Dazed and confused

se1man

“last chance to save the planet” and the most “important gathering of world leaders since world war two.”

Bollocks.

But an "Institute For Climate Change". Now that sounds like a good idea; better than all these quangos that are Against it.

Maggie

Lord Stern is very keen on "international trading and buying of credits" in carbon offsets. I think he's mostly influenced by a need to protect his investments.

Jim Ryan

I abhor the 'save the planet' tag; the planet doesn't need saving, it will survive regardless. Humour aside Rod, your attack and preemptive conclusion regarding the CRU scientists is pretty dispicable and stinks of trial by media. Hardly the language of a measured skeptic. And who do you turn to for sage counsel on the climate issue, that well known climate scientist David Davies. Muddled and confused indeed. Have you read and digested the links to scientists I've sent you. I await your counter-argument to the science that has been presented to you. In the meantime you can find a real non-CRU climate scientist response to a genuine skeptical inquiry regarding climate science in general and CRU in particular. I can see the howls of mock outrage as the content, once again, goes way over the head of most on this blog.
Incidentally said climate scientist would be only too happy to receive a detailed outline of your 'measured skepticism' approach to AGW.
-------------------------------
I strive to adhere to purely scientific principles in my professional work (albeit not in climate science). I have long suspected that the lack of transparency in sharing data, code, and methodology among certain climate scientists indicated a lack of certainty in the integrity and resilience of their work. Reading these emails (especially those referring to the dodging of FOI requests and deleting emails) turns the dial up on these suspicions.

Two questions for Gavin (or other climate scientists):

1. Let’s assume for a moment that the work of those scientists implicated in these emails is ultimately discredited. If we assume by default that other publications based heavily on that work must also be set aside, what impact does that have on our certainty of climate change as we understand it now?

[Response: Very little. Warming is unequivocal and seen in dozens of data sets - the vast majority of which are open access and which curiously the 'skeptics' exhibit no interest. Paleo-reconstructions are made by groups all around the world, and are again based on publicly accessible data, and that all show very similar things. Their role in the detection and attribution of human caused climate change is minimal in any case. The important point is the case for AGW is based on multiple lines of evidence, none of which are exclusively the work of anyone at CRU. That isn't to say that they haven't made great contributions - they have. But like everything that is robust, those conclusions have been evaluated and validated in many other research centers. - gavin]

2. Wouldn’t this be a good time for folks in the climate science arena to publicly and openly commit to increased transparency in the scientific process? Why not give honest “skeptics” a chance to preview code, data and methodology prior to publication? Wouldn’t that just make the final result more robust, reliable, and durable?

[Response: The clamour for 'more data' is insatiable and will not stop however open and transparent we are (and we actually are very open and transparent). It's just too powerful a political club. Nonetheless we should always strive to be as open as is possible. Should the National Met services allow CRU to release their data? sure. Should countries share satellite and observational feeds in real time? sure. Write to your representatives to push for it. But don't blame the scientists who are caught in the middle. Not sure about pre-publication vetting of scientific results though. The few honest skeptic there are might have their hands full! Note too that the issue of replication is not one of arithmetic checking - some errors might exist there, but true replication of results comes about when people support the conclusion through independent means - and that takes more time and a more constructive attitude. - gavin]

Jeremy

'...Lord Stern has said that Copenhagen is the “last chance to save the planet”...'

Copenhagen? Ridiculous. Everybody knows that East Grinstead was the last chance to save the planet.

'...and the most “important gathering of world leaders since world war two.”...'

...since half past two, more like...

rod liddle

Gavin? Who he? Is that Gavin from Gavin and Stacey?

Sorry Jim. This despicable attack, as you put it, consisted solely of the word "uh". Do I think the investigation will be entirely fair and scrupulous? No, probably not. I'm sceptical about that, tell you the truth. We'll wait and see.

I've said I'll come back on the science, and I will, when I have the requisite time to get the stuff together. Still a long way from convinced regarding your response on antarctic ice sheets. Your answer did not compute.

