An empty chair for Monbiot

Colin

Don't empty chair him. By doing that you are implying that he's important and somehow central to the debate.

Just replace him with someone who has the courage of their convictions - no matter how ill informed those convictions may be.

Sue Johnson

Seems to me the empty chair is for Plimer, who agreed to answer some written questions before the debate, then reneged.

Albert M. Bankment

Yes, he's one of the "disagreement is heresy" brigade. I feel you should adopt the Have I Got News For You approach, and substitue a tub of lard.

Brian Sherwood Jones

Yes, empty chair him. The cult needs to be exposed for what it is.

jimfred

I have been listening to the ''Climate Change'' movement(then it was called,''The Ecology'')since the early seventies.Although it has done some good on enviromental issues,I,for one have had enough of the apocalyptic version of the future that this particular industry peddles.

Simon Mason

Monbiot because he's good box office.

Fraser how could a man that does nothing but write columns and books about AGW be scared of debate.

You also said that "even for those who disagree with him (myself very much included)" What do you disagree with him about? Do you believe that humans are changing the climate through the release of green house gasses like CO2 & CH4.

Yes or no?

Resident Leftie

He is well advised not to attend the debate, for the same reason the Dawkins no longer debates creationists. Are your 7800 scientists daft? Possibly, but they are certainly wrong. It's the thousands of other climate scientists you should listen to, and the Royal Society.

Billy Blofeld

George has been involved in direct action in the past. Do the same. Replace him with an electric fire.

George simply has to turn up, otherwise you can punish the earth with the electric fire.

The ecological impact is a problem for George's conscience, not yours.

Keith

It's interesting that the climate change debate seems to be evolving into a straightforward left/right split with all that that implies. One manifestation of this is the recent appearance of the phrase "climate denial" used by global warming proponents to describe the position of people who are sceptical about the global warming agenda.

Is anyone reminded of another two-word phrase ending in "denial" that is applied to fascists and Nazis?

David Ossitt

This is the first time that I have accessed Coffee House by signing on; please will somebody explain what is the ‘Report this comment’ in red print all about?

Any Colour but Brown

No empty chair. Just set up a small stand bearing a single white feather.

Fraser Nelson

Simon, what I reject is the binary divide that you set up there. There are shades of gray in the climate change debate, the science is far from certain and the debate (contrary to what Monbiot says) is ongoing. From what I have read, I do believe that human co2 activity is contributing to global warming - but I have never seen anyone convincingly explain how big this factor is. My hunch is that human activity is exacerbating a natural phenomenon, but I am aware that the argument is nowhere near won. Crucially, the research I have seen suggests there is very little we can do to make a meaninful difference to the trajectory of global warming and money would be better spent saving lives where we can and preparing for whatever our changing planet has in store for us.

David Ossitt

You have a glitch in the system; I have now changed my user name from the standard (1) to my proper name David Ossitt twice and yet this page still says at the top 'Hello 1'

Alastair Harris

The whole global warming thing has become a crackpot religion. The high priests don't debate - its not in their interest because it does not progress their agenda. Personally I would much prefer that you provided a platform for the science to be aired.

Tiberius

1: it's a common feature on forums. It gives other posters the chance to complain to the moderators about the post in question. This, of course, will never be necessary on CH.

mart

Fraser, if the email history on G.M.'s page is accurate, then he laid down honest conditions well in advance, with reasons. The conditions were not met. I think his conditions were not unreasonable or unachievable. I can definitely see his point of view in this situation.

Colin

David Ossitt

You are clearly the "1".

Generian

I would like to suggest a chair with a watermelon cut in half on it.

Sam Clark

I have just read the email thread and cannot for the life of my see what Mombiot did wrong here. They were perfectly reasonable pre-conditions that were never changed by him. This is childish journalism.

Pete Hoskin

David Ossitt/1: if you like, you can fire me an email at phoskin @ spectator explaining in detail what's going wrong for you. Then I can get our techies on the case.

NM

Wait a moment. Monbiot did not avoid "debate". Monbiot asked that Plimer provide references to 11 assertions he (Plimer) makes about certain facts, facts that are crucial to this thesis, and explain the often-marked discrepancies between the peer-reviewed published record and his claims (as well as some grievous misrepresentations of other people's work). This is basic scientific practice. If I make a curious and peculiar claim about a factual question ("the moon is made of cheese") I will be asked to provide support for this, and to explain the discrepancy between my claim & the best-established facts (the peer-reviewed record) and why my claim is to be preferred over the hitherto accepted understanding. Nothing debate-dodging about demanding this.

The factual claims Monbiot wants to see support for are vitally important for Plimer's thesis. If those facts don't hold, the thesis doesn't. If these facts contradict the peer-reviewed record and Plimer has no way of explaining the discrepancies (as appears to be the case, since he refused answer M's qu.s, has not submitted his argument to the only rigorous test, scientific peer-review, and has not answered his critics in the scientific community), then his thesis looks very weak indeed.

Establishing and cross-examining complex scientific facts and arguments is only really possible in writing. It is difficult, and takes time, often a lot. That's why scientific debate takes place almost exclusively in writing. You can't have a meaningful oral 'debate' about extremely complex factual questions. (But you can do it in writing. It has been done. For about two and half decades. The debate is over.) This is not a question of being or not being 'confident of one's facts.' For that reason, M. wanted to see written answers - which would be public. Written answers would enable people to actually evaluate Plimer's claims in an oral exchange would not - especially people without advanced training in the relevant disciplines. Nothing debate-dodging here. Plimer obviously can't support his claims, i.e. they don't stand up to peer-review, i.e. his thesis is rubbish. But an oral 'debate' would allow him to disguise this, because you cannot adequately assess and cross-examine complex factual claims in that manner - especially not in a way that a lay audience can evaluate. Hence the demand for written debate of the factual points before an oral debate fo the matter becomes meaningful.

As to d'Ancona - others may feel that he comes across the in the email exchange as, to use his own words, "deeply immoral and grotesquely irresponsible". It would be interesting what Thatcher would have thought of this - someone with an actual scientific background, who recognised the overwhelming scientific support for the man-made global warming hypothesis, and that this hypothesis has Not been falsfied, and today more than ever looks most unlikely of being so.

David Ossitt

Colin

How sweet of you!

But now I see that the system is working.

Peter

All these comments together with the similar string of comments which appear on many other blogsites emphasize the need for a proper grown-up debate. However the group of people who will not countenance any debate are the leaders of the most of the key nations of the world who are rushing blindly down the alley marked global warming domesday.

It is irresponsible, undemocratic, fanatical and utterley mad but a fantastic way to tax us all into oblivion.

Billy Blofeld

I take my past comment back. I've read the exchange. Monbiot is being reasonable.

David Ossitt

I read recently that two merchant ships have for the very first time; sailed through the north east passage.

We are told that this is because of man made global-warming; and yet we are told that the north east passage was free of ice 5000 years ago.

What caused the ice to melt then?

It is in my opinion a natural cycle of this earth; we the UK who are responsible for only 1.6% of the worlds carbon and so should stop pandering to the carbon fascists.

FrankFisher

You could follow the Have I Got News For You formula - but rather than use the tub of lard, as they did for Fattersley, (I think) maybe substitute a pot of yogurt for dear Moonbat?

FrankFisher

R

NM, peer review is not rigorous if it is done by your mates, as is the case with so many climate papers on both sides. It is not rigorous if you don't make available the data and methods, for what can then be reviewed?

Is there in existence any process by which the CO2 AGW hypotheses might be falsified? What would be the criteria? If so, where may I find the reference?

HK

As mart and others have posted, Monbiot did not avoid debate. Monbiot proposed conditions (answers to written questions in advance), you (Spectator) agreed, and so (apparently) did Ian Plimer. Then Plimer reneged on that agreement. How is that Monbiot's fault? You should be holding Plimer to his agreement and be wondering whether you have been backing the wrong horse.

Not that I am a fan of Monbiot. From what little of his material I have read, I think he is a pompous ass. And I think that the global warming crowd have largely failed to make their case, have probably faked or fudged at least some of the numbers, and may well be proven wrong in time.

But unless Monbiot has fabricated the email exchanges with The Spectator and Plimer on his website (which would be pretty easy from The Spectator to expose), Plimer is just dodging reasonable questions and The Spectator is backing off from commitments already given.

I say this with genuine disappointment, because I had thought this was shaping up to be a good kicking for the global warming crowd. But having read those email exchanges, it really looks like Plimer might end up discrediting the climate change skeptics far more than he helps them.

SimonC

So, let's get this straight: Monbiot criticises Plimer's book for containing unsubstantiated claims. Plimer objects, and challenges Monbiot to debate. Monbiot insists that Plimer substantiate his claims first. Plimer agrees, but then reneges, sending instead a weird barrage of non-sensical questions of his own.

Enter the Spectator, which tries to set up the same debate. Monbiot insists on the same conditions. Spectator agrees. Plimer reneges again. Spectator event organiser wildly misrepresents this as if Monbiot were introducing new pre-conditions. Event cancelled.

So, tell me: how is Monbiot at fault here? Is insisting on substantiated evidence as a basis for debate really some devious tactic? I would've thought it to be a pre-requisite, myself. How on earth can one debate someone who won't tell you where his facts come from?

Bat your eyelashes innocently all you like, this was clearly set up to do an end run around Monbiot's perfectly reasonable pre-conditions that he'd made perfectly plain well before the Spectator ever got involved.

Bickers

Unfortunately, the peer review process has been corrupted by the AGW lobby. There's a cosy circle of like minded people (many sit on the IPCC) who not only peer review each other's work, but some work for the same organisations, and in the case of the IPCC review and approve 'peer' reviewed papers that they have had 'made' some contribution to, or have worked with/continue to work with the authors.

If you want to you can easily find that there are thousands of scientist (far outweighing the IPCC's so called consensus -an oxymoron in science) that don't buy the AGW scare story.

All the computer models have failed to predict the climate of the last 10 years it's been cooling BTW) so why should we believe their prediction for 50-100 years from now - GIGO

Bickers

Unfortunately, the peer review process has been corrupted by the AGW lobby. There's a cosy circle of like minded people (many sit on the IPCC) who not only peer review each other's work, but some work for the same organisations, and in the case of the IPCC review and approve 'peer' reviewed papers that they have had 'made' some contribution to, or have worked with/continue to work with the authors.

If you want to you can easily find that there are thousands of scientist (far outweighing the IPCC's so called consensus -an oxymoron in science) that don't buy the AGW scare story.

All the computer models have failed to predict the climate of the last 10 years it's been cooling BTW) so why should we believe their prediction for 50-100 years from now - GIGO

terence patrick hewett

Monbiot is the high priest of Crapology. To be avoded at all costs, together with the militant athiest jihad and the jehovahs witnesses.

Simon Mason

Fraser - Thanks for the reply, but I do rather think that you hedged your bets, you are so certain on other matters why not this? This should not be a right/left issue!

Really the science is very certain, I think that you will struggle to find many genuine experts in the relevant disciplines or scientific bodies that believe otherwise.

If we don't believe in science , we live in a world of superstition, ignorance & quackery and what rational person wants that?

I do take a similar view to you and Bjørn Lomborg that money will now probably better spent now on adaptation as we have locked in at least 2.0C of warming but I hold out hope, like Lovelock that Geo-engineering will come to our aid in some way.... I also take great comfort that the vast majority of start ups in Silicon Valley are now in “cleantech”, let us hope that uber clever free market evangelists and assorted geeks that brought us the internet and Google can save our collective arses and get massively rich doing it.

TGF UKIP

Why not put THX 1138 in the chair. He's a Prius driving, "climate change" headbanger with plenty to say for himself and he only lives round the corner in N. London liberal utopia.

In any case, though, Fraser, if you're really serious why isn't Polly Clark as "climate change" shadow in the chair to defend the Tories in rational debate (or, better still, Swampy Dave himself.)

Brian Williamson

Here's a nice rejoinder...read the excuses and weep.

Q: What Do You Do With A Broken Hockey Stick?

A: Move the goalposts. How's that for a mixed sports metaphor?

Posted by Vladimir (Profile)

Monday, September 14th at 9:30AM EDT
13 Comments

The U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change and Climate Change scientists have waaaay too much invested in Anthropogenic Global Warming to walk away from it based on mere data. Data, for example, that demonstrates that despite the dire warnings of steadily increasing temperatures, global temperatures are actually cooling, and have been for 10-12 years.

In other words, the Hockey Stick is broken. (Temporary) Global Cooling is seeing increasing acceptance among some in the Climate Change community, but they remain True Believers in Anthropogenic Global Warming.

This cooling trend is causing some consternation. None of the whiz-bang computerized climate models (which were the basis of the IPCC reports and the subsequent policy initiatives from Kyoto to Cap and Trade and Green Jobs) predicted the dip in temperatures that we’re experiencing now. That should be enough to call the whole business of climate modeling into question. As many critics have pointed out, the global climate system is too chaotic and too dependent on many poorly-understood, interdependent processes to lend itself to accurate (and precise) computer modeling. And the first tenet of computer modeling is that a good history match is no guarantee of a reliable forecast.

Even if the models were to be believed, the dip makes forecasting a lot more dicey. Early in my engineering career, I learned from a mentor (only half in jest) that much of the process of making a good forecast involves plotting non-linear data in such a way that it can be projected as a straight line. This temperature dip means that any forecast of increasing temperature is no longer a linear projection of a stable system; now it is completely dependent on the accuracy of the computer model, which has been demonstrated to be poor.

So now the line is: “Forget all the computer forecasts we tried to scare you with over the last 10-20 years. Now we have a really good model, so you’d better do what we say!” Skeptics are still labeled deniers, even though the reason for the skepticism has been reinforced.

Lorne Gunter, an article in the National Post, points out that the Emperor of Climate Change is wearing no clothes:

[W]hy was a speech last week by Mojib Latif of Germany’s Leibniz Institute not give[n] more prominence?

Prof. Latif is one of the leading climate modelers in the world. He is the recipient of several international climate-study prizes and a lead author for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has contributed significantly to the IPCC’s last two five-year reports that have stated unequivocally that man-made greenhouse emissions are causing the planet to warm dangerously.

Yet last week in Geneva, at the UN’s World Climate Conference — an annual gathering of the so-called “scientific consensus” on man-made climate change — Prof. Latif conceded the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering “one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.” [emphasis added]

So is Prof. Lotif ditching the Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming? Not a chance.

Prof. Latif says he expects warming to resume in 2020 or 2030. “People will say this is global warming disappearing,” he added. According to him, that is not the case. “I am not one of the skeptics,” he insisted. “However, we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves or other people will do it.”

Mr. Gunter continues:

How can Prof. Latif and the others state with certainty that after this long and unforeseen cooling, dangerous man-made heating will resume? They failed to observe the current cooling for years after it had begun, how then can their predictions for the resumption of dangerous warming be trusted?

My point is they cannot.

It’s true the supercomputer models Prof. Latif and other modellers rely on for their dire predictions are becoming more accurate. A major breakthrough last year in the modelling of past ocean currents finally enabled the computers to recreate the climate history of the 20th century (mostly) correctly.

But getting the future equally correct is far trickier. Chances are some unforeseen future changes to real-world climate or further modifications to the UN’s climate computers will throw the current predictions out of whack long before the forecast resumption of warming.

H/T The Cooler Heads Digest, Competitive Enterprise Institute

occasional ranter

Fraser,

Regardless of one's view on AGW (but for the record I'm a doubter) it is perfectly clear from the published email thread that the Spectator badgered Monbiot, finally got a "yes" subject to some clear pre-conditions, then ignored those pre-conditions.

The tone of your piece above is unfair and unattractive. Were you having a bad day ?

coeur de lion

Stop Press. This week's New Scientist doesn't deny climate change but predicts a decade or two decades of global cooling.

Alan Douglas

"how could a man that does nothing but write columns and books about AGW be scared of debate"

No no, he is wary of giving credence to his opponents by appearing with them ....

Alan Douglas

THX1138

TGF Thanks for putting me forward but I think The Speccie should ask that Simon Mason, he seems to know what he's talking about.

Nick

Monbiot is clearly in the right in this case.

I don't understand why The Spectator continues to encourage a view that there is a serious scientific debate to be had about the fundamentals of AGW. The interview of Plimer by Delingpole was just embarrassing.

The science is overwhelming in favour of AGW.

David Ossitt

Pete Hoskin.

Thank you Peter; but one of your team a Simon Brock has already contacted me, he was most helpful.

All would appear to be working splendidly now; please pass on my thanks to Simon.

john miller

Monbiot is not a scientist.

Scientists posit a theory, perform an experiment, analyse the data and refine the theory.

Monbiot is of the flat earth brigade,or perhaps the "earth is the centre of the universe" religion. In the past, he would have been the member of the Inquisition who delighted in burning the soles of Galileo's feet.

You may place on the empty chair a Bible, or the Koran. They and Monbiot carry the same scientific weight.

manacker

Hey, how about having a debate? No preconditions, answering a list of questions beforehand, etc., but just a one on one debate?

This seems like the best way to see who has the better arguments.

Max

Victor Southern

The news story that two merchant ships are making the first North East passage is both a lie and an exaggeration.
Vessels have been making this passage certainly for 130 years that we can be sure of. Ships' logs are reliable sources of data.
What is not stated is that the two ships are preceded by ice-breakers.

Simon Porter

Another Scottish writer. Can't the Spectator find any Englishmen. It's about time you people woke up and smelled the coffee.

No, Simon Mason, the science is not “very certain”. It’s true there is good empirical evidence that the world has warmed (by an unthreatening 0.65C or so) since the early 19thC and that adding CO2 warms the atmosphere. But there’s no such evidence supporting the hypotheses that man’s CO2 emissions were the main cause of recent warming or that more such emissions will cause dangerous climate change. For these, the sole “evidence” comes from computer models – shown to be misleading at the recent UN climatologists’ conference. I’m afraid that believing an unverified hypothesis is more akin to religion than science – there’s your “superstition, ignorance & quackery”. Yet, on the basis of unverified hypotheses, we are despoiling our countryside and placing yet another burden on our already shattered economy. It’s an extraordinary turn of events.

Robin Guenier

Apologies - I didn't put my name on the post at 9:17 - addressed to Simon Mason.

faust

As a natural born sceptic and having read both sides of this debate it is Monbiot who is the clear winner. Read his blog and decide for yourself. Sceptics gonna have to do better than this. Also, fraser nelson's first and second contributions have no intellectual reasonance with me and have the ring of business before rigour. Disappointing.

Yorkshireman

George Monbiot put this question to Ian Plimer....

"5. Discussing climate trends in the Arctic, you state that:

"the sea ice has expanded" (p198).

Again, you give no reference.

a. Please give a source for this claim."

This might give something of an answer :

http://www.dailytech.com/Sea+Ice+Ends+Year+at+Same+Level+as+1979/article13834.htm

January 1, 2009

"Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979.

Rapid growth spurt leaves amount of ice at levels seen 29 years ago.

Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.

Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.

The data is being reported by the University of Illinois's Arctic Climate Research Center, and is derived from satellite observations of the Northern and Southern hemisphere polar regions."

and

"Earlier this year, predictions were rife that the North Pole could melt entirely in 2008. Instead, the Arctic ice saw a substantial recovery. Bill Chapman, a researcher with the UIUC's Arctic Center, tells DailyTech this was due in part to colder temperatures in the region"

Hope this helps George.

By the way, I'm not a scientist and managed to find this out.

John Duck

Could always build a bonfire night "guy" to take his place in advance of the big night, then set fire to it later (should wind him up a bit).... maybe even use it to make a few quid for charity.

Fergus Pickering

I tell you what, I'm not a scieentist but I can spot a self-publicizing, self-important prat when I see one. George Monbiot isn't a scientidst either. He's just a scribbler. And a self-pulicizing...

Adrian Gobbi

THX 1138, correction - that Simon Mason simply thinks he knows what he is talking about, or more accurately, as with all his ilk, sermonizing about.

I commend Fraser's standpoint to you very strongly. Received wisdom, particularly when expressed with such zealotry as the"climate change" mob invariably espouse, is always to be mistrusted. Indeed, it is the messianic certainty associated with Monbiot, Cameron and the rest of the gang together with their rabid determination to thrust their views down our throats and fuck our lives about irrespective of financial cost and economic damage which really pisses me off.

PS BTW, Numberplate, by changing your posting name are you simply hoping that Verity will not spot that THX 1138 and Simon Mason are one and the same, to avoid further duffings up at her hands?

