Bill, Excellent posts. Essentially, I have seen deniers do this kind of thing before. Its totally unethical. Like the creation lobby, they take the research of others and mangle it to produce conclusions they wish to derive from it. It happened to a colleagues paper that was published in Nature several years ago. The Idso site took the findings of the paper and attempted to spin them to show that increased atmospheric C02 benefitted soil as well as above-ground plant biomass. The article had nothing to do with that. My colleague was shocked and asked me if I knew who 'these people' were. I said of course I did. Dr. Lu's work is similarly being distorted to downplay AGW. Its a disgrace, but it is in keeping with the well-worn tactics of the deniers. They will stop at nothing and will stoop as low as they can to bolster their sordid anti-scientific positions.
Still waiting for that apology Timbo.
SteveC screams "As if. You're a fucking troll, as confirmed by..."
Well hush your Getup mouth.
"So Australia has the reputation for the highest rate of species loss of any "developed" nation for no reason? So your "the biota is back" claptrap is based on verifiable data comparing diversity and abundance now with times past? So there's no such thing as rabbit plagues, house mouse plagues or feral animals, or weed intensities increasing sharply?"
Yes it has been overstated - yet another grande overclaim with no supporting evidence from you. If you have recently driven through and sampled the wildlife in western Queensland and NSW the resurgence is phenomenal - many anecdotes such as - http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/02/16/3139953.htm?site=westqld and http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/14/3163089.htm?site=westqld
And the resurgence is also alongside ferals and toads. Climate isn't the concern - it's the animals out of place. Including feral greenies and Getup delusionals.
BTW doofus - mouse plagues are an episodic grain industry phenomenon not climate change
You're obviously an ecological ignoramus.
If we are to spend fortunes on conservation we need to get the numbers and mechanisms right e.g. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7347/full/nature09985.html
Wot ? Cat got your tongue again Tim ? Or has your namesake 'the prince of precaution', Tim Flannery finally shown you 'the light' ? :-)
On the QLD result.
I only hope Julia Gillard was watching closely.
spottedquoll and steveC, CO2 is only a feeble excuse to make you and me pay more for hydrocarbons.
Do you really think that any country or any government anywhere in the world will stop digging, drilling or fracking for hydrocarbons ?
I can assure you that they don't want anyone to stop using these resources, they only want more money, CO2 is the excuse and they (the bureaucrats) do not give one flying fuck about the environment, you all are simply tools suckered in to help the agenda move forward.
If you want to stop the mining for fossil fuels you have to find an alternative, all efforts by your trusted governments so far have been pathetic, maybe they don't really want an alternative ?
I think it's fair to cast bgfdg's effort as spam.
I dunno, it makes more sense than Karen Bracken a.k.a Mack a.k.a Sunspot.
Thanks Anthony David #45 - Two apologies are required at least. One from the owner of this blog and also his namesake the mad lunatic wandering this wide brown land sprouting doom from 'global warming'.
"The dams will never fill again". Indeed.
Sack him now.
Radio Ecoshock : Free the Climate Scientists
BBD left this link in comments at Kloor's. Adam Curtis, excellent as always:
[The bizarre story of thinktanks](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/09/the_curse_of_tina.html)
[Scientists to construct artificial human brain by 2023; rat brain by 2014](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rPH1Abuu9M&feature=player_embedded)
Re: Scribe @ 1.
Link does not work.
Scribe
No active html behind what looks like a link in your #1
The actual title of the Radio Ecoshock podcast is [Free the Scientists](http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock12/ES_120229_Show_LoFi.mp3)
I would like to take this opportunity to raise awareness of a process afoot to undermine any progress made in the UK with respect to reducing GHG levels and pursuing a low too none fossil fuel based economy.
The is to have selected 'skeptics' brief members of our legislature through the machinations of non-legislature members such as Christopher Monckton.
There have now been two seminar sessions the first on November 30 2010 delivered by Phillip Stott, Ian Plimer, Donna Laframboise, Ruth Lea and Matt Ridley , which may already have been discussed elsewhere here.
The second was just this last February 22 2012 with Richard Lindzen delivering the message, which message was almost a boiler plate copy of his testimony to the US House Subcommittee on Science and Technology hearing in November 2010.
A pdf of his presentation was available at Curry's house but strangely missing one of the slides.
re: #4, thanks for the plug!
@3
The rat brain has already been done. Check out the Jonas thread :-)
In a similar vein MikeH, I had been going to suggest a working prototype denialist brain by next Tuesday.
Well I made an interesting discovery a few days ago :
One of the many howlers in Plimerâs book that struck me as an unfathomably bad one even in my former climate contrarian phase was this one :
Which, as someone whose love of astronomy was inspired in part by the 1989 Voyager II fly-by of Neptune immediately had me thinking âExplorer?" Huh?!? What the ..?" There was one & only one spacecraft to ever fly past Neptune and that space probe â as I thought everyone knew â was âVoyager 2â².
It was a well known fact and such an incredibly basic error that a minutes research would show that I found it hard to understand how Plimer could possibly make it or allow it to stand.
Well, recently I was reading - out of morbid curiosity - contrarian Christopher Booker's The Real Global Warming Disaster and guess what I read on page 188 of that :
Uh, no ... Markram is prone to ridiculously grandiose claims. And consider that we have no idea what the structural difference is between a functional human brain and one that is comatose ... or worse, the brain of a global warming denier.
Of course the whole "other planets are warming" thus its not us causing Global Overheating canard has been frequently and long since debunked in many places such as here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSXgiml5UwM&list=PL029130BFDC78FA33&inde…
My favourite out of all the Climate Crocks series.
Plus here :
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-on-mars.htm
As well as here :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/04/29/is-global-war…
via the Bad Astronomy blog with some great graphics and a lot of other places too.
Hmm .. can we now post links via cut'n'paste method as usually allowed? Looking like it on preview - good.
Or to put it another way, it's crap. Please don't propagate this nonsense, which unfortunately has a serious chance of sinking â¬1 billion that could be put to much better use.
Yes -linkage via cut'n'paste now works fine. Thanks.
BTW. This :
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/triton.html
seems to be the original (probably?) press release on Triton warming - and it names the craft as "Voyager" (they could've added the 'II' suffix but oh well) and also notes :
So as with Pluto it is almost certainly a seasonal warming effect that we are witnessing.
(Incidentally Voyager II only saw about half of Triton due to the fly-by geometry and lighting conditions. Wish there was another mission so we could get as good a view of the the rest of that small, fascinating world.)
StevoR: Those are howlers indeed.
Take two temp measurements of a moon of Neptune, compare them to the massive and growing temperature record of the Earth (surface temps, OHC, global heat content, etc) and try to tell us the former is of more significance than the latter?
I have no words to describe how shameless Booker & Plimer would have to be to propagate such flim-flam.
Any Australians remember a deodorant ad for "Uncle Sam?" I can still hear it in my head:
"You need Uncle Sam, you need Uncle Sam the deodorant protection in the stars-and-stripes can!"
"It's the perfect connection for fellows and girls, and under your arm it's the top of the world!"
It had a groovy guy and girl and was kind of psychedelic
Bob "discount" Carter provides a sworn affidavit in support of NZ deniers a month before the Heartland budget document was made public in which he says:
"I receive no research funding from special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments."
http://hot-topic.co.nz/the-carter-controversy/
Good one Bob.
MikeH, he would be correct in his claim, in a very narrow way. You see, the money he receives from Heartland is for co-writing the NIPCC report, which involves no research.
And if that is too weak, he can still point out that Heartland is not an environmental group, energy company or government department...
marion@17. Ohhh yes. It was rare that I watched the commercials in those days, but that ad seemed particularly crass after the Moratorium marches and the Whitlam dismissal. I am showing my age.
Much excitement in the contrarian blogoshpere over a presentation by Richard Lindzen at a public meeting at a committee room at the House of Commons
But then there's also a manufactured excitement in the contrarian blogosphere every week. Nose-ring led consumers need product.
What was the name of that German 'father of the Greens' a while back? It hardly matters, or matters about as much as who had the No.1 single the week after Christmas. I suspect from our Scandinavian visitors' comments that next week it will be a new paper from Svensgard.
It's all part of the process that let's them kid themslves they're 'making progress'.
@Doug #21
WTF? How did that come about?
I understand Lindzen warned against "science in the service of politics" in his address to a bunch of politicians at an event organised by a political lobby group.
Doug @21 and lord_sidcup @24 see my #7 post above.
Dave H @23, good question.
Interesting article here :
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/southern-ocean-climate-0228.html
via MIT about the southern oceans role in the thermohaline oceanographic part of the climate system if folks are interested.
Also any one know if its normal for the Co2 Now site to be stuck behind a month or so given its current main page :
http://co2now.org/
Far as I can get is still on January 2012?
@16.Composer99 | March 1, 2012 10:42 PM
Well, the howler I was referring to was getting the name of the one & only spacecraft ever to visit Neptune so terribly wrong - but you're right, there's certainly that too! Good point.
I'm sure we can think of a few apt words to describe Plimer & Booker even if we can't print them.
@Lionel A
Strange. I totally skimmed over your original comment without reading it. Perhaps because it contained the word "Monckton", leading my brain to temporarily shut down in self-defence.
The video is just terrifyingly bad, from how much I've been able to bear to watch so far. Seriously, they need someone with half a brain sat there pointing out the errors and lies.
He actually said that there is nothing in the IPCC reports about species loss. He actually said that, and its plainly not true. Really, that's a lie. I mean, we're used to dissembling, and misrepresentation, and distortion and omission, but that is just a flat-out lie.
As your ideological 'sun' sinks slowly in the west, well, actually it's sinking everywhere but you're all so busy trying to make excuses for your own "very naughty boy", 'On yer bike' Gleik, you maybe haven't noticed but, alas, the fact is no-one is listening to you anymore and a lot of your erstwhile supporters are quietly sidling out of the nearest exit - 'splitters', I know!
However, talking of the sun sinking - it really is! We all love the sun when it has a severe dose of acne, you know, spots all over its face, but just at the moment it looks as though its acne has been cured because Cycle 24 is pathetic! And fewer sun spots *probably* means a chilly, not to say, icey, future. I only tell you this, in strict confidence of course (well, hardly anyone outside your sect reads this blog anymore so there's not much risk of a leak), now is the time to practice one of those imperceptible shifts from global warming to global cooling, you know, just like the reverse one you did back in the '70s.
Either that, or chuck it in altogether and find a new hobby. I do realise how important 'end of the world' scenarios are to your inner well-being so if you ask me nicely I can tell you about a big lump of space rubble due to 'hit' earth in about 40 years. Of course, in this context you need to place inverted commas around the word 'hit' because it's about as likely as, er, well, global warming really. Anyway, I'll be dead by than so I don't care but if it cheers you lot up then I'm happy.
Duff, please stop posting while drunk.
> Comment by David Duff blocked. [unkill]â[show comment]
Ah, that always brings a smile to my face.
If we can find out if any MP's attended the lecture in the HoC, we can then write to them pointing out how they have been lied to. The problem seems to be finding out who was there.
Reduced to wishful thinking now, eh DavidWank, you silly old duffer? And so in that vein perhaps Gleik may get a Congressional Medal for uncovering a subversive plot to dumb down future citizens by corrupting them with Heartland branded pseudo-science lies.
Seriously Wankybabe, if every time one of you morons proclaimed final nail in the coffin or its ilk, the proverbial coffin would now be approaching the centre of the Earth at speed under the accumulated weight of iron.
Martin Lack who was in the audience and informs me that:
Monkton was in the chair, Lord Nigel Lawson did not appear, maybe even he was too embarrassed.
That is all I know so far. Media mostly quiet on this one.
Thanks Lionel A, looks like only nutters attended then. How's your dissection of LIndzens presentations going?
Slowly, due to other commitments but one thing I had bother with was getting a fresh copy of his page 32 chart of AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent for October 11 2010 from IJIS , I set up all the numbers in the left pane, Submit and get the map but then 'Data of Sea Ice Extent' lands me at a October 3 2011 chart. Not that this matters that much in the grand scheme of things considering his cherry pick on a cherry.
No, it means that it's chilly now, moron ...
So so much truth in that.
check: You shouldn't play that game with the Swede, because you're wrong about Curry ... she's a full-fledged denier now.
Dave H #27
"He actually said that there is nothing in the IPCC reports about species loss. He actually said that, and its plainly not true. Really, that's a lie. I mean, we're used to dissembling, and misrepresentation, and distortion and omission, but that is just a flat-out lie."
I have watched the video Dave and that isn't what Lindzen said. He was talking about advocates putting 'spin' on the full IPCC report. Lindzen knows that WG2 deals with, amongst other things, species loss. He was a lead author on AR3 WG1, he is familiar with the process and the full range of the subject matter.
In this context he was being supportive of the actual 'science' in the full IPCC reports and bemoaning the distortions subsequently related by advocacy groups for "the greater good".
Youshe people, hey what, I mean youshe people, well you're just, you're ideo-logic-'l, that'sh what you aresh, an' your wrong, juss dead wrong, ideo-logic-'ly. N'anyway I don't care 'cosh I'll be dead soon 'n' it's the Sun 'nyw'y 'n' all that. 'N' there'll be an iceberg soon. Whoopsh; age! Ther'll be an ageberg soon. Rememmer I told youshe...
StevoR,
I bigger geek than I would need to track down the dates with certainty, but Plimer and Booker both copied it. I don't know which, if either, copied from the other, but the meme dates from a year before the publication H&E and TRGWD (if not earlier). I've narrowed the window slightly, but there's still more digging required
Most frequently cited is a financial news email called the The Fleet Street Letter. I haven't managed to get an exact date, but by mid-March 2008, several I'm-a-well-off-but-angry-white-guy-with-a-mid-life-crisis blogs were citing a a mailout from the FSL (mostly via another such mailout, "The Daily Reckoning":
>Global warming - a new religion By Brian Durrant: "However, there is an inconvenient truth for Mr Gore. Astronomers have noted in 1998 that Triton, Neptune's largest moon, seemed to have heated up significantly since it was visited by the Explorer space probe in 1989. Moreover, in 2002 it was reported that the temperature on Pluto had risen by two degrees Celsius in 14 years."
The page below dates to some time after early 2009, but appears to be a rehosting of a page written in or shortly after December 2007:
>"It had first been noticed in 1998, when researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that, according to observations by the Hubble telescope, Triton, the largest moon of the planet Neptune, seemed to have heated up significantly since it was visited by the Explorer space probe in 1989. Frozen nitrogen on the moon's surface appeared to be melting into gas".
http://world-news-research.com/contrarianview.html
He cites as the source for this comment, the revelant news report from MIT
>"A Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher has reported that observations obtained by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based instruments reveal that Neptune's largest moon, Triton, seems to have heated up significantly since the Voyager space probe visited it in 1989. The warming trend is causing part of Triton's surface of frozen nitrogen to turn into gas, thus making its thin atmosphere denser".
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/triton.html
I wonder if Plimer or Booker provide citations - if they point to the original MIT release, what are the odds of them independently making the same boner?
@GSW
Lindzen:
> What has become commonplace in this, is for somebody to say "global warming is going to destroy the habitat, its going to get rid of species, its going to do this, that", and they will cite as their authority the IPCC - and you can't find it in there.
IPCC AR4:
> Overall, climate change has been estimated to be a major driver of biodiversity loss in cool conifer forests, savannas, mediterranean-climate systems, tropical forests, in the Arctic tundra, and in coral reefs (Thomas et al., 2004a; Carpenter et al., 2005; Malcolm et al., 2006). In other ecosystems, land-use change may be a stronger driver of biodiversity loss at least in the near term. In an analysis of the SRES scenarios to 2100 (Strengers et al., 2004), deforestation is reported to cease in all scenarios except A2, suggesting that beyond 2050 climate change is very likely to be the major driver for biodiversity loss globally. Due to climate change alone it has been estimated that by 2100 between 1% and 43% of endemic species (average 11.6%) will be committed to extinction (DGVM-based study â Malcolm et al., 2006), whereas following another approach (also using climate envelope modelling-based studies â Thomas et al., 2004a) it has been estimated that on average 15% to 37% of species (combination of most optimistic assumptions 9%, most pessimistic 52%) will be committed to extinction by 2050 (i.e., their range sizes will have begun shrinking and fragmenting in a way that guarantees their accelerated extinction). Climate-change-induced extinction rates in tropical biodiversity hotspots are likely to exceed the predicted extinctions from deforestation during this century (Malcolm et al., 2006). In the mediterranean-climate region of South Africa, climate change may have at least as significant an impact on endemic Protea speciesâ extinction risk as land-use change does by 2020 (Bomhard et al., 2005). Based on all above findings and our compilation (Figure 4.4, Table 4.1) we estimate that on average 20% to 30% of species assessed are likely to be at increasingly high risk of extinction from climate change impacts possibly within this century as global mean temperatures exceed 2°C to 3°C relative to pre-industrial levels (this chapter). The uncertainties remain large, however, since for about 2°C temperature increase the percentage may be as low as 10% or for about 3°C as high as 40% and, depending on biota, the range is between 1% and 80% (Table 4.1; Thomas et al., 2004a; Malcolm et al., 2006). As global average temperature exceeds 4°C above pre-industrial levels, model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% species assessed) around the globe (Table 4.1).
What a massive liar. Your interpretation is funny - as an example of "advocate spin", Lindzen chooses something that very definitely *is* in the IPCC report.
Hey, if PLuto or triton or wherever had a 2 degree temp rise caused by the sun, that means that, since we are a lot closer and inverse square law and all that, we must have had an 18 degree increase!!!
(based on roughly 3 times further out and so 9 times greater surface area).
Dave H
You've still missed the point. It isn't whether or not WG2 discusses "species loss", everybody knows it does. Lindzen knows it does.
He is talking about specific claims that are made in the form of "Enviroporn" which are not supported by, or are misrepresentations of, the papers that the IPCC bases its analysis on.
He politely refers to this as 'spin'. But it's "lost in translation" + "chinese whispers"- journalists not reading or understanding the papers or IPCC reports, merely repeating the words verbatim from advocacy group press releases.
It isn't a hard point follow, especially if you actually watch the video.
A reminder of what Professor Tim Flannery actually said about rainfall in southern Australia, instead of the quote-mining being bandied about once again.
@GSW
So, what you're saying is, that when Lindzen said:
> What has become commonplace in this, is for somebody to say "global warming is going to destroy the habitat, its going to get rid of species, its going to do this, that", and they will cite as their authority the IPCC - and you can't find it in there.
He actually meant to use entirely different words that mean what you want them to mean?
Also, @GSW
> It isn't whether or not WG2 discusses "species loss", everybody knows it does.
Really? Everybody? Lindzen was addressing a non-technical audience, and your best bet is that only a tiny minority (if any) will have read *even part* of the IPCC reports - are you absolutely sure that nobody will have been misled in any way by his choice of words?
> Lindzen knows it does.
Which is why I'm calling this a lie, and not just being ill-informed.
Duff @ 28 echoes the argument of solar crank David Archibald.
from Duff
From Archibald (2009) in the climate crank's journal of choice, Energy and Environment
Archibald's prediction plotted at SkS.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/ArchibaldMidLat.png
Duff is obviously envious of [John Mclean's](http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/McLean2011Failure.png) status as the denier with the most ridiculous and ridiculed prediction of global temperature.
Of course, whenever you put this to denialists, they claim Flannery was saying the same things about more northerly parts of Australia too. When asked to supply a citation for their claims, they vanish in a puff of smoke.
By the way, Melbourne's reservoirs have got back to 64.4% after more than a year of mainly La Nina conditions. Flannery doesn't look like he will be falsified any time soon.
No, we all get the point, GSW, that you and Lindzen are pathetic liars.
Meanwhile, over in the Swedish thread, GSW lies about Tim.
Not to be missed: Andrew Breitbart, dead at 43.
What Andrew Breitbart wil be remembered for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=R4od4QQVK1o
While doubtlessly there are many who will lament the passing of Breitbart, I'm not going to be hypocrite enough to pretend I'm one of them.
Hi guy's, remember this ?
August 30, 2009
It's not drought, it's climate change, say scientists
"SCIENTISTS studying Victoria's crippling drought have, for the first time, proved the link between rising levels of greenhouse gases and the state's dramatic decline in rainfall.
A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed what many scientists long suspected: that the 13-year drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change.
Scientists working on the $7 million South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative say the rain has dropped away because the subtropical ridge - a band of high pressure systems that sits over the country's south - has strengthened over the past 13 years.
Advertisement: Story continues below
These dry, high pressure systems have become stronger, bigger and more frequent and this intensification over the past century is closely linked to rising global temperatures, they found.
Climate data from across the past century shows the subtropical ridge has peaked and waned, often in line with rising global temperatures.
But to see what role greenhouse gases played in the recent intensification, the scientists used sophisticated American computer climate models.
When they ran simulations with only the ''natural'' influences on temperature, such as changing levels of solar activity, they found there was no intensification of the subtropical ridge and no decline in rainfall.
But when they added human influences, such as greenhouse gases, aerosols and ozone depletion, the models mimicked what has occurred in south-east Australia - the high pressure systems strengthened, causing a significant drop in rainfall.
''It's reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,'' said the bureau's Bertrand Timbal.
''In the minds of a lot of people, the rainfall we had in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was a benchmark. A lot of our [water and agriculture] planning was done during that time. But we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again as long as the system is warming up.''
But not all experts agree. Murray-Darling Basin Authority chief Rob Freeman told a water summit in Melbourne last week he believed the extreme climate patterns that have dried out south-east Australia would not prove to be permanent.
''Some commentators say this is the new future. I think that is an extreme position and probably a position that's not helpful to take,'' he said, expressing confidence that wetter times would return.
Dr Timbal believes 80 per cent of the rain loss in south-east Australia can be attributed to the intensification of the subtropical ridge. If the next phase of the study is approved, the scientists hope to work out exactly how rising temperatures result in a stronger subtropical ridge.
The research program, supported by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, the federal Department of Climate Change and the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, was set up in 2006 to solve the puzzle of why south-east Australia had experienced such a dramatic loss of rain.
The program covers the Murray-Darling Basin, Victoria and parts of South Australia.
Monash University's Neville Nicholls, a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who has also published on the subtropical ridge, said he believed the program's results were right.
''We did think that the loss of rain was simply due to the [rain-bearing] storms shifting south, off the continent,'' Professor Nicholls said.
''Now we know the reason they have slipped south is that the subtropical ridge has become more intense. It is getting bigger and stronger and that is pushing the rainstorms further south.''
The scientific results have implications for many state government water programs and drought funding, some of which factor in climate change. Projections for the water coming to Melbourne in the north-south pipeline are based on the assumption that Victoria will return to rainfall levels of last century.
Melbourne's dams get roughly a third less water than they did before the drought began in 1996."
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/its-not-drought-its-climate-change-sa…
Do you have a touch of arrière pensée ?
Via one of those dumb trolls:
Of course we know that is no longer true because Melbourne's dams are now overflowing. Yeah right.
Just a whispered prayer of thanks to my imaginary friend, Jeebus, for showing the Bible belt states the Sinfulness of Denial and the Reality of Global Warming through the Awakening of Conciousness through Holy Tornado. Amen.
Climate change skeptic's university course criticized
@Fran Barlow
The comments on that story are depressing.
Someone claiming to be one of the signatories to the recent WSJ Op-Eds has [turned up in comments](http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=10829#comment-229565) on the RealClimate post by Bickmore critiquing a few of the second Op-Ed's claims.
He appears to assert that the post is wrong, but seems to have difficulty in stating precisely why. I wonder whether he'll hang around and try to argue the Op-Ed's case...?
Correction: the comment I referred to was on the "Free Speech and Academic Freedom" thread - but it seems more likely to have been intended to address the Bickmore response to the WSJ Op-Ed.
Moron @ 55
From Barrie Pittock, Honorary Fellow, Marine and Atmospheric Research at CSIRO
http://theconversation.edu.au/droughts-and-flooding-rains-climate-chang…
The relevant quote from "A Special Climate Statement from BoM" in February 2012 quoted by Pittock to help with your reading comprehension
Here follows a more detailed discussion.
Karen/Sunspot - Do you have that sinking feeling that comes from being identified as an idiot or are you so obtuse that it has no effect?
Foulspot.
You may still pretend to be 'Karen', but your obsession with the Australian floods and their causations reveals you for who you are.
Tread carefully grasshopper, or Tim Lambert might tire of your escape from the only thread on which you are permitted to post, and summarily execute your tresspassing blather.
Oo, and as Chris O'Neill and Mike H observe, you are worse than wrong. There is one compensation however for your state of being - it permits you to live in deluded bliss.
Interesting [comment](http://rabett.blogspot.com/2012/02/it-comes-in-threes.html?showComment=…) on that Carleton Uni denialist course:
> Mr. Harris is a MechE; as we know, the Earth's climate is governed by a system of sprockets, springs and chains similar that found on bicycles so it's wise to defer to his judgement. In the case of "negative discovery" I think he's trying to use nontechnical terms to explain that we have to pedal backward in order to go forward.
(It also notes that the lecturer's highest degree appears to be a M.Eng. which doesn't seem particularly relevant to teaching Earth Sciences.)
Tom Harris was hired by Tim Patterson, head of the Department of Geological Sciences at Carleton. Tom Harris and Tim Patterson go a long way back in Canadian AGW denerism.
See DeSmogBlog:
http://www.desmogblog.com/r-timothy-patterson
A WUWT classic, courtesy of McKitrick.
"The problem the alarmists had, was that there was never anything substantial to hit back at. "
Unfortunately, I think he has no sense of irony.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/02/quote-of-the-week-alarmists-missi…
Harry @ 66,
To "paraphrase" *Pointman*:
> Every one of the skeptics was a lone brainless zombie, who needed absolutely no logistical support of any kind to continue the fight indefinitely. The alarmists never understood this, preferring to think that there simply had to be some cerebral matter leading the resistance. While they wasted time and effort attacking targets that had no head, each of the zombies chewed on them mercilessly in their own particular way.
You can watch John Mashey talk about Heartland, Seitz, Singer, Wegman, and various other points of interest over at Hot Topic in the latest Climate show.
bill
Watched the video bill. Not sure about the reference to mashey being a "Hobbit". A little disrespectful I thought.