Rhoda Klapp

Jim, Gavin is one of the crew. You know that, of course. His lot have been protecting the data, and continue to do so. They still do not produce data, code and methods to go along with their papers, pal-reviewed though they are, in sympathetic journals which bend their own rules to publish them. Gavin et all cound release all the data anytime they like. They do themselves no favours by making up different excuses for hiding the data (IPR, NDAs, we don't give it to non-scientists, we don't have it any more), and then in response to repeated requests for it complain of nagging. You should be well aware of the history, and to claim that all is OK now is disingenuous.

You continue to ignore any question based on climate sensitivity and radiation budget, although these are vital to link any warming to CO2.

Polar Seacole Bear

Not much to say really. Good opportunity though to combine polar bear and seacole.

EyeSee

Shock horror, Rod Liddle isn't right on everything! Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. Am I to guess that you are an American? It doesn't matter that much, but you seem to care about AGW not being trashed a little too much. As for mindsets; your accusation that Rod is abusing his position in the media doesn't stand up. This is a blog. You have replied to it, so have I. Rod hasn't used a media that is uncriticised. It is criticised, in real time.

AGW. So absolutely certain about the situation in 100 years, but no idea what that same system (the weather) will be doing on Saturday). The Earth has ben through cycles of temperature variation in the past, what caused them? Until you know, definitely then the science most certainly isn't settled. Because something that has caused the event you predict, with certitude, in previous eras evades you. But hey, it's not about proof, religion, is it? It's about faith.

RichieSeacoleP

For a detailed and cogent analysis of the issues flowing from the CRU leak and its implications for AGW alarmism, read Monckton's summary here:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Monckton-Caught%20Green-Handed%20Climategate%20Scandal.pdf

A good summary of what's been worked out over the last few weeks since the leak.

Jim Ryan

Rhoda, this is the last paranoid rant I shall repond to you. I'm only interested in a discussion with Rod who at least seems rational.
Gavin is indeed one of the crew or in other words one of the several thousand experts involved in climate science. For the umpteenth time (I guess) the data is available, RAW data , processed data, modeled data, so much data it's available, links to so many different research area, all there for your consumption. I shall expect a nature paper on your interpretation of the raw data refuting AGW within the year.
--------------------------------http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/

This page is a catalogue that will be kept up to date pointing to selected sources of code and data related to climate science. Please keep us informed of any things we might have missed, or any updates to the links that are needed.

Climate data (raw)
Climate data (processed)
Paleo-data
Paleo Reconstructions (including code)
Large-scale model (Reanalysis) output
Large-scale model (GCM) output
Model codes (GCMs)
Model codes (other)
Data Visualisation and Analysis
Master Repositories of climate and other Earth Science data
Climate data (raw)
GHCN v.2 (Global Historical Climate Network: weather station records from around the world, temperature and precipitation)
USHCN US. Historical Climate Network (v.1 and v.2)
Antarctic weather stations
European weather stations (ECA)
Satellite feeds (AMSU, SORCE (Solar irradiance), NASA A-train)
Tide Gauges (Proudman Oceanographic Lab)
World Glacier Monitoring Service
Argo float data
International Comprehensive Ocean/Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) (Oceanic in situ observations)
AERONET Aerosol information
Climate data (processed)
Surface temperature anomalies (GISTEMP, HadCRU, NOAA NCDC, JMA)
Satellite temperatures (MSU) (UAH, RSS)
Sea surface temperatures (Reynolds et al, OI)
Stratospheric temperature
Sea ice (Cryosphere Today, NSIDC, JAXA, Bremen, Arctic-Roos, DMI)
Radiosondes (RAOBCORE, HadAT, U. Wyoming, RATPAC, IUK, Sterin (CDIAC), Angell (CDIAC) )
Cloud and radiation products (ISCCP, CERES-ERBE)
Sea level (U. Colorado)
Aerosols (AEROCOM, GACP)
Greenhouse Gases (AGGI at NOAA, CO2 Mauna Loa, World Data Center for Greenhouse Gases)
AHVRR data as used in Steig et al (2009)
Snow Cover (Rutgers)
GLIMS glacier database
Ocean Heat Content (NODC)
GCOS Essential Climate Variables Index
Paleo-data
NOAA Paleoclimate
Pangaea
GRIP/NGRIP Ice cores (Denmark)
GISP2 (note that the age model has been updated)
National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC)
Paleo Reconstructions (including code)
Reconstructions index and data (NOAA)
Mann et al (2008) (also here, Mann et al (2009))
Kaufmann et al (2009)
Wahl and Ammann (2006)
Mann et al (1998/1999)
Large-scale model (Reanalysis) output
These are weather models which have the real world observations assimilated into the solution to provide a ‘best guess’ of the evolution of weather over time (although pre-satellite era estimates (before 1979) are less accurate).