Simon Stephenson

What I find most peculiar about the whole "debate" about Man Made Global Warming is that no one outside Spiked ever raises the question as to whether or not the Monbiots of this world are really, genuinely, wholeheartedly fighting this battle because they are scared sh1tless about the effect warming will have on mankind. Or, to them, is global warming no more than a pretext for what they are really fighting for, which is an end to the commercial over-exploitation of the world's resources to feed an undesirable programme of ever-increasing consumption?

To me, the only way serious people can overstate their case in the way the Monbiots do is if they're not really concerned whether their case is true or not. It doesn't matter because it's only window-dressing to further what they're actually trying to achieve, and as long as their ultimate objective is still being pursued, then who cares if the pretext is a fraud?

The same strategy was used, infamously, with Weapons of Mass Destruction and Passive Smoking, so why not with Global Warming?

tempterrain

If Ian Plimer is reading this , maybe he might care to comment on his statement (page 366 of his book)
"The Earth has an average surface temperature of about 15 deg C. If the atmosphere had no CO2, far more heat would be lost from Earth and the average surface temperature would be -3C."

That is 18 deg C colder than in pre-industrial times. He is saying that CO2 accounts for 54% of the natural Greenhouse effect of 33 deg C. There is a well known logarithmic relationship between CO2 concentrations and temperature rise. This statement is more in agreement with those who are predicting temperature rises of 6 degC, or more, by the end of the century if CO2 levels are allowed to double.

This statement cannot be dismissed as a slip or inconsequential error. The relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperature is quite fundamental.

HK

I can't believe I'm defending someone like Monbiot, but I also can't believe The Spectator is characterising this as Monbiot "setting prissy conditions".

The Spectator had already agreed to those "prissy conditions". All it has to do is keep to its side of the agreement.

I am a skeptic about climate change, but I also believe in people keeping their word, and I'm open-minded enough to consider the possibility that The Spectator is being a little disingenuous in this.

Read those emails:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/09/14/correspondence-with-ian-plimer/

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/09/14/correspondence-with-the-spectator/

They give the strong impression that Plimer is avoiding answering basic questions about his work. I want to see those questions answered, because they are fundamental to his credibility.

Hysteria

Note to Spectator - new format ? what other changes are you going to spring on us?

re the debate - I am sceptical due to the economic effects we are going to see - I remaim interested in seeing which way the science goes (not the religion!)

But to this particular point I think Monbiot is right - reasonable preconditions that were not met.

Sean Haffey

How does one get to attend this debate?

THX1138

Adrian or should I call you TGF, no conspiracy my friend, like you I got confused with the new login system.

occasional ranter

What it boils down to Fraser, is "Can the Spectator be trusted to keep its word ?"

Cuffleyburgers

Good posts here, personally I am a denier in the sense I disagree that the world government should intervene to outlaw light bulbs because of some rather dodgy science.

However it seems to me that moonbat may have had right on his side, if he asked to see the evidence underlying certain of Plimer's assertion and plimer failed to deliver.

Now there may be issues about the peer reiew process, but it seems to me Plimer has scored an own goal here.

To me it is obvious that when you have a coalition of failed US presidential candidates plus various brigades of bearded sandalwearing vegetarians (and that's just the women!) with half of the most respectable (and narrow minded, because government funded) scientists with the UN and the BBC - all telling us to stop flying to tuscany on holiday but it's all right china can go on building 500 coal fired power stations per year... sounds more like a coalition to stop human developmentin its tracks than to save the world.

Climate change has been happening since the year dot. Man may be responsibe for part of it. One deplores the despoiling of natural resources, especially rain forests and effort should be dedicated to creating market led ways to prevent it, and some progress has been made, but vast amounts of energy is being wasted on AGW instead of much more sensible issues of reducing waste, reducing pollution of the air and the waters - can someone please get upset about the Aral sea? I bet if that had been destroyed by a "right wing" regime instead of the soviets, the Beeb would be up in arms...

DaveB10

Er, the world has been cooling down since about 97. This is why these muppets now call it climate change instead of 'global warming' (remember that phrase). The human contribution to carbon emissions is negligible and the whole climate change movement is about higher taxes and profits.

The real issue to focus on is the transition from Oil dependence to sustainable energy once the Oil runs out.

I guess there is no money in this though which is why we continue to have this Climate change nonsense forced down our throats.

Peter

Nick's comment that that the science overwhelmingly supports AGW, when it patently does the opposite, illustrates just how important it is to have rational debate but more importantly how dangerous it is for the world leadership to adopt such a blinkered stance.

teddave

heres that george lad:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/09/14/answers-come-there-none/

G Beard

Hmmm. Were anyone who has commented on this article to actually read the email exchange between Monbiot, D'Ancona and the Speccie's Events Organiser, you would see that Monbiot comes out of it really rather well, that D'Ancona is one of those gimps who signs off his emails with the word 'best', that the Events Organiser has a shockingly poor grasp of spelling, grammar and punctuation, and from the private email that the OE foolishly lets Monbiot see her email with Plimer thus exposing the Speccie's agenda. Whoops!

Oh, and also that it was Plimer and not Monbiot who sabotaged the event since Monbiot was absolutely clear about his pre-conditions when it was first arranged and Plimer has either failed to meet them or the Speccie failed / chose not to pass them on.

Still - best not to let truth get in the way of a bit of partisanship, eh?

Carry on.

Mailman

I think the point is people, lets have the debate in person instead of through email.

Lets get to the table, no pre-conditions and DEBATE global warming (tm).

But no, I think the reason Monboit asks questions isnt because he is interested but more as a diversion. If someone wants to debate in person and you dont, what do you do? You divert attention by asking a hundred different questions.

And lets be honest here...George will ask this set of questions, which when answered while generate a whole new set of questions and so on.

So in that regard I think the editor is right...forget the preconditions, if you are so confident about your position then get to the table and debate!

Mailman

Mailman

Actually, in reading the correspondence I may have been too kind fo Monboit.

The editor is right, you cannot agree to a debate and then list a bunch of pre-conditions for that debate to happen, which is EXACTLY what Monboit has done.

He says he wants to debate yet hides behind these so called pre-conditions.

I mean, far be it for me to say BUT it really does sound like Monboit is afraid of debate...because that may well end up harming his argument (because people will get to see him for what he really is, an empty wind bag).

Perhaps in the regards, an empty chair is most apt!

Mailman

YouCannotBeSerious!

Just read the exchange of emails. Monbiot comes off as professional; D'Ancona as an amateur hack and the less said about the Events Manager the better. Why won't Plimer rebut the charge of factual inaccuracies? Is it because he can't?

HK

Mailman "you cannot agree to a debate and then list a bunch of pre-conditions..."

I would say the exact opposite happened. The time sequence is important. Monbiot listed his conditions prior to agreeing the debate. Those conditions were accepted (they were, as you say, PRE-conditions). And THEN The Spectator decided to ignore the conditions already agreed.

Is the point of this article that The Spectator realises that Plimer won't be answering those very basic questions, and is trying to avoid having to admit that.

If Monbiot wanted to waste time, he would have asked some really difficult questions, but the ones he asked are simple.

One of the reasons I am a climate change skeptic is because of the obstruction I have read about on Climate Audit and Watts Up With That: researchers failing to release underlying data, reproducible computer code, etc to anyone they consider to be a "denier".

From what I've read of this episode so far, I remain a climate change skeptic, but I have also become a Plimer-skeptic, because Plimer appears to be using the same blocking tactics as the alarmists.

Marcus Young

Fraser, understand your point. But you also need to understand that Pilmers work is utter rubbish - schoolboy stuff. The problem is that it requires largely specialist knowledge to understand quite how mendacious and ill-informed Pilmer is. The questions Monbiot asked Pilmer to respond to were eminently fair.

You can argue about the causes, effect and solutions re climate change. But you cannot argue that it is happening. Pilmer tries to.

Robin Guenier

I'm no supporter of Monbiot but, from that correspondence, it seems to me that the Speccie has handed him an unnecessary and undeserved victory.

BTW did anyone hear the balanced and reasonable discussion on the Today programme this morning between Professor Philip Stott (London U) and Dr Vicky Pope (Met Office)? A summary from memory:

Asked about recent reports that a period of cooling might "harm the fight against global warming", Pope said that Met Office models (now improved) indicated that there could be a period of cooling for the next decade or so. Stott agreed that ocean patterns and the current dearth of sunspots suggested that cooling was likely but stressed that no one really knows. What interested him, however, was how politicians and the public might react - it begins to look, he said, rather like the non discovery of WMDs in Iraq. As to long term warming, he agreed there had been a warming trend for a hundred years or so but thought it unlikely to be attributable to a single cause. Pope did not express a view on that but made no attempt to dispute it.

Hmm – is this an adjustment of tone from the BBC? Might attitudes be achanging?

Larry

AGW hysteria is a religious cult, and it is motivated by religious dogma, not science. Although it has multiple complex motivations including political correctness (blaming the evil West, America and corporations for ecological problems) rather than facing the real ecological catastrophes of massive deforestation, pollution, decimation of riverine, lake and ocean fish populations, coral reefs, diminshing fresh water supplies and the like for which all people everywhere, the rich, middle-class and poor are to blame.

The damage done by overpopulation to the environment and increasing indigence associated with this cannot be stressed enough. Naturally the pc lefties are not interested since overpopulation cannot be blamed on the rich white man, so they ignore this elephant in the room and so by ignoring it, it is allowed to get worse, resulting in further ecological catastrophes with all that that entails.

Also by blabbering on hysterically about AGW they can ignore Muslim terrorism and fundamentalism which they like to pretend a minor side-issue. London and Tel Aviv and NY could be blown up by dirty nuclear bombs planted by Al-Queida, and Lefties will still be going on about global warming as this dire threat. Would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Johnny Haddock

Yorkshireman, singling out 1979 as evidence that the arctic ice is not shrinking is inaccurate.

Here's how much I'm going to pay you for posting on here for the next 7 days...

100
90
80
70
110
50
100

I'm paying you 100 on day 1 and 100 on day 7, therefore by your logic I'm continuing to pay you the same amount ;)

If you have noisy data then you must look at the trend. Cherry-picking data, no matter where you stand on an issue, is not scientific.

Paul Shallard

Plimer's work has been seriously undermined by honest analysis by several well informed critics. A lot of his claims and assumptions are downright false. Delingpole's review was full of presumptuous bumf that very accurately echoed this underlying reality. There is one well written catalogue of Plimer's gaffs on the web, that runs to some 30 pages of a PDF, by a mathematician from the University of Melbourne, for example. He shows definitively that Plimer simply does not add up and is really not worthy of discussion.

The Spectator's publication of a review of his book will be seen in retrospect as a lapse of judgement.

Why bother with this man? As someone observed debating with climate sceptics of this ilk is rather like playing chess with a pigeon: it walks all over the board, knocks all this pieces over, then craps on the board and flies off to tell its mates that its has won the game!

I can totally understand anyone with a brain being very chary about bothering to go into battle with someone of Plimer's standing. As an ancestor of mine once wrote: if you role in the mud with a pig, the pig loves it, but all you get is very dirty!

And isn't it interesting that in all that US Senate list of 700 sceptics mentioned by Fraser Nelson, there is not one date attached to their statements. I wonder if they even know that their names and quotes have been cherry-picked from publications of God-knows-what-age to put into someone's political barrow, complete with a US Government official stamp on it?

Tim Down

Idiots. I came to this with no preconceptions, having dimly heard of George Monbiot and never heard of Ian Plimer. Putting aside the climate change issues themselves and assuming the email exchange on Monbiot's site is genuine, Monbiot's position throughout has been clear, unwavering and reasonable, and his preconditions not having been met is completely correct not to attend the debate. I have no idea why The Spectator would be upset with his behaviour.

Hysteria

I have no idea why The Spectator would be upset with his behaviour.

indeed - unless they have an agenda.

GW is complex - and digging in for an extended period of trench warfare is not going to get either side very far....

Mailman

HK,

If George is so confident...then get in to the debate! Surely he could use Plimers non-response for his own benefit during the debate?

The fact the debate hasnt happened because of Monboits preconditions says more about his insecurity than it does about Plimmers security.

Although, I do find it rather amusing that one can agree to a debate BUT only if the other side answers a hundred questions. Either you are in or out or shake it about but come on...lets get on with the debate!

After all, what has Monboit got to be afraid of his Plimmers arguments are so childish and has been ripped apart by others in the know?

Mailman

Yorkshireman

Monbiot's own blog where he corrects himself on average arctic sea ice figures

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/may/15/climate-change-scepticism-arctic-ice

"Whoops – looks like I've boobed. Sorry folks. As one of the posters on this thread points out, there are in fact two averages in play – 1979-2000 and 1979-2009. It is therefore correct to state that the April 2009 extent exceeds the 1979-2009 average, but not the 1979-2000 average. It remains the case, however, that the data relate to April, not May. Please accept my apologies for my mistake and the confusion it has caused."

Global Changes

I fear the climate change debate (or fight as it is inevitably turning out) will never be resolved. There are too many un-comprehensive studies that contradict each other that are diluting the real research, so no one knows what is true and accurate. Another problem is that this is a scientific issue, and it comes down to facts, so opinion is totally irrelevant. The public choosing to not believe in it will not make make it go away, likewise them believing it will not make it exist.

ian skidmore

What is all the fuss about? Has no-one heard of Climatic Optimum? In medeaval times there were vineyards as far north as Ely and the Vikings were able to graze sheep and cattle on GREENland and ICEland
The argument cannot be resolved because the youngest readers will be dead when it does/does not happen. If you want something to worry about how about the fact that China owns America and is the first foreign country to prospect for oil in Iraq

HK

Mailman,
I agree that some people would still see it as a challenge to expose Plimer in a live debate, without any written questions answered.

Clearly Monbiot is not one of them. Monbiot has spelled out his reasons for not doing the debate without those answers first. And most importantly, The Spectator ACCEPTED those pre-conditions. After accepting the conditions, it is now a little dishonest of The Spectator to give the impression that Monbiot is being "prissy" by insisting on them being kept.

Personally, from what I've seen of this so far (and I'm really just going on that email correspondence) I wouldn't fancy a debate with someone like Plimer, because if he is slippery enough to avoid answering basic questions about the sources for his own book, who knows what he'll get up to in a live debate.

Ian C

The amazing thing about the Climate Change debate is the alarmists and the sceptics - which we should all be until the hard evidence is unquestionable - cannot even agree on what are the relevant facts, at this stage.

Every time one side points to a new piece of evidence, or a work of sceptical origin such as Plimer's, the other side replies "No, no no; you have not considered this that or the other".

In short the research is incomplete. But the alarmists, such as Monbiot and Al Gore et al, want to pretend it has because what has been turned up by some of the research has serious implications if the deductions drawn from it are correct and it suits their ‘book.’

But there clearly is, not yet, the smoking gun of empirical evidence. And after 20 years and a massive amount of funding - estimated at c$80bn in the USA alone - you would have thought that the case would have been nailed to a point that the public can understand the science, as with most other great finds in scientific historical knowledge.

That has not happened. And until it does it is unbelievable that we are being taxed on the assumption that that it has. The mainstream media do not appear to even register that there are massive doubts about the science, when this is their first duty - to be sceptical. And in the meantime politicians are leaping to policy conclusions that are, at best, intellectually premature. At worst they could have devastating economic consequences for both rich and poor nations.

But all that should not stop Plimer from answering the scientific questions put to him, nor would you have thought that Monbiot would do anything but relish wiping the floor with him in front of a sceptical audience.

The whole episode is typical of how this whole 'debate' is being thoroughly mishandled by both sides. We are all losers in that.

Charles Haskins

An objective reading of the Plimer-Monbiot email thread suggests that Plimer is dodging fundamental issues. Monbiot's insistence that Plimer provide written evidence to support some of his claims before the debate is perfectly reasonable. Any fool can rattle off unsubstantiated arguments in the course of a scientific debate, comfortable in the knowledge that he is unlikely to be challenged, particularly if he has the skill to wrap his gobbledegook in pseudo-scientific terms. Plimer seems rather good at this. His reaction, in response to Monbiot's list of questions, to issue his own set of questions, beggared belief. One would have thought that a scientist would be delighted to provide irrefutable evidence to back up their research. Why didn't Pilmer take this opportunity?
As far as The Spectator is concerned, apart from the deafening sound of axe-grinding, it is clear that neither the former editor, nor his successor, are at all interested in furthering the debate about global warming. As the debate about the debate drags on, one increasingly gains the impression that they would happily invite a penguin to the event if they thought it would increase sales. Now there's a thought.

Simon Stephenson

Question to all Monbiot fans

Let's assume that you are seriously concerned about global warming, and are not just using it as a pretext to chip away at consumptive lifestyles. That however personally distasteful you may find the proles' quest for happiness, you're only making all this fuss because of the warming consequence. It's no part of your purpose to seek to improve lives by implanting your morality into a group of people who currently don't share it.

Why are you so unenthusiastic about the idea of applying man's ingenuity to negate the emissions problem, so that we can keep the lights on without worrying about warming? Why, as intelligent and educated people, are you so determined to preserve the myth that the only feasible way to reduce emissions is to reduce energy consumption? Why aren't you at the forefront of a campaign to contain the warming problem at minimal disruption to lifestyles?

But if, after all, you are partially driven by a desire to change lifestyles irrespective of global warming, then why the fXXk don't you come out and say so? Why not pitch the debate around what really concerns you, what you really believe to be important, instead of spending millions of man-hours waffling about something for which the chief element in its elevation to problem status was its suitability as a masquerade?

Mailman

HK,

Surely the problem here is that an invite has been issued to debate on a certain topic. Either you are in or out, but dont go about asking a hundred questions before you will say "yes" to the debate (even though you already said yes).

If Monboit is so sure of himself, what has he to fear in Plimmer?

Even if Plimmer is as slippery as you say, Mobnoit should be able to easily destroy him in a one on one debate if his "science" is settled (as warmists want us to believe)?

Personally, Id prefer it if Monboit just came out and said no. Then at least we know where he stands, instead of hiding behind the facade of "answer my questions before I say yes again to your invite".

As I said earlier, perhaps the empty chair is rather apt in this instance.

Mailman

Johnny Haddock

Yorkshireman, I may be wrong but I believe you are still missing the point. For one year to be larger than an average over a certain period doesn't prove that the trend is positive.

As I read it Monbiot is owning up to incorrectly stating that 2009 was not greater than the average. He was wrong about that but the trend is still indicating decreasing extent.

SimonC

Mailman, your claim that Monbiot agreed to a debate before asking his questions is a flat out lie. His simple questions were a pre-requisite to a debate with Plimer long before the Spectator ever got involved. He never agreed to the debate unconditionally, and his conditions were agreed to, then simply ignored.

If someone won't answer simple questions about factual claims they have made, despite having *months* in which to do so, what chance is there of productive face to face debate? How are the audience to tell fact from fiction?

Ken Johns

Dear Heavens, I have just read the Wiki about Monboit, - studied Zoology, visiting fellowships or professorships in environmental policy, philosophy, politics and environmental science. A former member of “Respect” – really?? In addition to every other publicity driven protest he has made over the years, he is one of the king sized pricks responsible for the banning of incandescent lightbulbs. Obviously he doesn’t know much about the serious negative medical effects these damned things have on those of us sensitive to their dreadfully distorted light output , or doesn’t he care….I thought not!

Also from Wiki: Working as an investigative journalist, he travelled in Indonesia, Brazil, and East Africa. His activities led to his being made persona non grata in several countries and being sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in Indonesia. In these places, he was also shot at, beaten up by military police, shipwrecked and stung into a poisoned coma by hornets. He came back to work in Britain after being pronounced clinically dead in Lodwar General Hospital in north-western Kenya, having contracted cerebral malaria.

Hmmmm! Last sentence says it all!

HK

Mailman,
But Monbiot didn't say yes and then attach a condition later. He said he would debate IF Plimer answered some questions in advance. That was accepted. In fact, Matthew d’Ancona's response to Monbiot saying he would do it, with those conditions, was "Excellent! I am thrilled." No amount of "are you in or out" bluster will get around that it was accepted.

Monbiot didn't ask 100 questions. He asked eleven questions. OK the questions had more than one part each, but each of the eleven questions were about the same subject.

E.g. on one graph: "What is the source for the graph you used? Where was it first published? Whose figures does it use? How do you explain the alteration of both the curves and the timeline?"