No mention of the similarity between John Cook and Shrek however. Curious.
lol Bernard J, your such a silly duffer.
So the climate pro's were wrong about rain in 2008, so were you Bernard
Tim Flannery was named Australiaâs Man of the Year in 2007-for predicting that Australian cities will run out of water. He predicted Perth would become the âfirst 21st century ghost city,â and that Sydney would be out of water by 2007.
Then we have the polar bears, disappearing temperature gauges, missing data (and Micheal's emails), glaciers not melting, snowmaggedon, low hurricane occurrence, sea levels not rising fast enough, in context emails that are out of context, hockey sticks, sheezzzz.
âCorals will become increasingly rare on reef systems.â Dr. Hans Hoegh-Guldberg, head of Queensland University (Australia) marine studies.
In 2006, Dr. Hoegh-Guldberg warned that high temperatures might kill 30-40 percent of the coral on the Great Barrier Reef âwithin a month.â In 2007, he said global warming temperatures were bleaching [potentially killing] the reef.
But, in 2008, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network said climate change had not damaged the âwell-managedâ reef in the four years since its last report.
Most in here can't or won't see these things for what they truly are, or they move the goal post and twist the fairy tale's, you are only fueling the public's rejection of the "cause" or "the team's" consensus science.
This is a WUWT post that you all should read http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/02/why-cagw-theory-is-not-settled-sc…
Bernard J, your foul mouth, bullying and innuendo are surely your most treasured attributes.
[Foulspot](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2012/03/march_2012_open_thread.php#comm…).
>...snowmaggedon...
If you're going to maintain the pretense of being a girl, you should avoid using [terminology peculiar to 'sunspot'](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/05/brent_thread.php#comment-2559477).
That aside, in what way am I "wrong" about the magnitude of this year's and last year's floods?
How do you know that Flannery is wrong in predicting that Perth may become a "ghost city" this century? When did he predict that Sydney would run out of water by 2007?
What about the polar bears?
Which "disappearing temperature gauges", and what does their absence mean?
What "missing data"?
What about "Micheal's" [sic] personal emails?
Which glaciers are not melting and which ones are, exactly? What do you think that this means?
Which hockey sticks do you believe are invalid, and which ones do you accept for their demonstration of global temperature trajectory? What do you think that this means?
Do you have the primary source for Hans Hoegh-Guldberg's statement that:
>...that high temperatures might kill 30-40 percent of the coral on the Great Barrier Reef "within a month."
because I have seen a lot of denialist regurgitation of the words, with no context supplied.
>Bernard J, your foul mouth, bullying and innuendo are surely your most treasured attributes.
Diddums.
Now grow a set, lose the glass jaw, and get thee back to your own thread, where you actually have permission to discuss these matters.
And stop pretending to be female: it's offensive to women.
I just came across this Science Daily article that found a minimum impact of land cover change on the glaciers of Kilimanjaro. Here is the original article from Nature Climate .
A WIN FOR SCIENCE
For the last 2 years the Virginia Attorney-General, Ted Cuccinelli has pursued climate scientist Michael Mann (he of âhockey stickâ fame) and the University of Virginia, demanding they hand over all e-mails and other correspondence related to research undertaken at the University. This modern-day version of McCarthyism has just come to an end (on 2 March), when the Supreme Court of Virginia decisively ruled against Cuccinelli.
This is not only a victory for Science but no less importantly a win for academic freedom. The ruling throws out the politically motivated attempt by Cuccinelli to destroy the right of climate scientists and University faculties to confidential correspondence. Without such confidentiality, scientists working in institutions such as universities, could have felt intimidated in what they could say or write in discussion with other scientists.
The Harper Government of Canada, has effectively gagged all climate scientists in its employ from speaking about their work or publishing their views without first obtaining clearance from the Prime Ministersâ Office. This dangerous bid to curb freedom of speech among climate scientists should be the next target brought before the Courts.
WSJ signatory Michael Kelly [doubles down](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/02/free-speech-and-a…) at RealClimate, with interesting responses from Gavin Schmidt. I fear Kelly is only making himself look even more foolish.
Also known as, proof by non-existent citation.
What a liar.
re: #734
Nit: that's Ken Cuccinelli, who would probably not approve the image chosen for Curious Coincidences at George Mason University: Ed Wegman, Milton Johns and Ken Cuccinelli.
[Lotharsson](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2012/03/march_2012_open_thread.php#comm…).
I see that Michael Kelly outs himself as a cornucopian.
He is a discredit to the engineering profession, as a consequence of the simplistic thinking that he displays when he claims Malthus, Jevons - and implicitly Hubbert - are all wrong to predict the finiteness of both renewable and non-renewable resources. The truth is that the first two gentlemen have not been proven "wrong": they simply haven't yet been proven right, because they were unable to foresee certain applications of technology. However those applications are not infinitely postponing those inescapable limits, as much as Kelly might fantasise otherwise...
As for Peak Oil, Hubbert and the modern commentators have been pretty much spot on. If Kelly imagines that there will be any significant deviation from the contemporary trend and future predictions, he's living in la-la land.
I'm surprised to see yet another supposedly educated person succumb to illogical analysis. This cornucopianism seems to be the technological equivalent of religosity - the atheists' version of sky fairies, if you will, just as interstellar colonialism and cybernetic evolution seem to be the rabid technophiles' version of immortality and heaven.
If there is any 'god' that directs our lives, it is thermodynamics, and it has only one dictum: "I win". Kelly would do well to remember that, and to remember that the forecastings of Malthus and his heirs are ultimately entirely consistent with thermodynamics, even if Faustian humans have managed to fiddle the calendar a little in order to stave off the inevitable 'judgement' day.
Looks like 'Karen' is regurgitating the customary pre-mangled Andrew Boltisms in place of any actual science.
[Hat-tip](http://rabett.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/pox-on-hat-tipping.html) to Eli.
Flannery's supposed prediction of Sydney running out of water comes from this Lateline interview from 2005: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2005/s1389827.htm
Firstly he said Warragamba Dam had two years supply of water (something easy enough to figure out, take the volume in storage and divide by daily use + evaporation). I've got two years supply of water in my water tanks, hardly a controversial statement.
He was then asked what the worst case scenario would be and he answered "Well, the worst-case scenario for Sydney is that the climate that's existed for the last seven years continues for another two years. In that case, Sydney will be facing extreme difficulties with water...".
So there we go, that's what the fuss is about. Other claims about what Flannery is supposed to have said don't stand up to scrutiny either.
Hey chek, right on cue.
Bolt has just posted on this subject.
'http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comme…'
@karen #80
It does look fairly damning when you see all those past statements from Karoly and others listed together. Do you think there is any possibility they have more of a clue now than they did then?
Let's rephrase that more realistically GSW.
"It does look fairly damning when deniers continually cherry pick short periods and ignore [trends.](http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/trendmaps.cgi?map=rain&are…)
Do you think there is any possibility they will ever have more of a clue"?
The answer being 'not a chance'.
GSW.
You appear to be playing Fergus to sunspot's Dil.
And we know how that ended...
Why so sensitive chek? There's no harm in going back to look at past claims. Nobody made them say these things at the time. It's useful bearing them in mind when they make future pronouncements.
Do they know what they are talking about? it's a fair question.
"Do they know what they are talking about?"
Which "they"?
Bolt? Almost definitely not.
re: #79 Bernard J
Hat-tipping Eli, or not:
That wasn't Eli, it was Brian Schmidt.
Eli owns the Rabbett hole, but Brian and John sometimes post there. [Brian was a big help for Fake science, ...
The visual style may not make it as obvious as one might like, since the author is at the end not the start.
Sunspot @ 81 provides a broken link to a failed radio shock jock in a discussion of climate science. Tells you everything you need to know.
Damn - I'm dark - a very good, up until today, publication/website has been The Conversation.
I think it ran with a denier today - the old "it's wet and cold here thus it's wet and cold everywhere theme" but by someone a little more articulate.
https://theconversation.edu.au/climate-and-floods-flannery-is-no-expert…
Am I a little too thin skinned?
(forgot to add - it does continue on the theme that we assert we've caught Flannery out thus all climate science is the hoax, Fourier and his minions unmasked crap)
Dave @90,Franks has tried this 'the experts get the physical relationship between wrong' argument before,but it's facetious. He seems to suggest that higher temperatures are a result only of drought,and that they cannot further dessicate already dry soils. He ignores the observation that the long term rising temperature trend overlies dry and wet periods.
@80 "He was then asked what the worst case scenario would be and he answered "Well, the worst-case scenario for Sydney is that the climate that's existed for the last seven years continues for another two years. In that case, Sydney will be facing extreme difficulties with water...".
So there we go, that's what the fuss is about. Other claims about what Flannery is supposed to have said don't stand up to scrutiny either."
Which is why they need to lie when they continually beat up on him. If they actually quote him, they have nothing. All the major cities in Australia were facing extreme difficulties, which is why they all built desal plants.
Thanks Nick@91
I must admit I don't fully understand the ins and outs (still trying - got a couple of text but ohh I am so struggling - I'm good on the IR blocking, I love lasers, so happy with CO2 laser and the operation of a CO2 IR gas analyser, and good with satellites measuring the absorption bands deepening and hence the energy being trapped that must be taken up by the ocean/atmosphere). But the meteorology bit. I have to defer to CSIRO/NASA/NOAA etc
But my BS detector is OK.
Here's someone I've never heard of before, Franks, who has never published a climate related paper (not in any reputable journal anyway) ripping into Karoly + CSIRO flinging about terms that sounds wizardry. Then after that, you're left with the conclusion that he has just disproved Fourier's Greenhouse Gas Theory. Yet the genius has never published.
I did expect this rot to get a go in The Australian - but so sad to see pseudo-science getting into The Conversation. Why couldn't the editor ring AMOS or CSIRO and/or say UNSW and have it checked over by a climatologist or 3 rather than assume he's got in his hot paws the scientific discovery of 2 centuries. That's the dumb bit :(
Stewart Franks subscribes to the Bob Carter/John McLean theory that climate change is all down to ENSO. His claims that climate has returned to normal are nonsense. We are getting monsoonal rain in southern Australia while our winter rainfall continues below average.
The last 2 years have set a La Nina inspired rainfall record for Australia! That's normal?
Here is the antidote to Franks.
https://theconversation.edu.au/droughts-and-flooding-rains-climate-chan…
He makes the claim "If the observed history of ENSO and Australian flood risk is any guide to the future, then we might expect further La Niña for the next decade or so."
Like most climate change deniers he sees cycles in ENSO like creationists see JC's face in their toast.
Yes,Mike,Franks frowns at climate experts making nuanced attributions from long term data,yet is happy to declare the return of normalcy after two abnormally wet years and gaze into his own crystal ball. He obviously has some axe to grind.
Didn't he co-author a recent paper in this area with a procedural error that undid his conclusions?
@41. FrankD | March 2, 2012 5:41 PM :
Thanks for that.
Turns out that Booker's book came after Plimer's one - later on Booker refers to H&E (page 336) as a "best seller" & refers to going to press August 2009 on P. 324 FWIW.
Citations~wise, I've returned TRGWD to the library now but don't recall seeing any cites for that whilst Plimer cites :
Which matches the original MIT press release I linked in comment #15 (1st of March 2012 10:23 PM) here - and which correctly names Voyager as the spacecraft involved.
Plimer also cites :
Over the (seasonal though Plimer doesn't note that natch!) warming on Pluto debunked at the 3 minutes 45 sec's mark on the 'Mars Attacks" Climate Denial Crock of the Week clip linked at #13. Seems Plimer didn't actually read the article either.
@28. David Duff | March 2, 2012 9:30 AM :
It is? Try telling that to the peer-reviewed literature and melting glaciers.
Funny, solar storms like this one from a month or two ago :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/01/29/mesmerizing-t…
are still happening quite dramatically. Pathetic is NOT a word I'd use to describe them.
Interesting, the same blog noted recently that there was also the study reported here :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/02/01/what-caused-t…
That seems to show the solar influence on the Little Ice Age was less than we used to think with volcanic activity playing a more significant causative role there.
Yet here you are. Are you then a sect member? Strict confidence on a public thread? Really?
Bzzt. Wrong. That climate canard is debunked here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB3S0fnOr0M&list=PL029130BFDC78FA33&inde…
Among many other places. To sum up, no, a majority of climatologists *always* thought global warming was more likely than global cooling even back in the 1970's. Our understanding has of course moved on since then and the evidence for Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating (HIRGO) has grown ever stronger.
Or alternatively we're capable of hearing about such things as the close pass of asteroid 2011 AG5 and asteroid 2012 DA 14 and asteroid Apophis and other such space rocks for ourselves and assessing their risks calmly.
Also, FYI I'd be much happier if HIRGO wasn't real bI used to be a contrarian myself but was eventually convinced otherwise by the weight of evidence. It'd be great if we could keep on with business as usal consequence free - but the science shows we can't.
Ironically enough an asteroid or comet impact on Earth is eventually inevitable - unless we act to prevent it. Due to thermal inertia we're already comittted to and bound to have more global overheating as well. So David Duff, you are actually correct here although not in the way you think. Both are very likely although one is caused by Human activity and the other can perhaps be stopped by it.
How very charming - not.
Got any children or grandchildren? Don't give a durn for the future beyond your lifespan at all?
If David Duff has any younger relatives, I'm sure they'd be delighted to know he's been keenly hoping they have a socioeconomically impoverished future.
I wonder what my family would say if I went around spouting off that I didn't care about my 5-month-old's future.
Nick @ 95
You are probably thinking of this [paper](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/07/ahh_mclean_youve_done_it_again…) authored by John McLean and Bob Carter which has been the source of great amusement over the years - particularly when McLean predicted on the basis of the "its all ENSO" view he shares with Franks that "it is likely that 2011 will be the coolest year since 1956 or even earlier".
Franks has coauthored an ideological rant with Carter that appeared in Quadrant.
http://theconversation.edu.au/whos-your-expert-the-difference-between-p…
One of Mann's main accusers has written a "book review" over at Amazon. Funny enough, the entire review revolves around what the reviewer, Hu McCulloch, wrote and Mann's response.
I just got to the part of the book that briefly mentions Mr. McCulloch and read the notes. I still do not feel well versed enough to tackle it directly.
I am hoping one of the more erudite forum members here can take a look.
No,Mike I'm thinking of Lockart et al 2009? "On the recent warming in the Murray-Darling Basin: Land surface interactions misunderstood" which Franks co-authored. This paper claimed a drought/reduction in cloud cover mediated increase in sunshine hours accounted for the rise in average temperature across the basin. It got a swift rebuttal from Cai et al who pointed out they had failed to handle their data correctly
I complained at The Conversation about [Stewart Franks' claim](https://theconversation.edu.au/climate-and-floods-flannery-is-no-expert…) that
without providing a source that backed up the claim.
According to Matthew Thompson, one of the editors at The Conversation
@28. David Duff | March 2, 2012 9:30 AM :
Very hot off the solar corona and just in via the Bad Astronomy blog and Solar Dynamics Observatory from earlier today (7th March 2012.)
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/03/06/the-sun-unlea…
Hardly "pathetic" with the most powerful type of flare* seemingly setting the whole solar surface quivering!
* Good, quick NASA primer on the solar flares can be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOXVZo7KikE&feature=player_embedded
Exponential scale with B, C, M & finally X so this was in the most powerful class of solar flare.
Hmm... we could even be in for aurora maybe esp. those of us living further south & north latitudinally.
#92, #80 and others
There's some discussion about what Tim Flannery actually said about dams and rainfall.
He did a "Landline" interview in 2007,
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s1844398.htm
"PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: We're already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we're getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that's translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That's because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that's a real worry for the people in the bush. If that trend continues then I think we're going to have serious problems, particularly for irrigation."
mmm... "isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems", I wonder what he meant?
Franks has made this statement in The Conservation thread:
>With all due respect - you do misunderstand the physics. Higher temperatures do not cause higher evaporation - this sound right but is completely wrong.
>Boundary Layer Meteorology is what you are lacking.
Utterly disingenuous. While it is true that temperature is not the only variable affecting evaporation, e.g., relative humidity, pressure, and available liquid water; without a transfer of sensible heat into latent heat, there is no evaporation. Though turbulence in the Terrestrial Boundary Layer makes the relation of surface temperature and evaporation highly non-linear for any given small area of land (much less so over the open sea), it doesn't eliminate the ceteris paribus causal relationship between temperature and evaporation.
>Higher temperature is caused by a dry land surface.
While dry land will accrue sensible heat more than wet land (given relative humidity >100% and constant pressure) it isn't the cause of temperature change, it is the effect of the transfer of sensible heat into the latent heat of evaporation. The cause is an external source of energy.
I can't seem to find a way to register for comments there, but I feel this casuistry shouldn't go unanswered.
GSW says:
>mmm... "isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems", I wonder what he meant?
It is hard to ascertain what he meant if you neglect the part where he says, "If that trend continues..."
Cherry-picking, misrepresentation and selective quotation; the deniers' only friends.
>(given relative humidity >100% and constant pressure)
I forgot to consider albedo. Given fairly high relative humidity and all other variables constant, wet land will actually warm more than dry land.
@LB
Hi LB, how are you?
;)
Great Slimy Weasel @ 104
Why don't you drop the weasel act and tell us what it means.
Franks tried the "Bolt" interpretation and was forced to withdraw. What is yours? Before you do, I suggest that you get your atlas out and look at the latitude difference between northern and southern Australia. Bolt can be excused for not knowing the science because he is an ignoramus who repeats what he is told by Carter, Franks et. al. Let us see if you know any more than him. Come on. Stop with the bluster. Let us see what you have weasel.
LB @ 105. Go to the bottom of any article where the comments start and you will see a Sign Up link. You only need an email address to register.
@MikeH
"Great Slimy Weasel @ 104"
Are you addressing me? ;)
Honestly I don't have a horse in this race (Don't live in Oz). From what I can gather, Flannery has opportunistically made all kinds of statements about water/rainfall in various regions, at various times, and tried to pass it off as the new "climate shift" norm. It's what Climate Change Commissioners do I suppose.
If you want to know what he meant, I suggest you ask him. Although I suspect he doesn't know either.
;)
GSW, I'm intrigued to know if Brad Dourif understudied with you (unlikely, but possible) or if your chosen public performance on blogs just channels his LOTR Grima Wormtounge performace, yet uncannily taps into the vast natural reservoirs of slime which already exists within you.
It positively ooozes from your very text, which is an incredible talent you possess.
Mr GS Weasel @ 110
I thought so - all puff no cream.
@chek,
"yet uncannily taps into the vast natural reservoirs of slime which already exists within you."
I'm guessing that's the closest I'm ever going to get to a compliment out of you.
So thanks.
;)
Obvious and stupid lie. You've been fellating an abject ignoramus in his own little dungeon for over half a year now. I doubt your horse is financial, but it is most certainly emotional and most definitely to justify your cognitive difference.
So no, you are not objective. Objectively proven to not be objective. You are a cheerleader.
That is all, carry on.
Sigh... s/difference/dissonance.
> Honestly I don't have a horse in this race
Shorter GSW: I don't really know what I am talking about outside the memes I repeat, and the more I read on the subject the more I realise I have been mislead so I will try and ungracefully back out of this conversation.
Professor Michael Ashley has complained that Franks was allowed to withdraw his Bolt inspired accusation against Flannery.
Ashley argues
https://theconversation.edu.au/climate-and-floods-flannery-is-no-expert…
Curry Asks âWhy Heartlandâ? Hereâs an Answer.
Griphook's Social Worker has driven by at RealClimate comment 84 .
Can someone tell me if the following has any credibility or whether it is just another anti-wind beat up by the Australian.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/billions-blown-away-on…
"conducted his study for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which is chaired by former Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson."
That tells you a lot right there.
For Aussies and Kiwis:
DC's latest sounds like it might be about Canada, but it has
Tom Harris (ICSC, which includes Bob Carter), NZCSC (Carter & Warwick Hughes, Heartland funding, Bali 2007, and a certain Viscount. It also has the Canadian equivalent of a newspaper Tim loves to tweak.
Follow the money... these days, across many borders.
Prof. Gordon Hughes also has another report out: "The Myth of Green Jobs". Funnily enough that's not available through his university press either, but can be had for free through the [GWPF here](http://thegwpf.org/search-site.html?searchword=hughes&ordering=newest&s…) along with other august authors such as Donna Laframboise.
Yes SQ I saw that too:
Crow(e)ing too much about a study that probably isn't that thorough. One more strawman in the making.
Another affiliate of Heartland (GWPF) strikes again.
@120
The article includes a comment from Anthony Owen, Santos Professor of Energy Resources at the Adelaide based International Energy Policy Institute established with a grant from BHP, owners of the Olympic Dam uranium mine.
Not questioning the prof's integrity but that must get a laugh when he disses renewable energy.
I am thinking of establishing the Clubs Australia Centre For Gambling Reform with a few dollars I have cadged from the local pokies venue.
In case John Mashey's #122 was too cryptic, here is the opening summary.
Tom Harris, Heartland and the 2007 Bali open letter to the U.N.
http://deepclimate.org/2012/03/08/tom-harris-heartland-and-the-2007-bal…
Today Iâll take a close look at the beginning of the Harris-Heartland connection in 2007, based on Heartlandâs publicly available 2007 tax declaration and December 2007 press releases, as well as the illuminating full recorded interview of Harris by Suzanne Goldberg of the Guardian. Taken together, these provide compelling evidence that Heartland funded Tom Harrisâs Natural Resource Stewardship Project right around the time that Harris was organizing the Bali contrarian petition attacking climate science, part of a broader attempt by Heartland to disrupt the December 2007 UNFCCC conference.
National Post financial editor Terence Corcoran essentially provided Harris the sole (but very powerful) PR channel for the petition, while hiding Harrisâs involvement, a fact that the Post has never publicly acknowledged to this day. Now that it turns out that the effort was likely funded by the Heartland Institute, the Postâs credibility has been compromised even further.
Professor Michael Ashley isn't happy with the ABC's Mr Newman.
"What has me fuming is your speech last week to ABC staff in which you accuse your senior journalists of "group-think" in favouring the scientific consensus on climate change. You refer to "a growing number of distinguished scientists [that are] challenging the conventional wisdom with alternative theories and peer reviewed research" and you claim that these poor folk are being suppressed in the mainstream media.
Who are these distinguished scientists? I don't know of a single credible climate scientist who doubts human-induced climate change."
http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/opinion-an-open-letter-to-mr-maurice-new…
Fortunately Tom, Newman has retired and gone off to count his millions.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-08/gillard-confirms-spigelman-as-new…
For those not in Australia, the replacement of Newman with Spigelman would, in the States, almost be akin to replacing Limbaugh (or Watts) with Hansen.
Much happier days for the ABC...
Much happier days for the ABC...
And for me. I realise it won't happen overnight, but I have a lingering fondness for Insiders which I abandoned some time ago due to the 'balanced' approach including some of the more unpleasant representatives of the right wing flappermouths. (If they were truly interested in 'balance' they'd be hosting assorted wild-eyed, unkempt street marchers as well.)
And there are a couple of other venues in various media which would do better with real, serious reporting and analysis rather than the constant hesaidshesaid dragged down by relentless trying for a gotcha moment and tedious flourishes of 'and how did you feel about that'.
Whew! Its good to get back to sanity and away from that he-who-must-not-be-named megalomaniac on his 'own' thread.
Here is an outstanding TED lecture presented by James Hansen (courtesy of Joe Romm at Think Progress). As we all know here, Hansen is perhaps the world's best known and leading climate scientist. And, contrary to the rantings of the resident fruitcake on his eponymous thread, Hansen is an immensely respected 'real' scientist. Deniers loathe him for precisely that fact: his integrity, wisdom and because his views carry so much weight. Hansen makes it clear that we are approaching the precipice:
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/08/440396/james-hansen-ted-talk-c…
I just watched "The Greenhouse Conspiracy", the Channel 4 (UK) documentary from 1990. Aside from the amusingly bad graphics and dodgy dress sense, it was remarkable to see how many of today's denialist talking points were floating around then. I compiled a list while watching:
1. The urban heat island effect.
2. Focusing on very short term timescales for both temperature and sea level rise. No consideration of statistical significance.
3. Cherry-picking start and end dates (and remember this was before the 1998 El Nino!). Cherry picking small areas of the world as representative of the whole.
4. Wine was grown in medieval Britain.
5. CO2 levels lag temperature, so temperature causes CO2 rise.
6. Models are bad!!!
7. Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas.
8. CO2 is good for plants, so more is better.
9. Global cooling was predicted in the 1970s, so how can we trust scientists now?
10. Allegations that scientists are promoting global warming so they can get incredibly rich.
11. Allegations of "McCarthyism" against opposing views.
12. The idea that if we don't know everything, we don't know anything.
13. An uncritical acceptance of opposing views (e.g. Lindzen, Michaels, Spencer, Idso).
14. Finally, a laughably cocksure air of certainty.
I see he-who-must-not-be-named (hwmnbn) is spewing out his typical vapid invective on his own sad little thread. To be ignored. Since hwmnbn has no scientific qualifications whatsoever, it takes remarkable hubris for him to think he possess the acumen to be able to separate 'real' scientists from pretenders. I'd hate to see the names of people he considers the real deal. Its a scary thought. Baliunas? Soon? Lindzen? Singer? Balling? Idso? Himself?
To reiterate, the Hansen lecture is outstanding. Hansen's 1981 Science paper is also mwell worth a read. Essentially, Hansen lays it out as clearly as someone can in a little under 18 minutes. Most chilling was the fact that extreme weather events affected a miniscule 0.23% of the globe in the early 1960s; now they affect 50 times as much area, some 10%. As Hansen pointed out, there's little doubt that the global extinction spasm currently underway will be - is being - exacerbated by AGW, particularly since the rate of warming is incredible and other attendant changes (precipitation, drought etc). are occurring over vast spatial scales across the biosphere. The field of climate-change related effects on biodiversity and ecosystem functions is already large and growing. Here we are studying rapid range shifts that are occurring amongst plants and their consumers as a result of recent warming, and we are finding that thermophilic plants arriving from the south are leaving their soil-borne pathogens behind, leading to changes in community assembly patterns. Three weeks ago I presented a lecture at the University of Toronto in Canada on part of my research with invasive species and it is clear that warmer conditions in Canada are enabling alien plants to spread north of where we might expect them to be limited. Ontario was experiencing a record warm winter: conditions in the North Bay area were more akin to those found in the central U.S. over the winter period. Of profound concern is that areas at the southern edge of the boreal forest zone, north of Lake Ontario are going to be hard pressed as warmer conditions force a shift in their biota north. Soils in this region are acid and the forests are dominated by spruce, hemlock and cedar; to the immediate south the soils are lime-based and have a much higher pH. Northward shifts of plants in the eastern deciduous forests will certainly be impeded by the presence of acid soils, so we are talking about a potential ecological 'squeeze' in which communities of plants and animals are hard-pressed to colonize new areas. Colleagues at the U of T are examining this area which is vitally important because of (1) the rate of warming which is quite remarkable and (2) polewards migration is not a simple, linear process. There are kinds of complex impediments that account for the high projected extinction rates.