ERA40 (1957-2001, from ECMWF)
ERA-Interim (1989 – present, ECMWF’s latest project)
NCEP (1948-present, NOAA), NCEP-2
MERRA NASA GSFC
JRA-25 (1979-2004, Japanese Met. Agency)
North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR)
Large-scale model (GCM) output
These is output from the large scale global models used to assess climate change in the past, and make projections for the future. Some of this output is also available via the Data Visualisation tools linked below.

CMIP3 output (~20 models, as used by IPCC AR4) at PCMDI
GISS ModelE output (includes AR4 output as well as more specific experiments)
GFDL Model output
Model codes (GCMs)
Downloadable codes for some of the GCMs.

GISS ModelE (AR4 version, current snapshot)
NCAR CCSM(Version 3.0, CCM3 (older vintage))
EdGCM Windows based version of an older GISS model.
Uni. Hamburg (SAM, PUMA and PLASIM)
NEMO Ocean Model
GFDL Models
MIT GCM
Model codes (other)
This category include links to analysis tools, simpler models or models focussed on more specific issues.

Rahmstorf (2007) Sea Level Rise Code
ModTran (atmospheric radiation calculations and visualisations)
Various climate-related online models (David Archer)
Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) (FUND, FAIR, DICE, RICE)
CliMT a Python-based software component toolkit
Pyclimate Python tools for climate analysis
CDAT Tools for analysing climate data in netcdf format (PCMDI)
RegEM (Tapio Schneider)
Time series analysis (MTM-SVD, SSA-MTM toolkit, Mann and Lees (1996))
Data Visualisation and Analysis
These sites include some of the above data (as well as other sources) in an easier to handle form.

ClimateExplorer (KNMI)
Dapper (PMEL, NOAA)
Ingrid (IRI/LDEO Climate data library)
Giovanni (GSFC)
Wood for Trees: Interactive graphics (temperatures)
IPCC Data Visualisations
Master Repositories of Climate Data
Much bigger indexes of data sources:

Global Change Master Directory (GSFC)
PAGES data portal
NCDC (National Climate Data Center)
IPCC Data
Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Lab: Atmospheric trace gas concentrations, historical carbon emissions, and more
CRU Data holdings
Hadley Centre Observational holdings

Verity

I stopped reading Jim Ryan's post right here: "Humour aside Rod, your attack and preemptive conclusion regarding the CRU scientists is pretty dispicable and stinks of trial by media."

People who wish to term others despicable should be able to spell the word.

GaryO

What was the topic for today's Thought for the Day, I wonder?

Jim Ryan

Rod, you had me rolling in the aisles with the Gavin and Stacey joke but your implied contention that you have not prejudged the e-mail scandal was even funnier.

Anyway more from Gavin
------------------------------
The CO2 problem in 6 easy steps

We often get requests to provide an easy-to-understand explanation for why increasing CO2 is a significant problem without relying on climate models and we are generally happy to oblige. The explanation has a number of separate steps which tend to sometimes get confused and so we will try to break it down carefully.