Those are not much more than asking Plimer to properly document his own book. As others have posted, you would have thought Plimer would want to get those answers out there. The fact that he won't do it discredits him already. Perhaps Plimer will now answer the questions. I hope he does: I'd really like to hear that he has answers.

Believe me, I am no fan of Monbiot, nor of the AGW hypothesis. But I can recognise someone dodging when I see it, and so far, based on those email exchanges, Plimer and The Spectator have been dodging.

Ken Johns

Dear Heavens, I have just read the Wiki about Monboit, - studied Zoology, visiting fellowships or professorships in environmental policy, philosophy, politics and environmental science. A former member of “Respect” – really?? In addition to every other publicity driven protest he has made over the years, he is one of the king sized pricks responsible for the banning of incandescent lightbulbs. Obviously he doesn’t know much about the serious negative medical effects these damned things have on those of us sensitive to their dreadfully distorted light output , or doesn’t he care….I thought not!

Also from Wiki: Working as an investigative journalist, he travelled in Indonesia, Brazil, and East Africa. His activities led to his being made persona non grata in several countries and being sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in Indonesia. In these places, he was also shot at, beaten up by military police, shipwrecked and stung into a poisoned coma by hornets. He came back to work in Britain after being pronounced clinically dead in Lodwar General Hospital in north-western Kenya, having contracted cerebral malaria.

Hmmmm! Last sentence says it all!

John Levett

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of this issue, having read Monbiot’s article yesterday, I was left with an impression of somebody obsessively self-justifying and delighted to have found an excuse to avoid debate, the precondition an obvious delaying tactic that could be spun out interminably. There is form on this tactic by the AGW proponents – Al Gore, Andrew Freedman and now George Monbiot all failing to debate with the sceptics amongst us.

Whether Plimer is a charlatan or not, he speaks for many of us who are frustrated by this lack of debate. It is the purveyors of the AGW pseudo-science who should be answering questions – for once, without resorting to their stock answers such as ‘the science is settled’, ‘it’s peer-reviewed’, ‘there’s a consensus’, ‘what are your sources?’ etc. Scepticism is entitled to be based on a hunch; it’s up to the proponents of AGW to prove to us that we are wrong before saddling us all with their brave new world.

Incidentally, I tried to find the pdf referred to by Paul Shallard at 10.37. I didn’t find it but the extent of opprobrium heaped upon Plimer seems so vast that it’s difficult to believe that he hasn’t hit a nerve somewhere.

fourcultures

There's a simple explanation for the continued disagreements between climate change 'believers' and 'sceptics'. According to Grid-Group cultural theory (look it up in Wikipedia under 'cultural theory of risk'), there are four basic ways of organising society and they correspond to four 'myths of nature'. 'Nature benign' says climate change couldn't possibly be happening in a bad way, since nature is... benign. 'Nature fragile' says climate change is just one more of the many threats to the whole world's future. You don't need facts to demonstrate these positions because they are already encoded in our social lives and institutions. They precede facts rather than following them. There are two more 'cultural biases besides these. fourcultures.com blogs about them all.

Norbury

Hi Fraser,

Generally find you thoughtful and insightful even when I don't agree but this is an exception. The problem isn't that greens aren't prepared to debate you but that the scientific debate is largely over and you don't seem to have caught up on who won. Following the publication of the IPCC's 4th report the scientific consensus is pretty overwhelming, even if all the detail aren't yet certain. There are of course still some people who refuse to accept the result, mostly for ideological reason, and as always it is possible to find cranks and fringe figures in the scientific community whose views can be used to foster the myth that the 'debate' continues. At this stage however people who still want to argue about whether human activity is very likely to be the principle cause of dangerous climate change are frankly no saner than people who still want to debate evolution.

George Steiner

I don't know if you fellows understand how useless and pretentious this discussion is. You are beating a horse long dead.

The planet is cooling. The global warming enchiladas are now climat changeing. And back tracking. An understanding of the physics, thermodinamics, heat transfer mechanisms and its mathematics are beyond most of you, the modellers and most certainly the Montbiotic fellow. Stop making yourself look sily.

Lord Stansted

As a physicist, I've always found it amusing that people who know nothing about the selection of temperature proxies (e.g. diatom and pollen assemblages, biogenic silica, tree-rings, etc.) cubic splines, Gaussian noise, black body radiation, solar-earth em coupling, box modeling, etc. (people such as economists, politicians and journalists) always give their opinion on global climate models. I have no opinion since it is not my field, but I do know enough physics to know that anyone who says that "the science is now known" is at best an idiot and at worse a crook.

Simon Stephenson

Norbury (4.10pm) and all who think like he does.

There hasn't been a scientific debate. There's been a political debate in which some scientists have participated.

The debate is only "over" in the sense that George W Bush declared the debate on the War on Terror "over", by saying "You're either with us or you're supporting the terrorists". Debate over because I'm not prepared to debate, in other words.

The IPCC report is political not scientific. Proper scientific method would rubbish all its conclusions because the standard of rigour with which they have been drawn up is laughably low.

There may indeed be people opposed for ideological reasons, as equally there are cranks and fringe figures who are opposed also. But for someone who, presumably, has some respect for scientific principles you'll surely recognise that for you to claim superiority on the basis that your only opponents are either cranks or fraudsters you have to demonstrate, objectively, that this is so, and that labelling them as inadequates because they don't agree with you is begging the question, in its real sense.

Too many people seem to think that we have to take the view either that there is a problem or that there isn't one. I, and I'm sure a great number of those you label cranks, are actually the ones being scientific here, by saying that from the information available there's no way of telling whether Man Made Global Warming is a significant problem we should anticipate, or whether it isn't.

Norbury

Simon - your comments rather suggest you haven't read the IPCC's 4th report which is probably also where Fraser went wrong - would either of your care to confirm my suspicion?

Simon Stephenson

Norbury (6.06pm)

Diversion. What does it matter whether Fraser of I have read the report? Does having not read the actual report automatically disqualify someone from commenting on it? Only if the report's got something to hide, in my opinion.

How many people in the UK have read the Treaty of Rome, and all its subsequent amendments? A dozen? Are these the only people qualified to make a submission about the pros and cons of being in the EU?

Don't be ridiculous. If your only powers of persuasion are ad hominem attacks on your critics then if I were you I should give up and start stamp collecting - or become a politician. Now there's a thought.

MoonMike

Marvellous entertainment: The Spectator taking a deserved kicking on its own site. Poor old Fraser Whatsisname, the dishevelled hired gun, has been shot to ribbons by George 'The Preacherman' Monbiot

Richard Blogger

From the correspondence it appears that Matthew D'Ancona developed a good relationship with Monbiot and was persuasive in a gentle way. Excellent. Then on the 6 Aug your events organiser undid all the good work by appearing to be biased on Plimer's side. That was a rather crass mistake. It is no surprise that Monbiot took offence.

The Spectator has not explained why Plimer has chosen not to answer Monbiot's questions and then have an opportunity to put his views face-to-face with Monbiot.

Then, prior to the 7 Sept something happened, no one has explained what, but apparently Andrew Neil told Monbiot not to turn up. It was clear that Plimer had not provided the answers requested, yet he was still being asked to continue with the event.

There is only one conclusion from this: the Spectator aligns itself with Plimer. Providing an empty chair is a silly piece of theatre that appears to be in vogue with the more dimwitted news reporters these days. (HIGNFY had the good humour to provide a tub of lard, but that was 16 years ago, and the joke has worn a bit thin.) It's sad to see the Spectator making gestures like this, and it is more sad that D'Ancona's good work appears to have been wasted.

SUSAN HILL

Ask Christopher Booker to debate with Jonathan Porritt

Robin Guenier

Norbury:

You question whether Simon and Fraser have read IPCC AR4. Perhaps your uncertainty might apply to me – and to other contributors to this thread who doubt the validity of the dangerous manmade global warming hypothesis. See my posts at 9:36PM yesterday (unattributed until the following post) for a summary of my views.

Well, I have read the report – it was a major contributor to my scepticism. And I don’t mean just the Summary for Policymakers (laughably woolly though that is) but the detailed scientific and technical contribution set out at length in Chapter 9, entitled “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”. It’s a turgid read but it’s clear from it that little is really known about natural impacts on climate change – to anything approaching the certainty necessary to exclude them from having had significant impact on late 20th century warming. In particular, it contains no reference to peer-reviewed research setting out empirical (from the real world, not computer models) evidence supporting either the view that manmade emissions were the main cause of that warming or that more such emissions will cause dangerous climate change.

Have you read it, Norbury? If you have, perhaps you’d be good enough to show me precisely where I will find the references for which I am looking. If you cannot, I suggest you reconsider your position on this matter.

Osama the Nazarene

You're correct to think that Monbiot "...seriously believes that only crackpots disagree with him" but it also shows up the despotism of these people where they think they are SO CORRECT everyone else's views count for nothing!

David Short

Bizarre article. It's astonishing to see anyone reading that exchange and thinking that Monbiot of all people is the one who comes off worst.

Monbiot gave good reasons why a debate in writing, with references, was better than a live slanging match. He finally gave in, and consented to the slanging match, but on the condition that some basic information was provided first. This condition was simply not met.

English Electric

Well, I think Monbiot comes off worse. Setting conditions gave him wriggle-room to get out of it. And that's what he did.

Bernie

Er, there is a debate and it's called peer review science.

As for Plimer, why won't he give direct answers to Monbiot's questions?

Ian C

There are alot of examples of alarmists refusing to debate with sceptics. Marc Moran at Climate Depot and Freedman of the WaPo are going through a similar exchange in the US.

The staggering thing is that both sides are able to throw the charge of 'unscientific' or 'against science' at each other. And the alarmists claim they have the final science on the matter, which by definition, is an overstatement of any scientific theory's efficacy. While the sceptics are saying 'hang on a minute', there is no hard proof in your science only theory supported by modelling but those models are at odds with most of the actual observation. That is plain for all to see. It may be that Ian Plimer (and other sceptics) has got some of the science wrong (and they should stand up and take those hits publicly to retain their credibility where alarmists tend to hide behind the IPCC and obscure scientific jargon) and there are many egregious claims by the alarmists that are demonstrably wrong also.

If the alarmists want to convince us of the urgency they must prove their case if the result is going to be that the total tax paid to gov'ts worldwide is to be increased by perhaps 25%. Then they have to show that that will solve the problem.

The alarmists, led by the UNIPCC have not done that. All they have done is lob a hand grenade into the mix, relying on the status of the UN (thoroughly degraded by this many other actions over the years) and presumed that we would all swallow it unthinkingly. It is playing a dangerous political game for unfathomed, thus far but what looks like wicked, motives.

So alarmists. You have not made your case. No amount of brick-batting over the rights and wrongs of one debate's 'terms and conditions' are going to help you do that.

Jamie

Fraser

I appear to have come late to this.

Keith's binary left/right divide up at the beginning is one worth considering. The environmental question is not simply scientific, but philosophical. Questions about the impact of industrialisation on society date back two hundred years - not least exemplified by Blake's Jerusalem. It is intimately bound with globalisation, free trade, and social cohesion and organisation.

For what it is worth, I would not empty chair Monbiot. He does seem to be making an acceptable point - however irksome for an editor. He does not wish to confer legitimacy on Plimer. He would however be willing to participate in verbal debate with others, such as Lomborg. I would be tempted to find someone else and ignore him.

hadrian

Astonishingly I managed to force myself to purchase a copy of the Guardian earlier this week- but only because it had a free retro issue of the Dandy!
Anyway, therein was the predictable, tired stuff on climate change utterly trashing the credentials of those who dare to question the popular received wisdom. Personally I'm with Fraser on this one: obviously human activity has some effect on the enviroment but I remain far from convinced it is the exclusive or even crucial factor in it all. After all we are tolf the same phenomenon is being observed on other planets.

Ken Hall

"Just replace him with someone who has the courage of their convictions"

That's the problem. None of the climate change alarmists are prepared to debate or have their wild and increasingly unproven opinions challenged. They consider those who (through decades of dedicated scientific research and investigation and observation) disagree with the alarmist's opinions as cranks and mentally unstable people who should be locked up.

I see that Arctic ice has started it's early autumn refreeze a few days ago. This year's minimum has 23% more ice than only two years ago. At that rate the northern hemisphere will be under a massive glacier in only 50 years, (using the Alarmist's false and palpably wrong logic from 2007) After all the media was plastered with their claims that the massive reduction of ice in 2007 meant that less ice reflected heat, more sea absorbed heat and this would trap more heat and melt more ice quicker and this would accelerate to melt all this ice in only 5 years (according to AL Gore). Using that exact same logic, the 11%+ increase in ice minimum extent year on year means that more ice = more heat reflected = yet more ice. So using the alarmists own logic, we must be heading for a massive ice age by 2080 then!

Now wonder they refuse to debate when the actual real climate keeps doing the excact opposite of what their computer models have been project.

Dogzzz

"I read recently that two merchant ships have for the very first time; sailed through the north east passage."

Did you not read the part where they were following two Russian ice breakers then?

Fred

If Plimer won't provide his reference sources in writing then what good would a debate do. You can say anything in a debate. I wouldn't waste my time talking to the loon either.

Matt Bolton

This whole episode makes the Spectator look like incompetent idiots, with a very clear, and biased, agenda. Embarrassing.

English Electric

Peter Taylor, author of 'Chill', a new book on climate change, has stated in the comments on Monbiot's most recent Guardian article, that he is willing and ready to debate with Monbiot.

It will be interesting to see what Monbiot's response is.

Robin Guenier

English Electric: thanks for drawing our attention to Peter Taylor’s offer to debate with George Monbiot. The offer was made at 5:04pm yesterday in the comments following Monbiot’s recent piece in the Guardian here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/sep/16/global-temperature-cooling?showallcomments=true

A review of Taylor’s book “Chill” (with comments from Taylor) can be found here: http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=220

I see the Speccie is hosting a debate (including Professor Ian Plimer) in London on 12 November. Come on, Fraser, how about getting Monbiot and Taylor to take part?

Morphybum

While i believe it is an anthropocentric fallacy to blame climate change on human agency, I would be more able to listen to experts who expound it if politicos, such as Monbiot, would stop shouting at the tops of their voices. Let us deny the ideologues and allow the truth some space.

GC

The dishonesty in this piece is breath-taking. Here are the facts. Plimer challenged Monbiot to a debate. Monbiot agreed so long as Plimer answered in writing some straightforward questions, related to sources of data in Plimer's book. Plimer originally agreed, but after a series of excruciatingly embarrassing excuses, failed to come up with the references for his data. Plimer did not meet his part of the agreement.

Plimer and his supporters at the Spectator lost. Monbiot won. Drivel about an 'empty chair' just continues your humiliation. You are like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "Come back here and I'll bite your knees". You have made yourself into a laughing stock.

Peter Crawford

Truth. Well that's a hard one. I keep reading about rising sea-levels as if it were a fait accompli. But they are not rising. I live and work next to the Irish Sea alongside men and women who have lived and worked here sixty years or more. Sea levels have not risen, and are not rising. That's as near the truth as you'll get.

Eamon

GC's comment is spot-on. The Spectator has engaged in a most disengenuous campaign against George Monbiot.

Monbiot only agreed to debate Plimer under specific conditions - the foremost of which was that Plimer would answer some questions that he had about Plimer's book. Plimer agreed to - but never fulfilled his promise.

If fault is to be assigned then it is to Plimer that the opprobrium must be heaped.

English Electric

Thing is, though, Mr Monbiot has now been challenged by another sceptic who appears, to me, to have impeccable credentials (see my post above and the follow-up one from Robin which provides the link.)

As far as I'm aware, Mr Monbiot has yet to reply. It will be interesting to see what his response is as I felt Mr Monbiot's tactics against Plimer (and subsequent withdrawal) showed a degree of reluctance.

As Robin suggested, perhaps the Spectator should contact Peter Taylor and try to set up the debate with Mr Monbiot?

Eamon

If Peter Taylor wishes to debate someone on the science of Climate Change then Monbiot is not the man. I'd suggest Michael Mann, Gavin Schmitt or Stefan Rahmstorf as good candidates for a scientific debate.

Monbiot's debate with Plimer was to be about Plimer's misrepresentation of the basics of the science of Climate Change. Plimer produced doctored graphs, quoted scientific papers that did not support his views as supporting them, and made ridiculous suggestions about the sun having the same composition as an asteroid. Scientists complained about Plimer's misrepresentations and Monbiot, as a journalist interested in the field, rightfully commented on this. He is a well-informed journalist - but not a climate scientist.

See:http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/jul/09/george-monbiot-ian-plimer

And:http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/aug/05/climate-change-scepticism

English Electric

But Monbiot can't dodge a debate using the 'I'm not a scientist line.'

He's published a book on climate change. He is an enormously influential journalist and environmental campaigner who continuously references scientific reports when he is writing.

He is more than happy to debate with non-specialists and to attack them using his greater knowledge of climate science (see, for example, this transcript of a debate with the bloke who heads up the Aga company, memorably described in the comments as Monbiot 'slapping around some cooker salesman':
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/mar/20/william-mcgrath-aga-foodservice )

Furthermore, Taylor isn't a climate scientist.

Mr Monbiot should put up, or shut up.

English Electric

And here is Mr Monbiot debating with an under-prepared David Bellamy, using his greater depth of scientific knowledge on climate change to give him a very hard time:

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/are%20the%20glaciers%20melting/107930

I wonder if Mr Monbiot would be concerned that the boot may be on the other foot if he debates with Peter Taylor?

Eamon

English Electric,

just because Monbiot's written a book about climate change does not make him a climate scientist. Climate scientists actually do science - Monbiot reports on what they do.

Eamon

EE,

who is Peter Taylor? I've been unable to find a bio of him online.

Robin Guenier

Eamon: a review of Peter Taylor’s book “Chill” (with a short bio and comments from Taylor) can be found here: http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=220

Phil Clarke

Shame to start a new Editorship with a smoking hole in your foot, but I fear the facts are there for anyone to see ... Monbiot suggested that Plimer provide the sources and references for less than a dozen claims made in his book, claims that contradict the mainstream scientific viewpoint, before the debate went ahead. A request which Plimer could have satisfied within a few minutes from his research notes ... if his claims had legitimate sources. You now describe this as a 'prissy condition' even though this pre-condition was AGREED BY THE SPECTATOR. It is not Monbiot who is showing a lack of 'confidence' in his facts, not Monbiot who is being evasive. No it is in clearly Plimer, and Liddle monstering Monbiot when it is Plimer and the Spectator who have failed to meet the agreed terms is a spectacular own goal against the publication's credibility and reputation for honest dealing.

Plimer will never answer Monbiot's questions because he cannot - he cannot even answer the nonsensical questions he responded with as a transparent exercise in obfustication and misdirection - http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/08/plimers-homework-assignment/

Plimer is a distinguished geologist, but his claims about climate science have not exactly sent the field scrurrying to recheck their observations and calculations judging by these comments:

'If this had been written by an honours student, I would have failed it with the comment: You have obviously trawled through a lot of material but the critical analysis is missing. Supporting arguments and unsupported arguments in the literature are not distinguished or properly referenced, and you have left the impression that you have not developed an understanding of the processes involved. Rewrite!' Kurt Lambeck, president of the Australian Academy of Science

'Given the errors, the non-science, and the nonsense in this book, it should be classified as science fiction in any library that wastes its funds buying it.'

David Karoly, Professor of Earth science, http://www.earthsci.unimelb.edu.au/php/view_profile.php?id=dkaroly

A point by point listing of the errors in Plimer's book, one per page on average: http://www.complex.org.au/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=91

Many will be scratching their heads as to what the Spectator hopes to achieve by championing this purveyor of nonsense on arguably the most far-reaching public issue of our time.

MATT

The AGW scientific community has known for several years that global cooling is ahead for the next several decades, yet publicly they were predicting global warming and doom and gloom for the world.

2007

Decadal to Multidecadal Variability of the Atlantic MOC: Mechanisms
and Predictability
M. Latif1, C. W. Böning1, J. Willebrand1, A. Biastoch1, F. Alvarez-Garcia2,
N. Keenlyside1, and H. Pohlmann3

Our results indicate that the next several decades will be
still governed by the internal variability of the MOC. The effect
of anthropogenic climate change on the MOC is likely not to
exceed the level of the internal variability until 2050.

http://www.ifm-geomar.de/fileadmin/personal/fb1/me/nkeenlyside/paper/Latifetal_AGUBook_2007.pdf
2008
Advancing decadal-scale climate predictions in the North Atlantic sector
N. S. Keenlyside1, M. Latif1, J. Jungclaus2, L. Kornblueh2 & E. Roeckner2

we make the following forecast: over the next decade, the current Atlantic meridional overturning circulation will weaken to its long-term mean; moreover, North Atlantic SST and European and North American surface temperatures will cool slightly, whereas tropical Pacific SST will remain almost unchanged. Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/full/nature06921.html#cor1

So it was known then that natural climate variabilty due to the ocean's SST[NOA,AMO,etc] and deep ocean currents [MOC ]are really the prime climate makers and not carbon dioxide . Yet the public debate seems to be completely off topic

English Electric

Eamon,

Are only scientists allowed to debate now?