In any event, Hansen lays it on the line. I praise him and others in the scientific community who have the courage to speak out in the face of a well-funded and organized denial machine that routinely smears them. Hansen speaks for the vast majority of scientists - myself included - who fully realize what is at stake.
People at our local garden centre in Manitoba (zone 2) consider that it is often worth while trying plants rated as being hardy to zone 4. Some will die, but many will survive. In part, this is because more is known about how to overwinter them, but also the winters are less severe than formerly. There is also concern over the movement of formerly-unknown pests into the area.
Sunspot and others who are obsessed by weather rather than climate might like to know that later this week the temperature is forecast to go 20C warmer than normal. That'll put paid to the outdoor skating rinks.
Welcome back to sanity, Jeff. And I thank and admire you for not taking offense at my comments and even defending them. You are so much better than those guys ... I understand well how hard it is to let go but, as I said, you are powerless to change them.
#73- if the Virginia investigation found Michael Mann et al not guilty on March 2, why is Monckton still crowing about it as "proof of conspiracy"? Is that libel from the famously libel-sensitive Viscount?
[WUWT sycophantic review of Monckton's Schenectady talk](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/10/moncktons-schenectady-showdown/#m…)
and a ["recorded live"](http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/20909681) video from March 6. You'd think that if you are going to make an accusation of guilt based on the fact that someone is being investigated, that you'd bother to check that the accused party has not been found innocent in the meantime.
Still, baseless accusations, distortion of facts, using outdated information, and never ever ever retracting or admitting error is pretty much what I expect from Monckton and his toadying glee club.
> You'd think that if you are going to make an accusation of guilt based on the fact that someone is being investigated, that you'd bother to check that the accused party has not been found innocent in the meantime.
If your purpose is to persuade people to take up pre-canned positions rather than seek truth, it's far more useful to induce your audience to infer guilt from the accusation. You don't have to bother with any of those pesky facts and tedious testing of evidence. And it relies on the vast bulk of your audience not remembering to go back and check the facts when they finally become available.
This also works well bi-weekly hyperbolic touting of a new "final nail in the coffin of AGW" which is almost always touted before the claims can be appropriately tested...and which thus far have never stood up to sustained scrutiny.
In this fashion, you certainly can fool some of the people all of the time. (Especially the ones who want to be fooled by your schtick.)
So it rained and heaps - and all the experts were projecting otherwise even though they knew better. Shows how easy it is to get carried away. It was just the IPO and a bad run after all. AGW - who knows... http://theconversation.edu.au/climate-and-floods-flannery-is-no-expert-…
Also evaporation is declining not increasing.
Reckon CSIRO have no clue on future rainfall for Australia. Back to crushing rocks.
The aptly named "Out of ammo" tries a drive by with an unloaded weapon. The linked to article is proving to be a bit of a farce for its hapless author Stewart Franks. See @102 or Tim's
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/04/blue_moon_at_the_the_australia…
Thanks ianam. You were right and I finally woke up. I was completely out of my mind in responding to the puerile utter rubbish being spewed out 'over there'. The reason I like to contribute to weblogs like Tim's excellent blog is to interact with rational, intelligent people who may as of yet be undecided on the seriousness of the situation that looms in front of us. Climate change and its attendant effects represent one of the biggest challenges humanity has faced. Its time to move on beyond those anxious to promote a business-as-usual policy because these people are playing roulette with our planet's life support systems for the benefits of short-term gains for the privileged few. We are engaged in the biggest struggle our species may have yet faced, and that is why I find those politically-driven deniers to be such a disgusting lot.
Mate - wasn't just Flannery - all the others were all there too - and face it Flannery wouldn't know about AGW and should bugger off. The fact is that climate change projections for Australia are hopeless - why would you believe any of it? Whether you are rabid greenie, warmist, sceptic or denier. Face it when you're in big drought sequence objectivity declines - it starts to get to everyone even the pros. So what are we left with - no trend in rainfall, warming minima not much in maxima and about half of the official line if you don't weak the data, reducing not increasing evaporation, downward trend in tropical cyclones making landfall. Baa!
Totally, utterly wrong.
More like out of brains than out of ammo.
The monckton video is worth watching just to see how little the standard monckton talk has changed over the last years. Apart from the pink portcullis which was probably changed after the UK House of Lords "cease and desist" letter. Pink portcullis? Lovely bit of work that. Wish I had one for my house.
Watch for the best (worst?) example of a "Strawman argument" I've ever seen.
It goes a little like this...
- put the IPCC temperature projection onto a chart
- add your own extrapolations, way beyond the IPCC ones
- point out how ridiculous the extrapolations are
- this proves the IPCC are idiots! (well actually proves anyone falling for this is an idiot)
Following on from earlier, Australia's drought/floods, who said what, and what did they mean, does Flannery know what he is talking about?
We have similar issues with "what the experts said" in the UK.
Recent article from Farmer's weekly - as far as I am aware this is not a Peer reviewed journal.
http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/09/03/2012/131835/Climate-change-predicti…
Cue to all those here struggling to defend Flop Flannery: Give up. His alarmist rubbish, inspired by and concocted from published pseudoscientific pap, was persuasive enough to cajole obscenely dumb state governments to build desal plants that will forever stand as pitiful, though hideously expensive, monuments to global warming/climate change/climate disruption malarkey.
Graham,
You clearly belong on another thread with another D-K acolyte sharing similar views. Let me guess - you also have no background in science and thus have formed your views on the basis of your won political bias. From under what rocks do you guys emerge?
Needless to say, Grima 'Suckass' Wormtongue's reference to Farmer's Weekly's suddenly indispensable folk wisdom is a hot topic at Bishop Dill's and currently with all GWPF stooges. Because obviously a farmer in one specific Southern England location will intuitively understand everything about the British Isles. Or so GSW would have us believe.
Essentially it's the story in the UK of how areas with more rainfall will get [wetter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Great_Britain_and_Ireland_floods) and those with less will get [drier.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drought_in_the_United_Kingdom)
, dressed up in GSW's inimitable clumsily transparent style to foster distrust of 'experts'.
Chris O'Neill - there's trend there is it? ROFL !
Mate come on ... it's a series of ENSO and anti-ENSO x IPO - you might have got some SEACI research in there if you'd squeezed harder. If you're going to make an argument at least get over the target - Fig 4 http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs16.pdf but who says in our very short run of climate data that it's a record anyway? http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1848641.htm
But don't forget - it's not just Victoria - Sydney and Brisbane dams were all were supposed to be empty forever more.
And http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rrano… doesn't look as cherry red does it. Is March 2012 in autumn? let's look out the window and see how the levee is going.
The bungling ammo-less numsky links to a BOM statement sub titled
"Long-term rainfall deficiencies continue in southern Australia while wet conditions dominate
the north"
Just as well he is out of ammo otherwise his feet would be full of bullet holes.
The article cited by GSW was, as expected, pure and utter garbage. It wouldn't pass muster at as a primary school essay let alone as 'science'. Predicting extreme weather events that are linked to AGW of course is problematical. What we can expect, though, as has been pointed out numerous times, and which are being borne out across the biosphere, are more extreme weather events: droughts, heat waves, extreme rainfall events. Last year much of western Europe experienced a near record warm and dry spring, followed by the a summer with record rainfall, in turn followed by an autumn with near record warmth and lack of rainfall. All in keeping with model predictions. As James Hansen said in his TED lecture, areas of the globe experiencing extreme meteorological conditions has increased 50 fold since the 1960s. As conditions are forced out of relative long-term stability, a constant prediction in global-change scenarios is to expect surprises. Often very nasty ones. And events such as heat waves in Europe (2003) and Russia (2010) or the prolonged drought in the south-central US, as well as record floods in Pakistan (2010) are all part of the package.
Its hardly surprising that the anti-science brigades the dominate the ranks of the denial community would make a big deal out of a kindergarten-level article in Farmer's Weekly. Talk about grasping at straws.
Wakey wakey MikeH - remove gummy bear from mouth - it has bucketed down since. 2008 report. 2 whopper La Ninas since. And although BoM may have put the worst on record story in that report - they always start the clock at 1900 and conveniently confound the history of the 1985-1902 worst ever Federation drought. The Australian AGW story is a mess of imprecise science and flakes like Flannery haven't helped.
@ ^ Out of ammo | March 11, 2012 8:23 PM :
&
@94. MikeH | March 6, 2012 5:35 AM :
I think it is worth noting in that context that last year 2011 was the hottest La Nina year ever recorded as well as the ninth hottest on record with 2010 being the (equal with 2005) hottest year on record according to NASA among others.
Sources :
http://climatecrocks.com/2012/01/23/graphs-of-the-day-global-temps-2011/
Graphs of the Day: Global Temps 2011 posted on
January 23, 2012 on Peter Sinclair's 'Climate Denial Crock of the Week' blog.
Plus :
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/jan/HQ_11-014_Warmest_Year.html
RELEASE : 11-014 NASA Research Finds 2010 Tied For Warmest Year On Record
Note that whilst there is the "noise" of El Nino-La Nina variations from year to year the decadal trend "signal" of ever rising global temperatures is very clear. The Earth is heating up.
D'oh! First link not working, sorry. Try :
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/index.html
and then searching for 2010 Hottest year and you'll get the page I was citing as the first entry on the search.
NASA has some good climate and environmental articles there on their website too although I'm not sure how often their climate change evidence page gets updated.
New Climate Spectator editor Tristan Edis has a go at The Australian for its coverage of the anti-wind power article mentioned @ 120.
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/australian-s-fear-reds-un…
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/blown-away-weak-wind-rese…
The comments section of Climate Spectator articles have been hijacked by a group of deniers, some of whom like Peter Lang also feature regularly at BNC. I get the impression that Edis has had enough.
>I think it is worth noting in that context that last year 2011 was the hottest La Nina year ever recorded as well as the ninth hottest on record with 2010 being the (equal with 2005) hottest year on record according to NASA among others.
But what you don't get is that Flannery said by 1980 water would never exist again and ner ner ner, look, it's coming out of my tap nothing to worry about here CLIMATE SCAM!!!
Once again, these clowns demonstrate that they're only capable of being sucked in by Bolt's selective quotation. Here is what Flannery actually said:
"We're already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the WINTER rainfall zone across SOUTHERN Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change".
Seems these clowns don't know the difference between winter and annual, and also between the southern winter rainfall zone of Australia and the whole of Australia.
He just can't help being sucked in by Bolt's lies.
>I just watched "The Greenhouse Conspiracy", the Channel 4 (UK) documentary from 1990. Aside from the amusingly bad graphics and dodgy dress sense, it was remarkable to see how many of today's denialist talking points were floating around then.
And they will be the same talking points used in 30 years from now when the average temp is much, much higher. It will be "cycles". It will be "not as warm as the MWP!". It will be "Rain means global warming is a SCAM!".
Nothing will change. It goes without saying that the out-of-context quotes these clowns are mangling (even in their out-of-context form!) originate from a political blog. Go figure.
That's cute. We both called them "clowns". Consensus!
MikeH - you don't have to be a denier to be sceptical. Of course the Las Ninas are warm - they're on a warmer background. It's just an interesting factoid. In fact back to back Las Ninas are uncommon but not unheard of http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/products/australiasvariableclimate/en…
But given the palaeo-flood histories of much bigger floods than we have hitherto experienced have we seen anything yet? Even in recent history three floods in the Brisbane River in the 1800s are 2-3 metres above 1974 (pre-dam).
AIMS gives some truck to what you're implying http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006PA001377.shtml
But land use has also changed increasing runoff in big wets and probably bolstering drought conditions.
There's just not enough data to impart a trend.
@141.Out of ammo | March 11, 2012 7:33 AM :
Really? Question for you "out of ammo" - have you actually read Flannery's book(s) on the topic notably his award winning The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change published in 2005?
How much of Flannery's works have you personally read or have you only heard second hand quotes about these from others?
I have read many of Flannery's books including The Weather Makers and he did come across there as informative and as someone with a good knowledge and understanding of the subject matter. The fact that he has written a book - actually a few books - on the topic seems to strongly contradict your assertion there that he "wouldn't know" about it.
Because such projections are put together by scientists, mostly I presume climatologists, using scientific evidence and techniques and science is the best method we have for understanding reality and developing technology. Because science works in creating computers, mobile phones, telescopes such as the Hubble, has landed humans onthe Moon, modern medicines, and so very much more.
Because these climatologist have spent years of study and passed climatology class exams and published peer-reviewed papers and written PhD's showing their understanding of issues that are complex and involved and often, frankly, over my head as well as most other non-experts. IOW, there is good reason for assuming they do know what they're talking about.
Because these projections are constatly checked with the evidence and reassessed and improved as further data and understanding comes in.
That's why I trust them or at least consider them worth taking seriously.
Far as I'm aware few environmentalists have ever been diagnosed with rabies and those suffering that almost invariably fatal disease do not live long therefore the chances that a more than minute percentage of "greenies" are rabid is vanishingly small. I find your use of that adjective applied solely to "greenies" interesting and telling of your seeming bias here. Are no deniers presumably metaphorically "rabid" in your eyes?
Maybe. In some cases. But does the same not happen in the other direction when there are consecutive years of heavy flooding and is that affecting our biases now?
Citation needed. It is not clear to me that that is actually the case.
I think there's a clarifying word missing there. To what are you referring there? Solar activity? Seasonal temperatures? Diurnal / nocturnal temperatures? Something else again?
Er, "weak" the data? You mean weaken? Work? Tweak? Your evidence supporting your your contention that this has happened being what precisely and from where?
Humbug?
Did anyone else see a good doco afew days or week or so ago on artists travelling up to the Arctic to create artworks about Global Warming?
It was on (very) late at night on one of the ABC or was it SBS channels.
My internet searching can't seem to find very much on ABC or SBS about it or too much elsewhere either (couple of places online had the whole thing but NOT viewable from here in Australia. Dangnabbit! :-( ) but this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaBuWghj3mo&feature=related
on Youtube is part of that Arctic artists doco. Titled simply 'Art from the Arctic' where a group of artists, educators and well people sailed into the region - Svalbard island mostly - to do some strange but evocative arty things to explore & express their views on Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating as I call it ie. climate change. This show had some interesting and different takes on it.
Luke@160. Not sure what comment of mine you are referring to. My observation of Franks' claim is the same as the one made by Nick@95.
See also
http://www.skepticalscience.com/is-pacific-decadal-oscillation-the-smok…
Luke:
Indeed. The whole point of the anti-science arguments is that the past two Northern wet seasons supposedly prove Flannery wrong. They do no such thing of course and that is what the arguments were about. But no-one is claiming the data has proven Flannery right either. That is not being argued.
Basic comprehension is obviously not one of out of ammo/shooting blanks/small calibre,large bore/popguns better skills, lets look at what some of the horrible government departments have had to say:
Let's start with a couple of quotes from CSIRO's publication "Climate Change" (2011)
"It is also likely that the most intense rainfall events in most locations will become more extreme, driven by a warmer, wetter atmosphere."(p38)
"There is potential for significant increases in flooding due to higher mean sea level and more intense weather systems. Studies in the Australian region point to a likely increase in the proportion of tropical cyclones in the more intense categories (category 4 or 5)....." (p43)
And what about the Queensland Government "Climate Change in the South East Queensland Region"
"In contrast to the overall rainfall declines, more intense extreme storm events are expected to cause increases in flooding impacts" (p10)
And from the Queensland Government's "Climate Change in Queensland. What the Science is Telling Us" (2010).
"...despite a projected decrease in rainfall across most of Queensland, the projected increase in rainfall intensity could result in more flooding events.' (p30)
And from "NSW Climate Impact Profile:
The impacts of climate change on the biophysical environment of New South Wales" (2010)
"Potential increases in the intensity of flood-producing rainfall are also likely to affect flood behaviour." (p xi)
"In lower portions of coastal floodplains, the combination of rises in sea level and catchment driven flooding is virtually certain to increase flood frequency, height and extent. More broadly, increases in the intensity of flood-producing rainfall are likely to affect flood behaviour." (p34).
And just for a little balance, here's something the IPA said about Flannery: "Although Flannery has avoided directly attributing the recent floods in Australia to climate change, he has said that extreme weather events like the floods are more likely to occur as a result of climate change."
Damn experts, never said anything about flooding, no sir, no they didn't.
Cripes SteveoR - the big appeal to authority doesnât work - what gets funded and good enough for govt work is the meme. Check CSIRO's non-helpful plus or minus in their AGW rainfall predictions - ye gads and not even any IPO representation. It's loose as. Have you looked at the reports yourself?
As to rainfall trends
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/trendmaps.cgi?map=rain&are…
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rain&…
2012 will only add to a wetter lower trending long term analysis
SW WA might still appear as a drying trend - but that's part natural part AGW so says the science and internally contested. i.e. southern annular mode vs southwest Australian circulation â
http://www.earthsci.unimelb.edu.au/~ihs/publication_pdfs/Meneghini%2BSi…
http://www.cmis.csiro.au/Yun.Li/Papers/reprints/2010_JCLI_SWWA%20Monsoo…
As for south-east Queensland on our BoM map - well - http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3501.1 natural variability says our erudite CSIRO
You can do the max and min temperature spatial Australian plots from BoM yourself. But this site has made a hobby of it http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/
Sorry it should have been "tweak" and you need to roll your own analysis to know. Done that? Get the raw data and find out for yourself. Whether the tweaks are all justified - who knows. A lot of work to really know.
Decreasing evaporation story - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169411007487
Fewer tropical cyclones making landfall here http://www.springerlink.com/content/b073428q37741816/
The AGW rainfall case is tepid at best.
The science on AGW and rainfall in Australia is totally unconvincing.
Decadal variation rules.
Sorry two links above should have read
http://www.earthsci.unimelb.edu.au/~ihs/publication_pdfs/Meneghini%2BSi…
http://www.cmis.csiro.au/Yun.Li/Papers/reprints/2010_JCLI_SWWA%20Monsoo…
*The science on AGW and rainfall in Australia is totally unconvincing. Decadal variation rules*
Where to begin dismantling this mastication of science and a complete inability to understand the importance of scale? Decadel variation IS the consequence of AGW, given the size of the system that makes it more deterministic, making trends of < 10 years impossible to elucidate. As Hansen explained in his TED lecture, extreme weather-related events - tornadoes, heat waves, floods, droughts are increasing in frequency across the globe, but this is only discernable at longer time scales. Its also accepted that warming will result in more unpredictable events based on the interplay between a range of abiotic and biotic responses. One of the rules of global change scenarios is to expect surprises. Trends will show - as they are - that nasty surprises are increasing in frequency over time but are difficult to predict at short-time scales because of these are stochastic.
I notice that Out of brains totally ignored what Flannery talked about: Victoria, Southwestern Australia, and Tasmania.
Interesting report from [UCS](http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/how-corpor…)
"Trends will show - as they are - that nasty surprises are increasing in frequency over time but are difficult to predict at short-time scales because of these are stochastic." or not
do you find averaging a bunch of GCM runs to a mean as "scientific" - ye gods
"Its also accepted that warming will result in more unpredictable events based on the interplay between a range of abiotic and biotic responses. " - no it's ASSERTED
"Decadal variation is the consequence of AGW" says Jeff - what rot - the PDO records in coral cores and tree rings go for at least 400 years.
Well Chris - Flannery also raved about the MDB, Sydney and Brisbane and alas we seem to have a surfeit of water. Fail.
Get a new climate commissioner - someone who actually knows about climate.
Decadal variation is swamping any AGW signal and we can't even well model it.
Trouble is, Ammo-less, that you seem to think that discernible natural variation in climate cycles is generated at time scales that collate with a very small segment of a human life-span. What is rot is to think that climate control is a stochastic system, at least at the scales you are suggesting. How can you prove that decadel variation in temperature and rainfall is not a fingerprint associated with AGW? And that this variation leads to trends that are discernible only when measured in the appropriate time-frame? Your arguments assume linearity in climate regulation. Moroever, 400 years for a largely determinsitic system is nothing; it would take some massive forcing to shift a system out of the stasis in the scales we are talking about.
I'd like to ask you: do you think the planet suurface is warming? Do you think there ia a profound anthropogenic signal in the warming? How much time do you think is necessary to elucidate a significant trend, either locally or over a larger geogrpahical scale? How might this warming affect precipitation regimes? When does decadel variation become more than natural?
Chris as for the last two years - well it's rained - like this http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest…
Just imagine how we'll be after adding this on http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest…
Pity your anomaly sequence didn't include the full Federation drought and only started at 1900 - you would then have something unremarkable.
Who's talking temperature ? stop verballing me. But OK global temperature is increasing at low end of AGW projections consistent with some anthropogenic influence. Profound - yawn.
Did I say the climate is stochastic - our knowledge of PDO and La Nina clumping behaviour would suggest anything but. There are periods of intensity. There are 10000 year PDO palaeo records.
"How might this warming affect precipitation regimes" give me a break - the IPCC is uncertain on ENSO under AGW and silent on decadal. Wait for AR5 I guess.
*But OK global temperature is increasing at low end of AGW projections consistent with some anthropogenic influence*
Incorrect: its increasing at the expected mid-level range, as first projected by Hansen in 1988. Moreover, try telling people in the Arctic and those at other places where local temepratures have increased dramatically (> 3C) since the 1980s. And given the time lags involved, we won't see the real global effects borne out for at least another 10-20 years. By then the procrastinating will have led us down a dead end road with no exit. Given the potentially serious repercussions of doing nothing, and in light of humanity's utter dependence on the natural economy via a range of ecosystem services, it doe not seem prudent to continue a blind experiment on our ecological life support systems, does it? Those advocating a wait-and-see approach are, IMHO, gambling with the livs and welfare of future generations. But then again, ammo-less, I guess you dont'think that we shoudl insure our homes and valuables, do you?
Moreover, we know that AGW is increasing the magnitude of extreme events, if Hansen's data are correct. Just because we don't know where the next weather-related calamit will be doesn't mean that we should do nothing, does it? As I said, one of the predictions of tinkering with natural systems is to expect surprises. Nasty ones. To approach and then pass tipping points. Moreoverm we don't as of yet rerally understand the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, not which species play the most critical roles in maintaining systemic functions. Similarly, our understanding of how much redundancy is built into the system is also poor. Does that mean we should continue to plough, pave, dam, dredge, eutrophy, slash-and-burn, overharvest natural systems etc. until we better understand the consequences? By the time the effects kick in, we will be in shit up to our necks and unable to get out of it.
The point is that your 'we don't know much' arguments are redundant.
Oh what pure indulgence Jeff - we don't know very much about extreme events - for example WMO put the tropical cyclone/hurricane science as highly contested. LOcally we haven't even seen a Mahina again http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahina_Cyclone_of_1899
Recent temperature trends are under Hansen C. It's not going expected to plan and everyone knows it.
And so Australia has a stupid hide the pain by 90% being a winner (how does that work again), force big industry off-shore, no mandate, might as well piss in the ocean for an effect, carbon tax just as the carbon price shits itself. Great move. I'm sure our valiant effort will motivate everyone else on the planet (or probably not).
What utter hysteria about "life support" systems. It's simply indulgent greenie wank. You've never had better times. Do something serious like invest in soil conservation, biosecurity, new genetics, build a dam, study climate variability mechanisms.
And now it's a tipping point again, it's worse than we thought, just you wait the trend will become obvious in ANOTHER 10-20 years. So every 10 years it will be another 10-20 years. Good lord.
If you want good national parks and healthy waterways - you need a good economy to pay for them. Anything else is pure indulgence.
If you're seriously interested in biodiversity - get a gun now and go to northern Australia and start blazing away at ferals like cats and foxes that are causing a major mammal extinction on our watch. Don't sit around talking shit about ecosystem services. What a ridiculous concept anyway.
And isn't it funny that the "ecosystem services" have evolved in an environment that rages between massive droughts and massive floods and we're all hot and bothered that it won't cope? Oh diddums. How did the ecosystems get on without our vital assistance during the "at least" 10,000 years of ENSO and PDO shifts herniating the climate every 10-20 years.
The Australian climate change story is a limp lettuce.
> The point is that your 'we don't know much' arguments are redundant.
It's stronger than that.
"We don't know much" leads straight to "We must stop fucking with it. NOW!"
Funny how those arguing uncertainty is too large **never** draw that conclusion. Why, it's almost like they're trying to justify a particular policy position rather than follow the data where it leads...
*If you're seriously interested in biodiversity - get a gun now and go to northern Australia and start blazing away at ferals like cats and foxes that are causing a major mammal extinction on our watch*
O of A: your first point is appropriate. No doubt invasive species are major threat to biodiversity. Your second is pure garbage. Just because you don't understand the concept is no reason for anyone to consider it bunk. In fact, the field of valuing the conditions that emerge from natural systems is in itself taking on a whole new life in the field of ecological economics. The Constanza et al. (1997) paper in Nature estimated that these supporting services - pest control, pollination, nutrient cycling, climate control, renewal of soil fertility, waste disposal, flood control etc - are worth tens of trillions of dollars to the global economy, and certainly more than the combined GDP of every nation on Earth. More importantly, the conditions emerging from natural systems through the interplay of trillions of interactions involving billions of organisms and millions of species permits humans to exist and persist (Levin, 1999). Our civilization is exists because natural conditions permit it to be so. So take your big foot out of your mouth for a minute and try to envisage human evolution and survival were there to be no nitrogen fixing bacteria, detritivores in the soil, insects to pollinate the plants, etc.
As for your follow-up gibberish: ecosystems themselves evolved over billions of years in complex adaptive systems that bridge ecological communities, ecosystems, and biomes. The reason for biodiversity and natural systems to sustain themselves through transient (or not) extreme abiotic conditions is through natural selection to local conditions and because functional redundancy was 'inbuilt' into the system. Redundancy involved multiple species fulfilling similar ecological roles. Some species are better adapted to changing conditions, whereas others are better competitors. I have no clue what you are going on about when you ask 'how ecosystems got on without our vital assistance'. The answer is just fine: no anthropogenic assistance was necessary. The real question that is still unknown is how we can survive in a world of mass extinctions caused by a huge array of threats caused by mankind. Certainly we are pushing natural systems towards a point beyond which they will be unable to sustain life in a manner that we know. And before you spew lout some more crapola about hum,an ingenuity., how our species is exempt from the laws of nature etc. etc. etc. don't bother. The scientific community by and large knows full well that humans and nature are on a collision course. Let me guess - you aren't a scientist. Surprise! surprise! How could I know that? Its simple. Because all of your posts thus reveal a complete inability to understand basic concepts in Earth science. Your latest musings on ecology are an abomination. My advice is to stick at whatever it is you do as a day job. That isn't in a science department at a university, for sure.
You need to do some field work Jeff - what academic wankery. No serious ecologist believes this shit. Despite your bedwetting Australian flora and fauna survive massive extremes and swings of climate of climate at interannual, decadal and centennial scales. And now the biota is now back after the big wet. A big reset for the bush. Funny that those nitrogen fixing bacteria, detritivores and pollinators are back doing their thing.
And here we have yet again - the spectre of extinctions from hysterical wrong species projection models. More crap. Waiting for the apocalypse. So how much actual work have you done on saving biodiversity Jeff - got your hands dirty or been spending your time reading one of those predictably drivelly Nature overview papers.
What an abomination is post-modernist wankers doing virtual ecology instead of science. Meanwhile some of us are doing real science and trying to make a practical difference.
Perhaps if ecosystem services are worth so much perhaps someone or maybe the Gaia bank can send me a cheque?
Gee, the Moron really is strong in this one.
If knowledge truly is a weapon then he's well named. What an egregious, fatuous yobbo.
We could always save time and assign him to his natural home with the Scandinavian Tyre-Swing Troop right know, you know. If he persists in loitering it's only where he'll end up anyway...
Is that after morning snack and before finger painting?
Out of ammo... what an incredible tool.
Once again, I cannot overstate the blessed relief I experience when I see:
Comment by Out of ammo blocked. [unkill]â[show comment]
So all abuse and no science eh? true believers.
People generally give back what they get, Sunshine. You barge in and act the galactic buffoon, you're only going to get exactly what you deserve, little man.
But, wow, how I forget myself; I'm speaking to a Genius; you're out there doing 'real science' as a bona-fide super-smart brainy I-used-the-word-'detritivore' manly no-ivory-tower-for-me super-duper real-world science guy and all, right?
Personally, I suspect that when I've been out 'in the field' all day I've subsequently found smarter things than you in my socks.
But do go on, amaze us with your actual qualifications and all round brilliance. Judging by your own gish-gallop recycling of 'only fit for the worms' mouthbreather talking-points above I'm still going with 'finger painting', but do feel free to prove me wrong.
Remember, if you make it up - many of you do (yep, we've seen many a self-aggrandizing boorish blowhard before) - you'll only get found out, and even though your advanced Dunning-Kruger won't allow you to actually acknowledge it's happening, well all get to laugh and point as your pants tangle around your ankles...
@outofammo
Are you saying there was some science in that porridge of broken links that you provided?
I read abuse
but missed the science. Why don't you try again but without the gish gallop. Try making a single point if you are able.
Last time I heard the phrase "Real Science" around here it was David Duff claiming that biology wasn't a science and the there was a massive international conspiracy in which scientists tilted sea level measuring equipment. Ammo is in good company.
I can't imagine what "practical difference" Ammo believes he is out there making since there is apparently nothing to worry about. No shifting agricultural zones, no early springs, no species loss due to the non-existent warming...
Just out of curiosity Ammo, what "real science" are you practising?
Yes, that very well describes your `#`180 ... with fallacies of No True Scotsman, affirmation of the consequent, and false dichotomy added to that ad hominem stew. If you ever wanted people here to take you seriously and not consider you a troll, you totally blew it with that very revealing rant that displays your narrow, cramped worldview. You're like one of those crotchety old farts who berates college students, telling them how, when he was a youngun, he went out and got a real job.
Let's be intellectually honest. Feral cats and foxes do real harm (no snark). I believe that OOA is doing useful work. But unlike him, I don't believe that it's the only sort of useful work or that feral cats and foxes are the only sort of threat to biodiversity.
Jeff used the word. OOA just repeated his terms in his anti-intellectual anti-science rant. How hypocritical that he followed up that ad hominem dismissal of science with a complaint about abuse and no science.
Ho hum - still no science.
And what I repeated the word detritivore. Oh gee willikers - I'm so sorry. I'll ask permission next time.
It's not an anti-science rant at all -you lot have made few cites or science points and basically are uncritical overcommitted ideologues. Big on appeals to authority and vacuous post-modernist data-free nonsense. I'm out of ammo defending the indefensible establishment position.
You could have picked on many science points and discussed but you're so tightly handing on to your pinko positions that you're unable to actually think.
If you think it's a gish gallop you're just low bandwidth and are upset there are so many science papers that invalidate your ill-considered philosophical position. Cognitive dissonance hurts doesn't it.
All mouth; no trousers. Established in record time. 'Shooting Blanks' might make an even more apt moniker. Next.
Ianam - I should have realised the word would be borrowed, along with everything else!
On the topic of 'post-modernist wankers', I thoroughly enjoyed this:
@Out of ammo : I notic eyou didn't answer my question :
or not?
Simple yes or no would suffice.
An elaboration on why exactly you have concluded his arguments there are in error (in your view apparently) would be good & appreciated too.
What happened there? (Puzzled.) Correction :
***
@Out of ammo : I notice you didn't answer my question :
Have you read Tim Flannery's book (s) or not?
Esp. referring to his The Weather Makers one.
Simple yes or no would suffice.
>I'm out of ammo defending the indefensible establishment position.
Cigars all round. Inform the World President and leader of our faith, Reverend Gore, that another true, honest freedom fighter of real science has been defeated by the militant foot soldiers of Greenpeace.
Seriously though, Jeff Harvey gave you one thousand words of science. You concluded it was "shit" and "academic wankery". No citations were given, to the deep shock of us all.
>you're so tightly handing on to your pinko positions
He's onto us!
>there are so many science papers that invalidate your ill-considered philosophical position.
But I thought "science papers" were "drivelly" and "academic wank" from people who need to do "field work".
They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But now they're laughing at "out of ammo".
Via Nine MSN online news :
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/8433528/greenland-icesheet-vulner…
Perhaps of interest here?
Still no science. You're not very good are ya's. One time you could come over and be sent packing with scintillating witty repartee and on point science rebuttals. But now it's just a coven meeting for warlocks.
Yes SteveoR - I have read Flannery's Weather Makers - my copy has a drill bit hole in it. Along with many denier texts with multiple holes. He got off lightly.
Ah - this sounds very similar to another recent visitor who believes in thinking for yourself, which would be quite the achievement for the moron in question. So, with that in mind and having skimmed a couple of Wiki articles, I'm now off to harangue some Japanese government agency about Fukushima.
I'll bet they're sick to death of self-interested advice from pinko nuclear careerists more eager to enrich themselves from the grants trough on the gravy train with their post-modernist, post-normal, post-graduate, post-colonial, post-early-for-xmas 'science'.
StevoR, maybe you need to see this.
"two key government documents have been dug up â which tell us that Arctic sea ice extent was much lower prior to 1979.
In 1990, the IPCC published the graph below based on NOAA data. It shows us that Arctic ice extent in 1974 was almost two million km^2 less than 1979"
http://www.real-science.com/arctic-fraud-worse
Karen/Sunsplot@200
Thanks for the link. That was seriously funny. You deniers may know squat about science but you do know how to tell the joke. Very convincing too - I thought I was at [Climate Depot](http://climatedepot.com/). Actually I notice Climate Depot has a link to Real-Science - maybe it was a co-production.
While we are sharing here is a link to [My Water's On Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song)](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=timfvNgr_Q4&feature=player_embedded)
[This comment](http://www.real-science.com/arctic-fraud-worse) is too good not to re-post. 'Karen' should first and foremost rememeber that "Steven Goddard" is as unreliable as John O'Sullivan, which is about as unreliable as it can possibly get.
If the ice was at 2007 levels back in the 60â²s then how did we miss the Northeast and Northwest Passages being open? Especially since we were trying to gauge the feasibility of shipping oil across the arctic.
Oh, maybe it *wasnât* at those levels:
On Sept 2, 1969, the S.S.Manhattan turrned her huge armored bow toward Baffin Island and started encountering her first ice floes at approx. 14 feet thick. The Manhattan, cracking off half-acre floes, sailed on without a quiver. As the blocks grew larger, more power was required and the Manhattan broke though ice floes as thick as 60 feet. When in the McClure strait howver, ice 15 to 20 high and sometimes as deep as 100 feet proved too much for the Manhattan. Ploughing into thick ice, backing out and going forward again and making very little headway and requiring icebreakers to relieve the pressure on the side of the ship caused a change in direction on Sept. 11th and the Manhattan changed course to the Prince of Wales straight, the more normal route for the Passage. On Sept. 14, the prow of the Manhattan cracked the last floe at the southern end of Prince of Wales Strait and ahead lay 1,000 miles of open water. Upon reching Prudhoe Bay, the Manhattan took on a ceremonial barrel of oil.
Ice 35+ meters thick. They just donât make ice like they used to â at least not in the arctic. By the way, if the Manhattan made the same voyage today (or any year since 2007) they wouldnât even go through Prince of Wales Strait, thereâs open water *north* of the strait in most years now â not ice 35 meters thick.
'Karen' might also like to ponder that warming began [prior to 1979](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1850/to:2011/plot/hadcrut…) and that 1979 is used when measuring the icecap as that was when satellite coverage began. But of course 'Karen' won't ponmder anything at all.
Moving the goal-posts right along:
Out of science:
Flannery wasn't talking about average rainfall for these places. He was talking about the increased risk of reservoirs running dry because of increased variation in rainfall which is indeed what happened: Wivenhoe dam got down to 15%. One more summer the way things had been going for 6 summers and Brisbane was stuffed.
Out of ammon claims to 'want science'.
On the subject of ecosystem services, which he so casually belittled, I types the words 'bidoversity' and 'ecosystem services' into the biggest scientific search engine, Thompson's ISI Web of Science. There are 2,428 articles published in the peer-reviewed literature linking these terms, and these studies have been cited 44,170 times, including more than 11,000 last year alone. Forty one of these papers are published in Science, 17 in Nature, and 32 in the top Ecology journal, Ecology Letters.
What does our new resident moron call this - oh yes, 'scientific wankery'. I'd like him to go through the 2428 studies in the scientific literature and please point out where the 'wankery' can be found. If truth be told, research on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and in turn bridging functioning with the supply of critical ecosystem services, currently lies at the heart of system biology and ecology. Out of ammo is in truh out of brains - in true, tried and trusted fashion of the ignoranti he camouflages his lack of knowledge of the field in sematics and smears. No substnace necessary: if he doens't usnderstand it, the least he can do is belittle it. There is an infamous clown on another thread who is a maste rof the technique. You guys must have been joined at birth.
As for extinction models, which are you referring to? Storks 12 mosels (1997) or Lomborg's kindergarten-level take on the subject? The truth is that the most reliable models are those projecting decaying exponential rates based on habitat loss. Originally formulated by Rober t MaCarthur and Edward O. Wilson, and later updated by John Terborgh and Michael Soule, they have actually proven to be highly accurate is estimating regional extinctions of habitat specialists on the basis of area of habitat loss. IN North America they actually underestimate avina extinctions, whereas in Peurto Rico and coastal Brazil their accuracy is uncanny. In fact they are often too conservative because they ignore other anthropogenic stressors, such as inavsive species, overharvesting or pollution that also have negative impacts on biodiversity. The additional problem is that 95 or more percent of species have never been formally identified. Thus many species have almost certainly been lost without being classified. Given that species in tropical regions are often locally rare and have distributons some 70% smaller than their temperate counterparts, there's little doubt that the loss of 50% of the world's wet tropical forests has resulted in the loss of huge numebrs of species and populations. Like other loony deniers (I have met my share) ammoless argues that without 100% incontrovertibel evidennce then the problem does not exist. This trick has been routinely used by deniers to downplay a range of other environmental problems: acid rain, pesticide toxicity and also climate change.
Finally, O of A shows his hand with his 'pinko' comment. So here we have another far right libertarian who cannot hide his politial bias which accounts for his 'scientific' position. Its amazing how many of those deniers claiming to have profound interest in science ultimately cough out their guts and let everyone know that their views are far to the right. No need - it appears that this expalins about 99% of them. The truth is that they routinely deride the science that they hate.
I wasn't sure before now, but "Karen's" latest proves she really is Sunspot! No one at Deltoid, on any thread however inane, has mastered the art of the pie-in-your-own-face quite like the resident clowntroll.
I normally wouldn't bother with a Goddard article, but as a fan of Sunspots art, a little deconstruction shows the true genius of the self-administered cream pie:
1. A one-off -900,000 sq km anomaly in 1974 cannot mask the trend over the period of observation, any more than a one-off -1.1 million sq km in 1995 does.
2. The two graphs that Goddard would like us to mentally stitch together both measure anomalies, but from different baselines. To the extent that you can splice them together, that 1974 anomaly translates to approximately -500,000 sq km on the 1979-2008 baseline graph. So a notably deep anomaly in 1974 is about the same as a notably high anomaly now. That's pretty bad for anyone trying to argue the ice is fine, mmm, you betcha. It's...why it's like someone claiming that a abnormally warm year in, say, 1998 being the same temperature as an abnormaly cold one now means that we are not warming overall. But who'd be stupid enough to try that on?
3. Goddard then says Arctic ice is 10% higher in 1974 because the CIA say that global snow and ice was. Anyone who doesn't know the difference between Arctic sea ice and global snow and ice should just shut their fuckin' yap and try to learn from those who do.
4. But even if Goddard's leap was legit, it still leaves the problem that he blunders when he stitches that 10% onto 1974. The CIA report was written in 1974, so its hardly likely to refer to earlier that same year as "in the early 1970's" - clearly, even if it related to Arctic ice (and it doesn't) it would have to be referring to some earlier high point, most likely no later than the zero anomaly in 1973. But since the IPCC FAR Goddard draws his bollocks from refers to 1972-1975 as a period of relatively low Arctic Ice cover, it is probably earlier (and higher) than that mark.
So what can we conclude from the actual material Goddard uses? The worst state of 1974 roughly equals the best state now. The early 1970's were quite a bit higher than that. Arctic Ice recovering? Only on the other side of the mirror...
As a final dose of self-inflicted farcical goodness, that CIA report, which deals with reports on the possibility of global cooling and concludes - in the very section Goddard quotes! - "Most meteorologists argued that they could not find any justification for those prections."
So much for the "In the 1970s, scientists predicted a new ice age" meme!
Really, you can't make up clowntrolling genius like this...
There's always (at least) one:
"prections" s/b "predictions"
More pseduo-science tugging from Jeff - you know you're right among it when they start using new fashion words like libertarian - WTF - all part of the meaningless greenie speak. And when you don't really have a clue or anything to offer wave your arms with vacuous comments about ecosystem services. Blugh !
I typed dickhead into Google and got over 7 million hits and over 27 million for wanker.
So Jeff more importantly what is the current rate of Australian mammal and avian extinctions. What are the drivers. And what are you doing about it.
Hmm. Ooa is starting to sound VERY familiar. IP check?
Not new, not fashion, and why are you debating this?
Only a libertarian would say something as dense as this. Could you try to not contradict yourself within the same sentence, precious? People might actually start to pretend to take you seriously if you can only manage that.
> I typed dickhead into Google and got over 7 million hits and over 27 million for wanker.
Cutting edge climate science from our solitary hero.
I can't say I've noticed too many 'libertarians' around these parts for a few seasons now. Not your actual swivel-eyed, name your kids 'Rand' type of barking but relatively honest loonies.
Of course, the recent Lindzen and Heartland debacles really has brought the fellow-travelling corporate whores and apologists out of the woodwork. And those poor diddums also tend to get offended when they're not taken seriously.
Just like ... oh.
Carry on Stu.
The dreck just keep getting dreckier.
This one will doubtlessly turn out to be known to us already, but who cares? It's just the sound of the last noxious jets escaping from a punctured carcass...
I'm not so sure about the familiarity of out of allknownuniverses.
It might be a newborn reincarnation, not fully briefed on the task yet. I thought the all too familiar looneytunes representatives at least know who Jeff Harvey is.
Ooaf.
And just for those who dislike the notion of armchair scientists ..... try this out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_emb edded&v=3F9FbdqGRsg#! (I've inserted a space because of the embedding. You can get rid of it yourself.)
OOA@207
That would be the ultimate vanity Google.
"Egosurfing (usually referred to as Googling yourself and sometimes called vanity searching, egosearching, egogoogling, autogoogling, self-googling, master-googling, google-bating)"
> Ooa is starting to sound VERY familiar.
OOA sounded very familiar from the get-go, and has remained that way.
Better trolls, please.
Chek and Frankd, I suppose neither of you thought to have look at the graph depicting the sea ice extent in the IPCC WG 1 report ?
Go to page 224 and there it is.
( www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf )
"Especially importantly, satellite
observations have been used to map sea-ice extent
routinely since the early 1970s. The American Navy Joint
Ice Center has produced weekly charts which have been
digitised by NOAA. These data are summarized in Figure
7.20 which is based on analyses carried out on a 1° latitude
x 2.5° longitude grid. Sea-ice is defined to be present when
its concentration exceeds 10% (Ropelewski, 1983). Since
about 1976 the areal extent of sea-ice in the Northern
Hemisphere has varied about a constant climatological
level but in 1972-1975 sea-ice extent was significantly less."
I guess that this must be another mistake to put into the long line of IPCC mistake's, it didn't fit the narrative so they changed it in later reports.
ps, I do find your abstractions and confabulations most amusing.
pps. Who the hell is sunspot ?
And meanwhile, over at ["The Land"](http://theland.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-ge…") Ian Mott confesses he learnt everything he needs to know about climate change from one meeting.
"And I was in the meeting of the Qld SLATS Committee when the designated "expert" predicted no major rain events in SEQ for 30 years."
And that's all the proof he could put forward.
Out of ammo | March 12, 2012 6:52 PM
So Australia has the reputation for the highest rate of species loss of any "developed" nation for no reason? So your "the biota is back" claptrap is based on verifiable data comparing diversity and abundance now with times past? So there's no such thing as rabbit plagues, house mouse plagues or feral animals, or weed intensities increasing sharply?
Yeah like the thousands of threatened species already listed here aren't enough to be concerned about. Or did you only just land here? Or is it wilful blindness? Or deliberate trolling? Hard to decide.
As if. You're a fucking troll, as confirmed by...
Me ME ME!!! That about sums up your entire contribution to the world.
"Out of ammo" about sums you up.
Ah, 'Karen': Always a big fan of the 'What's a moider*?' ploy.
Sunspot is, ahem, 'another' Denier who deploys invective remarkably similar to your own, coincidentally cannot grasp the use of possessive apostrophe's, and also indulges in remarkable feats of idiosyncratic punctuation [gap] !
To be fair, I'm perfectly willing to believe these are all merely symptoms of the single personality disorder with which you are both afflicted.
*think Springfield's mobsters.
'Karen', speaking of confabulation, two words for you 'extent' and 'volume': two very different things deniers love to conflate. The point at issue is the disappearance of the mass of ice at the poles - not how thinly spread whatever remains is. Sea ice extent refers to an area of water with at least 15% ice, i.e. 5/6ths open water.
And until the launch of the Seasat and Nimbus 7 satellites in 1978, monitoring relied on US Navy sampling. It's only with the launch of the GRACE satellites that truly meaningful measurements also able to determine mass that a clearer picture of what is happening has become available.
As with the Central England Temperature graph also used in early IPCC publications, the alacrity with which deniers jump on any old data thinking it means whatever they like to imagine it means without any caveats is a pretty tired routine. Goddard is yet again trying to sell a crock version of reality to the gullible. And you bought it.
As the voyages of the SS Manhattan excerpted previously show, there used to be a lot of thick, solid ice blocking the arctic ocean 40 years ago. Now there isn't. Get over it.
What we seem to need is smaller humans, as obviously they have a smaller footprint. Or so says Prof Liao of New York Uni.
No surprise, of course, to see Eugenics dusted off in the service of the Green movement under the banner of climate change mitigation.
That's right Rick, crank theories about eugenics will help you capture the minds of the public. It's worked so well for you conspiracy theorists in the past.
@Karen:
>I suppose neither of you thought to have look at the graph depicting the sea ice extent in the IPCC WG 1 report ?
But since I referred to the exact paragraph you quote - "But since the IPCC...refers to 1972-1975 as a period of relatively low Arctic Ice cover, it is probably earlier (and higher) than that mark" - I suppose you didn't actually bother to read my post before replying to it. Or just didn['t understand it?
Either way, your "supposes" look to be about as accurate as Goddard's... What you think about him conflating Arctic Sea Ice with global ice and snow coverage? Pretty much a beginner mistake. What's your take on the fact that the exceptionally low area is now equal to our 12 month maximum? That means were headed downwards overall, right?
I mean, you linked to that piece of arrant stupidity, so let's hear what you have to say about it.
Or is it just another dud attempt at a driveby Molotov cocktail? I heard the glass break, but no boom...:-(
In case you are wondering what Bradford's faux outrage is about, Leo Hickman has written sane article on the topic:
[Bioengineer humans to tackle climate change, say philosophers](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/mar/14/human-engineerin…)
Philosophers engage in a challenging philosophical and moral enquiry, SHOCK HORROR OUTRAGE.
Even better - this is an adaptation strategy, not a mitigation one. And which "side" favours adaptation? Why, the "skeptics" of course! Put it off until it can't be denied anymore, then adapt.
So, Rick, it is *you* that favours this strategy you find so comically offensive.
@ Bradford
Eugenics dusted off in the service of the Green movement
Yes Bradford, once us Greenz attain world domination one of the priorities is to make sure people like you are prevented from spawning any more generations of stupid. You and your ilk aren't entirely without purpose in Our Evil Dominating World Plan though - we intend to make the most of your otherwise irritating habit of pointing us to sources of Stupid.
I just saw a denier over at Boing Boing post this link. The link is the usual baffle-gab invoking PDO and citing the Oregon Petition and what ever to explain Alaska's temperature rise. The interesting thing is that it is on a NOAA web site belonging to the Alaska office of NOAA.
Anyone know what gives?
What comes across most powerfully to me in the [Guardian's "Green Eugenics" story](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/mar/14/human-engineerin…) isn't the Bradfordesque fearmongering, but how little effect bio-engineering humans would actually have in terms of solving the problem.
It seems to me it addresses only the most superficial of aspects, and has nothing to offer regarding ocean acidification, flooding and drought, poleward habitat migration, or species extinction. Whether that's a flaw with the article and not of the paper itself I can't say. But if the article is a fair summary, it seems to me the philosophers involved ought to be thinking at a much deeper level. Like for survivability splicing our DNA with cockroaches or bacteria.
Of course some might say that approach has already been tried on the evidence provided by the Bradfords and Sunspots and Jonases, and look how that worked out.
That link looks like a subterranean page put on the website by the author. It does not use the standard NOAA master page decoration, which makes me wonder just how official it is. You might want to notify the webmaster about it.
I offer some CFACT begging for Monckton so he can visit every college in US (or something like that).
John Mashey
lord sidcup reported on another thread that Lord Bunkum also has his begging bowl out here.
http://lordmoncktonfoundation.com/home
Note the registered address - a PO Box in Balwyn North VIC, Australia.
Some video from last night's ABC news showing the Cape Grim CO2 monitoring station.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-14/csiro-issues-climate-change-warni…
Worth watching.
MikeH,
Interestingly, that PO Box is already registered to Olaris and Associates, an accounting firm specialising in tax accounting. Since most "charitable" foundations perform their best work in minimising the tax liabilities of their donors, one can hardly be shocked that their correspondence goes to their accountants as a point-of-contact.
In other news-that-isn't-news, the contact phone number on the Bunkum Foundation website belongs to Chris Dawson, managing director of Desaln8, and simulataneously was a Victorian Senate candidate for...drumroll...[The Climate Sceptics Party](http://climate-sceptics.com.au/the_team.html). Which seems to be a remarkable bit of unwitting cognative dissonance, when you think about it...
The LordBunkumFoundation domain name is also [worth checking](http://whois.domaintools.com/lordmoncktonfoundation.com)...
In checking out the previous I did stumble over [this hilarious submission](http://climate-sceptics.com.au/_files/Carbon tax submission TCS11.pdf) to the Senate on carbon pricing, at which I literally laughed out loud. Enough predictable "references" to fill everybodies Denial Bingo card.
The little network of confirmation bias is so cute!
Section 4: "The No Regrets Strategy" is my favourite piece of unintential comedy. Clue: "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" is the term preferred by people who blush when the term "Cold Fusion" comes up in coversation.
re Mike H#233 - Gee, the ABC failed to get an idiot's opinion for 'balance'!
How refreshing!
From Hot Topic:
[How Heartland lied to me and illegally recorded the lies](http://hot-topic.co.nz/heartland-lies-and-deceives/#more-10661)!
Speaking about Heartland,
I just noticed that Heartland is selling T-shirts with the text "FAKEGATE" and a picture of Peter Gleick.
Classy.
Could be that Joe Bast's next career move will be to a market stall....
>Could be that Joe Bast's next career move will be to a market stall....
Watts is doing his best to try to ensure that such is not the case. I don't wish him well.
And by the way, aren't there property issues involved with trading images and names without permission?
Great interview with Penn State's Michael Mann outlining the sordid tactics used by the extremely well-funded and organized denial lobby to smear scientists and downplay the effects of climate change.