As I've shown with the links, Monbiot is happy to debate with others and Taylor isn't a climate scientist.

I can't see there being any problem with accepting the challenge.

manacker

I really hope Monbiot will rise to the challenge and accept Peter Taylor's offer to debate the topic of global warming with him.

Taylor has stated his case very clearly in his book, "Chill", so Monbiot would have every opportunity to prepare his arguments.

It could be a very informational exchange for everyone, on both sides of the argument as well as those that have not yet made up their minds, to watch.

Let's hope it takes place.

Max

Snowman

Two points, one suggestion, and a joke.

If all the humans on the planet, the 6bn plus, were to drop dead, the discharge of CO2 due to their activity – flying, steel bashing, cooking, and the rest – would sink by 4%, FOUR percent. At any time the guru Monbiot has been asked whether the 4% is correct he avoided answering it. Because it’s correct. To switch bulbs or drive slower is akin to asking us to pee into the ocean to stop a tsunami.

If we are to accept that the density of CO2 in the atmosphere got boosted from 280ppm (parts per million) some 200 years ago to 380ppm now, it still amounts to an increase of 0.01%. Could this infinitesimal change be really the cause of the cataclysmic outcome the ecochondriacs are predicting?

If we could run an experiment that mimics the Big Bang why hasn’t any scientist yet conducted an experiment that would prove once and for all that an air containing 0.028% of CO2 traps reflected heat so dramatically less than air containing 0.038% of the stuff.

A man on a train to Brighton is throwing pieces of paper out of the window. After a while, a passenger asks him why he is doing it. ‘I’m scaring away the lions and tigers,’ answers the man. ‘’But there are no lions and tigers here,’ says the man. ‘You see how effective I am’, replies the man.

Eamon

EE,

you're putting words into my mouth there. What I wanted to know was what Taylor's field of expertise was. I'm a physicist, if I were to enter into a debate it would be necessary to know the expertise of the other side - as terminology and methods vary among the sciences.

As to 'only scientists being allowed to debate' the thing is this: science isn't about debates - it's about observations, theorizing, facts and figures. None of those are really good material for debates. That's why Monbiot suggested getting questions answered first so there could be at least a baseline for the debate.

Monbiot might be happy to debate with others - but given Plimer's complete lack of honesty on the faults and misrepresentations in his book Monbiot was quite right in setting preconditions for debate, lest it devolve into an 'I said, he said' exercise that shines no light on the issues at all.

manacker

Eamon

You asked about Peter Taylor’s field of expertise.

From his book, “Chill”, I read:

"PETER TAYLOR is a science analyst and policy advisor with over 30 years experience as a consultant to environmental NGOs, government departments and agencies, intergovernmental bodies, the European Commission, the European Parliament and the UN. His range of expertise stretches from pollution and accident risk from nuclear operations, chemical pollution of the oceans and atmosphere, wildlife ecology and conservation, to renewable energy strategies and climate change."

According to the write-up, Taylor graduated in Natural Sciences at Oxford University, and later returned to study Social Anthropology.

His book appears to be well researched and presented in a logical fashion. I believe he would make a good debate partner for George Monbiot.

Max

Marco

Snowman, your level of ignorance on the topic would be shocking, if not for the fact it is so prevalent. That "4%" that humans add is more than natural cycles can take care off, hence the increase. And want to try and lift that "0.01%" ? You would not even be able to lift 0.01% of that 0.01%!

MATT

Climate modelers now concede that rather than unprecedented warming for the next 100 years as predicted by IPCC ,we are likely going to have several decades of cooling followed again by global warming.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17742-worlds-climate-could-cool-first-warm-later.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

However past climate records show that the natural alternating cool and warm cycles last typically more like 30 years and not just ” for several years.” or “10-20 years” as suggested.

http://www.heartland.org/bin/media/newyork09/PowerPoint/Syun_Akasofu.ppt#524,30,Slide 30

Yes, after the next cooling cycle ends, in about 30 years from now, a warm cycle will return but what was not said is that a cooling cycle will then likely return again thereafter. These cycles alternate. So during the next 100 years there will likely be 2 cool cycles and one warm cycle .Putting it in different terms , 60 of the next 100 years are more likely to be cool than warm., a far cry from 100 years of unprecedented warming that IPCC predicted. They seem to have got it wrong and hence the temperature rise of 3 C is most unlikely. So why all the panic to limit carbon dioxide when ocean SST and deep ocean currents[MOC] are the real climate drivers. The debate should center around why are we in a panic to curtail carbon dioxide when it will not be a major climate maker and global temperatures are not likely to rise as predicted.

manacker

Marco

Before you berate Snowman’s “level of ignorance”, read what he wrote again.

His arithmetic is correct: changing from 280 ppm to 380 ppm (CO2 concentration) is a change of 100 ppm (or 0.01%).

His second point is that the premise of a potentially serious threat from AGW, caused by human CO2 emissions still lacks the support of empirical data or experimental results (as opposed to computer model assumptions and outputs based on these assumptions). This point is also valid.

I agree that your point that the "4% that humans add is more than natural cycles can take care of, hence the increase” is reasonable, but there is no good correlation between human CO2 emissions and changes in atmospheric CO2 content, and some scientists think that this may have more to do with CO2 de-gassing from warmer oceans than with human emissions.

Lots of questions. Lots of hypotheses. Few real answers.

Max

Pricky Gayes

Well worth reading - http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17808-climate-myths-any-cooling-disproves-global-warming.html - or are the New Scientists a bunch of treehugging socialists too?

Jimmimack

Time will tell, both with Global Warming and with Monbiot's Cold Feet.
Change the conditions as often as you like but Monbiot will fabricate another series of body swerves.
In industry his pre-condition questions followed by refusal to debate would be seen as "Constructive Dismissal".
Plimer is a scientist who relies on first order gathering and analyses of data, whereas Monbiot would like us to think he is a scientist until he is called to debate with one, then scurries for cover, hiding beneath the pile of sunday supplements from whence he collects his "facts".

HK

Jimmimack - nothing you said gets around the fact that Monbiot made his conditions a requirement to the debate, The Spectator AGREED to his conditions, and so, apparently did Plimer.

Plimer's subsequent refusal to answer those basic questions makes it pretty hard to defend him, which is why it seems disingenuous of The Spectator to try to shift the blame for the non-debate onto Monbiot.

If The Spectator wants Monbiot to get the blame, it should keep its end of the agreement. Then we will all see whether Monbiot will concoct a "body swerve". Why isn't The Spectator doing that?

Eamon

Manacker,

Natural Sciences covers a wide range of subjects: he could be a biologist, physicist, geologist, earth scientist, biochemist...etc. A little more info would be nice.

However, on reading the first page of Chapter 1 on Amazon, "The Uncertain Signal", where he repeats the old hoary assertion that "CO2 lags temperature by 800 years" leads me to believe that Monbiot would be well capable of debating him.

Roy Gould

Wed 23rd Sept: After a week of pacing his floor, George Monbiot has come out fighting in his Guardian blog - Fraser I hope you feel chastised and I expect you to go straight round to his house and own up to your errors (and slap that naughty Matt D'Ancona's hand too)!!!!
I want to use stronger language than Rod Liddle did in his blog about Moonbat, but I won't. Keep fighting this misguided fool as you sem to be the only Press outlet we "deniers" have. Both The BBC and Channel 4 report all the Global Warming hype as gospel for reasons I fail to understand. Keep up the good work!!

Paul T

It would have been a fascinating debate. Yet surely it was Plimer who left the chari vacant? From the email exchanges between him and Monbiot, and the Spectator and Monbiot, Plimer agreed to answer the questions regarding the sources for his book - and then changed his mind.

manacker

Eamon

You cover two topics in your post

First to Peter Taylor’s qualifications to enter a debate with George Monbiot, I suggest you read the preface to his book, where he states his qualifications to write the book.

You mention what you refer to as the “old hoary assertion that CO2 lags temperature by 800 years".

For a “chicken and egg” treatise on the paleoclimate CO2 / temperature correlation from ice cores by Lubos Motl entitled “CO2 vs. temperature: ice core correlation & lag” see:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/07/carbon-dioxide-and-temperatures-ice.html

This study points out that A came before B, therefore that B could not have been the cause of A.

For a more convoluted rationalization by Real Climate that A caused B at first, but then B started to cause A see:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/

This study actually states: “All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.”

Duh!

Peter Taylor is correct in pointing out that Al Gore tried to mislead the viewers of his AIT film by implying that the ice core data show that changes in CO2 concentration caused the changes in temperature.

As far as the debate with George Monbiot is concerned, it should be interesting (if it really takes place).

I would suspect that Taylor will more than make up for his lack of aggressiveness and emotional hyperbole compared to Monbiot by having a firmer grasp on the scientific questions.

But we’ll have to wait and see.

Max

Daniel, London

This is ridiculous. It’s clearly Ian Plimmer and the Spectator who are trying to wriggle out of this. Monbiot set out his conditions, Plimmer and the spectator agreed – and then didn’t meet them! I find it shocking that a supposedly professional publication such as this is focussing all this weight on Mobiot to ‘prove climate change’. If they really want to know the truth, rather than just having their ignorance confirmed (the editor states he is partisan), why don’t they get Stephen Hawking or David Attenborough or someone from NASA or Harvard or Cambridge, or Oxford or Cambridge, all of whom agree that climate change is man made and a huge threat to civilisation. Shame on you Spectator, you are letting your personal prejudices get in the way of fact and even balance. Is this where journalism had got us to?

Mark

Here in his native Australia Plimer's take on climate change as laid out in his book is widely regarded as laughable. His credibility as a scientist is in tatters. Its a bit of a puzzle to us that you mob in the old country are gullible enough to listen to him. Will you print any old fact-free nonsense?

Phil Clarke

Regarding Senator Inhofe's ever-growing list of 'sceptical scientists' - it is a longstanding joke, including as it does several hundred who are neither scientists nor sceptical; to be included one only has to write something like this:-

'I wish we could grow up about it, I'm sure we are contributing to global warming, and we must do all we can to reduce that, but our climate has always changed. The Romans had vineyards in Yorkshire. We're all on this bandwagon of 'Ban the 4x4 in Fulham'. Why didn't we have global warming during the Industrial Revolution? In those days you couldn't have seen across the street for all the carbon emissions and the crap coming out of the chimneys.'

which was the considered scientific opinion of one Alan Titchmarsh (Yes, THAT Alan Titchmarsh) expressed in that academic journal, The Telegraph. So either the Editor of the Spectator did not bother to read through the list of 'scientists' before citing it, or else The Spectator now classes Alan Titchmarsh as a climate scientist. Which is it please?

Jimmimack

HK, you might note that, come the day of debate, Plimer asserts that he would be in his chair, Monbiot would be absent, taking refuge in his smokescreen of blather and bluster.
Your argument, like so much of the climate change stuff (posturing politics by the left-leaning), relies on noise and emotion (see Delingpole blog) and ignores so much of what good observation would elucidate, i.e. objective science. Doctor Johnson, when asked to philosophise on the reality of a chair, kicked the leg, "I refute it thus".
Can Monbiot pass the tests (laid out by Plimer) as a serious objective scientist?
Clearly not.
Plimer should just kick Monbiot's empty chair (empty, whether he is sitting on it or not) and refute him so.

Paul Bowen

I have no axe to grind here as I honestly don't understand the science. However, I do know unfairness when I see it and anyone who reads the correspondence can see that it is Plimer who has wriggled out of a debate, not Monbiot, and it is unfair (at the very least, I actully think it's closer to an outright lie) to suggest otherwise.

Reg Perrin

What is the point of debating with someone who just makes up stuff?

Actually reading the email exchange, Monbiot was consistent from the beginning, and he simply asked Plimer to provide references for his assertions. That's a basic requirement for "O" level Science.

The Spectator's role in this is just to stir up some sensationalist headlines. Please try some informed, non-partisan journalism.

Eamon

Max,

whilst CO2 increases lag temperature increases in ice cores - this is due to the temperature increases in the distant past being due to variations in the orbit of the Earth. See: http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyperglac/time1/milankov.htm

Even then, CO2, amplified the temperatures.

Currently the Earth's orbital characteristics are such that we need not worry about temperature rises due to them. However, CO2 still amplifies temperatures - the only difference between now and then is that we are producing the excess CO2.

It's really simplistic to say 'CO2 always lags temperature'. The truth is, we are looking at two totally difference scenarios.

Eamon

Jimmimack,

Plimer's 'tests' were nothing more than technobabble. Gavin Schmitt over at Real Climate analysed them and found most of them to be irrelevant:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/08/plimers-homework-assignment/

To be honest, the one containing the phrase "Calculate 10 Ma time flitches" is hilarious. Flitches, according to my Laurousse Dictionary of Science and Technology are 'pieces of timber of greater size then 4 x 12 in'. Reminds me of that classic comedy short "The Plank".

manacker

Eamon

You wrote:

“It's really simplistic to say 'CO2 always lags temperature'.”

No one is saying that (least of all Peter Taylor).

Taylor simply said that Al Gore’s use of paleoclimate charts of temperature and CO2 were misleading (I saw AIT, and, indeed, they were misleading, as they attempted to show that CO2 drives warming, which in this case was untrue).

To your statement:

“Even then, CO2, amplified the temperatures”

This is an unsubstantiated statement of faith, Eamon. There is no empirical evidence whatsoever that any of the warming shown on the paleoclimate charts was actually caused by (or "amplified" by) increased atmospheric CO2.

Max

manacker

Eamon

It appears that you keep trying to defend Al Gore’s use of misleading paleoclimate charts of atmospheric CO2 and temperature in his AIT film. Here is a bit more background to help clear this up.

As quoted on the Real Climate blog, Jeff Severinghaus wrote (in defense of his rather convoluted article defending Al Gore’s use of paleoclimate charts of CO2 concentration and temperature to show that CO2 is a driver of temperature):
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/

“The coolings appear to be caused primarily and initially by increase in the Earth-Sun distance during northern hemisphere summer, due to changes in the Earth’s orbit. As the orbit is not round, but elliptical, sunshine is weaker during some parts of the year than others. This is the so-called Milankovitch hypothesis, which you may have heard about. Just as in the warmings, CO2 lags the coolings by a thousand years or so, in some cases as much as three thousand years.

But do not make the mistake of assuming that these warmings and coolings must have a single cause. It is well known that multiple factors are involved, including the change in planetary albedo, change in nitrous oxide concentration, change in methane concentration, and change in CO2 concentration. I know it is intellectually satisfying to identify a single cause for some observed phenomenon, but that unfortunately is not the way Nature works much of the time.

Nor is there any requirement that a single cause operate throughout the entire 5000 – year long warming trends, and the 70,000 year cooling trends.

Thus it is not logical to argue that, because CO2 does not cause the first thousand years or so of warming, nor the first thousand years of cooling, it cannot have caused part of the many thousands of years of warming in between.”

Duh! This is pure gobbledygook, i.e. since we cannot prove that CO2 did not cause part of the warming, it could (maybe possibly) have done so, after all.

Either CO2 caused the warming or the warming caused the increase in CO2 (or the two are unrelated). But since the warming started 800 to over 1,000 years before the increase in CO2 there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to assume that the increased CO2 caused the warming. Period.

Max

Roger Otip

@Yorkshireman

You quote George Monbiot's unanswered question to Plimer regarding Arctic sea ice and attempt to answer it for him with a dubious and misleading link. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the past three years have seen the lowest minimum sea ice levels since records began in 1979.

But why should you be attempting to answer a question directed at Plimer anyway? If he can back up his claims with scientific evidence then surely it is for him to do so, and if he had done so, or even just made an effort to do so, then the oral debate would now be going ahead.

Alan Redman

What was wrong with Monbiot's condition that Pilmer answer his questions in writing before the debate? It seems reasonable to me, it should be easy for Pilmer to do and his reason for wanting it was explained. Maybe you have an issue with Monbiot's style and the fact that he gets so worked up about the subject? I understand this but if he (and more importantly the IPCC) are right about climate change (which they are more than likely to be) then maybe we should all be getting more worked up about it. We certainly shouldn't be so blaise about the subject so as to print a front cover like the spectator did. If climate change happens as predicted more people will die than did in the holocaust (although of course it will be a slow death, not a horrific eye catching one) so maybe you the editors should learn that some subjects are so serious that they shouldn't be trivialised.

Bart Verheggen

It is abundantly clear that it is Plimer who ducked the debate; not Monbiot.

Answering the written questions (as was agreed upon) should have been a piece of cake for Plimer (if he were sincere). But he ducked.

The first sentence of this post gives you away: "high priests of climate alarmism"?I guess that includes the 98% of climate scientists who are convinced by the evidence that humanity is changing the climate? Your contempt for science is mindblowing.

manacker

Roger Otip

To your mail about Arctic sea ice, whether 2009 is among the “lowest” years (of Arctic ice extent) depends very much on which month you pick to make your point.

Ranking of year 2009
August - third lowest (after 2007, 2008)
July – third lowest (after 2006, 2007)
June – fifth lowest (after 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008)
May - fourteenth lowest ( after 1989, 1990, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2002-2008)
April – tenth lowest (after 1989, 1996, 2002-2008)
March – sixth lowest (after 1996, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007)
February – fourth lowest (after 2005, 2006, 2007)
January – fourteenth lowest (after 1991, 1996, 1997, 1999-2008)

But however you rank it, it appears that the late-summer ice in the Arctic has experienced a significant recovery since the 2007 low. The question is whether this recovery will continue to become a new trend, and it is still much to early to answer that question.

Max

manacker

From the posts here it is clear that Monbiot has achieved what he wanted to, namely that the AGW faithful spread the word that it was Plimer who backed down from the debate from Mobiot, rather than the other way around.

I have not followed all the back-and-forth on this and find it all rather immaterial, but I can see no earthly reason why Plimer would have "backed down" from a debate with George Monbiot.

But we should leave that topic, since this debate will apparently never happen as neither of the two contestants has agreed to make it happen.

More interesting now is whether George Monbiot will accept the written challenge to a debate from Peter Taylor, author of the recent book, Chill - an assessment of global warming theory".

Let's see how this one plays out. It should be interesting, especially for those who have not yet made up their minds on the scientific validity of the AGW premise.

Max

Roger Otip

manacker said:

"Either CO2 caused the warming or the warming caused the increase in CO2 (or the two are unrelated)."

In nature there are many examples of positive feedbacks, where an increase in A causes an increase in B and an increase in B causes an increase in A. Temperature and CO2 levels are related in this way, as evidenced by the close match between temperature and CO2 levels in the ice core records.

For more information on this see:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11659-climate-myths-ice-cores-show-cosub2sub-increases-lag-behind-temperature-rises-disproving-the-link-to-global-warming.html

Roger Otip

Fraser Nelson said:

"I wonder what he makes about this US Senate list of 700 scientists who dissent over man-made global warming – are they all bonkers?"

Since you link to this list shouldn't you have done the checks. Are they all scientists? How many are climate scientists? How many have published peer-reviewed papers on the subject? How many of them do actually "dissent over global warming" and in what way? And how many of them are Alan Titchmarsh?

MATT

The negative or cool AMO [Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation] and negative or winter NAO [North Atlantic Oscillation] seemed to have had a significant affect on European winter temperatures in the past, especially 1962-1987.Past climate records show that as the AMO and NAO started to decline after 1944, the climate of UK and Europe were in colder than normal temperatures by 1962 and also for the next 25 years. The winter NAO has again been cooling since 1989 and went negative already this past winter.We already felt the snow and cooler temperatures this past winter. The AMO peaked in 1998 has been declining in more significant way since 2005. It already was cool or negative for the first 5 months of 2009 and is likely to go negative annually soon. What does this mean? Regardless of what IPCC says or Monibot claim on his Guardian blog, the next several decades are headed for cooler temperatures again. These natural alternating warm and cool climate cycles typically last for 30 years. We just came out of the 30 year warm cycle. The sun is also predicted to be in low activity for the next solar cycle and has had an extended minimum. I anticipate a cooler winter than last year for Europe this coming winter and certainly by 2010/2011 winter and for several decades thereafter. These winters could be severe and could affect farming and crops to the extent that farming and energy availability could be a problem. Yet the Europe is strangely focused on global warming only as this debate on this blog shows and MonbIot pursues. Instead of discussing long range planning for possible energy and resource shortages [including food], the focus is solely on carbon dioxide reduction which may not be the prime cause of global warming at all. Even worse, European nations are being urged to prematurely shutdown coal and fossil power plants with insufficient or reliable replacement energies of comparable size and reliability in place. Lets get real about what drives our climate what we debate .Why are we supporting organizations or individuals who urge us to pay new “cap and trade” backdoor taxes and to buy Bermuda shorts for the coming heat wave when the there is more likely going to be a blizzard outside.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/jhurrell/indices.data.html#naostatmon
http://dataservice.eea.europa.eu/atlas/viewdata/viewpub.asp?id=4119

manacker

Roger Otip

In your post to Fraser Nelson you raised a question regarding the validity of “Inhofe’s list” of “climate change skeptics”.

There is a list of around 200 individuals (which I would be glad to provide) who are qualified to have an opinion on AGW who have also gone on record to say that there is some aspect of the premise that AGW is a potentially serious threat caused principally by anthropogenic CO2 emissions, which they do not scientifically support.

Of these, 167 are scientists and 53 are meteorologists.

If someone tells me that “an overwhelming majority” of the world’s scientists do support this premise, I would ask this person to provide a list of at least 4 times this many individuals that have specifically stated that they do support the above AGW premise in its entirety.

Do you have such a list or are you just bluffing?

Max

anthony p

‘Whether Plimer is a charlatan or not, he speaks for many of us’. This comment was posted by a certain ‘John Levett’ on Sep 16 on this site. Is there a more telling, or more apt, contribution to the so-called 'debate' on this blog? Priceless!

Jimmimack

HK, Eamon, and all those so Hot under the Collar with their Global Warming hysteria had better not cast a glance at the mumblings of Mojib Latif at the UN conference. Witter away fellas, time will tell. It certainly made dumplings of the doomsayers who predicted the end of the oil reserves by the year 2000, and numerous other simply silly doom-mongerings by those who are unable to draw attention to themselves in any other way. The end of the world is nigh, but there might be the comfort of safety in numbers of those with whom you agree in your 'consensus'. You will surely be better and more usefully employed rolling up your Guardian and swatting at the imaginary demons swirling around your head. Chances of success with that little exercise depends upon whether the demons are outside the head or inside.
The Bloomberg survey of U.S. voter concerns seems to show that the climate-change 'wowsers' have a lot of convincing to do outside of their own cabal.

Howling Fantods

Anyone else as amused by Manacker's failed attempts to make the rather random "Peter Taylor debate invite" the centre of this thread in the face of almost universal agreement that, indeed, Nelson and Plimer have behaved like children?

HK

Jimmimack, as I've said on this and Rod Liddle's parallel article, I am skeptical about climate change.

Your comment "Change the conditions as often as you like but Monbiot will fabricate another series of body swerves" ignores what appear to be the facts: that Monbiot did not change the conditions, and Plimer/The Spectator did. They reneged on what they had already agreed to. It appears that Plimer is the one performing the "body swerves". It is that simple.

I'd like Monbiot to debate someone. I'd be interested to see if he would indeed dodge the debate, if the AGREED conditions were met. Unfortunately it doesn't look like we will get to find out, because Plimer/Spectator are backing away from what they agreed to. Because of that, Plimer has already damaged his credibility. The questions he agreed to answer are absolutely basic.

manacker "I have not followed all the back-and-forth on this and find it all rather immaterial, but I can see no earthly reason why Plimer would have 'backed down' from a debate with George Monbiot."

At least read the emails (to/from Spectator and Plimer). I also can't see why Plimer would have backed down. Assuming Monbiot hasn't made them up, it is absolutely clear that Plimer is dodging.

manacker

Howling Fantods

Hey, how about “thinking positive” for a change?

The Plimer/Monbiot debate has unfortunately been shot down, apparently by both sides, so will not take place. Too bad. No point dwelling on negative thoughts concerning that non-event any longer. It's over.

But Peter Taylor has challenged George Monbiot to a debate. There should be no reason from either side not to go ahead with this one.

So rejoice, Howling Fantods, maybe there will, indeed, be a debate, which everyone on either side (or undecided) on AGW should welcome.

A tip: Think positive, me boy, and you’ll get ahead in life.

Max

Dunc Young

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/opinion/columnists/do-we-really-need-ambulances?-20070801317/

Patricia Shaw

After such a patronising, insulting and 'prissy post such as this, the man is extremely justified in turning you down.

To do othwerwise would put him in the position of having been bullied, or shamed into it.

You come across, as you did on Radio 4 yesterday, as a smug, sneering little schoolboy of the sort that needs a good hard slap.

manacker

Hear, hear, Patricia!

Jimmimack

It's been fun, folks, and thanks for that. The climate will do its own thing and we will be confirmed or confounded.
I, for one, will not be into Moonbat worship, seeing it more profitable to anticipate the future's developments through the analyses of Fraser Nelson than the rabid rants of George Monbiot.
Have a nice day, but it is not the end of the world if you don't.

Daniel Taghioff

If you want an interesting debate, ask Monbiot to debate with the UN commissioner responsible for the Clean Development Mechanism and Reduction in Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in developing countries on the likely impacts on the poor.

I guess as conservatives the Spectatorship is used to being well behind the curve.

Eamon

Max,

I said: “Even then, CO2, amplified the temperatures”

You said: "This is an unsubstantiated statement of faith, Eamon. There is no empirical evidence whatsoever that any of the warming shown on the paleoclimate charts was actually caused by (or "amplified" by) increased atmospheric CO2."

Yes there is - it's called Basic Physics, Max.

Max

Eamon

Max,

you say:

"Either CO2 caused the warming or the warming caused the increase in CO2 (or the two are unrelated). But since the warming started 800 to over 1,000 years before the increase in CO2 there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to assume that the increased CO2 caused the warming. Period. "

And where did I say that? However, once the CO2 is released it will have a warming effect - unless the Laws of Physics were in abeyance for some strange reason at that time...

Jack Hughes

'peer-reviewed' this and 'peer-reviewed' that...

We can all list great scientists and their achievements: Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Einstein...

Can anyone here list the peers of these great scientists ? No ?

manacker

Eamon

The empirical data (even if they are reconstructed) show changes in temperature followed a few hundred years later by changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration. There were periods where cooling started at high CO2 concentrations and others where warming started at lower CO2 concentrations. There is no observed CO2 warming effect. So much for the data.

Throwing in the theoretical “Laws of Physics” to try to rationalize something else into the data than what they show is a bit too hypothetical and contrived for me. Let’s just stay with the data as they are.

Max

manacker

Eamon

The empirical data (even if they are reconstructed) show changes in temperature followed a few hundred years later by changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration. There were periods where cooling started at high CO2 concentrations and others where warming started at lower CO2 concentrations. There is no observed CO2 warming effect. So much for the data.

Throwing in the theoretical “Laws of Physics” to try to rationalize something else into the data than what they show is a bit too hypothetical and contrived for me. Let’s just stay with the data as they are.

Max

james bell

This is journalism at its very worst. Monbiots demands were fair, controlled and reasonable. All I can see is a bunch of climate denying fraudsters wriggling around. The truth will come out and you will be smacked down. Ha!

manacker

james bell

I agree with you that this is journalism at its worst.

The Plimer/Monbiot debate will not take place, because neither contestant really fought hard to make it take place.

Peter Taylor (who has just written a book on the subject) has in the meantime made a clean offer to debate the open issues on climate change with George Monbiot (a well-known journalist, who is quite knowledgeable on the topic, as well).

These are both grown men.

Let's let them figure out how to make this debate take place, rather than second-guessing the whole process.

Don't you agree?

Max

manacker

MATT

Sorry for delay. I read your interesting post, where you pointed out how 30 year cyclical changes in ocean currents and solar activity have changed our climate in the past and are likely to do so again, with the near future most likely continuing the current cooling trend.

Peter Taylor's book, "Chill", covers these natural cyclical changes, as well (he includes changes in cloud cover). He points out how an unusual combination of these natural factors were responsible for most if not all of the late 20th century warming, and how they are now very likely causing the start of the next cooling cycle. It is strange that the UK Met Office seems to agree (at least on the natural variability cause of the current cooling, although the word "cycle" is still taboo).

Time is not on the side of those who believe that human GH gases (primarily CO2) are the principal climate drivers. Despite the enormous political (and financial) momentum that the AGW movement still enjoys, the rather convoluted scientific basis for the AGW premise is beginning to unravel.

It is interesting that this coincides with even shriller cries that the scientific debate is over and that time is running out for taking immediate action.

Time is, indeed, running out.

Max

Frank

A very good summary of the moral, political, and scientific corruption associated with the AGW promotion is given here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/global_warming_science.html

An extract from near the end:
'1. There appears to be no serious evidence that some form of unprecedented global warming is underway. The mathematical modeling effort used to support AGW claims has been shown to be flawed, if not fraudulent. Any scientific "consensus" of a major problem appears to be coming from a self-reinforcing group within or financially dependent upon the IPCC.

2. No serious scientific link between any perceived global warming and the miniscule amount of manmade CO2 in the atmosphere (beyond the flawed or fraudulent IPCC mathematical model) has been made. Also, in 15 years since the first predictions of catastrophic events were announced, none of those events can be demonstrated to be underway today.'

Eamon

Max,

"Theoretical Laws of Physics" ...really?

The physical properties of CO2 ARE well understood - and they lead to heat retention in the atmosphere and climate change.

You attempt to deflect attention from this fact by delving into the paleoclimatic record fails on the ground that there are other mechanisms for raising local and global temperatures - like changes in the Earth's orientation, orbit, and local effects like changes in currents.

Eamon

Frank,

'American Thinker' is a 'special site' - as evinced by it's ridiculous stating of the obvious:

"Nearly every student of Earth history is aware of the massive amount of geological evidence showing that significant climate changes have been ongoing for over 4 billion years."

The page you link to also referrs to Prof Wegman's group as a 'panel of experts'. Nope, they just had a narrow interest in statistics, with no expertise in the science. To top it off they ignored queries from their referees. Prof Wegman was unaware that Mann's data was freely available - contrary to his assertion. Now the North report, which had a wide range of experts on it, and had 12 anonymous referees and 2 monitors concluded that Mann was right, but the stats could be improved.

The stating that water vapour is much more important than CO2 neglects the fact that C2 stays in the atmosphere for decades to centuries - water vapour stays up on the order of weeks and then drops as rain.

There are things we can do to limit the amount of extra CO2 in the atmosphere - there is nothing we can do about water vapour.

As for the devastating evidence about climate change at the end of the 'American Thinkers' page you reference:

The 'detailed review' paper is from:

Klaus-Martin Schulte, MD, FRCS
Consultant in Endocrine and General Surgery, Department of Endocrine Surgery!

And the scientist petition is a pretty poorly designed petition that has no way of verifying the credentials of those who reply. See http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-11-12

For a good overview of issues from Professor North, the guy with a well-constituted panel of experts, try: http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/NorthH264.mp4

MATT

MAX
This is an interesting article that talks about the warm and cool cycles.
By the way both the North and South Atlantic ocean SST anomalies showed cooling
for August when normally summer heating would take place .

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10783

JP

All that is needed to expose Monbiot's cowardice is for Plimer to publish the answers to Monbiot's questions. It should take less than a page, and no more than a few hours. That would really force Monbiot's hand, and then everyone at the Spectator could get *really* stuck into Monbiot, and empty-chair him, and worse with a totally clear conscience.

Surely the opportunity to do that warrants a little pressure on Plimer to cite a dozen or so sources, no?

manacker

Eamon

The worst thing that true AGW believers can do to cast doubt upon the judgment and scientific honesty of IPCC (and their own intelligence) is to continue to try to revive the long-buried Mann et al. hockey stick.

The MBH98/99 reconstruction was prominently featured in the 2001IPCC report as a key piece of supporting evidence that the 20th century warming was unprecedented since year 1000 A.D. This curve was an artifact from the very start. Yet IPCC eagerly embraced it without doing effective due diligence to confirm its scientific validity, and added its own model projections for future warming, in a superb example of “chartmanship”, to make the curve look even more alarming. It became a key scare-mongering feature of Al Gore’s “AIT” film.

It has since been thoroughly discredited and buried. The Wegman panel of statistical experts have confirmed the conclusion by McIntyre and McKitrick that the statistical approach used was full of errors, and that the conclusions reached by Mann could not be supported by the study:

”Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported by the MBH98/99 analysis”

IPCC no longer shows the MBH98/99 reconstuction in its latest report, although IPCC sticks with its since discredited contention: “Paleoclimate information supports the interpretation that the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1,300 years”, citing a series of “copy hockeystick spaghetti curves” that have been made since then.

For a detailed recapitulation of the whole story, see:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html

The whole story is a sorry episode in the ongoing climate debate and AGW believers, like yourself, would do best to leave it buried and hope people forget about it, rather than try to revive it again. Let it R.I.P.

Max

PS The incredible thing is that the existence of a historically and physically well-documented global Medieval Warm Period with temperatures slightly warmer than today should not be an issue at all to IPCC. The recent warming, and its possible causes, is a totally separate topic, which can be studied without trying to artificially prove that the late 20th century was warmer than any period in the past millennium.

manacker

MATT

Thanks for link to Easterbrook paper. Very interesting.

Max

manacker

Eamon

You are getting repetitive.

The paleoclimate data cited is clear: it shows no evidence that changes in atmospheric CO2 have caused changes in temperature. The CO2 changes lagged by several hundred years. In some cases, warming started at low CO2 concentrations and in others cooling started at much higher CO2 concentrations. Don’t try to embellish on the physically observed data in order to make it fit the theory.

IPCC has been accused of this often enough. Don’t fall into the same trap here.

Max

Eamon

Max,

you also are getting repetitive. The paleoclimatic record's CO2 release is, funnily enough, based on different conditions from today's. There is also no indication that the laws of physics were sufficiently different in the past to change Carbon Dioxide's well-known absorption profile.

If you wish to know a little bit more about the science, then Professor North's presentation on their review of Mann et al is nice:
http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/NorthH264.mp4

Your defense of the Wegman report seems only to be based on the fact that they said what you (and Senator Barton, their sponsor) wanted to hear. The North report was much more in-depth, and also listened to the criticisms of its anonymous referees. It found the hockey stick in not only tree-ring data, but glacier studies, borehole readings, and ice-core measurements.

manacker

Eamon

Some practical advice: When you are in the hole, stop digging.

I have seen the CO2 / Temperature curves from the paleoclimate study. They show exactly what they show (and this is NOT that changes in atmospheric CO2 drove changes in temperature, as Al Gore implied. End of story.

As for MBH98/99 (hockey stick), the Wegman committee discredited the statistical approach used in the study, and hence its conclusion. For more information on this whole sorry affair read this study published in Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, December 2007 , pp. 951-983(33: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mscp/ene/2007/00000018/F0020007/art00007

Let me quote from the abstract:

'I review how the IPCC came to adopt the "hockey stick" as scientific evidence of human interference with the climate. I report also on independent peer reviewed studies of the "hockey stick" that were instigated by the US House of Representatives in 2006, and which comprehensively invalidated it. The "divergence" problem and the selective and unreliable nature of tree-ring reconstructions are discussed, as is the unsatisfactory review process of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report that ignored the invalidation of the "hockey stick". The error found recently in the GISS temperature series is also noted. It is concluded that the IPCC has neither the structure nor the necessary independence and supervision of its processes to be acceptable as the monopoly authority on climate science. Suggestions are made as to how the IPCC could improve its procedures towards producing reports and recommendations that are more scientifically sound.'

Ouch! That hurts...

Max

manacker

Eamon

I just made the mistake and listened to the whole 1+ hour ramble of Prof. North on MBH98/99, which you cited.

This was a total waste of time, Eamon. He starts off with platitudes about past trends, telling us nothing that has not been reported ad nauseam already. Then he "introduces" the hockey stick authors using the phrases "very, very distinguished professor" and "who wrote very, very nice books". He then tries to discredit McIntyre and McKitrick "as a couple of fools" who "met at an anti-global warming chat room". Eamon, this is a load of condescending rubbish, actually.

Read the report by Holland I cited. It tells you a lot more about the subject in a lot less words.

The Wegman testimony is also a good source of unbiased info on this.

The fact that IPCC has sneaked the discredited hockey stick into Chapter 6 of its latest AR4 report is amazing. The arrogance of the idiots that let that slip by is only exceeded by their ignorance!

Max

MATT

I too recently listened to a dialogue on BBC NEWS between Dr Vicki Pope of the Met Office and Emeritus Prof. Phillip Stott of London University discussing the recent global cooling prediction of 1-2 decades of cooling by Dr M. Latif of Germany http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8258000/8258459.stm

What was of interest to me was that Dr. Pope clearly denied that there would be cooling during the next decade. She said that they [the Met Office] had also done predictions and that it would get warmer during the next decade and that over the long term it would get warmer due to global warming. She said that their models used data about what was happening below the ocean surface and that their model had been tested and they have reproduced past climates using actual past records and thus their model was more realistic than the model used by Latif’s German model who uses ocean surface data .

She did say that she accepts the possibility of a period of a decade or 10 years of temperatures leveling off or small amount of cooling.

She also said that any accelerated warming or cooling was the result of natural effects [natural variability]

It would appear to me that she and the Met Office seem to be changing the AGW argument by 180 degrees. I PCC said that the unprecedented and accelerated warming of the last 30 years was the problem caused primarily by man [all temperature records were set here and that this warming would accelerate for 100 years or more]. In other words this 30 year temporary warming bubble was caused by man and not due to natural variability. Dr Pope seems to be saying that the long term trend of the last 150 years is real and this is caused by global warming. Is the recent accelerated warming bubble then due to natural causes? If so, then I agree with this view.

I personally disagree with the forecast of the Met Office especially the warming for the next decade. They are also predicting now a temperature rise of 4 C by 2060. It seems to me that there is more political manouvering here than science.

manacker

MATT

Your questions following the discussion between Dr. Pope and Dr Stott are very pertinent.

The Met Office probably did not think of this at the time, but Vicky Pope’s statement has opened a can of worms for the AGW premise.

Up until now we have heard from the Met Office that human CO2 is driving our climate and that we are headed for much warmer temperatures in the near future as a result.

The Met Office published forecasts of 0.3°C per decade warming over the 21st century (later reduced to 0.2°C per decade).

We had annual press releases warning us that the next year would be a record warm year.

None of these forecasts came true.

There were no “record warm” years as predicted.

Instead of 0.2°C (or even 0.3°C) per decade warming we are seeing cooling at a rate of 0.1°C per decade.

This raises the question, if the Met Office cannot predict one or eight years in advance, how are we to believe the longer-range forecasts?

So now the Met Office tells us that “natural variability” is the cause for the current cooling.

But “natural variability” is just another way of saying “natural climate forcing factors”, which IPCC have told us are insignificant.

The CO2 increase since January 2001 should have caused GH warming of 0.2°C, yet we saw 0.1°C cooling instead. This means that these “natural climate forcing factors” have more than offset the anticipated warming and caused net cooling over less than 9 years of 0.3°C.

If this is the case, why can these same “natural climate forcing factors” not have been the cause for much or even all of the 0.65°C warming we observed over the entire 20th century (rather than anthropogenic CO2)?

A tough question for Met Office, which they are unlikely to address, despite the fact that they opened this Pandora’s Box themselves, with the “natural variability” rationalization.

Max

MATT

Here are the words of Professor Emeritus W.M. Gray , Atmospheric Science , Colorado State, US who said at the conclusion of his paper called Climate Change: Driven by the Ocean not Human Activity. Professor gray has been studying climate and oceans for 50 years.

Implementation of the proposed international treaties restricting future greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 20 percent (by 2020) and 80 percent (by 2050) of current emissions would lead to a large slowdown in the world’s economic development and, at the same time, have little or no significant impact on the globe’s future temperature. Such policies should be rejected.