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3454652.htm
Don't forget to read Monckton's entirely bonkers CV, an extrodinary list of boasting and history revisionism.
In brighter news, his claim to have won a Nobel Peace Prize has finally been removed from his profile at the SPPI website, while his CV claims it was all just a "joke".
Here was the hilarious joke:
>His contribution to the IPCCâs Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 â the correction of a table inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise â earned him the status of Nobel Peace Laureate. His Nobel prize pin, made of gold recovered from a physics experiment, was presented to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York, USA.
Forgive me for missing the cutting satire in that paragraph.
Monckton also claims to have found a constitutional lawyer who backs up his claims that's he's a member of the HoL in that weirdly defensive CV. If that's the case I think the only option is to sue the the house for defaming his good name with horrid lies about his non-membership, and demand they repeal that nasty letter that denies what is rightfully his.
No, his only option is to SAY he's going to sue the HoL.
That way he doesn't have to lose.
Among the many nuggets of comedy gold to be found within his CV is the following:
> An expert on the internet has said that the cost of giving the gibberish pages a ranking above the page with the genuine video was probably not less than $250,000.
That has to be one of the most unintentionally funny things I've read in a long time. "An expert on the internet"!
Since this is an open thread, I won't feel too guilty in this shameless self promotion..We just started a new project focused on providing the average citizen with topical information on environmental issues, and encouraging them to learn, discuss and participate - [Be Green](http://begreen.botw.org) We welcome any point of view and encourage any and all feedback. Keep on fighting the good fight.
With respect to Monckton's camp's penchant for altering history, I commented at [Barry Bickmore's](http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/the-monckton-files-inspector-…) on 19 December 2011 (2:11 am) on an example of Monckton-related [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eternity_puzzle&oldid=4657266…).
I'd long been suggesting that Monckton's behaviour regarding the marketting of the Eternity puzzle fits the definition of fraud: it seems that either that or someone else's comments about it encouraged some revisionism. For the perverse it might be amusing to follow the Wikipedia history of the changing...
The shame for Monckton though is that it doesn't change history itself. If someone bought the Eternity puzzle on the basis of Monckton selling his house to fund the prize, they would still appear to have a case for seeking damages as a consequence of fraud. If there were a class action on this basis, it could be quite inconvenient for Monckton and Ertl Toys - to say nothing about his reputation amongst the Denialati as an 'honest broker'.
This pompous dweller in a happy land of magical ponies being taken seriously at all says everything you need to know about 'skepticism', including the notable dearth of convincing authorities to put forward.
Of course, their misplaced faith being so palpably ridiculous only makes them more attached to it!
For the connoisseur I offer this exchange with Monbiot over intriguingly mobile compensation claims on Wikipedia, and the Press Complaints Commission findings of 2010, also relating to Monbiot.
It's well worth reading his original 'offending' 2009 article - particularly comparing its actual contents to the complaint Monckton made - and the long Observer interview with the Legend-in-in-his-own-Mind that's referred to, too. But, as I'm only too aware, 'too may links and it sinks'!
Ho hum, heavy projection from another intellectually bankrupt troll.
It was just a misattribution that I corrected, moron; nothing to get so childishly defensive about.
Funny how it's always about ideology with you denialanuses.
Wiley coverup: The great Wegman and Said âredoâ to hide plagiarism and errors
I had thought the saga of climate science critic Edward Wegman and the various allegations of misconduct in his recent work could not possibly get any more bizarre, especially in the wake of manifestly contradictory findings in two recently concluded investigations at George Mason University.
But in a shocking new development, it turns out that two problematic overview articles by Wegman and his protege and congressional report co-author Yasmin Said in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Computational Statistics (WIREs CS), have been completely revised. Those revisions saw the removal or rewriting of massive swathes of copy-and-paste scholarship, as well as correction of many errors identified by myself and others. In each case, the comprehensive revisions came âat the request of the Editors-in-Chief and the Publisherâ, following complaints to Wiley alleging wholesale plagiarism. But Wegman and Said also happen to be two of the three chief editors of WIREs CompStat, thus raising compelling concerns of conflict of interest, to say the least.
In fact, it is very clear that Wileyâs own process for handling misconduct cases was egregiously abused in favour of a face-saving âredoâ manoeuvre. And this latest episode raises disturbing new questions about the role of the third WIREs CS editor-in-chief (and âhockey stickâ congressional report co-author) David Scott, and indeed Wiley management itself, in enabling the serial misconduct of Wegman and Said.
More here
DC, you may want to contact the people behind retractionwatch about this one. They've recently taken up the issue of "mega-corrections". This is definitely a new one to add to their list!
Congratulations to Deep Climate and John Mashey for their tireless work in pursuing Wegman's distortion, deception and obstrufication if there is such a word. As Adelady commented on Deep Climate 'Iâm amazed that anyone can put actual words together to comment on this'.
On the topic of disinformers, columnist Mike Steketee has a good article in [today's Oz](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/scientists-who-trade-in-do…) looking at the affiliations of Carter and Singer. Nothing new here but it is good to see this information making it into the public domain. If only the Murdoch Press had more columnists of the calibre of Mr Steketee.
>No doubt the views of Carter and some other contrarians are sincerely held.
I laughed.
Carter has always had a good line in comedy.
Good one Bob.
@241.Jeff Harvey | March 15, 2012 9:37 AM
You beat me to it, Jeff. I was going to post that here.
Oh well, I'll have to be content with posting a link to this article on the Drum :
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-14/phillips-rising-tide-of-climate-c…
by Sara Phillips instead. There's an interactive sea level rise for Australia graphic thingummy at the end of that which may be of interest to folks here too.
Its kind of weird that gormless stupid wan*** (GSW) is arguing on another notorious thread that my discussion of >2,000 peer-reviewed studies and >11,000 citations in the empirical literature linking the effects of AGW on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is 'indulgent greenie wank'. In other words, as in keeping with nincompoops who are miles out of their depth in a field of science, *by all means do not engage in a scientific discussion of a field in which you know absolutely nothing*. Instead, mere ridicule and hyperbole are enough to de-ligitimize a field, no matter how empirically based it is. GSW and Out of Ammo consistently engage in this kind of bait and switching tactics. Neither can tell a dragonfly from a monitor lizard. Both sit in ivory towers wallowing in their own profound ignorance. Why they think their comments 'add to a discussion' on a site like Deltoid is anyone's guess.
@198. Out of ammo | March 13, 2012 5:47 AM :
Um..what the!? You drill holes through and vandalise books after (during?) your reading of them? Really?
Thanks for the (eventual) straight answer I guess. But that leaves me puzzled because you earlier claimed in comment 141 (March 11th, 2012 7:33 AM) that :
So Flannery has written a book showing he *does* know something abut AGW and yet you obviously disagree and think Flannery is wrong because, well, why?
What specifically has Flannery got wrong in his book that shows he knows (in your view) too little about the topic to be taken seriously and listened to?
What makes you think after reading Flannery's book that he doesn't know about Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating?
Steveo - yawn - what Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating - "rapid"? - we're trundling along way at the bottom of the range.
Flannery just copied down a bunch of stuff other had told him. So tedious.
I do believe Luke's comment is in English. It certainly has English words in it, he just appears to have plonked them down in some random order. Anyone care? Didn't think so...
What I am actually genuinely curious about is the other Tim - our Tim if you will. Tim Lambert, of Deltoid fame, where are you at? I'm almost certain I didn't imagine him...
Translated version: "we're trundling along way at the bottom of the range" of the predicted warming by AGW, so far in a low activity solar cycle also aided additionally by the warmest recorded El Niño cycle.
So, like ... duh ... obviously there will never be any future La Niña events or active solar cycles - especially not acting in concert - otherwise my admittedly fairly puny, futile attempt at an argument would likely fall apart into smithereens.
Prediction: deniers will be frantically making hay before the sun shines.
So now we've moved from "it's cooling" to "it's plateaued" to "it's warming but so what?"
Now don't "denier" verbal me mate. You're the one that's rapidly and I mean rapidly overheating.
It's really that not rapid is it. It's the sort of not really as rapid as rapid would be. Sort of Luke warmish rapid sort of rapid. Mind you though it will pick up soon. We're all sure of that aren't we? Just as sure as we are of where the trend is now. Ahem.
If I were you, Luke (and thank Dog I'm nowhere as decerebrate), I'd find another dealer.
Sociological explanations for climate change denial
@Scribe
Ah! Its sociological is it. Nothing to do with, Climategate, Fakegate, the "Travesty" of a lack of warming this century, Polar bears seem to be OK now, and the frogs, and the Coral reefs are recovering, and the Himalayas aren't doing too bad, and the fact that the Greenland ice sheet is likely to be around for a few thousand years more - Despite what the 'concensus' has told us in the past.
Sociological is probably only one valid reason for willfully carrying around a head full of such tosh as you catalogue, Grima.
It is good to know that the Australian never lets us down. In response to Mike Steketee's article (#252), [William Kininmonth and Des Moore](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/climate-debate-must-be-unf…) have the first reply. These are very honoured fellows, gracing the Australian's letters page on such a regular basis.
On the plus side today there is an article by [Will Steffen](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/were-likely-to…) on the exacerbation of droughts and floods from climate change.
Ah, I had a feeling 'Luke' was one of those devastating witticisms that we are periodically forced to withstand.
And how would you say the crysophere was going, vis-Ã -vis ranges and trundling? I mean, seriously, along with all the mouthbreathing Denialati you're going to play at 'angels dancing on the heads of pins' with short-term temp trends, rather than attend to the actual real-world impacts, eh?
Sea levels? Species migrations?
And your rebuttal to Foster and Rahmstorf?
GSW provides another casebook example of an own goal.
Just seen a great and rather relvant here episode of Media Watch!
It'll be replayed Tues. late night /early Weds. morning & there's a website too.
HadCRUT4 is now official:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17432194
Will the world has cooled since 1998 meme bite the dust?
Interesting news item (hopefully) here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17432194
via BBC World news online.
Peter Stott explains [HadCRUT 4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-Rr2Tflw9BE#t=0s) changes with graphs.
Does everyone notice how one of our resident deniers (GSW) goes back to the Jonas thread her with his brainless musings? He thinks he is going to a 'higher intellectual authority.' (that's a laugh). His latest one is an attempt to belittle thousands of peer-reviewed studies on the Web of Science - the world's most respected scientific search image - that examine the effects between climate warming, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. The joke? Apparently to belittle this research on the basis that it does not draw causation.
The point I am making is that the causation has been established beyond any reasonable doubt. Pretty well every one of these studies accepts that the warning is anthropogenic. Science has moved on. Well on, for the vast majority of the scientific community. This little salient fact bypasses the likes of GSW and the little army of idiots.
Earlier above, and in spite of a point I already vanquished on the you-know-who thread, GSW downplays the effects of short-term warming on the demographics of polar bear populations. This is a clear example of burying one's head in the sand. I debunked this garbage elsewhere, and GSW dredges it up again. NO attempt is made by him or his idol to challenge a thing I said (because they cannot, so by not replying they attempt to think this legitimizes their arguments). No wonder only two people go there now.
Luminous beauty @ 273: thanks. So the take-home messages are:
1. The 1940s are now slightly warmer due to a correction for the fact that most sea surface temperatures around then were taken using buckets lowered over the side of ships, leading to a cooling bias. If I understand correctly, the data were adjusted based on correlations between these measurements and measurements from buoys.
2. The 2000s are also slightly warmer* due to the addition of extra stations in Russia and the Arctic. These regions have been warming more rapidly, so when they were omitted there was a cooling bias.
3. The overall picture has not changed much: a ~0.75°C increase since 1900. I believe this is approximately consistent with other records.
*I predict much oh-so-cynical eye-rolling from the usual suspects.
The palpitations have started at WUWT already. "It's all a conspiracy, I tell you! Hide the decline!"...
Those of you who are regular visitors to Professor Brook's blog BraveNewClimate may be interested in the debate that has flared on this post.
https://theconversation.edu.au/what-australia-can-learn-from-the-worlds…
The issue as I see it. A number of posts (posts, not comments) at BNC crticising renewable energy have been written by retired engineer Peter Lang.
http://bravenewclimate.com/renewable-limits/
Lang is a hard core climate change denier who regularly refers to the "Alarmistâs CAGW scam" and describes renewables advocates including the editor of Climate Spectator as being from the "far left".
He does not make those arguments at BNC because of the comments policy (outlined by Christine Brook on the thread).
Christine expressed the following view
"Barry made it clear that, if CC/AGW deniers were willing to desist from espousing their views on BNC, their technical expertise on any source of energy, would be welcome"
I have a problem with that as someone who has had to regularly respond to Lang's vitriol directed at climate scientists, climate science and renewable advocates at The Conversation and Climate Spectator.
At the very least I believe it is dishonest to not make it clear at BNC where Lang is coming from. Lang leverages the authority that being a high profile poster at BNC gives him to attack climate science.
Note that there are also some over the top comments at the thread from Matthew Wright which I disagree with.
And yes - I know that this comment will result in an attack of the trolls - but I suggest you read some of Lang's comments which I have posted on the thread before passing judgment.
When the evidence changes I change my mind. When the evidence changes WUWT commenters go nuts:
>The answer is a question: Do you get more money from an increasing average global temperature or from a global temperature that stays the same?
>These guys are obviously frauds but what gets me is that they arenât even particularly good frauds. So why does anyone believe their crap?
>There are some of us âhard coreâ skeptics that question if the Earth has warmed at all over the last century. Looking at the magnitude of the one-way âcorrectionsâ, can you blame us?
>Surely fra*d charges have to be in the works by now. A new twist on âhide the declineâ or same ol same ol for âclimate scienceâ which btw is NOT science.
>This is just plain out wrong, we have OBJECTIVE SATELLITE MEASUREMENTS SINCE 1979 that have an accuracy of 99.99%, donât see no reason to change it, but organizations like NOAA, NASA, and CRU think itâs ok to make up data sand use it to prove their anti-capatialist, global warming alarmist agenda
>The Climatologists are in it to move the world into a âSocialistâ one world totalitarian government. CAGW is just the lever they are using to do it and lying, dishonest activities are perfectly acceptable if used in the furtherance of the âCAUSEâ We have had ample evidence that they lie and cheat, Gleick being just the latest.
>Its no longer a joke the fellow or anybody involved with thiss must be held to account by the American and Australian Justice Systems
'anti-capatialist' is priceless! If that's being opposed to very large and accomodating consumer items then it could catch on!
I never fail to be amazed by just how mind-numbingly, mouthbreathing, scarred-knuckle Stupid you can be and still stand upright, yet alone make little stabs at a keyboard...
The indignant responses to Singer's tactical repositioning as a 'lukewarmer' are another amazing example; the idiots are both empowered and entitled - in their quasi-post-modern inversiverse their pure and honest ignorance outshines decadent expertise and learning any day!
WUWT attacking HadCRUT4 (badly)
http://nailsandcoffins.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/anthony-watts-misleading-…
re: 278
"This is just plain out wrong, we have OBJECTIVE SATELLITE MEASUREMENTS SINCE 1979 that have an accuracy of 99.99%"
Whoever @ WUWT said that ought to read Fake science... pp.100-101 on satellites. In almost every issue, Heartland E&CN had a satellite section. saying:
âEach month, Earth Track updates the global averaged satellite measurements of the Earthâs temperature. These numbers are important because they are realânot projections, forecasts, or guesses. Global satellite measurements are made from a series of orbiting platforms that sense the average temperature in various atmospheric layers. Here, we present the lowest level, which climate models say should be warming. The satellite
measurements are considered accurate to within 0.01°C.â
These were the UAH numbers of course, in which the successive version of the algorithms changed the numbers far more than that.
> The answer is a question: Do you get more money from an increasing average global temperature or from a global temperature that stays the same?
Therefore exploiting this would be the capitalist ideal, right? So why is it:
> their anti-capatialist, global warming alarmist agenda
?
This just in:
http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/historic-march-heat-wave-tallies-mo…
By any standards, March 2012 is going to go down in the history books as an incredibly exceptional month. There has been a prolonged heat wave over the entire mid-west that is, by any standards, incredible and unprecedented. More than 2,200 warm temperature records have been set so far this month in the United States and more will tumble this week. The ratio of warm-cold weather records in the United States since January 1st is a whopping 14:1. Even weathermen - normally sceptics - are taking note.
Along with the revised HAD-CRU temperature records, its been a devastating week for the deniers. The evidence is swamping them, and they are now resorting to desperate smears and political attacks in an feeble attmept to dig themselves out of their own ideological hole.
Mike Mann and Miranda Devine have had a right old twitter scrap. Ill-informed polemicist paid for her hyperbolic outpourings says to scientist:
Huh?
[Lord Sidcup](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2012/03/march_2012_open_thread.php#comm…).
[Devine's rant](http://backupurl.com/3xyqyp) is an example of breath-taking Dunning-Krugerism.
I hope that a time comes when such blatant, anti-factual propaganda is seen for what it is, and that NewsCorp and its staff are brought to task for their contribution to greater damage to the planet than we would otherwise have had.
I'm sure that our grandchildren and their grandchildren will regard denial of human-caused warming as treason. I hope that they presecute accordingly.
I see our resident non-scientist is still sniping away at me in his own padded cell er... thread. He's down to one regular ally now - GSW. Sad.
He's really bitter now to learn that thousands of scientists working on climate-related effects on biodiversity take AGW as a 'given'. If one were to go through these studies one by one, they'd quickly realize that the authors are investigating the potential consequences on AGW, and not its causes. Why is that? Because as far as the vast majority of scientists are concerned (me included), science has moved on. There is no controversy whatsoever. Humans are the primary culprit. Just as we are the pirmary culprit for a range of processes affecting ecological communities and ecosystems across the biosphere. Only in the mindset of a very small subset of the scientific community is there any controversy whatsoever with respect to the causes of the current warming. And watch this space - as the evidence grows, and their numbers shrink even further, then they'll turn increasingly to the 'adaptation' canard.
I challenged the moron-who-must-not-be-named to discuss and debate ecophysiological aspects in space and time as this relates to declining biodiversity, with emphasis on polar bear demographics. Response: silence. Then GSW, in keeping with his own lack of even the basics, repeats the mantra, 'polar bears are doing fine'. But of course they aren't doing fine at all. The dynamics of polar ice loss will without any doubt decimate populations of this apex predator. GSW and you-know-you write as if the Arctic is in stasis, or else that changes in ice cover are either slow or non-existant. I could say that much of the Amazon's biota are doing 'just fine', whilst ignoring the fact that the forests are disappearing. Thus far about 15% of these forests have been felled with about another 20% affected by fire and high-grade logging with its attendant 'collatoral' damage. We have no way of knowing now or down the road if 15% is significant habitat destruction for many species (it almost certainly is for species reliant on intact forests) and at what point further extinction thresholds will be reached. Once 50% of the forests are gone, then this will certainly be catastrophic for many more taxa. The same goes for Arctic ice. If no more ice was to be lost over the coming decades, then polar bears will survive. But if, as projected, much of the ice goes, and eventually summers become ice-free, then this will condemn this species to extincton in the wild. No ifs or buts. This is what the deniers conveniently leave out. The dynamics. Its as if today the future stops. Its no small wonder that its virtually impossible to find an environemntal scientist or ecologist who writes the kind of drivel our resident deniers do here. They just cannot think in terms of dynamics or interactions. For them the world is static.
The final point is that I know I am on the right track when I am verbally abused by the likes of a few climate change deniers on Deltoid who have little or no pedigree in any relevant scientific field. I'd be much more concerned if qualified researchers were weighing in here, telling me that my arguments are without merit. Instead, I have yet to encounter one critic on Deltoid in all the years I have written in who possesses qualifications in climate science or Earth science. Instead they are all D-K intellectual wannabes.
The Swede is chock-full of sweeping but meaningless rhetorical statements devoid of any substance. There's never any science cite in sight.
But that doesn't matter one bit to his troupe of groupies because as is plain when they venture out of the cellar, they don't comprehend it anyway. As is the way of all adoring cretins and personality cults throughout the ages, they just like the cut of his jib.
@Jeff, chek,
Any chance you could confine the bruised ego love-in to another thread? I don't think there is much traction for your Special Pleading here. Honestly, WGAF?
Not true, Jeff, they've found a new ally. Who cannot spell and fails at reading comprehension ("8 year old daughter").
I'm shocked, I tell you.
GSW: I'm sorry, did you just actually accuse another sentient being of a bruised ego?
Guys, it's best to leave the Scandinavian Troll Collective alone in their cave to lick each other's arse by themselves.
They don't do science. They don't reference it in the context of constructing a coherent and defensible case, and quite frankly they don't care about it. I think that we've all poked at the tar baby enough to prove that point.
They're only here to cause distraction and obfuscation. Best stop giving them a platform for attention, and hope that Tim Lambert tires of their drivel enough that he closed the thread completely.
For anyone who both remembers and cares, Alex Harvey made an appearance on the RC "Misrepresentation From Lindzen" [thread](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/03/misrepresentation…) more-or-less touting Lindzen & Choi 2011, much like he did somewhere around the Nov 2011 timeframe here on Deltoid.
There are a few interesting responses from Gavin (e.g. one along the lines of their method is useless if the feedback factor is positive, so any conclusions that feedback factors are negative are fallacious). Given that it doesn't appear that any of the key climate scientists could be bothered to respond to it (because it's in a low impact journal and it seems likely they think it's not even worth the effort), and that Alex somehow still believes this allows it to be credible (or at least portrayed as such), some of the commenters are now digging into it a bit more.
By yours truly:
Explaining that bogus math is bogus to people who embrace bogus math.
-- frank
Given the lunacy going on over at the 'other' thread, which I wish to ignore (check out the latest drivel), I will make a single rebuttal and leave it it that. For good. The rest of the post is bile. Unsubstantiated nonsense. My advice to Tim is to shut down the Jonas thread once and for all and to put our self-righteous, self-educated 'God' out of his misery. Let him throw his ideas into the scientific arena where they will be chewed up and spat out.
This comment is made: "Arctic ice has been varying all the time. Has been both more and less. As have been temperatures. Only during this interglacial."
Sure it has. But it hasn't changed at the rate it is doing now. Not even close. The loss of Arctic ice in the space of less than a century is unprecedented. Seems to me most of the deniers - not scientists mind you which is hardly surprising - think 20 years is a long time, and 80 years is metaphorically geological. Most importantly, biotic shifts are occurring that are probably unique over many millennia. Is warming the major threat to polar bears? Yes. There is little doubt about this. Moreover, I never said all of the warming was due to human activities (who is creating straw-men now?) but that much of it is. Certainly enough to be driving the rapid biotic shifts we are witnessing.
Now, unlike our sad friend, I have science to do. You know - the kind done by professional scientists. He does not qualify. Unless he can tell me of his publication list on the Web of Science. But we know where that will lead.
@jeff
"But it[Arctic ice] hasn't changed at the rate it is doing now"
How do you know? we've only been measuring it for 30yrs! and there are maritime reports claiming "unprecedented" Arctic variations before that. So, how can you be certain about what you say. I know the answer to that already, you just feel it's true, no supporting evidence required. So much for doing "Science" jeff.
GSW, you could, of course, check the scientific literature. We have been measuring arctic sea ice for much more than 30 years. You could start here and follow up on the references:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AnGla..46..428M
That paper alone already extends the record to almost 60 years.
You can also do analysis based on proxies and go even further back:
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-2/public-review-draft/sa…
Note also figure 8.13 in that chapter.
There we have it: supporting evidence shows Jeff right, and GSW wrong. Is anyone here surprised?
As Marco says, there's a lot of information (National Snow and Ice Data Center founded 1957 for instance, integrating many local records) to be found out there, already known of course to scientists who take studying the subject seriously.
The problem is that there are many like Grima who aren't interested in the science, but are eager to be spoonfed political conspiracy garbage by the anti-science think tanks and their PR creatures, who have no interest whatsoever in presenting a rational picture of reality, particularly if it conflicts with their effort to discredit science and scientists. Hence the head full of similar tripe (cf #265) Grima sustains.
@marco,chek
In case you missed Jonas comments on Arctic ice, a link [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/09/jonas_thread.php#comment-6246223).
*WARNING* GSW's link takes you to the asylum: the Jonas thread. Nobody in his right mind wants to go there. Its a veritable padded cell. I wouldn't now touch that clown with a ten meter pole. Until I see their arguments published in the emprical literature, then they are to be avoided.
GSWs analogy is that any aspect of global change should be considered unworthy if we do not have historical records that are completely accurate. So here is an analogy. The populations of many Paleractic and Nearctic birds are in decline, in some cases in freefall. In Europe, tree sparrows, song thrushes, red-backed shrikes, pied flycatchers, corn buntings, yellowhammers et al. have declined markedly in recent decades. In North America, the same is true for Eastern Towhees, Bachman's Sparrows, Henslow's Sparrows, Loggerhead Shrikes, Olive-Sided Flycatchers, Barn Owls, Upland Plovers and many others. A number of factors are involved: habitat loss, compeition for nest sites with agressive invasive species like the starling, boord parasitism from cowbirds, and climate change. However, according to the logic GSW spells out here, we don't really have accurate demographic data for many of these species beyond 50-100 years, then it all may be natural and we ought to do nothing.
So goes his argument over the extent and loss of Arctic ice, which is projected to be gobe during summer periods within half a century or even less. Again, like most deniers, GSW wants a wait and see'approach whilst Rome burns. He appear to think that 30 years is a long time and that 100 years (the maximum time estimated between the commencement of the ice loss and its estimated summer disappearance) is a veritable geological time frame. And Polar Bear? Harp Seals? No worry. Highly k-selected species like apex predators will adapt in the space of 2 generations. Forget genetic bottlenecks, the very low chance of adaptive random mutation, and the normal time scales involved, these quadrupeds will simply move to terrestrial landscapes. They must have done it before, eh GSW? At least in your lexicon they did. And, if we are to believe you, maybe multiple times in the space of a century or two.
Earlier you wrote that coral reefs and amphibians are doing fine. B*. They most certainly are not. Here is a very recent (2011) study in Nature: "Bleak future for amphibians".