His Paper is available at http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu (under News) or
http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/24891.pdf

Part of the Abstract for the paper reads

This paper discusses how the variation in the global ocean’s Meridional Overturning Circulation(MOC) resulting from changes in the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation (THC) and deep water Surrounding Antarctica Subsidence (SAS) can be the primary cause of climate change. (MOC =THC + SAS) is the likely cause of most of the global warming that has been observed since the start of the industrial revolution (~1850) and for the more recent global warming that has occurred since the mid-1970s. Changes of the MOC since 1995 are hypothesized to have lead to the cessation of global warming since 1998 and to the beginning of a weak global cooling that has occurred since 2001. This weak cooling is projected to go on for the next couple of decades

MATT

MAX
Thank you for more of the background on Met Office .Vicky Pope said that she accepts that natural variability can cause both accelerated cooling or warming up to 10 years or a decade .When one looks at the past global temperature curves, the real last global warming bubble was from 1995-2006 a period of about 11-12 years. The warming from 1970-1994 was not that significant. The 1994-2006 period was when all the record anomalies occured. So was this last warming also just another accelerated warming period that she accepts as due to natural causes? I think so .It fits her definition[short period of about 10 years] . This last warming was primarly due to the warm or positive AMO which went warm in 1994/1995 and the warm or positive NAO. This again fits her definition[ due to natural variabilty.]

MATT

Max
My views on the latest Met Office prediction of even faster global warming. [4C by 2060] It looks like more political posturing prior to Copenhagen to me.

Take look at this graph again
http://www.heartland.org/bin/media/newyork09/PowerPoint/Syun_Akasofu.ppt#524,30,Slide 30
IPCC projected rise in global temperatures of 3C by 2100. This is very unlikely as you look at the upper curve on the referenced web page above. Recently another new doom and gloom global warming forecast by the UK Met Office projects what they call a “ plausible “scenario in which they call for 4 C degree rise by now 2060.[ 40 years earlier] Just mark this new higher projected temperature and place it 40 years earlier on the above graph. Now you can see why I place this new forecast on the” global warming exaggeration scale” of 10. It is likely 10 times more than what may be probable. With the global temperatures likely to drop or at the least, to likely level off during the next 30 years due to the pending cooler weather, the temperatures would have to rise faster later or 4-5C between 2030/2040 and 2060. That would require average temperature increase of 1.67 C per decade between 2030 and 2060 or 10 times the higher than the highest data measured today per decade. A most implausible scenario.

In addition the Met Office forecast for the 2009/2010 winter reads

Preliminary indications continue to suggest that winter temperatures are likely to be near or above average over much of Europe including the UK. Winter 2009/10 is likely to be milder than last year for the UK, but there is still a 1 in 7 chance of a cold winter.http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/science/creating/monthsahead/seasonal/2009/winter.html

Personally I think this next winter is going to be cooler than last year
Now time will tell who is right. If their climate models cannot get the next winter right as you so rightly point out, what possible credibility is there in their forecast that the next decade being warmer instead of cooler or that global temperatures are going to rise by 4C by 2060..

manacker

MATT

Thanks for your post and the link to the interesting slide show by Dr. Akasofu. It is very clear that the IPCC warming projections are based on flawed interpretation of the late 20th century data, essentially ignoring anything that happened prior to around 1976.

The most recent Met Office predictions (4°C warming by 2060!) are even more absurd, and I agree with you that this has nothing to do with "science", but is simply a bit of pre-Copenhagen scare mongering to get support for “mitigation” measures.

Thee only good thing that may come out of all this is that the more absurd the Met Office (or IPCC) projections become, the sooner people will all be able to see that the whole premise that AGW is a serious threat is a hoax.

Vicky Pope made a serious mistake when she brought up the “natural variability” explanation for the current cooling. Attempting to limit “natural variability” to a 10-year horizon in order to defuse this mistake is not only totally unsubstantiated but also foolish.

What happens if the current cooling cycle goes beyond 10 years? Do we have to “extend” the time period for an impact from “natural variability” accordingly? To 12 years? To 15 or 20 years? Once we have extended it to around 25 years, it will be as long as the late 20th century warming period, which has been used to justify the whole AGW craze.

It is clear to me that, after so many false forecasts plus the unpredicted current cooling, the Met Office is “in a deep hole”.

But what really surprises me is that the Met Office management is not astute enough to realize that now is the time to “stop digging”.

In using the term “natural variability” to explain the current cooling and attempting to put a time limit on it, Met Office has tried to differentiate the cause from “natural climate forcing factors”, even though it is clear to one and all that this is exactly what is at play here.

This is a real dilemma for the supporters of the AGW premise, because IPCC has relegated the impact of “natural climate forcing factors” (i.e. solar related forcing) to an insignificant 0.12W/m^2 from 1750 to today (as compared to 1.66W/m^2 for anthropogenic CO2).

Now these same insignificant natural forcing factors are more than offsetting record increases in atmospheric CO2, which (according to IPCC version of GH theory) should have caused warming of 0.2°C since January 2001. Instead, we have seen cooling of 0.1°C over this period. So that is 0.3°C impact in less than 9 years!

Here is a graph I updated a few weeks ago showing the actual (HadCRUT) temperature record with a superimposed sine curve and some real and imagined trend lines, similar to the one shown by Dr. Akasofu.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2461/3915641920_3d38c7ddd4_b.jpg

The IPCC forecasts are ridiculous enough, but if you plot the most recent Met Office prediction of 4°C warming by year 2060, you can see how totally absurd this is. And these guys are supposed to be scientists!

Max

MATT

Max
It looks like you came to the same conclusions about the absurdity of the latest Met Office Forecast. If you draw your temperature curve starting in 2030 or 2040 to end at 4C in 2060, you can see how impossible the MET Office forecast really is. Having read so many of these doom and gloom AGW reports , I have noticed that there is a predictable format that many use . I have noted several dozen repeated techniques and only post a few here.

How far into the future do they project? Anyone can make prediction 60, 100, 200 1000 years ahead. This is now the time frames of expertise being claimed by AGW scientists. This is a safe area to project. The authors will never be around to be accountable for their work and short term field verification is difficult . When confronted with short term initial results[ like the next winter forecast] that are in direct conflict with the projections, we are told to wait for long term results which appear to be very unlikely to materialize based on past and current opposite trends.
Timing of the reports? With world wide review for carbon emissions under review and cap and trade decision pending it just happens that waves of alarmist report come out in support of AGW. These doom and gloom types of reports seem to pop up often prior to budget times or key decision times like Copenhagen.
Worst case scenarios? AGW science supporters use this technique to make things look far worse than they really are to frighten or catch the public, government and media attention. Things in real life tend to be more stable and best and worst scenarios tend to level out .According to worse case scenarios, the world should have ended centuries ago? Our past climate has had regular periods of cool and warm years not just unprecedented warming.
It is much worse than thought?
This is now a common phrase used by AGW science to prove that global warming exists still. Anyone can make this statement. It just proves that the previous or original judgment or prediction was bad by those who made it and proves nothing about whether global warming exist or whether it is worse at all .It could be quite normal.
Natural variability suppresses global warming?
It is not that these regular natural cool cycles suppress any warming due to greenhouse gases, as some have suggested, but rather that these natural planetary cycles dwarf and have always dwarfed and will continue to dwarf any warming created by green house gases. The sun and the oceans are much stronger climate makers than carbon dioxide.

MATT

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/09/29/peter-foster-climate-policy-bust.aspx

It looks like others have serious doubts about the current climate plicy as well

Eamon

Max,

sorry the North presentation wasn't of interest to you. Perhaps you missed the bit about all the other temperature proxies that support the 'Hockey Stick' - boreholes, ice cores, glacier lengths, corals.

Ah well. I guess having a Physics degree makes it a bit more entertaining.

Now the Holand report is entertaining: Twists the NRC report to suggest it did not uphold the general findings of Mann et al, doesn't like Peer Review (unsurprising, considering that E&E is non-peer review), doesn't trust scientists). It also implies that the NRC report refuted Mann. This quote from the report puts that to rest:

"The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes the additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and documentation of the spatial coherence of recent warming described above (Cook et al. 2004, Moberg et al. 2005b, Rutherford et al. 2005, D�fArrigo et al. 2006, Osborn and Briffa 2006, Wahl and Ammann in press) and also the pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators described in previous chapters (e.g., Thompson et al. in press).

manacker

Eamon

Yes, the "Mann fan club" has indeed put together a whole series of mutually peer-reviewed "copy hockey sticks".

Funny how they all scrambled to try to breathe life back into the comprehensively discredited "hockey stick".

IPCC no longer gives it "star status" (as it did in its TAR SPM report), but it still made it to Chapter 6 of the latest AR4 WG1 backup report.

Fortunately we have the Loehle study (from someone outside the "club"), which shows that the MWP was slightly warmer than today, not to mention several other studies, physical evidence, historical records, etc. from all over the world, which all confirm that the MWP was (a) global in scope and (b) slightly warmer than the late 20th century.

It doesn't make any difference to the AGW premise whether or not we have seen warmer periods in our history, Eamon, so let the poor dead "hockey stick" rest in peace.

You just discredit the "club" and IPCC by dwelling on this piece of "junk science"

Max

manacker

Eamon

You appear to still belive that the Mann et al. “hockeystick” is a scientifically well substantiated study proving that there was no MWP.

The Wegman committee reported on the hockeystick:

”Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported by the MBH98/99 analysis”

“The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable.”

Supporter of the “hockey stick” have used the argument that, while there may have been errors in the methodology used by Mann et al., the conclusions reached were still correct.

As Wegman summed it up to the energy and commerce committee in later testimony:

"I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn't matter because the answer is correct anyway.

Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science."

Forget this piece of “Bad Science”, Eamon. It has been buried. Let it “Rest in Peace”.

Max

Matt

MAX and EAMON

There is more to the Hockey stick story here. It looks like the issue is finally put to bed . http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/9/29/the-yamal-implosion.html

Eamon

Max,

as a scientist I have to say that if the method is 'wrong', but the answer is correct - then the answer stands. Also, if the answer is correct - as Wegman says, then the method obviously isn't bad - though it may not be perfect, which is another thing completely.

On the subject of bad science - having statistcicians comment on a topic which they have little experience on, with no anomymous peer-review, ignoring criticism from the report reviewers...that's definitely bad science.

Eamon

Ah, the Lohele study - non-peer reviewed, by someone outside the field, and which cherry-picks quotes to make his points - which seem to distill down to:

Scientists are bad!

I doubt Lohele's work is going to have anything constructive to say on the MWP.

On the subject of hockey sticks: you could take a gander at

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/

All the proxy hockey sticks in one easily understood format.

MATT

http://kestencgreen.com/naiveclimate.pdf

EAMON
This paper may be of interest to you. I personally do not have a problem if some one who is more qualified than I am , doublechecks my statistics and math that i used in my study if it is critical.That is proper peer review. Much of the science today deals with collecting and analyzing data and making interpretations that are open to different interpretations.
If you have been follwing the global warming debate recently, its history includes bad data , wrongly adjusted data, wrong statistics ,instrument errors, cherry picked data, just to name a few .One a topic that is so critical to our future , I would rather have the review and make the corrections than find out later that we made a serious error due to improper statistcal interpretations and no one checked the work properly.

manacker

Eamon

It is nice if you refer me to Real Climate for verification of the discredited hockey stick, but isn't that basically the wrong address?

And peer reviewed versus not? Sorry, this is no valid argument. Remember that the discredited MBH hockey stick was peer reviewed (the Wegman report even pointed out basic flaws in the peer review process).

Certainly Loehle is more valid than MBH98/99, even though it may not convey the desired message.

Max

MATT

I quote here partially the author, Ross McKitrick from the article referenced below. It speaks to the point that I was making earlier. Professor McKitrick is a professor of environmental economics at the University of Guelph, in Canada.

“I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a decade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent coauthors I have consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent. The surface temperature data is a contaminated mess with a significant warm bias, and as I have detailed elsewhere the IPCC fabricated evidence in its 2007 report to cover up the problem. Climate models are in gross disagreement with observations, and the discrepancy is growing with each passing year. The often-hyped claim that the modern climate has departed from natural variability depended on flawed statistical methods and low-quality data. The IPCC review process, of which I was a member last time, is nothing at all like what the public has been told: Conflicts of interest are endemic, critical evidence is systematically ignored and there are no effective checks and balances against bias or distortion.”

Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/10/01/ross-mckitrick-defects-in-key-climate-data-are-uncovered.aspx#ixzz0SnEFgeRV

PKD

Truly, there is little to choose between the Spectators piece here and Saddam's 'victory' speech after the 1st Gulf war. Its the same old if we pretend hard enough, we can fool enough people into thinking its true' philosiphy...

MATT

Max
This clipping perhaps helps to better understand what the Met Office is saying and why about global warming

Some brief highlights from Met Office NEWS RELAESE called Global warming set to continue , dated 14 September 2009

..very small global temperature rises over the last 10 years.
.. in computer modelled climate change simulations, they found that despite continued increases in greenhouse gas concentrations, a single-decade hiatus in warming occurs relatively often.
“We found about one in every eight decades has near-zero or negative global temperature trends in simulations which would otherwise be warm at expected present-day rates
‘internal climate variability’ — the capacity for slow natural variations in the oceans to temporarily modify climate. Computer models used to make climate predictions reproduce this intrinsic character of our climate because they successfully represent many of the necessary fundamental climate processes.
….the Met Office’s decadal forecast predicts renewed warming after 2010 with about half of the years to 2015 likely to be warmer globally than the current warmest year on record.
Commenting on the new study, Vicky Pope, Head of Climate Change Advice at the Met Office said: “Decades like 1999–2008 occur quite frequently in our climate change simulations, but the underlying trend of increasing temperature remains

Personally looking up the temperature records of HADCRUT3 , I can clearly see at least two periods of cooler climate ,namely 1944--1976 and again 1900- 1926, so dont'understand the one cool period of 10 years in every 8 decades comment. It looks more like 30 year cool periods every 30 yearsto me.

manacker

MATT

Vicky Pope may tell us now:

“Decades like 1999–2008 occur quite frequently in our climate change simulations, but the underlying trend of increasing temperature remains”

Unfortunately for her, the Met Office record tells us that her statement is not true.

There have been two 8-year cooling “blips” since the late 20th century warming trend started in 1976. Neither of these was as strong or as consistent as the current 21st century cooling period since January 2001.

Dr. Pope should check her own record before making such statements.

The late 20th century warming trend has ended.

Whether the current 21st century cooling trend will continue for another 2 decades or so is anyone’s guess.

Vicky Pope has no clue on this. Phil Jones also does not. Nor does James E. Hansen over at GISS. We will just have to wait and see.

Max

manacker

Eamon

You seem to think that the Loehle data were not peer reviewed.

The truth is that ALL the proxies Loehle used are taken from peer-reviewed (and published) articles.

And he concludes, based on all of these extensive peer-reviewed data that the MWP was slightly warmer than today.

Max

Eamon

Max,

That the data was peer-reviewed has no bearing on whether Loehle's conclusions are correct. His paper was not peer-reviewed.

You may have a suit made from the finest cloth - but if the tailor is an amateur then the result will be rubbish.

manacker

Eamon

When you speak of "rubbish", I am sure you must be referring to the totally discredited MBH98/99 (a.k.a. Mann hockeystick), not the more recent and more comprehensive study made by Loehle.

Right?

The MWP was slightly warmer than the late 20th century, as also evidenced by extensive historical and physical data.

But, hey, what difference does it make in the overall scheme of things?

None.

It has most recently warmed since the record started in 1850 (and we have been coming out of the Little Ice Age), at an average linear rate of 0.04C per decade, with 60-year warming/cooling cycles.

The most recent warming cycle was from around 1976 to 2000. Prior to that there was a slight cooling cycle (1945-1975), and an even stronger warming cycle (1910-1944). Now it looks like we are in the beginning of a new cooling cycle since around 2001. (It is still unclear if this cooling will continue, as many solar scientists predict, and the Met Office appears to accept now, but who knows how long this cooling cycle will last? Will it be another 30-year half cycle as we have seen before?

But, as compared to the MWP it looks like this is "deja vu all over again", rather than something "unprecedented". This is tough to swallow, because we like to feel more important than that, right?

Max

Max

MATT

Max

I find it troubling that the Met Office latest forecast of global climate does not even mention major climate makers like AMO, NAO , or PDO in their latest literature

Here is what the Met office said about the Arctic in their brochure
The extent of Arctic sea-ice cover in September 2008 was the second lowest since records began; only surpassed by the record minimum in 2007. The recent dramatic ice loss adds to the long-term trend observed over the last 30 years. The latest Met Office Hadley Centre results strengthen the evidence that human activity is already contributing to decreases in sea-ice extent

Here is what latest research based on peer reviewed papers said[see reference below]

In the study noted below The authors did confirm that the Arctic
warmed during the 1970–2008 period by a factor of two to
three faster than the global mean in agreement with model
predictions but the reasons was not be entirely anthropogenic

Here is what they said: in the opening paragraph.

Understanding Arctic temperature variability is essential
for assessing possible future melting of the Greenland ice
sheet, Arctic sea ice and Arctic permafrost. Temperature trend
reversals in 1940 and 1970 separate two Arctic warming
periods (1910–1940 and 1970–2008) by a significant 1940–
1970 cooling period. Analyzing temperature records of the
Arctic meteorological stations we find that (a) the Arctic
amplification (ratio of the Arctic to global temperature trends)
is not a constant but varies in time on a multi-decadal time
scale, (b) the Arctic warming from 1910–1940 proceeded
at a significantly faster rate than the current 1970–2008
warming, and (c) the Arctic temperature changes are highly
correlated with the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation
(AMO) suggesting the Atlantic Ocean thermohaline
circulation is linked to the Arctic temperature variability on
a multi-decadal time scale.

http://www.lanl.gov/source/orgs/ees/ees14/pdfs/09Chlylek.pdf

manacker

MATT

Thanks for link to Chylek paper. As you say, it confirms that AMO cycles are much more important than “human activity” cited by the Met Office.

I am afraid you are never going to get any objective and unbiased data or forecasts from the Met Office until someone cleans up this totally corrupted operation.

For a description of the problem read this article by Christopher Booker of The Telegraph::
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6257987/What-makes-Met-Office-long-term-forecasts-so-wrong.html

To quote:

“Most people are aware that the UK Met Office has in recent years become something of a laughing stock. Its much-derided forecast that Britain would enjoy a "barbecue summer" this year was only the latest of a string of predictions that proved wildly off-target. Three years ago it announced that 2007 would be "the warmest year ever", just before global temperatures plunged by 0.7 degrees Celsius, more than the world's entire net warming in the 20th century. Last winter, it forecast, would be "milder and drier than average", just before we enjoyed one of our coldest and snowiest winters for years. And in 2009 it promised us one of the "five warmest years ever", complete with that "barbecue summer", when temperatures have been struggling to reach their average of the past three decades.

What should be rather better known, not least since it helps to explain these relentlessly optimistic forecasts, has been the leading part played by our Met Office in promoting the worldwide obsession with global warming, notably through its Hadley Centre for research into climate change. In 1988 the then-head of the Met Office, Dr (now Sir) John Houghton, was one of the two men chiefly responsible for setting up the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, founded on their belief that rising CO2 would inevitably lead to higher temperatures.

In 1990, thanks to lavish funding from Mrs Thatcher, Houghton set up the Hadley Centre, which has continued to play a central role in shaping the IPCC's increasingly alarmist reports ever since. Not least, it chooses many of the scientists who write those reports, most of whom are sure to be "on message". In conjunction with the Climate Research Unit run by Professor Phil Jones at the University of East Anglia, equally firmly on side, the Hadley Centre also controls the most influential of the world's four official sources of global temperature data.

Nothing more tellingly reflects the Met Office's partisanship, however, than the fact that its present chairman is Robert Napier, a green activist who previously ran WWF UK, one of the most vociferous of the climate change lobby groups. Mr Napier now helps run not only the Met Office (which has been part of the Ministry of Defence ever since its forecasts came "from the Air Ministry roof") but also an array of other bodies centrally involved in driving the political climate-change agenda.

He is, for instance, chairman of the Green Fiscal Commission, charged with "greening the UK tax system" by shifting 20 per cent of government revenues to green taxes by 2020. He is a director of the Climate Change Group, an international lobby group involving "a coalition of governments and the world's most influential businesses", "helping to set the targets, create the policies, build the confidence and generate the political willpower needed to make the changes the world requires". He is chairman of the Homes and Communities Agency, which seeks to buy up land for "eco-towns" and dictates the need of new housing to comply with strict "green standards".

Mr Napier is a director of the Carbon Disclosure Project, which claims to hold the largest database in the world on corporate carbon footprints, so that companies that fail to support the green agenda can be vilified for their part in destroying the planet. He is also
a director of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, a pressure group dedicated to using the world's religions to push the same agenda. (I am indebted to a paper on the buythetruth.wordpress.com website – "Eco-Imperialism: Every Environmentalist's Dream" – for pointing the way to all this.)

It might seem extraordinary that such a political activist should now be in charge of the government body responsible for providing our daily weather forecasts. But what makes it even more remarkable is that one reason why those short-term forecasts are often so comically wrong is that, as the Met Office likes to boast, they are produced with the aid of the same super-computer used to provide the IPCC with its predictions of what the world's climate will be like in 100 years' time.

The Met Office's computer is programmed to believe that the chief driver of climate change is the rising level of CO2 – hence its predilection for forecasting barbecue summers and warmest-ever years. But in recent years, as we all know, while CO2 levels continue to rise, the trend of global temperatures has failed to follow suit. This might suggest that the basic assumption on which the computer models are programmed cannot be entirely correct. Is it not perhaps time we pensioned off all those "activists", scrapped their expensive computers and went back to putting some proper "Met men" in charge of forecasting our weather?”

Max

Eamon

No Max, I refer to Loehle's paper as rubbish.

Hope that clears things up for you.

I do understand why you hold so fast to it Max - it's all you've got to stack up against an enormous amount of evidence showing that modern hemispheric temperature rises have outstripped the local MWP.

manacker

Eamon

Sorry. The enormous amount of evidence you cite are all a bunch of spaghetti copy hockey sticks (which I will call "rubbish", along with the original discredited hockey stick).

The real data out there, Eamon, are historical records and actual physical evidence as pointed out earlier. This is real stuff.

Loehle also gives a good summary of peer-reviewed data, but we have already covered that point.

The MWP was real, global and a bit warmer than today.

The LIA was real, global and cooler than today.

The Roman Optimum (when Hannibal crossed the Alps) was also warmer than today, while the ensuing Dark Ages were cooler than today.

These are all part of a natural multi-century oscillation, and obviously have nothing to do with human CO2 emissions.

To belie their existence is simply sticking your head in the sand.

Max

Eamon

Hi Max,

I looked that the paper you suggested: 'Validity of Climate Change Forecasting for Public Policy Decision Making' by Green, Armstrong and Soon.

Now I'm not a businessman or an economist - which is the field of the principal author, so some of the terminology is unclear to me. However, the conclusions are pretty explicit:

"Global mean temperatures were found to be remarkably stable over policy-relevant horizons. The benchmark forecast is that the global mean temperature for each year for the rest of this century will be within 0.5°C of the 2008 figure."

Unfortunately the workings out of this 0.5°C figure are not given, as far as I can see.

However, the conclusions go on:

"While the Hadley temperature data shown in Exhibit 2 shows an upwards drift over the last century or so, the longer series in Exhibit 1 shows that such trends can occur naturally over long periods before reversing. "

They fail to mention that the main climate forcing causing the changes seen in Exhibit 1 are cyclical changes to the parameters of the Earth's Orbit and Inclination. They have no bearing on the current situation, as the Earth is in a very stable orbital configuration at present.They are comparing apples and oranges. It's a bit like insurers in 1939 forecasting damage likely to London in the event of a war by only looking at previous wars, neglecting the signal sent by the Luftwaffe in Guernica. Also, seeing that the third author, Willie Soon, is an astrophysicist - it's a very odd omission.

The terminology is also a bit misleading - Exhibit 2 shows an upwards trend, one strongly correlated with greenhouse gasses.

I'll finish by saying that I am also wary of the fact that he seems to be operating his forecasting on a year-by-year, and in some cases decade-by-decade basis. Climate trends need 30-year spans to discriminate against the noise of natural variability - perhaps this paper would be better targeted at weather forecasting?

"Even if one puts these reservations aside, our analysis shows that errors from the benchmark forecasts would have been so small that they would not have been of concern to decision makers who relied on them."

Ah, but given how things have worked out should they have been of concern to the decision makers? I'd say a 0.8°C rise in global temperatures should be of concern.

manacker

Eamon

Back to your statement about 0.8°C warming over the next century being of concern to you, the attached curve shows the observed long-term Hadley temperature record, the underlying long-term linear warming trend of around 0.04°C per decade, a suggested sine curve following the observed cycles and some imagined future trend lines.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2461/3915641920_3d38c7ddd4_b.jpg

Here is my opinion on all this:

It is unlikely that the current 2001-2009 trend of 0.1°C cooling per decade will continue throughout the 21st century.

It is just as unlikely that the IPCC model projected range of 0.18°C to 0.4°C warming per decade will continue throughout the 21st century.

Most likely is a continuation of the observed cyclical warming/cooling trend with a continued underlying warming of 0.04°C per decade or around 0.4°C over the 20th century.

Even if this doubles, it will only be a warming of 0.8°C over the 21st century, which, in my opinion, is nothing to be concened about.

But I am still waiting for your answer to my earlier question on the “just right” temperature of our planet.

Max

MATT

Eamon
To my simple mind the purpose of the paper was to illustrate to decision makers, that given our past climate history, is a future climate prediction even possible and if so, whether a more accurate forecast is possible than the inherit pattern in the past figures [or the benchmark]

Their study showed that a prediction is possible and that the simple ’ no change’ benchmark forecasting method or validation test was suitable to analyze the past numbers and it predicted that the global mean temperature for each year for the rest of this century will be within 0.5C of the 2008 figure. They also found that any other current better method of forecasting would not be much more accurate. [Computers no more accurate?]

manacker

Eamon

I posted this earlier, but somehow it got lost so am rephrasing.

In your earlier post you ended with:

“I'd say a 0.8°C rise in global temperatures should be of concern.”

This was apparently based on a 2008 baseline value.

What would you consider to be the absolutely perfect “Goldilocks just right” globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature for our planet?

Would you like the value that was observed in 2008?

Or would you prefer the value in 1998, around 0.2°C higher than that of 2008?

Or a value 0.6°C higher than that of 1998 (if we have an 0.8°C rise in global temperature from now until year 2100)?

How have you established our planet’s absolutely perfect “Goldilocks just right” globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature?

Max

Eamon

Max,

I don't think there is a 'just right' temperature for the planet. However, I don't think that having the planet's climate changed rapidly because of man-made greenhouse gasses is desirable.

By the way, there really is only a cooling trend if you start your calculation from the abnormally high temperature el nino year of 1998, which as a natural variation doesn't count. The temperature trend is still up.

Eamon

Hi Max,

due the the amount of statements made in this response from you I'm going to address them inline.

"Sorry. The enormous amount of evidence you cite are all a bunch of spaghetti copy hockey sticks (which I will call "rubbish", along with the original discredited hockey stick)."

Really Max? Dozens of papers by qualified scientists trumped by your guy's rejigging of their work?

Not only those, but all the work on glaciers, boreholes, ice cores, sediments too?

"The real data out there, Eamon, are historical records and actual physical evidence as pointed out earlier. This is real stuff."

Tree-rings, sediments, borehole data, etc are also 'actual physical data. Historical data, however, usually has to be taken with a pinch of salt unless it's available in large quantities, like in the case of the LIA in Europe.

"The MWP was real, global and a bit warmer than today."

I don't think you'll get many scientists who will agree with that statement.

"The LIA was real, global and cooler than today."

Most scientists will agree that the LIA was real and cooler than today. They would disagree that it was global - there is no evidence of this.

"The Roman Optimum (when Hannibal crossed the Alps) was also warmer than today, while the ensuing Dark Ages were cooler than today."

Where is your evidence for this?

"These are all part of a natural multi-century oscillation, and obviously have nothing to do with human CO2 emissions."

Well, I'd say they're part of climatic variability. The absence of CO2 as a major forcing in those cases means nothing. consider this: houses burn down naturally - but that doesn't mean that arson doesn't also occur.

"To belie their existence is simply sticking your head in the sand."

And where did I explicitly do that? For the record I consider the LIA factual, but not global. I consider the MWP possible, but definitely not global, or as large in temperature as some people say. 'Roman Optimum' and Dark Age temperatures I don't know too much about - but being so far back in time it'd be hard to say much about them definitively.

Eamon

Eamon

manacker

Eamon

To my statement: "The MWP was real, global and a bit warmer than today."
You responded: “I don't think you'll get many scientists who will agree with that statement.”

Well, that’s nice, Eamon, but a rather unsubstantiated opinion on your part. There have been studies by scientists from all over the world that have come to that conclusion.

If you would like a link to the various studies cited, I can provide this. Many have been assembled by CO2 Science.

Max

PS I'm still waiting for your choice of the "just right Goldilocks" temperature for our planet. Is it the 1998 temperature, the 2008 temperature, or another one (please pick the "globally and annually average land and sea surface temperature" that you find to be "just right" in degrees C). Thanks for your answer.

MATT

Max/Eamon
Here are some least square trend analysis about when the latest global temperature anomalies started to decline.[ most in 2000/2001] Just for the record, the latest[For September] Ocean SST anomaly figures were just published and every ocean region except South Atlantic showed negative anomalies . So the oceans are cooling and the atmosphere will not be far behind .

CLIMATE CHANGE SATISTICS

AMO index started decline in 2003 based on LINEAR TREND analysis. Went negative in Jan 2009

PDO index started decline in 2001 based on least square slope analysis [-0.0487/year] .Went negative in Sept 2007

OTHER LEAST SQUARE SLOPE ANALYSIS [WOOD FOR TREES –INTERACTIVE GRAPHS]

OCEANS SST
GLOBAL OCEANS SST [HADSST2gl] started decline in 2000 at [-0.00204/year]

NORTHERN HEMISPHERE OCEANS SST [HADSST] started decline in 2002 at [-0.0233/year]

SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE OCEANS SST [HADSST] started decline in 2000 at [-0.00204/year]

GLOBAL TEMPERTAURE ANOMALIES

COMPOSITE OF RSS, UAH, HADCRUT, GISS started decline in 2001 at [-0.0105 C /year]

UAH started decline in 2001 at [-0.0137C/ year]

RSS started decline in 2001 at [-0.01588/year]

GISS started decline in 2001 at [- 0.00134/year]

HAD CRUT3gl started decline in 2001 at [-0.0102/year]

manacker

Link 1
http://www.springerlink.com/content/gh98230822m7g01l/

Link 2
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_easternchina.php

manacker

Link 3
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_pearlriver.php

Link 4
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V9/N13/C3.php

manacker

Link 5
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_yakushima.php

Link 6
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/274/5292/1503

manacker

Link 7
http://earth.usc.edu/~stott/stott%20papers/Newton%20et%20al.,%202006.pdf

Link 8
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2001GL014580.shtml

manacker

Link 9
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_nzcave.php

Link 10
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l3_barrowstrait.php

manacker

Link 11
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_pigmybasin.php

Link 12
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_perushelf.php

manacker

Eamon

To my statement: "The MWP was real, global and a bit warmer than today."
You responded: “I don't think you'll get many scientists who will agree with that statement.”

Here are links to studies made by 83 different scientists from 21 different locations all over the world, concluding that the MWP was warmer than today. Am sending the links separately, since the spam filter gets overloaded.
.
China
De'Er Zhang
Henan Province
0.9-1.0°C warmer than present
Link 1

Eastern China
Ge, Q., Zheng, J., Fang, X., Man, Z., Zhang, X., Zhang, P. and Wang, W.-C.
0.4°C higher than today's peak warmth
Link 2

Pearl River Delta, S. China
Honghan, Z. and Baolin, H.
1-2°C higher than that at present time
Link 3

Japan
Adhikari, D.P. and Kumon, F.
warmer than any other period during the last 1300 years
Link 4

Yakushima Island, S. Japan
Kitagawa, H. and Matsumoto, E.
about 1°C above that of the Current Warm Period
Link 5

Sargasso Sea
Keigwin, L.
~1°C warmer than today
Link 6

Tropical Ocean (Indian Ocean, South China Sea, Caribbean)
Alicia Newton, Robert Thunell, and Lowell Stott
0.4°C warmer than today
Link 7

New Zealand
Cook, E. R., J. G. Palmer, and R. D. D'Arrigo
(MWP confirmed but no temperature difference cited)
Link 8

New Zealand
Wilson, A.T., Hendy, C.H. and Reynolds, C.P
0.75°C warmer than the Current Warm Period
Link 9

Barrow Strait, Canada
Vare, L.L., Masse, G., Gregory, T.R., Smart, C.W. and Belt, S.T
(MWP confirmed but no temperature difference cited)
Link 10

Northern Gulf of Mexico (Pigmy Basin)
Richey, J.N., Poore, R.Z., Flower, B.P. and Quinn, T.M
about 1.5°C warmer than present-day temperatures.
Link 11

Coastal Peru
Rein B., Lückge, A., Reinhardt, L., Sirocko, F., Wolf, A. and Dullo, W.-C
Medieval Warm Period for this region was about 1.2°C above that of the Current Warm Period
Link 12

Venezuela coast
Goni, M.A., Woodworth, M.P., Aceves, H.L., Thunell, R.C., Tappa, E., Black, D., Muller-Karger, F., Astor, Y. and Varela, R.
approximately 0.35°C warmer than peak Current Warm Period temperatures, and fully 0.95°C warmer than the mean temperature of the last few years of the 20th century
Link 13

Lake Erie, Ohio, USA
Patterson, W.P
both summer maximum and mean annual temperatures in the Great Lakes region were found to be higher than those of the 20th century; mean annual temperatures were 0.2°C higher
Link 14

Chesapeake Bay, USA
Cronin, T.M., Dwyer, G.S., Kamiya, T., Schwede, S. and Willard, D.A.
mean 20th-century temperatures were 0.15°C cooler than mean temperatures during the first stage of the Medieval Warm Period
Link 15

Greenland Summit
Johnsen, S.J., Dahl-Jensen, D., Gundestrup, N., Steffensen, J.P., Clausen, H.B., Miller, H., Masson-Delmotte, V., Sveinbjörnsdottir, A.E. and White, J.
temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period (~AD 800-1100) were about 1°C warmer than those of the Current Warm Period.
Link 16

Sweden (Central Scandinavian Mountains)
Linderholm, H.W. and Gunnarson, B.E.
Between AD 900 and 1000, summer temperature anomalies were as much as 1.5°C warmer than the 1961-1990 base period
Link 17

Finnish Lapland
Weckstrom, J., Korhola, A., Erasto, P. and Holmstrom, L.
0.15°C warmer than the peak warmth of the Current Warm Period
Link 18

Ural Mountains, Russia
Mazepa, V.S.
Medieval Warm Period lasted from approximately AD 700 to 1300 and that significant portions of it were as much as 0.56°C warmer than the Current Warm Period.
Link 19

Altai Mountains, S. Siberia, Russia
Kalugin, I., Daryin, A., Smolyaninova, L., Andreev, A., Diekmann, B. and Khlystov, O.
mean peak temperature of the latter part of the Medieval Warm Period was about 0.5°C higher than the mean peak temperature of the Current Warm Period.
Link 20

NW Spain
Martinez-Cortizas, A., Pontevedra-Pombal, X., Garcia-Rodeja, E., Novoa-Muñoz, J.C. and Shotyk, W.
mean annual temperature during this time was as much as 3.4°C warmer than that of the 1968-98 period.
Link 21

Antarctica (Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica)
Hemer, M.A. and Harris, P.T
The MWP at ca. 750 14C yr BP was likely warmer than at any time during the CWP.
Link 22

So these studies all show

(a) that the MWP was real
(b) that the MWP was global
(c) that the MWP was a bit warmer than today
(d) that your statement was false: “I don't think you'll get many scientists who will agree with the statement, the MWP was real, global and a bit warmer than today” (83 scientists in this somewhat restricted field are certainly “many”)

Unfounded general statements often get you into trouble, Eamon. It’s best to avoid them.

Max

manacker

Link 21
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_nwspain.php

Link 22
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l2_ameryshelf.php

manacker

Link 19
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_polarurals.php

Link 20
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_altaimountains.php

manacker

Link17
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_jamtland.php

Link 18
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_tsuolbmajavri.php

manacker

Link 15
(http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_chesapeake.php)

Link 16
(http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_gripsummit.php)

MATT

MAX
The only way one can demonstrate the bizarre or strange nature of the latest Met Office climate forecast of 4C during the next 50 years or by 2060 [an average rate 0 .08 C/year is with these comparisons.

Using least square trend line slopes and HADCRUT 3 temperature data: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/last:120/plot/hadcrut3gl/last:120/trend

OBSERVED RATE OF CLIMATE CHANGE 1850- 2008 was 0.004 C/year [over158 years]
OBSERVED RATE OF CLIMATE CHANGE 1908-2008 was O.0075C/year [over 100 years

OBSERVED RATE OF CLIMATE CHANGE 1999-2009 was 0.0052C/year [over last 10 years]

The latest Met Office projected rate of temperature rise is
20 times faster than the trend of the last 158 years
10 times faster than the trend of the last 100 years
15 times faster than the trend of the last 10 years

In my judgment how these type of implausible forecasts get accepted by the media without major critical comment and independent verification is difficult to comprehend [the Telegraph and the Spectator excluded]

manacker

MATT

Your analysis points out very clearly how totally absurd the Met Office (and ICC) forecasts really are.

Add to this the fact that the Met Office now concedes that "natural variability" (a.k.a. "natural climate forcing factors") have more than offset the record increase in atmospheric CO2 to result in net cooling of around 0.1C, when the Met Office (and IPCC) forecast was a net warming of 0.2C over this period of barely one decade.

These "natural forcing factors" had to be three times as powerful as the radiative forcing of CO2 over this period, so why is it that these powerful forces (operating in the other direction) were not the key drivers of climate in the 20th century as well (instead of CO2)?

A difficult question for Met Office to answer, now that they have let "natural variability" out of Pandora's Box.

More and more people are beginning to see through all these repeated false Met Office predictions of warming, record hot summers, all-time warmest years, etc. which never come true.

If there are 5 or 6 more years of cooling as we have had most recently, I predict that the Met Office will be ridiculed out of the "climate change" business and forced to go back to making short term weather reports.

Will the true "AGW-believers", such as Eamon, begin to doubt the validity of the AGW premise if this happens? Possibly, but it will be a slow and painful process.

Max

manacker

Eamon

Where are you?

After you made the claim that very few scientists would support the premise of a global MWP a bit warmer than today, I provided the evidence that over 80 scientists in this field from all over the world have confirmed that your statement is wrong.

I also gave you the links to their many studies, covering essentially the whole globe.

Why are you now so silent?

Is it so painful to admit that you were wrong?

C'mon. Be a man.

Cheer up. Maybe next time you'll do better.

Max

Eamon

Max,

you wrote:

"PS I'm still waiting for your choice of the "just right Goldilocks" temperature for our planet. Is it the 1998 temperature, the 2008 temperature, or another one (please pick the "globally and annually average land and sea surface temperature" that you find to be "just right" in degrees C). Thanks for your answer."

I wrote:

"I don't think there is a 'just right' temperature for the planet. However, I don't think that having the planet's climate changed rapidly because of man-made greenhouse gasses is desirable."

That's all I have to say on the subject. If you want to expound on your 'just right' temperature go ahead.

manacker

Eamon

You wrote:

"I don't think there is a 'just right' temperature for the planet.”

In other words, you were unable to decide on whether our current temperature is warmer or cooler than the “Goldilocks just right” optimum temperature.

Then you opined:

"I don't think that having the planet's climate changed rapidly because of man-made greenhouse gasses is desirable" (even though, according to your definition we might be moving from a “less desirable” to a “more desirable” state).

So it is apparently the “rate of change” that bothers you, rather than the absolute global temperature. This is interesting.

Can you spell out what you mean by "having the planet's climate changed rapidly”?

Hadley tells us it has warmed by a rate of around 0.014°C per year or a total of 0.36°C from 1976 to 2000 (the IPCC “poster period”) at least partly because of man-made greenhouse gases. Would you that it "changed rapidly" over this period?

Hadley also tells us it has cooled by a rate of around 0.011°C per year or a total of 0.10°C from 2001 to today, because of “natural variability”, which more than offset record increases in man-made greenhouse gases. Would you say that it “changed rapidly” over this period?

Hadley tells us it has warmed by a rate of around 0.015°C per year or a total of 0.53°C from 1910 to 1944; this occurred mostly because of “natural factors” (as this was prior to significant man-made greenhouse gases). Would you that it "changed rapidly" over this period?