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v480/n7378/full/480461a.html
And a recent NY Times article on coral reefs:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/science/earth/21coral.html
Next thing you know, GSW will run back in tears to his idol begging for help. And I will be smeared again. Fair enough. As I said earlier, if I was being attacked by a deluge of fellow scientists on Deltoid and elsewhere for my opinions on the causes and consequences of climate change, I would do a major rethink. But what is the status of those attacking me? Are they Professors at prestigious universities. NO. Are they fellow scientists working in relevant fields of endeavor? NO. Do they possess any relevant expertise in the field of climate or Earth Science. NO. At least not formally. Have they published anything in the empirical literature? NO, at least nothing they would admit to. That means almost certainly NOT. One of them is a genius in his own mind. But that doesn't count. Letters and titles after your name do. And these guys don't have any.
Next thing you know, they'll be claiming that every one of the thousands of scientists who are writing about the effects of AGW on biodiversity aren't 'real scientists' because they accept the broad consensus on the subject. If these guys had their way, there would hardly be a working scientist in any Earth or Life Sciences Department, because all those who accept the IPCC conclusions would be booted out. As I said, they are a joke.
I am too busy today to engage in any more of the comedic rants going on next door. As I said, the fact that a few no-names attack me relentlessly on a blog site means nix to me. Nada. If one of them had any pedigree in science, then I'd sit up and listen. But this sad little bunch are anonymous.
Frank: great post. Goddard clearly has NO grasp of even basic math. Quite embarrassing, really. But then again, hardly surprising.
For GSW (and while you are at it, please provide me with your 'proof' that coral reefs, polar bears and amphibians are 'doing fine'. Methinks you either made this up on the spot or else were told this by the resident loony).
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/11/22/science-arctic-sea-i…
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7374/full/nature10581.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/vast-methane-plumes-seen-in-a…
Sigh. I guess none of these people are 'real scientists' either? FYI: check out the one who is begging his readers to believe him, who is making all the insults, false innuendoes, whilst claining that somehow the vast majority of contributors to Deltoid actually support him. One guess, people. He's nuts. Hence why I won't go there again.
GSW, care to tell me why I should take notice of Jonas' comments on Arctic sea ice? Who is "Jonas" that his comments should bear any weight similar to that of actual working scientists studying the subject on a daily basis?
BTW, these are rhetorical questions, I already know your answer: you believe Jonas should be listened to, because he has an opinion that fits your delusion-du-jour. Whether it is well-informed or not, fits the facts or not, matters not to you, as it is all about the conclusion that can be drawn from his opinion: "nothing to see here, just move on".
@jeff,marco,
I sure you are aware, hence your hopping up, down and general frothing at the mouth. For others, links to [Jonas' responses](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/09/jonas_thread.php#comment-6246315).
He's a bright chap Jonas, get's to the "core" of issue immediately. Infuriating for you I'm sure , but reality just "is" I'm afraid.
;)
GSW, referring to that thread is verboten. You're just doing it to bait people, because you're a piece of denialist scum feces who should be banished to that thread along with your other sockpuppets.
Because, you denialist troll scum, unlike you we aren't ignorant, stupid, and dishonest.
Indeed Jeff does science, moron, a subject quite beyond you.
*Guffaw*
I'm inescapably reminded of Krugman's comment about "a stupid person's idea of a smart person".
*He's a bright chap Jonas, get's to the "core" of issue immediately*
Yeh, too bad the core is rotten.
Besides, GSW, when are you going to get to the 'core' of your quip about the curent status of Polar Bears, coral reefs and amphibians?
I think I am getting inocculated against stupidity, because I am not even mildly disappointed that GSW does not give a substantial response. He's just hiding behind Jonas, the serial obfuscator.
I'm not sure if that's a good development, as it may mean getting indifferent when my own students don't know what they're talking about, or when nonsense is published in the scientific literature.
@jeff #308
"He's a bright chap Jonas, get's to the "core" of issue immediately"
Yes he is a bright chap jeff, saw thru you straight away didn't he?
;)
Um, could we get the Scandinavian Dunning-Krugerite League, and all that pertains to them, back in the specially-designed encosure, please?
I really find it hard to imagine anything more inconsequential than their opinion on any matter. They're a reliable indicator for where The Stupid lies in a debate, sure, but scarcely worth exposing oneself to in any detail...
Seconded, Bill. It could be christened the Beavis and his two loyal Buttheads thread.
Oh come on guys, it's fun. Just follow GSW's link to Jonas's rebuttal. (TL;DR: But, but: HOLOCENE!)
The rally, which was entitled ''The Planet is Cooling'' was then addressed in person by South Australian geologist Professor Ian Plimer. Report.
>Mr Pearson, a retired New South Wales public servant, said his headware was a sartorial riposte to journalist Laurie Oakes for describing anti carbon tax protesters as "wing nuts."
>He said he'd gone to Bunnings, bought the biggest wing nut he could find, enlarged images of it on a photocopier, and made it into a hat.
Well I'm sold
Speaking as a South Australian, I'd just like to say .....
Oh, look. The grapes have been picked and this year's vintage from the premier wine state will be up for tasting pretty soon. And there's a terrific show on at the National Wine Centre beside the Botanic Gardens.
Otherwise I'd have to hang my head in shame. (At least he wasn't born here.)
Re John @#315 Maybe they could just bolt the nuts straight on to Clive Palmer's tinfoil hat?
Applying The Stupid to The Irony...
> The rally...
Wow, about 200 people (about 20 of which were in penguin suits). Huge mass movement there...
...and I wouldn't be surprised if Sting was pissed off by their use of his song.
And tangentially invoking [people who addressed the little rally](http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/blogs/blunt-instrument/clives-r…):
> How is Tony going to demonise the Greens now that the whole world knows they're not a bunch of lentil eating flatulators bent on winding civilisation back to the days when we all lived in bark huts and ate bowls of bugs and twigs for breakfast? How will the Boltbrechston Hivemind portray them as enemies of the state when we now know every second person in the Greens party is not just an agent of the state, but a totally freaking awesome super agent with nano-missiles embedded under their fingernails and scramjet nozzles where the rest of us have a standard issue anal orifice[?]
I see that GSW and his idol still cannot substantiate their claim that 'polar bears, coral reefs and frogs are doing fine'. Just another example of their so-called 'scientific' discourse. The truth is quite different from that they make up on the spot.
Now, unlike the Scandinavian trolls (led by the self-professed God of Knowledge) and their single foreign worshipper, I have REAL science to do. This is what must really gall them - me being a real scientist and all, doing all the things a scientist does, and they, stuck in one tiny innocuous thread in the blogosphere, where their rants reach the very few. It must hurt, given the amount of time they spend here. So all that's left is more insults, smears, silly denigrating remarks that I have become used to receiving from anti-environmentalists over the years.
The thing is that honest and esteemed scientists - like Michael Mann, James Hansen, Paul Ehrlich, and even Edward O. Wilson - realize that in stepping into the public arena they were going to take hits from loonies on the far end of the political right. I have since I did so more than ten years ago. To reiterate what I said yesterday, the fact that I have raised the ire of the nutters here says that I must be doing something right. Note that the most strident deniers are generally those who are intellectual wannabes, and who are not practicing scientists. The other thread has proven that in spades.
@jeff
"polar bears, coral reefs and frogs are doing fine"
Whats wrong with that? all these have been simplistically misatributed to CAGW at one time or another. Gore and his PBs, bleaching events and coral recovery have likely always occured, and the 80% decline in frog populations was due to a virus, not CAGW as you lot have unashamedly peddled.
Looking back, I mentioned the Himalayas and Greenland in the comment to Scribe, Not You, how rude! The fact you don't mention them now is some acknowledgement you don't think they are problem. Progress!
As for your work today, Good Luck with the Spells and incantations.
;)
>Whats wrong with that? all these have been simplistically misatributed to CAGW at one time or another[citation needed].
>Whats wrong with that? all these have been simplistically misatributed to CAGW at one time or another[citation needed]. Gore and his PBs, bleaching events and coral recovery have likely always occured[citation needed], and the 80% decline in frog populations was due to a virus, not CAGW as you lot have unashamedly peddled[citation needed].
Fixed
GSW. Chytrid is a fungus, fuckwit.
"80% decline in frog populations was due to a virus"
Citations needed, GSW, not information gleaned off the top of your own head. And now you are claiming that frogs aren't doing fine at all, just that in your opinion AGW plays only a small role in the global declines. So, in the end, you shoot yourself in the foot. No wonder you go crying back to wonder boy. If this is the level of your debating skills, then its no small wonder you need help from 'above'.
Besides, the various factors involved in the global amphibian declines are almost certainly not mutually exclusive but are synergized. In other words, different stressors work in concert - the organisms become more susceptible to viral infections when abiotic conditions - the amount of exposure to uv radition, climate change etc. challenge them physiologically. So to apportion 80% of the decline to a simple causative factor is wrong.
But why tell you this? You've already dug yourself a hole to deep to get out from.
@Jeff,
I thought frogs were your area of expertise, never heard of the Ranavirus? or chytrid fungus? There's been a world-wide epidemic. I know you don't read the "Primary" climate science literature but I thought you may do slightly better in your own field!
And Yes, none of these potential Catastrophes are down to a single cause, it's a complex mix. The simplistic "The World's going to hell in a hand basket because of C02" is just downright wrong - No matter how ideologically you would like it to be so.
Signs are frog populations are recovering, good news I'm sure you will agree, Co2 levels still rising though, go figure.
You happy to agree the scares over the Himalayas and the 10's of metres of sea-level rise this century due to Greenland Ice sheet melt were somewhat over-stated (twas ever so)? - you seem to be ignoring this.
How's the Alchemy going?
;)
>I thought frogs were your area of expertise, never heard of the Ranavirus? or chytrid fungus?[citation needed] There's been a world-wide epidemic. [citation needed] I know you don't read the "Primary" climate science literature [citation needed] but I thought you may do slightly better in your own field!
>And Yes, none of these potential Catastrophes are down to a single cause, it's a complex mix. The simplistic "The World's going to hell in a hand basket because of C02" [citation needed] is just downright wrong [citation needed] - No matter how ideologically you would like it to be so. [citation needed]
>Signs are frog populations are recovering [citation needed], good news I'm sure you will agree, Co2 levels still rising though, go figure.
>You happy to agree the scares over the Himalayas and the 10's of metres of sea-level rise this century [citation needed] due to Greenland Ice sheet melt were somewhat over-stated [citation needed] (twas ever so)? - you seem to be ignoring this.
Grima Suckas the question is, why on Earth do you imagine that your inane, startlingly uninformed, klutz-brained opinions are of interest to anyone on a science blog?
Are you really that starved of attention trhat derision is good enough?
GSW, sure I have heard of the viral pathogens, and I never said they didn't play a major role in the global decline of frogs and other amphibians. Also, its a bit rich for you and your idol to repeatedly call me a liar when I never claimed that climate change was the major factor in these declines. But it is a major factor. And no, as the Nature article I cited yesterday shows, a large number of amphibian species and populations continue to decline. Most species are not receovering, because they face a number of environmental threats of which climate change is decidedly in the mix. Where is your list of citations reporting large-scale recoveries? These organisms have a semi-permerable mebrane and are therefore very susceptible to rapid changes in the environment - chemical, physical, biotic and abiotic. Throwing your hads in the air and leaving warming out of the scenario is plainly stupid. It is a factor that exacerbates the effects of other stressors, and will clearly become more important as biotic zones shift polewards.
I also never claimed C02 and its attendant climate change is the only - or even the most important - process with respect to human simplification of the biosphere. But it is certainly a major threat to biodiversity. Just because you and few other non-scientific right wingers here think otherwise does not make it so.
While you are at it, you might as well tell your sidekick over at his own thread to shut up. I don't go there anymore. It appears that the only people who read his guff are you, Olaus and a few other contrarians from Sweden.
You have to laugh when deniers like GSW point to the most extreme claims (divorced of context, of course) and decide that because the claims are wrong there is nothing to worry about.
>Where is your list of citations reporting large-scale recoveries?
GSW's thinking is:
1. Al Gore claims frog populations are falling because of global warming
2. Global warming is a hoax, therefore:
3. frog populations are increasing
As I said, forgs and other amphibians are in deeper trouble than ever. Here is a good overview on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_amphibian_populations
Climate change is certainly an important factor, along with others described here. Teasing apart the causes is difficult, if not impossible to do independently. But more extreme conditions, such as droughts, heat waves, cloud cover, etc. will certainly impact amphibian populations. These organisms are the metaphorical miner's canaries: excellent indicators of profound changes in the environment mediated by human actions.
...and to top if off is the heatwave across the midwestern USA that is now reaching the east. Its unbelieveable by any stretch of the imagination. Some areas are breaking their old high records by as many as 15-20 degrees F - and Chicago is only one day shy of breaking its April record for days in that month over 80 F!!!
During the past few weeks, 3550 warm weather records have been broken against only 18 cold weather records. This is certainly a sign of things to come.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/exception…
Wow, what a car crash - James Delingpole interviewed on BBC radio today. The interpreter of interpretations comes in [at 1 hour 16 mins](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01djp25/Richard_Bacon_22_03_2012/).
It is a shame Richard Bacon didn't do a bit more preparation. He might have picked Delingpole up on the no warming since 1998, more polar bears than 50 years ago (when they were being hunted to near extinction) and other nonesense. Even so, Delingpole does just come across as the preposterous and angry conspiracy theorist he is.
Hi Jeff, There was a regional record here for the 2011-2012 winter. Beat the previous average set in 1931-1932 by more than a degree F. The average was also 7 degrees higher than normal winter temps. We've been hitting over 70 degrees every day this week in rural NE Pennsylvania.
Thanks for the link Jeff. Here is another.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/article.html?entrynum=2058
While we're all getting excited by "Weather" in the US,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/22/all-time-snowfall-records-fall-ac…
"âMany cities across Western Oregon and Southwest Washington are setting all-time cold and snowfall records for this late in the season. Since Tuesday night, the Willamette Valley has been blanketed with anywhere from 2â³ to 9â³ of snow from Vancouver, WA. south to Eugene, Oregon."
The point that you seem to be willfully missing Grima is that these extreme and record weather events (and the record snowfall story is already covered in MikeH's link well enough without any further input from Watts' ignorati) are following a pattern as predicted by AGW.
Your alternative 'it's all natural' assertion is powerless, whereas AGW theory tells us such events will increase in frequency as planetary warming continues with hot weather events outnumbering cold weather events by [approx ten to one.](http://www.wunderground.com/climate/extremes.asp)
GSW,
Watts is full of you-know-what. But we all know that. Check the ratio of warm-cold weather records in the US. More than 3500 of the former against 18 of the latter. And warm records are not only being broken, but as MikeH said they are being smashed to pieces. Like it or not, these conditions are well outside of any normal variance. By any stretch of the imagination what has transpired over much of the US and southern Canada is incredible.
Trust the deniers to grasp at their ever dwindling straw supply and to cite a few cold weather examples, as if there is a balance. There isn't. Like the heat wave that hammered Russia in 2010, we are seeing a broader pattern of exceptional conditions occurring over more of the globe that are probably unprecedented in a long, long time. And its almsot certain to get worse.
Dream on Jeff, can you prove that last statement ?
Also try to the same with Sth America, China, Australia, New Zealand and Russia, it will be difficult.
CO2 is rising and global temperatures appear to be on the decline, quite the contrary to the doom mongers predictions.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/esrl-co2/normalise
GSW and Watts miss the fact that the small number of cold weather records are linked to the large number of warm weather records. A high school level of understanding of synpoptic scale weather processes allows one to recognise that the warm weather has been driven by an unusual jetstream pattern, which basically consists of a cut-ff low forming a giant eddy above the Western US. This is responsible for the extreme temperatures across the east and for drawing in cold weather to the west.
In other words these cold weather records are indicative of a continental-scale exceptional weather event. It is pitiful to watch denialists trying to imply that cold weather records in some way balance the warm weather records elsewhere.
I thought this comment worth importing from RC where DanH is attempting the same BS
DanH says: "Yes, many of us here in Michigan are enjoying these four sigma above normal days â it is a real rare event for us to be this warm this early. On the flip side, my dad in Arizona is two sigma below normal.â
to which t-p-hamilton responds:
4 sigma 2 x 10^-8
2 sigma 5 x 10^-3
Not even close to the same. The number of record highs is increasing, the number of record lows is decreasing. The odds of that being just due to chance, and not a shift in the distribution, are google sigma.
GWB's Nemesis, here is a new paper for your perusal.
Environmental Research Letters Volume 7 Number 1 Create an alert RSS this journal
N Pederson et al 2012 Environ. Res. Lett. 7 014034 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/1/014034
A long-term perspective on a modern drought in the American Southeast.
abstract
"The depth of the 2006â9 drought in the humid, southeastern US left several metropolitan areas with only a 60â120 day water supply. To put the region's recent drought variability in a long-term perspective, a dense and diverse tree-ring networkâincluding the first records throughout the ApalachicolaâChattahoocheeâFlint river basinâis used to reconstruct drought from 1665 to 2010 CE. The network accounts for up to 58.1% of the annual variance in warm-season drought during the 20th century and captures wet eras during the middle to late 20th century. The reconstruction shows that the recent droughts are not unprecedented over the last 346 years. Indeed, droughts of extended duration occurred more frequently between 1696 and 1820. Our results indicate that the era in which local and state water supply decisions were developed and the period of instrumental data upon which it is based are amongst the wettest since at least 1665. Given continued growth and subsequent industrial, agricultural and metropolitan demand throughout the southeast, insights from paleohydroclimate records suggest that the threat of water-related conflict in the region has potential to grow more intense in the decades to come."
So dendro is back in favour now is it?
lord_sidcup @ 331,
Delingpole acutally claims that there is a concensus among paleoclimatologists that it was warmer during medieval times than it is now. (Around 1:22)
What a completely shameless liar that man is.
It's cold somewhere is it? All I see if GSW scraping the bottom of the barrel. C'mon GSW. Not even gullible old you believes that one.
Sunsp.... er Karen, writes, "CO2 is rising and global temperatures appear to be on the decline, quite the contrary to the doom mongers predictions".
This is kindergarten-level science. To be ignored. It assumes that at very short time scales the relationship between atmsopheric C02 and temperature must increase linearly. But of course this ignores short term perterbations that can transiently mask the longer term effects. Its akin to saying that one week in one year is warmer in March than in May, hence there is no relationship between month and temperature.
Come on Spotty, you can do better than this. Its clear you've never set foot near a science class or lab in your life. Take your D- shinanigans elsewhere.
Once again, some consensus are more equal than others in denier la-la land.
It's quite plain to hear, listening to the pompous little git, how easily Paul Nurse 'intellectually raped' him. Mind you Homer Simpson could likely intellectually gang-bang 'Dellers' too.
@342
Whilst also insisting science doesn't work by consensus! It would be fab to see Delingpole up against someone who knows their stuff. He got off really lightly when he came up against Paul Nurse.
Karen supplies a link which takes three clicks to turn into [this](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/trend/plot/esrl-co2/normalise).
Karen, thanks - that's interesting. First, I am really pleased that you now accept the veracity of dendrochronology as a technique - that is a big step forward as it means that you can no longer argue against the hockey-stick. Second, the paper indicates that the climate has been much drier even without warming (note that this work is about rainfall deficit not temperature). That suggests that the threats to SE USA from the combination of a return to drier conditions and increased temperatures from AGW are even more serious.
It is an impressive feat to shoot yourself in both feet with a single post, but then it is not the first time you have done so.
In other news, on Dennis Miller's radio show the highly respected Lord Monckton denies that he is a birther but...
[Via the Daily Caller](http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/22/lord-monckton-im-no-birther-but-obama…).
Can't wait to hear his views on EVILUTION!!!
Glad to see the crazies are having fun in their little asylum. Stu, for heaven's sake let them wallow in their pit of ignorance. Its an incestuous thread: the three stooges bandying around drivel that no one else reads. Two of them (Olaus and GSW) veritably worship the third (Jonas). That's it. End of story. The scientific community pays them no attention. Not a single person with any scientific credibility will go there. What galls them is that scientists like Mann, Hansen et al. are listened to. They get a forum. They speak at international scientific conferences and prestigious venues like the TED lecture series. Heck, I have been invited to the Ecological Society of America venue in Portland, Oregon to speak in a session there in August. I recently gave an invited lecture at the University of Toronto. Don't hold your breath waiting for the three stooges to be invited anywhere soon. The only invite they'll get is to a local watering hole. There is justice is science after all.
It follows deductively from your own observation, "CO2 is rising", via basic physics.
Incoherent non sequitur.
Only to someone stunningly blind, stupid, and dishonest. After Mike H's post, a human being would hide forever in shame, but Karenspot, being a mere fecal stain, is unfazed.
The average IQ of commenters on that article appears to be around 75.
"Only to someone stunningly blind, stupid, and dishonest."
inaman, you couldn't answer the question for Jeff because it was bigger than a yes or no question ?
Now do try to get rid of that smell, go to mummy for a nappy change little one.
For those that are interested here is a recent photo of inaman
( http://www.yourinternets.com/storage/lobotomy.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVE… )
It gets funnier. First, several of us counter Kar-spot's nonsense and he/she/it replies as if their C02-temperature argument had withstood scrutiny. It doesn't.
Then we have GSW on another thread claiming that he and his idol have 'done' me (heaven forbid what that means) when of course they've done nothing of the sort. GSW wrote in here claiming off the top of his head that 'frogs, coral reefs and Polar Bears are doing fine'. Of course this is nonsense. I counter it with empirical studies, then he changes his argument by saying that global amphibian declines are due primarily to a virus. But just a few days earlier he said these organisms were doing fine. Then when I argue that there are many causes for the global decline in amphibian numbers, he says that I'd blamed it primarily on AGW (which I never did; all I said was that it is an important factor amongst others). After this, nothing. Nothing on coral reefs or polar bears, and an admission by him that amphibians are actually not doing well at all. Now GSW thinks he is some kind of big guy because his posts are being pasted on Real Climate. He must think he's just published an article in Nature or Science. He runs off to his idol saying, "Look what I did! Aren't I special?!!!". And then expects a pat on the head. Its pathetic. And also sad.
I am used to this kind of argument from the anti-environmental fraternity. They ALL do it. Make unsubstantiated comments off the tops of their heads, then, when their arguments are vanquished retreat claiming some kind of intellectual victory. Note that in 7 months since Jonas entered Deltoid, there have been no more than half a dozen people who have written to support his arguments. At the same time, 30 or more think he's a loon. People like him claim to speak for science when science has already spoken, and it is not in support of their views. Otherwise, they would be publishing their ideas on the pages of the world's best scientific journals, and not in one little innocuous corner of the blogosphere. They'd be invited speakers at major conferences, and would be regular contributors to media reports. Note that the names of the most prominent climate warming deniers haven't changed in about 20 years. A few new ones have come along, but the denial industry still predominantly relies on the same old guys that it did in the early 90s to spread their gospel of doubt. Standing behind these deniers are a veritable army of D-K acolytes like the few who venture into Deltoid with their 5 cents worth of wisdom. These people are clearly ideologically driven because, when repeatedly asked, they never tell us what special institute of learning they gleaned their self-professed wisdom from. They consistently dodge this relevant little question. Instead, they routinely dismiss the qualifications of people who have worked in the field for more than 20 or 30 years as if they, somehow, possess the skills that are able to separate 'good science' from 'bad science', and, along with it, 'good [or real] scientists' from phonies.
Certainly I expect the usual barrage of 'Jeffie' posts on the other thread from the "Deltoid-3" along with the usual denigrating remarks and smears. But it comes with the territory. I have yet to be attacked over the past 10 years since I ventured into the public arena to discuss contemporary environmental problems by a single scientist with relevant expertise. I've been attacked by scribes and think tanks, as well as by laymen like those few on Deltoid, but I have received enormous support from scientists wherever I have spoken around the world. The only reason I persist here and elsewhere is to explain to people not familiar with the insides of academic establishments in the elusive search for the 'truth' that the vast majority of the scientific community are in general agreement over the causes of climate change. While we are uncertain as to how it will play out in the coming years on the functioning of complex adaptive systems and in turn, how this rebounds on human civilization, the truth is that the scientific community by-and-large agrees that humans are the primary culprit. So don't be take in by the snake-oil brigade who try to give the impression that they have some kind of intellectual authority. They don't. If they did, you'd read their articles on the pages of the best science journals and you'd see them getting media attention. And this particularly applies to the deniers who haunt the blogosphere. Their views are out of line with the scientific community. Bear in mind that every Academy of Science in every country on Earth agrees that humans are dangerously influencing climate patterns over the biosphere. These prestigious bodies do not reach these conclusions lightly. They are based on input from a large sector of their membership including experts in the field.
Re Monckton and the Birth Certificate.
This really is a hoot!
Good stuff, Bill. This crackpot behaviour reminds me of the painful ["enhance... enhance... enhance..."](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk) routines beloved of crime dramas everywhere.
On a related note, two videos for your perusal: [Potholer54's open letter to Christopher Monckton](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCoi94n0aJg) and [Conversation between Potholer54 and Greenman3610](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZKzJwMOWAI)
Jeff, Giving up on trolls is a bit like giving up cigarettes. Those nicotine patches help, but ultimately, you have to mentally reset yourself as an ex-addict.
It's great tyou've decided to stop engaging on the other thread, but that's only part of the way there - you actually have to stop reading it. As long as you post anything here about what they are saying over there, they know you are reading. They know they are getting a rise out of you, which is their raison d'etre. From their point of view, it doesn't matter too much whether you post there or here, you are still rewarding their time and effort. Posting about them here is just a slightly healthier form of the same addiction....
Now, everybody here knows you have better things to read than their twaddle. And better things to write than a critique of that twaddle (that no one else here read). We know because we have all read so many of your insightful and informative posts. But they are incapable of learning, and since almost no one else here reads their crap, no one can here benefit from your responses. So while you are venting your own frustration, you are guaranteeing future frustration. Only when they are denied the oxygen of publicity, will they eventually die.
And until then, believe me, when you can look at the side bar and leave it at "Hah - still posting crap in their own little twilight zone, like anybody cares" you will feel a lot better.
Respect.
Sorry, post above loaded during proofing! (Bugger!)
To clarify; I scanned a printed document consisting of text on a patterned background - i.e. much like the birth certificate - to see if I could replicate the 'separate groups effect' similar to the one found in the birth certificate in Illustrator quite innocently.