Finally, Hadley tells us it has warmed by a rate of 0.004°C per year or 0.65°C over the entire 150+ year record since 1850. Would you that it "changed rapidly" over this period?

In between the warming cycles there were cooling cycles; the overall cycle has repeated itself around every 60 years since the modern record started, with no apparent correlation with atmospheric man-made greenhouse gases.

Coming back to an earlier post of MATT, I’d say that the long-term trend (0.004°C per year), is likely to continue, with or without “man-made greenhouse gases”.

The current cooling trend (-0.011°C per year) is unlikely to continue over several decades.

The recent warming trend (+0.014°C per year) is also unlikely to return over the next several decades.

The even higher warming rates predicted by IPCC and the Met Office
of 4°C over the next 50 years (an average rate +0.08°C/year) is not only implausible, as MATT has pointed out, it is downright ridiculous.

But, then, the Met Office has become well known for its ridiculous predictions – why should this one be any different?

So which of the rates of change would fit your definition of "having the planet's climate changed rapidly”:

(a) The 1976-2000 warming?
(b) The 2001-2008 cooling?
(c) The 1910-1944 warming (most rapid)?
(d) The 1850-2008 warming (underlying long-term trend)?

Thanks for clarifying your statement.

Max

Eamon

Max,

I do have a life of my own, so sadly you will find that I will not be able to respond as promptly as you would wish.

Now you've posted 20-odd links to MWP papers, so, as is my wont, I'm going to have to go though them all.

Expect something this week.

Eamon

"Will the true "AGW-believers", such as Eamon, begin to doubt the validity of the AGW premise if this happens? Possibly, but it will be a slow and painful process."

Max, as a Physicist I would doubt the validity of AGW if cooling eliminated global warming. However, that is not the case. Please see: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/embarrassing-questions/

He covers it well.

Eamon

Max,

I'm splitting this reply because of the amount of quotations needed in it.

You wrote:

""I don't think there is a 'just right' temperature for the planet.”

In other words, you were unable to decide on whether our current temperature is warmer or cooler than the “Goldilocks just right” optimum temperature."

No Max, stop putting words into my mouth. If you feel there is a 'just right' temperature for the planet (or should we say - the part of the planet where you live) then tell us.

Eamon

Continuing my response Max.

Max,

You wrote:

"Then you opined:

"I don't think that having the planet's climate changed rapidly because of man-made greenhouse gasses is desirable"

(even though, according to your definition we might be moving from a “less desirable” to a “more desirable” state)."

Putting words into my mouth again Max.

"So it is apparently the “rate of change” that bothers you, rather than the absolute global temperature. This is interesting."

Max, if you knew anything about science you'd know that rates of change can make a big difference: Go from 60mph to 0 in 10 seconds - you're ok - do the same in 0.1 of a second and you're in for a world of pain.

Can you spell out what you mean by "having the planet's climate changed rapidly”?

I'm talking about an increase of 0.8 degrees C since 1850, half of that occurring in the last 30 years. The natural rate of temperature change in the glacial cycles is 1 degree in 10,000 years! Even during sharp rises and falls the rate of change gets to around 1 degree in 1000 years.

So our current rate of around 1 degree per century is going to have a big impact on the environment and us.

manacker

Eamon

Thanks for response.

You wrote:

“Max, as a Physicist I would doubt the validity of AGW if cooling eliminated global warming. However, that is not the case.”

Eamon, I do not “doubt the validity of AGW” (if by “AGW” you mean the premise (a) that CO2 is a GHG, (b) that GHGs can contribute to warming, (c) that humans emit CO2 and (d) that human CO2 may theoretically contribute to GH warming). The GH theory is plausible (even if difficult to “prove” with empirical data) and the human CO2 contribution is significant although it is quite small compared with the whole carbon cycle.

As a rational skeptic, I do “doubt the validity” of the premise that AGW is a potentially serious threat, caused principally by human CO2 emissions, as there are no empirical data that support this premise.

I am highly skeptical of Met Office predictions of staggering warming (as MATT outlined), because they have been so wrong so many times with the same old “wolf cries” of imminent warming. The same goes for IPCC projections that go out 100 (and more) years into the future (when they cannot even get the current decade right).

If it does, indeed, continue to cool over the next decades despite continuing record increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, then the CO2 / temperature correlation will have been broken, and it will have become apparent that other factors are more important in driving our planet’s climate than human CO2. AGW may still be a small piece of the total (maybe as much as 20%), but so small that it is insignificant, or, at least, nothing to worry about.

You stated that you would “doubt the validity of AGW if cooling eliminated global warming”, adding “however, that is not the case”.

You may wish to modify this by adding “as yet” to the end of your sentence. Right?

Max

manacker

Eamon

You wrote:

“I'm talking about an increase of 0.8 degrees C since 1850, half of that occurring in the last 30 years.”

Not to split hairs here, Eamon, but your figures are wrong.

The HadCRUT record confirms that the linear rate of increase since 1850 has been around 0.041°C per decade, or a total linear warming of around 0.65°C (not 0.8°C).

This came in two warming periods:

1910-1944. Linear warming rate of 0.15°C per decade, total linear warming 0.53°C

1976-2000. Linear warming rate of 0.14°C per decade, total linear warming 0.38°C

Prior to 1910, between 1945 and 1975 and since 2001 we had cooling periods.

So one could argue that

0.53/0.65 = 82% of the 20th century warming occurred in the 35 years BEFORE 1945 and

0.38/0.65 = 58% occurred in the 25 years after 1976

(with intermediate cooling cycles accounting for the balance).

The dilemma for believers in the premise that AGW is a serious threat:

Well over half of the warming occurred before there were any significant increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration, with somewhat under half occurring as CO2 increased rapidly.

In addition, there is the worrisome mid-century cooling, just in the post WWII boom years, when CO2 emissions were ramping up, which was originally attributed to “human aerosols”, but has since been attributed to natural changes in clouds and other natural variability factors.

And finally, there is the current cooling despite all-time record increases in CO2, which is also being attributed to natural factors.

You cap your post off with:

“So our current rate of around 1 degree per century is going to have a big impact on the environment and us.”

Eamon, our “current rate” is COOLING at “around 1°C per century”, NOT warming.

I agree that if this cooling continues, it will "have a big impact on the environment and us" (but not the one you foresee or IPCC predicts).

As a rational skeptic of the AGW premise (i.e. that AGW is a potentially serious threat), I have a hard time reconciling so many periods of poor CO2 / temperature correlation. It appears to me that CO2 may play a minor role, but there is something much more important which is causing these changes.

Max

manacker

Eamon

This is part 3 of my response.

You say that even sharp natural rises and falls in climate occur very slowly, i.e. 1°C change over 1,000 years.

How about the (mostly) natural increase of 0.53°C over the 35-year period 1910-1944?

Or the 0.65°C warming we have seen since 1850?

Or the rapid cooling we saw at the onset and during periods of the LIA?

Eamon, 1°C maximum change in 1,000 years (prior to human CO2) is a myth, and you know it. Don't try to sell me this story.

Max

Eamon

Max, despite being time-limited at the moment, I would appreciate if you could identify the source of your claim:

"In addition, there is the worrisome mid-century cooling, just in the post WWII boom years, when CO2 emissions were ramping up, which was originally attributed to �ghuman aerosols�h, but has since been attributed to natural changes in clouds and other natural variability factors."

manacker

Eamon

You ask about the validity of the suggested anthropogenic cause (aerosols) for the mid-century cooling half-cycle.

Peter Taylor, in his recent book, “Chill – A reassessment of global warming theory”, covers this cooling half-cycle, pointing out that the global cooling resulted from a decrease in solar radiation at the Earth’s surface. This dimming did not continue beyond the 1980s, when reduced cloudiness caused the planet to warm again, Taylor cites a study by Wild et el.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308/5723/847

The study concludes:

“Variations in solar radiation incident at Earth's surface profoundly affect the human and terrestrial environment. A decline in solar radiation at land surfaces has become apparent in many observational records up to 1990, a phenomenon known as global dimming. Newly available surface observations from 1990 to the present, primarily from the Northern Hemisphere, show that the dimming did not persist into the 1990s. Instead, a widespread brightening has been observed since the late 1980s. This reversal is reconcilable with changes in cloudiness and atmospheric transmission and may substantially affect surface climate, the hydrological cycle, glaciers, and ecosystems.”

As Taylor points out, the rationalization that this global dimming was caused by an increase in human aerosols (primarily sulfur dioxide from fossil fuel combustion) is less that plausible for several reasons:

1. First and foremost, the suggested aerosol explanation for the mid-century temperature drop is based on theory and model outputs alone. There is no observational physical evidence for strong anthropogenic aerosol cooling on a global basis during this period. The empirical data are just not there.
2. Global anthropogenic sulfur emissions have increased fairly steadily since 1950 (when they were around 30 million tons S/year); they decreased in western Europe and North America in the late 1980s, but increased by an even greater amount in Asia (most recently as a result of rapid growth rates in China). In 1980, these emissions totaled around 65 million tons S; in 2006 they were around 80 million tons S, so there was no net reduction that could have caused cooling to end and warming to resume.
3. The regional geographical pattern of SO2 emissions does not correlate with the global pattern of mid-century cooling; SO2 (contrary to CO2) has a very short residence time in the atmosphere, being converted rapidly into sulfate ions, which condense out into clouds. The regions that produce aerosols have shown warming in recent years, and those that cooled from 1945-1975 were not necessarily those regions where aerosols were supposed to have any discernable effect. In other words, the actual observations do not support this postulated cause-effect relationship for the mid-century cooling. Areas that were not affected by aerosols show the 1945-1975 cooling trend. This is evident in Southern Hemisphere temperature records for the last century. The question must be answered: how did “increased pollution in the Northern Hemisphere” affect temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere?
4. During the period from the 1950s to around 1980, there was negligible increase in temperatures in China. There was also negligible economic growth. Starting in the 1990s, there has been explosive economic growth in China with tremendous increases not only in CO2 but also in sulfur aerosol emissions. If the mid-century “global dimming” hypothesis were valid, these emissions should presumably cause local cooling today as they are supposed to have done from 1945 to 1975, yet there was a sharp increase in temperatures in China.
5. Global natural sulfur emissions are currently around the same order of magnitude as anthropogenic emissions (estimated between 40 and 140 million tons S/year, with an average of 75 million tons/year); these come primarily from the oceans (DMS released by phytoplankton, which is then quickly oxidized to SO2 and SO4-2); these have remained roughly constant since 1950.

As Peter Taylor points out, it is far more likely that the observed mid-century increase in cloudiness was due to natural variability (as was the prior early 20th century warming half-cycle and is the current cooling period), rather than the computer generated rationalization that it was caused by anthropogenic aerosols. The observed correlation between low cloud cover and cosmic ray flux (Svensmark) gives further credence to a natural cause, as Taylor points out.)

A final flaw in the anthropogenic aerosol rationalization, as Hans Erren has pointed out citing the USA example, is that if human aerosols had really caused the mid-century cooling and these had really been reduced, then simply reducing them could have been the principal cause for the late 20th century warming, rather than increased human CO2.
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/usso2vst.gif

Have you read Peter Taylor’s book yet? It is well worth reading.

Max

manacker

Eamon

More on 1945-1975 global dimming:

For empirical evidence that human aerosols have not diminished since 1973, as assumed by the IPCC models, see:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/uom-bsr031109.php

For a NASA report, which concludes that PDO cycles can have an effect on global climate, see:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
“These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”

For multi-decadal cycles of PDO (including the cold cycle from 1946-1977), see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation

Just more data to show that the IPCC suggestion of a human induced mid-century (aerosols) global cooling is on weak scientific footing and can most likely be ignored (as Peter Taylor has concluded).

The assumptions made by IPCC on aerosols are flawed and there are just too many other more credible explanations for the mid-century cooling.

Max

manacker

Eamon

More on Prof. Easterbrook study on PDO link to warming/cooling cycles:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10783

The study shows a close correlation between the PDO warm and cold cycles and cycles in global temperature, going back to 1900. The early 20th century warming half-cycle, the mid-century cooling half-cycle (which we have been discussing) and the late 20th century warming cycle all followed the PDO cycles much more closely than any correlation with atmospheric CO2 or with human aerosol emissions.

As the study shows:

“NASA’s imagery showing that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has shifted to its cool phase is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007). The PDO typically lasts 25-30 years and assures North America of cool, wetter climates during its cool phases and warmer, drier climates during its warm phases. The establishment of the cool PDO, together with similar cooling of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), virtually assures several decades of global cooling and the end of the past 30-year warm phase. It also means that the IPCC predictions of catastrophic global warming this century were highly inaccurate.
The switch of PDO cool mode to warm mode in 1977 initiated several decades of global warming. The PDO has now switched from its warm mode (where it had been since 1977) into its cool mode.”

Max

Eamon

Max,

just wanted to let you know that my responses are going to be at least another week out. Work is busy and baby is teething, so free time is non-existent.

George Crisp

I suspect this is a ploy by Spectator and Ian Plimer to add credibility to his position, which is completely at odds with mainstream science, and justify his appearance in the UK. Reading the email correspondence and the posts on Realclimate.org. there is little doubt about the motives and games played in this little charade.

I saw Ian Plimer "debate" in Perth a couple of months ago. He is clearly a prehistoric geologist well before his time, in which he said precisely nothing relevent to the current climate debate.

I very much doubt that Plimer would debate any bonafide climate scientist.

manacker

George Crisp

You wrote: “I suspect this is a ploy by Spectator and Ian Plimer to add credibility to his position, which is completely at odds with mainstream science, and justify his appearance in the UK. Reading the email correspondence and the posts on Realclimate.org. there is little doubt about the motives and games played in this little charade.”

I would suggest that RealClimate may not be the best site to get unbiased info relating to Plimer or the ongoing debate surrounding global warming.

To your next statement: “I saw Ian Plimer "debate" in Perth a couple of months ago. He is clearly a prehistoric geologist well before his time, in which he said precisely nothing relevent to the current climate debate.”

I did not see this debate, but have read his book. Despite the fact that there are a few notable errors, the general message may not agree with the “mainstream consensus” but is very relevant to the current climate debate.

His main points:

Climate has always changed.

The late 20th century warming was no exception to this rule and nothing unusual.

The Roman Optimum and Medieval Warm Period are two most recent examples of prolonged warmth greater than that of the 20th century; these were times of prosperity.

The Dark Ages Cold Period and Little Ice Age are examples of prolonged periods colder than today; these were not happy times for human society.

All of these were caused by natural factors and not by CO2.

On a shorter-term basis, we have seen a cyclical warming/cooling trend with the most recent warming half-cycle in the late 20th century, followed by what appears to be the start of a longer-term cooling cycle.

These cycles also do not correlate with atmospheric CO2.

The warming in the early 20th century, prior to major human CO2 emissions, was greater than that of the late 20th century.

There are several natural factors, which could have played a much larger role than human CO2 emissions to the latest warming.

Paleo-climate data show that warming preceded increased CO2 levels by several hundred years, demonstrating that increased CO2 was not the cause for the warming but rather the effect.

He has made several other claims, but these are the most relevant ones regarding the “science” behind global warming, as far as I could judge.

You added: “I very much doubt that Plimer would debate any bonafide climate scientist.”

Can’t comment on that. The proposed debate was not with a “bonafide climate scientist”, but with George Monbiot, and that got blown off.

It is too bad that the debate was cancelled. It would have been interesting to watch two very outspoken defenders of opposite views in a debate surrounding the AGW premise. Perhaps there will be another chance for a debate.

Max

Blimey

Aids denial and now climate change denial! I can see a pattern forming here.

As for Mr Monbiot I've read both his articles and yours, and that horrible ecuse for a blog offered by Mr Liddle, and Mr Monbiot seems to have set out a clear and fair set of terms for a debate. If the questions can be answered by Mr Plimer then the debate could be back on. Maybe you will have more success than Mr Monbiot did with your Mr Plimer. After all, all Mr Monbiot seems to want is a clear set of answers to 11 reasonable looking questions. Can that really be too much to ask?

Hector G

Have a look at Monbiot's emails with the

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/09/14/correspondence-with-the-spectator/

Amberjack

Amen to all those who've pointed out the reasonableness of Monbiot's position and the untenability of the Spectator's.

As for Monbiot debating with Peter Taylor, I'm not sure that would be any more productive. Taylor is apparently no more a climatologist than either Monbiot or Plimer (though as a former policy adviser he is undoubtedly familiar with the issues), and he does himself no favours by having his book published by Clairview Press (tagline: "Books to challenge your perception of reality"), which itself is an offshoot of Temple Lodge Publishing ("Our editorial brief is to publish books that further spiritual science, or anthroposophy, as founded by the Austrian thinker Rudolf Steiner..."). Clairview's other titles include such gems as "Psychic Warrior", "Seven Steps to Eternity" and "Did Jesus Come to Britain?". I've not read the book or heard of Peter Taylor, but I can't help feeling that if the ideas therein had any scientific merit, it would have been taken up by a more mainstream publisher - who are, after all, in business to a) sell books and b) maintain their reputations.

Or maybe the skeptics are right and there really is a global conspiracy to suppress the truth... ;-)

Earl Bramley-Howard

Well I've read this debate now & it seems to me there is a lot of misrepresentation of facts going on here & NOT from Monbiot I hasten to add.
Monbiot asked for some simple answers to certain questionable 'facts' and statements made by Plimer, as a pre-condition to debating any further & yet clearly if those questions had been answered 'honestly' then the rest of the twaddle Plimer touts as 'facts' would have been exposed for what it is.
I'm quite shocked that the debate's 'moderator' (Spectator) should take sides like this & let Plimer squirm out of this debate while 'blaming' Monbiot. I had hoped for better (and an interesting 'debate'). I also thought debate moderators were supposed to be unbiased? Silly me.
But what is MOST 'telling' in all this, is that Plimer has clearly not GOT any answers to Monbiot's questions... and clearly if they had been forthcoming then the 'debate' would have been over before it started... oh well seems it is anyway.
This is the problem with Climate Change 'deniers'... all too often THEY are the ones who are refusing to look at the evidence & peer-reviewed 'facts'. It reminds me of 60 a-day smokers who 'believed' those 'doctors' who used to claim smoking was 'good' for you!
There is obviously yet be MORE to be discovered about weather patterns & global climatology as it is a very very very complex science.
But to deny the existing peer-reviewed science, is almost as ridiculous as Gordon Brown ignoring the scientific 'evidence' about drugs.
Clearly when someone's dogmatic views are challenged by clear 'evidence' based science... then the science is either ignored or distorted.

Andrew Trigg

It's dishonest to claim Monbiot scuttled the debate. The Spectator, Monbiot and Pilmer all agreed that Pilmer would provide written answers to some simple factual questions about his claims as a precondition to the debate with Monbiot. Pilmer failed to do so. Pilmer therefore deserves the empty chair. Don't scapegoat Monbiot for your so-called expert's inability to provide any facts to back up his claims!

Adrian

Monbiot wanted a fair debate. Plimer denied him one and so did the Spectator. The empty chair is for Plimer. The Spectator should be ashamed of itself.

btw. The 700 US senate list isn't credible, it is a drop in the ocean and almost all these Scientist aren't climate scientists. See http://www.centerforinquiry.net/newsroom/ranking_members_senate_minority_report_on_global_warming_not_credible_says_/

manacker

Adrian

You state: “The 700 US senate list isn't credible.”

The list of 700 may include individuals who are more qualified to discuss the economic and political questions surrounding the ongoing AGW debate than the open scientific issues, but there are around 220 qualified scientists and meteorologists who have gone on record that they do not support the premise that AGW is a serious threat.

I can provide you a list of these individuals, if you are interested.

If this is “a drop in the ocean” (as you put it) can you provide a list of at least three times this many (i.e. 660 qualified individuals) who have gone on record that they support the premise that AGW is a serious threat?

I believe the record shows that there is no consensus among the scientists that AGW is a serious threat.

Max

manacker

Amberjack

I believe the key words in your post were:

"I've not read the book or heard of Peter Taylor"

Might be a good idea to read the book and check out who Peter Taylor is before you come up with a critique, based on the irrelevant fact of where it was published.

Max

disappointed

I've bought the spectator a few times when it has had something interesting on the cover.

Now I know I will not buy it again. A paper who's editor engages in this level of spin cannot be trusted. The email log shows that you had an agreement and it was Pilmer, not Monbiot who broke it.