I could. As detailed above.
And it's hard to explain the messy inconsistencies, gaps, and bits and blobs if the birth certificate was in fact cunningly generated 'whole cloth' in software. Not to mention understand how sweeping technical mastery in the original forgery could then collapse into such blatant stupidity in allowing the multiple 'group' artifacts to remain.
Now, less-than-the-best scanning practice was apparently employed somewhere along the line, sure, but can these artifacts in Illustrator be taken as incontrovertible evidence of a sinister conspiracy to fake an identity for global citizen No. 1?
Hardly!
People who are fond of playing Defence Lawyer - you know; all we have to do is create some doubt and then shout 'unproven' - when it comes to atmospheric pollutants might not relish the irony of being rather, I'd suggest, hoist on their own petard in this instance.
But some of the rest of us might find ourselves enjoying it a little more!...
Frank,
You're right. I have to give that up. Its just that when I log into Deltoid, the recent posts list in filled with crap from there. But you are correct. Moving on time.
My final riposte:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
Overwhelming proof from every survey that the climate science community believes that humans are strongly influencing climate warming. The deniers can quibble all they want, but the scientific community is as strongly united on this issue as on almost any other. This explains why, as I said earlier, the denial camp depends on the same bunch of 'experts' that it did 20 years ago. They can't find new recruits to join them. So we are stuck with the Lindzen's, Singer's, Idso's, Balling's, Soon's, Baliunas's, Ball's etc. The same crew that spoke against warming back in 1990-1995. Their credibility is shot.
Also, note how the deniers use the same old canard: that without 100% proof of a process - in this case that the National Academies reached their consensus based on very broad support of their membership (which of course they do if anyone who is a member of these prestigious bodies will attest) then the position of all of these academies is to be dismissed entirely. Why this is even 'debated' is beyond a joke. The positions of these academies across the planet is a very important
As for my scientific achievements, well how many does you-know-who want? My former job as Editor at Nature? My 400+ citations in the literature annually? My several keynote and plenary lectures at conferences and workshops? My 115 (and growing) publications? My invitations as guest lecturer to >20 universities around the world? Now I will be accused of waving my CV. As I said before, at least I have one to wave. Note how most of the deniers don't. Hardly a coincidence.
Now its your turn, big shot.
@jeff,
I don't think anyone gives a damn jeff. Your verbose, indulgent, tiresome, rants about "jeff" are embarrassing to read.
"the truth is that the scientific community by-and-large agrees that humans are the primary culprit"
Yeah fine, no mention of C02 there, is it implied? 80% of predicted species loss in sensitive regions over the next 50yrs is due to land use changes - chopping down forests for economic development, draining marsh areas for farmland, building shopping malls, etc. Even in the worst case climate scenarios of "Climate Envelope Models", land use still dominates, C02 is only a bit-part player alongside agricultural practices and "traditional" pollution.
The "C02 biodiversity armagedon" rants you are so fond of completely misrepresent the environmental challenges of the coming century. Are "humans the primary culprit" yes, is Anthropogenic C02 the primary threat, No! - No matter how much you've tried to play it up here.
Why does your ineffectual whining oscillate between IGW and personal "background info" to support the over-inflated view you have of yourself? why does that matter to anybody other than you?
It just ain't pretty jeff. Another one of your "final ripostes"? we can only hope.
Skeptical Science [has been hacked](http://www.skepticalscience.com/Skeptical-Science-hacked-private-user-d…).
Log on and change your details, everyone.
Jeff - GSW is needling you. Ignore him. He's another one who is not worth your attention.
I've just written a piece [Climate officials and climate provisionals](http://http://www.brusselsblog.co.uk/climate-officials-and-climate-prov…) suggesting a categorisation of those that discuss climate should include a third group - the climate provisionals - alongside the sceptics and the official climate scientists. The climate provisionals think official science is behind the game. The official/provisional debate is the most relevant.
Is this a useful categorisation?
Monckton is obviously too busy curing AIDS to debate Hadfield.
A troll using a sockpuppet to evade a restriction is extremely bad behavior. Given that, on top of the Karen sockpuppet so thoroughly demonstrating the qualities (and lack of them) that led to Sunspot's restriction in the first place, I urge Tim to enforce the restriction.
I think it's quite wrong-headed; there's a spectrum of legitimate scientific opinion on these matters and what one subscribes to is not determined by whether one is "official".
And here's your corrected link: http://www.brusselsblog.co.uk/climate-officials-and-climate-provisional…
Remarkable projection. Your stupidity, ignorance, and immense intellectual dishonesty make your opinions worthless, Grima.
Jeff, to enter a URL containing underscores, surround it with backquotes: `http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change`
And thanks for doing so much science. Try not to let yourself be baited by fecal stains like Grima.
The agenda behind this Lomborgian line is well known ... inaction. At least "out of ammo" is out there shooting cats, while people like Grima do their best to see to it that nothing happens.
ianam
Thanks for the reply and thanks for correcting the link.
If you confine your spectrum to "legitimate scientific opinion" are you excluding those commentators that have no peer reviewed publications in climate science?
One problem is the "officials" have pressures and instincts that make them conservative and less likely to be affected by emerging trends. I have been communicating with "official" science for a decade or so. I got a typical response from the UK Committee on Climate Change a few years ago:
"Thank you for your email. On the subject of methane and climate feedback; we do not assign probabilities to methane release because we do not yet know enough about these processes to include them in our models projections."
I read that as "we don't understand it so it doesn't exist".
I also heard Julia Slingo's recent evidence to the Environmental Audit CommitteeTranscript [here](http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmenvaud/uc1…).
Her estimates of the thinning of Arctic sea ice were much lower than those of the Arctic Methane Emergency Committee who gave evidence in an earlier session. She seems like an "official" to me.
A post on Joe Romm's Climate Progress [NYTimes.com Strikes False Balance On Climate Change](http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/09/17/321712/nytimes-com-strikes-fal…) has an illustrative graph of [Distribution of professional opinion on anthropogenic climate change](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QNv9CPAjNvE/S06gZ_U0ZDI/AAAAAAAAA0U/Lye6M_XEU…)
It shows a sceptical group and a warmist group distributed along an axis Predicted Impact of Climate Change -from Slight to Catastrophe. The warmist group ("Slight cost" through "substantial cost" to "catastrophe") contains the IPCC (the officials) placed nearer the "slight cost" end of the range. I think that judgement is right but I think the warmists split into two, which I have called the climate officials and the climate provisionals. (I'm open to better names!).
I also think these that these two groups have significantly different sociologiocal and psychological characteristics - but that's a bit academic. What's important is that the policies that are implied by these different warmist groups differ greatly. (e.g. To geoengineer or not.)
I see the Environmental Audit Committee's enquiry a interesting start of a debate between the two groups.
Geoff, (and sorry for the longiness)
Speaking as a thoroughly under-qualified "provisional", there is something of a false dichotomy in your observations here. "Provisionals" use "official" sources, so you need to be careful to consider whether a "provisional" argument is their own work, or a direct derivation of the "official" source.
Although Wadhams himself is probably best placed with the "officials", AMEG's arguments in this specific area are derived from the "provisionals". But while AMEG's arguments were weak, Slingo's rejection of those arguments, in the context of "officials" -v- "provisional", is equally weak.
With regard to Wadhams 2015 date, much of the "evidence" he uses was derived from some curve-fitting spitballing done at Neven's Arctic Sea Ice blog. The discussion has run on and off for 15 months, lack of physicality is clearly noted - e.g. we don't know what feedbacks will have what effects as more open water appears - and Slingo would have been right to reject AMEGs argument on the basis of physics alone.
But (based on the quotes on your blog) she rejects it for other reasons:
>"She also said that suggestions the volume of sea ice had already declined by 75% already were not credible."
That "suggestion" did not originate with Wadhams. Nor did it come out of the blogosphere discussion. It comes from the output of the PIOMAS model developed by the Polar Science Centre at the University of Washington - people whose expertise is not questioned.
Her dismissal of that figure as not credible is simply handwaving. In her oral evidence to the committee, the only "proof" I saw is that their model results differ from PIOMAS (to be fair, I only skimmed it). To determine why they differ would be an interesting exercise for the expert, but it is my understanding that PIOMAS results are well validated against as much thickness data as is available at present. If Slingo has any basis for preferring the Met's model over PIOMAS, she would have done well to discuss this.
2015 is a number from the "provisionals" and can be ignored at the readers discretion. 75% decline in volume is a number from the "officials", and can't be dismissed so easily.
In any case, even if Slingo is correct, shifting from 2015 to 2025 (her earliest possible) is hardly grounds for moving from "panic" (a bit of a cheap shot, IMO) to "don't worry".
Disclaimer: I am of the opinion that an ice-free Arctic is neither a necessary precondition for methane release, nor an automatic trigger for it. OTOH, while I believe increased methane release is more-or-less inevitable on our current trajectory, I'm not convinced geoengineering is a suitable response. The above blather is not related to the question of "panic", only whether Slingo rejected Wadhams claims for sound reasons. I don't believe that to be the case.
FrankD
Thanks
As a provisional you are putting forward the sort of argument that should be aired.
Getting the officials to do the same is like pulling teeth.
One problem with the officials is that, as a group characteristic, they are reluctant to express judgements that cannot be uttered with a high degree of confidence. Perhaps that is their role.
From my sample of contacts with officials I sometimes find that their wider knowledge is lacking and will assume the official line is correct without any specific knowledge. Also they avoid giving opinion by referring to a topic without any indication of their judgement . They may be waiting for "scientific facts" but if we can't get "scientific facts", we need some best calls.
I think officials often have their own judgements but they are reluctant to express them publicly. Geoffrey Lean once told me "They knew but they didn't tell us." Too right.
I'd put Peter Wadhams in the provisional camp.
Also I'd put James Hansen in the provisional camp. He has the confidence to express himself clearly. Another sign: One eminent "official" told me Hansen was mad - but as with all encounters with the officials there was no time to elaborate and I'm sure he won't respond to my emails.
What's good about the HOC Environmental Audit Committee is that some of them seem to have the urge to come to judgements that are useful to policy making and at last they can bring the officials to account.
Of course, all provisionals are not of one mind and neither are all officials but in declaring yourself as a provisional you are showing to me that the official/provisional dichotomy may be a useful one.
As an enthusiastic amateur, with the emphasis on enthusiastic and amateur, I'm happily free of the need to confine myself to 95% certain positions in this area. If I swung and missed as many times in what is supposed to be my area of professional competence, I wouldn't be employed for long... ;-)
I don't envy the scientists who find themselves living between "on the balance of probabilites" and 2-sigma "beyond reasonable doubt". I agree that there are more than a few who are privately deeply vexed, but through training and personality, are unwilling to voice their concerns beyond the scientifically "provable" position.
Wieslaw Maslowski is probably the only person who is simultaneously a professional in the field and a "provo" on the specific subject of Arctic sea ice decline, as Hansen is one of the very few in the field as a whole. He is fortunate in working for the US Navy, which is naturally more focussed on real-world balance of probabilities than a scientific gold standard. Maslowski's first projections was done in 2006 (when the "official" position was 2080+). Each new year of data adds confidence to that projection (and subsequent revisions), yet he is still an outlier compared to the "official" position (which has now moved to around 2040-2050, apparently).
And there's the thing - the argument is framed as denial versus very conservative (in a good way), yet there is a whole range of opinion beyond the consensus position, some of which has sound reasons for saying some things are probably much worse than the consensus, centrist, position. It's a bit like our ultra-right parties ridiculous framing of our fairly-right parties as a bunch of socialists...
One thing though; unlike in the troubles, few "provisionals" in this area regard the "stickies" as sell-outs, although I suspect the "officials" sometimes (as in this case) regard the "provos" as a nuisance and a distraction.
Off topic, if there is one, as this is an Aussie-based blog, could anyone who lives in Queensland please let me know if you can find anyone, anyone at all, who voted Labor (as you spell it 'down under there'). I understand that the Labor party were tremendous HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) and enacted all sort of anti-global warming measures. Sow and ye shall reap!
Duff, I understand that your reason for being here is to gloat that nobody believes in AGW anymore:
>Chicago has broken high temperature records for nine days in a row - though today is likely to end that streak. The temperature in Chicago this week has been sometimes 15 degrees higher than the average - more similar to June weather than March.
>Many Canadian cities including Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Quebec City, St. John, Windsor, Hamilton, and London, all broke high-temperature records on Wednesday. St. John's high of 25.4°C was higher than any recorded temperature in April.
>The low temperatures in Marquette, MI and Mt. Washington, NH, was higher than the record high temperature in the past.
>Lake Michigan has a water temperature closer to average June readings than March, reaching into the mid-10s in the middle of the lake.
>The server that handles NOAA's weather records has been down for days, due to unprecedented traffic. (Note: link doesn't work. See previous sentence for explanation.)
>New York City has had seven days of record-breaking temperatures, with yesterday's high of 25 breaking a 74-year-old record.
Even your favourite peer reviewed science journal, The Daily Mail, has been forced to comment.
It isn't just America:
>The heatwave will strike the whole of Britain, with Sunday's high expected in Scotland, while the Welsh town of Aberystwyth will show the largest rise on average temperatures.
>"There is a high pressure system in the North Sea which is affecting the whole of Europe. There is another south of Greece and in combination the two mean unseasonably high temperatures across the continent. Western France is 6C above average for this time of year, some parts of Germany are 7C higher.
You have previously admitted your belief that cold weather proves global warming isn't happening. As you can see, by your own reasoning you are wrong.
At the very least I am sure the data is being cooked by Al Gore and there is nothing to worry about.
Do have a nice day, son.
:)
Yeah sure, Duffster, imagine a party that's been in power since 1998 (and has been out of power for only 2 years since the notorious pro-National Gerrymander was revoked in 1989) being comprehensively turfed out.
And climate was a huge part of the state-level debate, was it? You'd know this from your armchair on the other side of the world, wouldn't you? Hell, you've probably been reenacting the campaign over your whisky-fortified Cocoa, with the aid of your Napoleonic and Russian toy soldiers!...
I was waiting for some moron to trot this out. I'm little surprised it was you.
PS, Thicko, it's an 'open thread', so your cultural-smugness is as misplaced as everything else in your impoverished intellectual repertoire.
Who better to deflate Duff and dumber than the winners on Saturday.
http://www.liberal.org.au/Issues/Environment.aspx
Now being locals, we know that the "mad monk" tailors his message on climate change depending on the audience but nominally the Liberals have the same carbon mitigation targets as the ALP. Both inadequate but that is a different story.
You seem rather confused. Whether someone's opinion is scientifically legitimate has nothing to do with what they have published ... but it certainly has something to do with what they base that opinion on.
Ok, you're just not very bright.
You need a course or twenty in basic logic. Hansen is an official ... does that disprove your position?
Um, perhaps it is a constraint on people who are held responsible for what they say. Scientists, as a rule, are reluctant to express judgments without a high degree of confidence, especially in peer-reviewed journal papers ... ah, but you seem to place all of those in the realm of "official", given your question about commentators with no peer reviewed publications.
That's extraordinarily stupid when he described himself as a thoroughly under-qualified "provisional" (those quote marks mean something), and noted a false dichotomy. Frank simply spoke your language to say that he's not a professional climate scientist, which in no way supports your dichotomy, and your attempt to take it that way demonstrates that you're engaging in dogma, not reason.
From Geoff's blog:
Sigh. Not prediction, projection.
And then we have
and
So we've got modellers = officials = cautious conservatives, vs. scientists = measurers = provisionals = alarmists/realists.
As I said, this sort of dichotomy is quite wrong-headed. What is useful is to point out that, in the face of uncertainty, the principles of risk assessment say that we should treat estimates of harm as understating it, and should act accordingly.
Ah, missed this earlier ... it goes to show how utterly irrational, dogmatic, and unfalsifiable this nonsense is, a textbook case of a No True Scotsman fallacy.
ianam -
"modellers = officials = cautious conservatives, vs. scientists = measurers = provisionals = alarmists/realists."
Not a bad summary. Except I think modellers would call themselves scientists. So would I.
"utterly irrational, dogmatic, and unfalsifiable this nonsense is"
I'n not a great fan of simple falsification in Popper's philosophy of science - his "simplicity" criterion does not work. Try Imre Lakatos.
Even so, my dichotomy can be put into a theoretical framework that contains falsification - and it would survive Occam's Razor.
Given more time than I've got at the moment, I cold predict the responses of the "officials" to new evidence - relative to the "provisionals" responses. These predictions would be falsifiable.
ianam -
"Whether someone's opinion is scientifically legitimate has nothing to do with what they have published ... but it certainly has something to do with what they base that opinion on."
Well said.
Mediawatch recently [tore shreds from Jenifer Marohasy's crusade to stymie attempts to ensure adequate environmental flows in the Murray River](http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3458728.htm).
Today [Counterpoint attempted to discredit Mediawatch's piece](http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/counterpoint/murray-mouth/…). High on the list was Marohasy's overarching straw-man attempt to seed doubt about the salinity or otherwise of the lower lakes, as if an estuarine history here somehow invalidates any attempt to ensure that the thousands of kilometres of the rest of the Murray-Darling system are not hydrologically over-extracted.
Listen to the interview carefully, and see if you can pick the occasions where Michael Duffy asks Marohasy some pre-arranged questions, and where she responds with pre-written answers.
Oo, and John Mashey, you might be interested to know that there was a brief discussion of some funding arrangments for some of the astroturf organisations in Australia.
Here is Senator Bob Brown spruiking for a one world government again.
( http://www.wakeup2thelies.com/2012/03/26/video-senator-bob-brown-calls-… )
I shouldn't forget Jooliar Gilard.
The importance of the Security Council to the maintenance of international peace and security is as great now as it ever has been. Not since the founding of the United Nations have we faced such uncertain times, when the contours of a ""new world order"" are emerging but not yet apparent.
( http://australia-unsc.gov.au/australia-and-the-un/ )
What next ? CO2 Marxism
Like David Duff, Jonas, Olaus, GSW and Pentaxz before him, Sunspot has outed himself as a ideologically motivated conspiracy theorist. I am shocked. I didn't see this coming at all.
The problem for you 'Karen' is that your private/individualistic outlook has conditioned you to think that public collective action is anathema, when in fact it has been the route by which many large-scale infrastructure benefits have been delivered to society.
You're the member of what is now a death cult with no answers except denial, because every attempt at a solution which requires collective action is off-limits to your ideology.
I just saw a this article from the Daily Fail claiming that a new paleoclimate article is disproof global warming. I took the time to contact the researcher named in the study and he said, "i don't think that reporter read my paper at all."
I have urged him to write a letter of correction to the Daily Mail and to contact Skeptical Science for a fuller response.
@Trent
Article along the same lines from [The Register](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/23/warm_period_little_ice_age_glob…)
@391-392
Right wing papers/media owned by giant media corporations that depend
on corporate advertising from industries with an axe to grind distorting science to downplay the prevailing scientific opinion over climate change? NEVER!!! Tell me it ain't so!!!!
re: 386 Bernard J
Yes, interesting. I assume the refrence to American CSC is actually this.
John M - yep, that's the site you get - in a weird flash pop-up - from the link on the Australian CSC's website.
The two sites - whether nominally Australian or American - are very similar, with a virtually identical banner, which they share, I now note, with a third entity, the ICSC. ('I' is for 'International'.)
They all say they offer 'climate for laypeople'. (Actually, in the ACSC's case it's 'guidance for laypeople', which makes them seem a bit like Opus Dei or the Salvos!)
It's hard to escape the conclusion that the pretty-well the entire Denier edifice - at least its leadership cohort - consists of 2 or 3 dozen tireless windbags who must keep ceaselessly changing clothes and buying new megaphones, perpetually recreating and remanifesting themselves in order to present the illusion of a social and scientific 'movement' that's going somewhere.
I just checked that researchers Facebook page and he seems pretty mad about the distortions. Do not want to reply because I might give the appearance of being a stalker. Perhaps someone here can give him some feedback?
New Radio Ecoshock show looks into the record heat event in most of North America, dubbed "Summer in March".
Interviews with Joe Romm of Climate Progress, and Jeff Masters of The Weather Underground. The thousands of heat records smashed, appear to be a mix of weather variation, boosted by a changed atmosphere (i.e. global warming).
NASA's James Hansen has similarly said that heat events like the European killer of 2003, or the deadly Moscow heat of 2010 could not have occured without our added greenhouse gases.
1 hour program: http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock12/ES_120328_Show_LoFi.mp3
Sorry. Apparently long file names don't work.
To download/listen to the new Radio Ecoshock show on the latest "Summer in March" try this short one:
http://bit.ly/GRGbPD
Alex
@Alex Smith,
Your link to Radio Ecoshock give a 404.
G'day Alex, please consider this by way of feedback.
I thought I'd quickly provoie a fixed version of that link that doesn't work, but a cut-and-paste of the URL gives a scary list of warnings from my scriptblocker - never encouraging - and it still 404'ed when I temporarily allowed everything.
I don't enjoy being confronted with having to apparently subscribe to a podcast where I actually just want to listen to a single show, and I was unable to find the program you refer to on the link from the homepage that goes to 'weekly radio ecoshock show' which is titled 'weekly radio ecoshock show 2011' .
I have found a program with an interview with John M that looks interesting, but I keep finding my cursor disappears when I'm trying to use the Mp3 player on one of the numeric-IP-address-style URL's that the site utilises (another thing I don't enjoy) - at the moment I can't pause the bloody thing for that very reason!
I'm downloading this program now, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it, but a bit of attention to the site at some stage may pay dividends!
This link works.
I said nothing about Popper's philosophy of science, and I'm well familiar with Lakatos. This isn't about scientific research programs, this is about a pet dogma of yours that is transparently unfalsifiable, in the trivial sense that you will do whatever is necessary, including blatantly ignoring the meaning of your own terms, in order to sustain it. By calling Hansen a "provisional" you establish yourself as a bullsh*tter and a fraud.
I'm a "provisional", fool, and my responses don't fit into your tidy boxes, nor do those of a lot of other "provisionals" ... nor do those of a lot of scientists who publish in peer-reviewed journals -- the sort of people that you deem "officials". Of course official responses generally tend to be more conservative than the responses of bloggers and blog commenters, for the obvious reason that I pointed out -- the people who make them are held responsible for their statements. There's nothing at all novel about this, or about the blogger/professional dichotomy, which is a far more sensible division than yours.
@ "Karen", much as I hate to acknowledge it, yes, you are right. The megalomaniac Bob "Benito" Brown and his squadrons of black helicopters are out to get you.
Run Karen, run as far as and as fast as your little legs will carry you. Run far and hide - under a rock perhaps. This means that you will have to stop, cease and desist posting your constant barrage of witless pseudo-scientific and illogical dribble curb your philanthropic activities here, since you will give away your location to the zillions of BrownBots that infest the interweb every time you post.
Goodbye then "Karen", we shall do our best to adapt to life here without you, but it won't be the same...
An Australian Land Court approves largest thermal coal mine in the southern hemisphere, decreeing that global warming concerns are "irrelevant".
Friends of the Earth spokesperson Bradley Smith said the decision was a âhuge disappointmentâ.
âWe demonstrated to the court and Xstrata that this project will exacerbate climate change, and they're going ahead anyway.
"Xstrata did not contest the reality or impacts of climate change. They're planning on building this mine knowing that it will create the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as 72 countries combined,â said Dr Smith. âIt's unfortunate that our laws allow multi-billion dollar companies like Xstrata to ignore the outcomes of their reckless actions.â
Hey - I don't know if any of you have been to Jo Nova's hive of gibberish lately, but I hadn't been there for a couple of months and just went to have a look - she's gone completely nuts.
Her site is just a big long series of insane right-wing conspiracy loon nonsense about economic conspiracies, Global governments, and so forth.
She's clearly associated in some way with the CEC and the other fringe-dwelling loons out there.
Somehow, I imagine her readership is drying up - you can't serve up that kind of crap and attract anybody but the hardcore cranks.
@ Scribe, the Qld decision is a complete mirror obverse of the (successful) challenge mounted (by an individual with the support of the EDO) in the NSW L&E Court against the Anvil Hill mine:
http://www.mallesons.com/publications/marketAlerts/2006/Documents/87183…
In this, Pain J held that:
(my emphasis).
I am not familiar with this case, but there may be grounds to appeal to the Commonwealth Minister (DSEWPaC) on Matters of National Environmental Significance, in which case there may be an opportunity to raise the same issue at Federal level.
What most pisses me off with mining applications these days is their outright disdain for the other significant environmental impacts. Their EIAs frequently acknowledge the project will cause significant ecological impacts, so they spend a few hundred K (petty cash as far as they are concerned) on a Species Impact Statement, make a few trivially miniscule concessions (mostly minor tidying up after they have pillaged the place) and sod off overseas to enjoy the substantial (and mostly unburdened by taxes or imposts) profits while the rest of us wear the considerable, enduring environmental costs. The flora and fauna (endangered or otherwise) just get wiped out as if it didn't matter (even if it impinged at all on anyone's consicence) on the basis of a consultant's report, itself focussed largely on the increasingly lax requirements of ever-more watered-down environmental legislation.
TL;DR - if climate change provisions in the existing legislative paradigm cannot or will not force us to stop wrecking what's left of the planet, there is f**k-all chance that legislation "protecting" threatened species will.
Yeah, Vince, interesting, isn't it?
I popped over there the other day because I assumed - wrongly, as it turned out - that there I'd find one of the parties who was publicising the SkS hack material.
No - there are bigger fish to fry! Instead I found it was all 'Gold, Gold Gold' (Ã la the dwarves in Terry Pratchett!), Hayek, more Hayek, 'Austrians' as a heroic accolade (unrelated to Austria, where they don't actually do 'Austrian', funnily enough) and the urgent realization that warmomarxosocialist undermining of the currency will sap all our vital bodily fluids.
Oh, and the concept of Conspiracy Theories is all a cunning plot hatched by the UN and its Regulating Class to ensure that no-one understands the appalling depths of the conspiracies involved.
And it's got worse - hell, now there's tungsten in the gold bars. Tungsten I tell you! Where will it end?! (Go and check if you think I'm making this up!)
You couldn't make it up, and, frankly, I'm glad I can't. The world beyond satire is equal parts depressing, scary, and amazingly dull.
Still, she's getting the standard massive approval ratings for each post from the discerning fruitcakes and the other de-institutionalised who are turning up (how many bloggers do you know who go in for this 'rate my post' thing, incidentally?), so I suppose at least its keeping them all off the streets for the time being...
The GWPF's main financier is revealed in a [Guardian article today](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/27/tory-donor-climate-sc…)
An Australian billionaire, connections to Atlantic Bridge, legally questionable statements from a supposed charitable concern - there seems to be a pattern developing.
SteveC, unfortunately the Anvil Hill mine did get the go ahead and has been sold off to Xstrata and renamed Mangoola (and it is to my shame that one of the leading exec's of Centennial Coal was a Uni friend of mine). Winning a court case is not enough, many times there's been a win in court for the government to come along and change the rules of the game. Hunter vignerons had a win in the courts against one mine, the government of the day changed the rules and the mine went ahead. Moolarben number 2 is now in the planning stage and the EIS is, like most others, nothing more than a sales brochure and the offset areas they're proposing are totally inadequate just for starters, the local aquifers are going to be ruined, one of the last corridors in the upper Hunter will be removed and we'll be left with a void filling with ever saltier water.
Threatened species don't stop coal mines, exposure of dodgy EIS's don't stop coal mines, social impacts don't stop coal mines, disruption of aquifers don't stop coal mines and you can be guaranteed greenhouse gasses won't stop them. There was one coal mine stopped in the Hunter Valley, only because it was small and the horse breeders started flexing their bank books, unfortunately with the new state government it's back on the table.
ianam,
Perhaps I misinterpret your responses, but I infer that you might have made the same mistake that I did when I first read Geoffs piece. In talking about "provisional" and "official" he is not talking about the degree of authority with which a person speaks - Hansen could never be a "provisional" by that standard. Rather, Geoffs blog article specifically refers to the "troubles" in Ireland, in which the IRA split into several different factions, most notably the "official" IRA and the "provisional" IRA.
That creates yet more scope for misapprehension ("climatologists = terrorists"), but the point for Geoff is that he sees two camps: those who, in focussing on statements that can be made with a high degree of confidence, become a more moderate or conservative viewpoint, and those who are prepared to chance their arms on a balance of probabilities position who in the analogy are the extemists. For reasons I can't really fathom, Geoff sees parallels with the "official" and "provisional" IRA respectively. Really, you simplify the whole thing by simply calling his second group "extremist" - I don't think its any more or less perjorative.
Personally, I think the analogy is bogus on many levels, most particularly because the relationship between Geoff's two camps is not remotely like the relationship between those two camps in the troubles. Nevertheless, if you reread his stuff with that view of "official" and "provisional" you get quite a different sense of what he means. Again, wrongheaded, IMO, but not quite as brainless as you interpret.
But perhaps you got all this, thought his analogy was even worse than I did and responded accordingly. Clarification or egg-sucking lessons...not sure...
Either way, thanks for:
>Frank simply spoke your language ...
That is exactly correct. Was happy to discuss within Geoff's framework for just long enough to think it through to "nope. doesn't work."
@ spottedquoll
Yes, you're right, Anvil Hill (aka Mangoola) did go ahead, despite the successful LEC case. I should have been more clear above in stating that the key 'victory' (and I'm not at all sure that one individual supported by an organisation that relies largely on volunteer labour, public donations and pro bono work bringing a case against a Minister simply to get the Minister to do their job properly can be called a "victory") was the judgement that all reasonably foreseeable effects of the proposal must be considered.
Regrettably the Gray case only applies to applications in NSW. Qld and other states have differing so-called environmental protection legislation that I am not familiar with, but on face value Qld's is not even as rigorous as NSW. When it was introduced in 1979 NSW's EP&A Act (Environmental Planning and Assessment Act) was rightly proclaimed as one of the best and most effective pieces of environmental legislation anywhere in the westernised world, let alone Australia. Since about 1995 every successive NSW government (regardless of their nominal political stripe) has diluted and latterly gutted the EP&A Act, the 2005 Part 3A amendment being arguably the worst of the lot (whose involvement in which is the principal reason I loathe Bob Carr), if only for its appalling disregard for the role of public participation in environmental and planning matters and the obscene discretionary power it afforded the Minister for Planning. The very idea of retrospective legislation (that you mention) ought, to any society with claims to being 'civilised' and 'advanced', be anathema. Yet that's what any party with money and clout could and does get (remember the retrospective POS that Dilemma passed that allowed film companies untrammelled access to the Blue Mountains Wilderness areas?). Environmental legislation a problem? Got money? Clout? No worries, let us as Macquarie St fix that for ya. The rest of us just get to wear the consequences for decades to come, all the while bemused why anyone questions why the electorate is quite so cynical about the political scene.
At a personal level, having worked in and spent many months tramping around in the less accesible parts of the upper Hunter, and got to know and love the area and its stunning (if often obscured) plant diversity, any new mining proposal there shits me to tears, particularly given the wholesale destruction of unique areas like Wybong. These days environmental campaigns aren't - contrary to popular opinion - fought against greedy multinationals; they also have to fight state and federal government and the (in my view) unconscionable "laws" they pass. And all in pursuit of what?
But who cares. So what if jaded, cynical conservationists like me lose another argument and rail against something they don't like and can't change? Never mind the quality, feel the economic boom. We've got 300 years of coal reserves, so whaddaya f'kin' whingein' about?
Bill @ 408, "And it's got worse - hell, now there's tungsten in the gold bars. Tungsten I tell you! Where will it end?! (Go and check if you think I'm making this up!)"
It has been going on for some time Bill, your lack of knowledge doesn't surprise me.
eg
( http://community.nasdaq.com/News/2012-03/gold-bar-1-kilo-filled-with-tu… )
and eg
( http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/03/25/the-problem-of-fake-go… )
and ect...from 2009
"In October, the Hong Kong bankers discovered some gold bars shipped from the United States were actually tungsten with gold plating. This is the exact same Modus Operandi as the silver clad zinc dimes from 45 years ago."
( http://www.kitco.com/ind/willie/nov182009.html )
Try getting your info from someone other than fat Al.
I suppose the point is Bill, that when the GlenBeckian-type collapse comes (orchestrated by bitter greens anxious to say 'I told you so', natch), those that are planning to eat their gold will find they stocked up on entirely the wrong condiments if it turns out to be tungsten.
FrankD
In this situation of extreme danger, where one group is called the "officials" what else would you call the other group? The situation in Ireland is not one I like to think about more than I have to so alternative names would be very welcome.
The latest reponse from "the officials" was obtined by my MP from the Met Office on my behalf:
"Carbon dioxide and methane release from permafrost is an area of active research at the Met Office Hadley Centre. A simple framework has been developed for estimating the amount of carbon dioxide and methane release from permafrost. and to estimate the impact of this release on the global mean temperature. We expect this work to be published within the next 2 months. This is a step towards full representation or the permafrost climate feedback within the more complex Hadley Centre climate models â the outputs of which are used by the IPCC - which we plan to achieve within the next 2 years.
Currently, no work has been undertaken to incorporate methane release from ocean hydrates into Hadley Centre climate models.
I hope this helps."
Does this help?
spottedquoll and steveC, CO2 is only a feeble excuse to make you and me pay more for hydrocarbons.
Do you really think that any country or any government anywhere in the world will stop digging, drilling or fracking for hydrocarbons ?
I can assure you that they don't want anyone to stop using these resources, they only want more money, CO2 is the excuse and they (the bureaucrats) do not give one flying f##k about the environment, you all are simply tools suckered in to help the agenda move forward.
If you want to stop the mining for fossil fuels you have to find an alternative, all efforts by your trusted governments so far have been pathetic, maybe they don't really want an alternative ?
>Try getting your info from someone other than fat Al.
You people are unhealthily obsessed.
Does this shithead never give up?
*What an crushing takedown of all the skeptics, of which many are real scientists*
Really? Name several. Very few of the 'skeptics' have strong scientific pedigrees. Very few publish much in the scientific literature. Most are on the academic fringe.
End of story. Science has moved on, even if the right wing-nuts haven't.
Yes science is moving on.
"Current theories of the causes and impact of global warming have been thrown into question by a new study which shows that during medieval times the whole of the planet heated up.
It then cooled down naturally and there was even a 'mini ice age'.
A team of scientists led by geochemist Zunli Lu from Syracuse University in New York state, has found that contrary to the âconsensusâ, the âMedieval Warm Periodâ approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago wasnât just confined to Europe.
In fact, it extended all the way down to Antarctica â which means that the Earth has already experience global warming without the aid of human CO2 emissions."
( http://www.syr.edu/news/articles/2012/ikaite-03-12.html )
Interestingly, not a single sentence of 'Karen's' "quote" actually appears in the link provided to the article by Syracuse University.
Imagine that.
Too bad Karen (Spotty) that you missed the boat. The senior author is apparently furious that the results of his study have been misinterpreted. But that's hardly news - the deniers have been doing this kind of thing for years. They routinely take the work of others and twist it to support their pre-determiend worldview (because so few of them do their own research or get it published in good journals). The site C02 Science did that with a colleagues paper here that was published in Nature a few years ago. She was shocked, to say the least, that the results of her study were used to support the stupid argument that increased atmospheric C02 benefits terrestrial ecosystems. Her study never said that at all.
Oh, and how about this in Reuters today:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/26/us-climate-thresholds-idUSBRE…
Very worrying indeed. Most of you deniers are dinosaurs driven by your own selfish political agendas.
Following on from the coal mine news as noted by [Scribe](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2012/03/march_2012_open_thread.php#comm…) and [SteveC](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2012/03/march_2012_open_thread.php#comm…), yesterday saw [the Victorial Liberal (= conservative) government move to repeal the previous state Labor government's legislation to reduce emission by 20% by 2020](http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3464379.htm) because the federal government is mandating only 5%, and Victoria can't "afford" to do better than the rest of the country...
And simultaneously, in his first day in the job the new Liberal-National (= conservative) premier of Queensland, Campbell Newman, wants the director of the Office of Climate Change to [dismantle all of Queensland's various current carbon reduction schemes](http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3464929.htm).
This is sure to thrill the vested interests and the ideologues, who can't see past their wallets, superstitions and/or paranoias, but is is a sad day for any hope that real action will gain a foothold in Australia.
Politics speaks louder than science, and louder than international, intergenerational, interspecies ethical defensibility.
> Oh, and the concept of Conspiracy Theories is all a cunning plot hatched by the UN and its Regulating Class to ensure that no-one understands the appalling depths of the conspiracies involved.
[Indeed!](http://blogs.e-rockford.com/applesauce/files/2011/04/conspiracy_thinkin…)
Happer in [WSJ again](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527023046364045772913528829842…).
*CO2 is not a pollutant. Life on earth flourished for hundreds of millions of years at much higher CO2 levels than we see today. Increasing CO2 levels will be a net benefit because cultivated plants grow better and are more resistant to drought at higher CO2 levels*
Garbage. Happer should be embarrassed for writing such tosh. First of all, its not the absolute concentrations of atmospheric C02 that are important, but the longer term evolutionary trajectories of life under relatively stable C02 concentrations. Certainly life flourished under higher C02 concentrations than occur now back in the late Mesozoic and early Cenozoic, but that is completely and utterly irrelevant. Contemporary biota evolved under relatively low C02 regimes, and the rate of change is taking the atmosphere into concentrations that have not been experienced in many millions of years, all in the blink of an evolutionary eye. This is challenging species to adapt at rates far exceeding any natural changes that have occurred in millions of years. Moreover, of course C02 is a pollutant if concentrations cause asymmetric shifts in biotic responses. Not all plants benefit at higher C02 levels - r-selected plants and weeds might grow faster, but in many plants additional biomass will be accrued with a concomitant change in internal stoichiometry: N and P may well be shunted out of plant tissues leading to quite dramatic changes in the quality of these plants for herbivores. N is normally a limiting nutrient for first level consumers, hence (as has been seen in a number of studies) arthropod consumers will increase the amount of plant biomass consumed to compensate for N deficiency. Another important point is that plant defenses are generally either C or N based. Plants with C-based phytotoxins may become more toxic to consumers, whereas plants with N-based defenses will become less well defended against herbivores and pathogens. All of these non-linear effects will impact food webs and communities, eventually scaling up to ecosystems.
Essentially, Happer is rehashing Monckton's stupid 'C02 is plant food' meme. As I said, his article is an embarrassment.
Oh, well, this explains it. Another tainted denier:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=William_Happe
@ Bernard J #422, so given Bailieu broke an election promise about carbon reductions, he shall henceforth be known as...
BaiLIAR.
Seems fair to me.
Jeff:
Look Happer up in Wikipedia and do read the climate section, including Daily Princetonian quote.
As GMI Chairnan, he continues the efforts of Seitz, Jastrow and Nierenberg.
SunsKaren@413
Ah, in the inversiverse all information that does not hail from Ordained Sources emanates from the Prince of Darkness, himself, right?
I know none of you guys - sorry 'Karen' - can do context, but I frankly don't give a toss about your tungsten impregnated gold bars; I'm not calling in to question it happening, I'm calling in to question, in the first instance, whether it means anything at all to anyone outside of wibbleworld, and certainly whether it means anything like what you wibbleworldians are claiming.
I'm sure any explanation will turn out to be based firmly on good old fashioned Greed, and since that's the most natural of human activities by your lights, and caveat emptor is the core of your philosophy; well, no problem, eh? ;-)
Sunspot and GSW's only requirement for a reliable source is "do they say what I want to hear?"
Anyway Sunspot, I'm disappointed that I haven't heard a peep from you about the current northern hemisphere heatwave seeing as your entire argument is predicated upon weather.
As you once said:
>The IPCC is being proven wrong by the cold "CLIMATE" almost everywhere !!!!
Even resident village idiot GSW realises this argument is a loser.
>I can assure you that they don't want anyone to stop using these resources, they only want more money, CO2 is the excuse and they (the bureaucrats) do not give one flying f##k about the environment, you all are simply tools suckered in to help the agenda move forward.
I present to you "Sunspot Argues Global Warming"
I found 'Karen's' "quote:
In the DailyFail. Shocked I am, shocked!...
So, how is offering a quote like that, and then providing a link to a news article (that says none of the things you say it does) based on a paper whose lead author flatly denies the very 'interpretation' of the quote you've given not simple and blatant dishonesty, then?
Lest there should be any doubt about what a truly shameful enterprise this whole pathetic effort is here's a quote from the lead author's Facebook page:
Answers: Deniers, Yes, Yes.
Actually, that quote search I did for 'Karen's' little squishy nugget of misinformation is kind of illuminating in its own right.
Now, who'd be daft enough to swallow whole this piece of manipulated tosh from the egregious DailyFail?
Come on down the GWPF!
And, what a surpise! - Andrew-freakin-Bolt!
They stand alongside other high-quality and discriminating science outlets, such as Stormfront.org, Beast Watch News (get all your latest End Times bible prophecy tid-bits here, folks!), globalclimatescam.com (better named than it thinks!), freerepublic.com, climaterealists.com, and that eternal fount of wisdom, urbanprepping.com.
Oh, and the Drudge Report.
Frankly, I don't think much of your friends, 'Karen'.
Don't you feel just a teeny, tiny, weeny bit a bit of an ass?
Damn, lost one in moderation - not sure how long that might take to get out of it! - probably because I listed some of the dubious organizations that have swallowed whole the DailyFail's squishy little chum-nugget.
Credulous / undiscriminating outlets include The GWPF and Andrew Bolt, you'll be astonished to learn.
Oh, and the Drudge Report.
Isn't it telling that Sunspot's argument is so weak he needs to resort to sneaky tricks like pretending the Daily Mail's interpretation is an offical summary?
That post has appeared! Unlike 'Karen', who has been so blatantly caught out fiddling the books that I suspect the establishing of another (non)entity will be in order...
which just goes to show that "tragedy of the commons" works over time as well as space. What is the point of governments making promises for 10+ years in the future?
Great Youtube video featuring real scientists. Some fightback at last?
I'm a Climate Scientist
Thanks John @428. Yes, Happer is affiliated with some pretty notorious groups and think tanks. It never surprises me when I read an op-ed or column in the media by a so-called 'expert' deriding climate change that this person more often than not has links with some right wing groups or think tanks that are part of the denial industry. Have these people no shame?
You all really are such a bunch of cry babies.
Is this what you are sooking about?
"A team of scientists led by geochemist Zunli Lu from Syracuse University in New York state, has found that contrary to the âconsensusâ, the âMedieval Warm Periodâ approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago wasnât just confined to Europe.
In fact, it extended all the way down to Antarctica â which means that the Earth has already experience global warming without the aid of human CO2 emissions."
If any of you 2nd graders knew how to use a search engine then you might not so stupid.
I'll hold your little hands for you, here is what the study says, verbatim.
"Having constrained the depth of ikaite formation and δ18O of ikaite crystals and hydration waters, we are able to infer local changes in fjord δ18O versus time during the late Holocene. This ikaite record qualitatively supports that both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age extended to the Antarctic Peninsula."
( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X12000659 )
If these writers did tell people that the IPCC had mucked up again nobody would know !!!
Is that what you all want ? You want to keep the old discredited and clapped out science propped up by hiding new studies.
go science !
This has been a common theme amongst the warmers.
I made no mistake. It's a dichotomy -- a pair of sets that together contain all members. One of the sets is "officials"; therefore, the other set (which he calls "provisionals") must contain all non-officials. Putting Hansen in the latter set rather than the former violates the definition. There's another dichotomy, the "conservatives" and the non-conservatives -- call them extremists, alarmists, realists, whatever. Geoff invalidly glues together the two dichotomies, equating officials with conservatives and non-officials with non-conservatives, when these sets simply are not coextensive.
No, it is quite as brainless/fallacious/dimwitted/erroneous/dogmatic as I have noted and explained, and not worth any more of either of our time. Geoff asked if his categories are useful and we both indicated that we don't think so, but he's committed to them ... but he's going to have to play that game alone.
try that again
If these writers "didn't" tell people that the IPCC had mucked up again nobody would know !!!
Karen, care to point out in the article, surely you have read it, where it states that the MWP was as warm as the current decade and that it was global?
Even better, care to show that the up-and-down motions during the MWP on Antarctica are synchronised on Antarctica itself, and with those in, just for the fun of it, Europe?
'Karen', I know you struggle with contextual reading, and you're angry because you're ashamed at having been caught out, but, seriously, get a grip.
Is what the man himself said. That's why he's so bloody annoyed at the dishonesty of the reporting, as I referred to above;
You then misleadingly posted that self-same wrong reporting in a manner that certainly looks intentional, further compounding the initial falsehood.
What you, and the remainder of your sad ilk don't get, is that, if you actually read the original post that you linked to - but didn't actually quote; unkind people might suggest that this is because Syracuse University has a credibility that the Daily Mail completely lacks, and you know it - is that he didn't say the warming extended to Antarctica.
Dummy!
He couldn't, could he, because he was examining a rare mineral that can only be found 'be found off the coasts of Antarctica and Greenland'?
Hence the original article's 'are climate changes in one part of the world felt half a world away?'.
Is not the same as 'We showed that the Medieval Warm Period extended all the way to Antarctica', is it? And if that's what he meant, why is he clearly pissed-off?
Or are we about to go into one of those looking-glass-world things, where the 'interpeters of interpretations' and 'pal-reviewers' understand the meaning of a paper better than the author does?
Another comment on Karen's article entitled ["The chronology of a lie"](http://nailsandcoffins.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/denier-lies-and-conspirac…). Note the observed sequence that culminates in a badly distorted Daily Mail article, and the author speculates:
> The next iteration will probably be performed by the moronic unpaid henchmen of the denialist machine - the readers and commenters of their blogs and media articles - who will exaggerate the misinformation even further to it's logical end.
Climate Crocks has the story, too.
I enjoyed Dana N's
SteveC @ 412, it is entirely possible our paths have crossed at some stage, I too have done much wandering and swearing at plants in the upper Hunter over the past dozen or so years. A fantastic place for botanising.
ianam, Geoff:
In any case [Michael Tobis](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QNv9CPAjNvE/S06gZ_U0ZDI/AAAAAAAAA0U/Lye6M_XEU…) did it much better, years ago.
Just in case Karen the Credulous hasn't quite got the point:
[Syracuse University scientist seeks to set the record straight on climate research](http://asnews.syr.edu/newsevents_2012/releases/ikaite_crystals_climate_…)
lord s #448
As was blatantly obvious to anyone with even the most basic literacy skills who'd actually read the very article 'Karen' linked to, but didn't quote from!
I'd be inclined to cool my heels for a while, too, if I'd made such an utter ass of myself in a public arena.
And I note, yet again, that while hundreds, indeed thousands of papers, confirming warming are unconvincing, speculative, premature, overstated, limited in their implications, even questionably honest, etc. etc. it only takes one bloody paper - and only this solitary one is required - to prove the absence of warming beyond doubt.
And you don't even need to actually read it!
You lot calling yourselves 'skeptics' is the most grotesque irony since, as Tom Lehrer was wont to point out, Henry Kissinger won his peace prize.
So, Karen, even though others have shown that the media articles spectacularly misrepresent the study, lets do a little thought experiment. Lets imagine that all these disparate and non-synchronous warming events over the Medieval were, contrary to the actual studies, actually all synchronous ... ie the whole globe warmed at the same time at some point in the Medieval. The whole globe warmed synchronously ... yet it did so in response to relatively slight solar and volcanic forcings.
In the real world, that logically must mean ...
wait for it ...
climate sensitivity is very high!
Perhaps you should stop and think and evaluate if what you are arguing for is actually what you want to argue for.
And to reiterate, actual studies do not show a globally synchronous MWP, meaning we have half a chance at slightly more moderate sensitivities being correct.
Quite frankly, anyone who pays good money to a rag such as the Daily Mail, that publishes obvious scientific untruths, is a mug.
The hacks who write for the Mail are either flagrantly and deliberately misrepresenting climate science, or they are so inept that they do not deserve to be granted the title 'journalists'. 'Propagandists', perhaps, or certainly 'shit-stirrers', but nothing that even hints at professional, objective reporting of fact.
Cigarette packets have health warnings, and television programs have viewer warnings: tabloid papers such as the Daily Mail should mandatorily have warnings of unreliable and nonfactual content. That way the suckers who buy such rubbish might have half a chance to understand that they're being had.
Sunspot, any comment yet on the current heatwave that, based on your own argument, proves AGW is happening?
There's a new report out from the IPCC. It's been making the rounds in newspapers. The report is available from the IPCC Home page (Top Right- News and Events).
Why they do this.
Here's a comment from WUWT on the Ikaite issue, in response to mandas pointing out that Watts' conclusions were incorrect, and that the lead author had gone on the record saying so -
In the Inversiverse all these spin-doctors and their drones do indeed believe they understand the implications of a paper better than the authors do!
In the Inversiverse the author is only responding like this now because he's scared of the power of 'the team'; perhaps if he refuses to knuckle under to Mike Mann he'll lose grant-funding? This isn't defamatory, of course - otherwise Anthony would surely remove it? - it's just telling it like it is.
In the Inversiverse it's up to the author to prove that his paper doesn't disprove current anthropogenic warming and doesn't show that the MWP was global, despite the minor technical detail that he was studying a rare mineral found only in frigid water in limited areas of the Acrtic and Antarctic, and the fact that 'we clearly state in our paper that we studied one site at the Antarctic Peninsula.'
In the Inversiverse Watts is apparently under no obligation to publish Zunli Lu's press release specifically responding to his own misinformation.
Hell no! In fact, in the Inversiverse Watts follow-up post is entitled 'Yes, I know, I covered it first: The Medieval Warm Period was Global'. The troops can stop telling him about his very own coup, because he knows it all already! After all, in a very real sense, he wrote it...
In the Inversiverse 90%+ of the readers at Watts will only recall this whole episode along the lines of 'remember that Ikaite mineral paper that proved the MWP was global?' 'yeah, that's right, the Warmist were all squawking and they tried to make him retract it or something, but he never denied that the MWP was global in the paper and it proved it anyway!'
And outside the Inversiverse the disengaged public will pause only to note 'oh, they still can't make up their minds about global warming, no point in doing anything about it, then...'
I see realclimate has a post up now on that [IPCC report](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/03/the-ipcc-srex-the…) .
They'll forget it in two weeks when there'll be a new shiny piece of disinformation to squawk over.
Time for another "The Australian's War on Science" article!
The Australian, 29/03/2012, p12 by Cliff Ollier.
*Sigh*. Does our resident 'genius' never give up in his little corner of the asylum? Another one of his long-winded 'Jeffie' rants. I must be worth the effort for him to spend hours on Deltoid with his hyperbole and rhetoric. Fact is I have much better things to do with my time than engage with a pseudo-intellect who in fact has not made even the tiniest dent in the scientific arena.
Tim: any chance you can close the door on the notorious Jonas thread once and for all?
Here's an interesting [study](http://www1.cnsi.ucla.edu/news/item?item_id=2046567) about making fuel using CO2 as one of the ingredients.
Watts unapologetic, abusive.
He not only does he apparently understand the import of Zunli Lu's paper better than the author himself does, he is under no obligation to draw attention to the author's own statements in the matter in response to the very meme that Watts is happily claiming credit for inaugurating.
I agree wizman (#457) and today's Australian has yet another doozy emanating from the masters of climate denial spin.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/global-campaign-for-cl…
Bill, Excellent posts. Essentially, I have seen deniers do this kind of thing before. Its totally unethical. Like the creation lobby, they take the research of others and mangle it to produce conclusions they wish to derive from it. It happened to a colleagues paper that was published in Nature several years ago. The Idso site took the findings of the paper and attempted to spin them to show that increased atmospheric C02 benefitted soil as well as above-ground plant biomass. The article had nothing to do with that. My colleague was shocked and asked me if I knew who 'these people' were. I said of course I did. Dr. Lu's work is similarly being distorted to downplay AGW. Its a disgrace, but it is in keeping with the well-worn tactics of the deniers. They will stop at nothing and will stoop as low as they can to bolster their sordid anti-scientific positions.
FrankD #447
True.
But I did link to that in post #371. See "an illustrative graph of Distribution of professional opinion on anthropogenic climate change".