Step 1: There is a natural greenhouse effect.
The fact that there is a natural greenhouse effect (that the atmosphere restricts the passage of long wave (LW) radiation from the Earth’s surface to space) is easily deducible from i) the mean temperature of the surface (around 15ºC) and ii) knowing that the planet is roughly in radiative equilibrium. This means that there is an upward surface flux of LW around [tex]\sigma T^4[/tex] (~390 W/m2), while the outward flux at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) is roughly equivalent to the net solar radiation coming in (1-a)S/4 (~240 W/m2). Thus there is a large amount of LW absorbed by the atmosphere (around 150 W/m2) – a number that would be zero in the absence of any greenhouse substances.
Step 2: Trace gases contribute to the natural greenhouse effect.
The fact that different absorbers contribute to the net LW absorption is clear from IR spectra taken from space which show characteristic gaps associated with water vapour, CO2, CH4, O3 etc (Harries et al, 2001; HITRAN). The only question is how much energy is blocked by each. This cannot be calculated by hand (the number of absorption lines and the effects of pressure broadening etc. preclude that), but it can be calculated using line-by-line radiative transfer codes. The earliest calculations (reviewed by Ramanathan and Coakley, 1979) give very similar results to more modern calculations (Clough and Iacono, 1995), and demonstrate that removing the effect of CO2 reduces the net LW absorbed by ~14%, or around 30 W/m2. For some parts of the spectrum, IR can be either absorbed by CO2 or by water vapour, and so simply removing the CO2 gives only a minimum effect. Thus CO2 on its own would cause an even larger absorption. In either case however, the trace gases are a significant part of what gets absorbed.
Step 3: The trace greenhouse gases have increased markedly due to human emissions
CO2 is up more than 30%, CH4 has more than doubled, N2O is up 15%, tropospheric O3 has also increased. New compounds such as halocarbons (CFCs, HFCs) did not exist in the pre-industrial atmosphere. All of these increases contribute to an enhanced greenhouse effect.
Step 4: Radiative forcing is a useful diagnostic and can easily be calculated
Lessons from simple toy models and experience with more sophisticated GCMs suggests that any perturbation to the TOA radiation budget from whatever source is a pretty good predictor of eventual surface temperature change. Thus if the sun were to become stronger by about 2%, the TOA radiation balance would change by 0.02*1366*0.7/4 = 4.8 W/m2 (taking albedo and geometry into account) and this would be the radiative forcing (RF). An increase in greenhouse absorbers or a change in the albedo have analogous impacts on the TOA balance. However, calculation of the radiative forcing is again a job for the line-by-line codes that take into account atmospheric profiles of temperature, water vapour and aerosols. The most up-to-date calculations for the trace gases are by Myhre et al (1998) and those are the ones used in IPCC TAR and AR4.
These calculations can be condensed into simplified fits to the data, such as the oft-used formula for CO2: RF = 5.35 ln(CO2/CO2_orig) (see Table 6.2 in IPCC TAR for the others). The logarithmic form comes from the fact that some particular lines are already saturated and that the increase in forcing depends on the ‘wings’ (see this post for more details). Forcings for lower concentration gases (such as CFCs) are linear in concentration. The calculations in Myhre et al use representative profiles for different latitudes, but different assumptions about clouds, their properties and the spatial heterogeneity mean that the global mean forcing is uncertain by about 10%. Thus the RF for a doubling of CO2 is likely 3.7±0.4 W/m2 – the same order of magnitude as an increase of solar forcing by 2%.
There are a couple of small twists on the radiative forcing concept. One is that CO2 has an important role in the stratospheric radiation balance. The stratosphere reacts very quickly to changes in that balance and that changes the TOA forcing by a small but non-negligible amount. The surface response, which is much slower, therefore reacts more proportionately to the ‘adjusted’ forcing and this is generally what is used in lieu of the instantaneous forcing. The other wrinkle is depending slightly on the spatial distribution of forcing agents, different feedbacks and processes might come into play and thus an equivalent forcing from two different sources might not give the same response. The factor that quantifies this effect is called the ‘efficacy’ of the forcing, which for the most part is reasonably close to one, and so doesn’t change the zeroth-order picture (Hansen et al, 2005). This means that climate forcings can be simply added to approximate the net effect.
The total forcing from the trace greenhouse gases mentioned in Step 3, is currently about 2.5 W/m2, and the net forcing (including cooling impacts of aerosols and natural changes) is 1.6±1.0 W/m2 since the pre-industrial. Most of the uncertainty is related to aerosol effects. Current growth in forcings is dominated by increasing CO2, with potentially a small role for decreases in reflective aerosols (sulphates, particularly in the US and EU) and increases in absorbing aerosols (like soot, particularly from India and China and from biomass burning).
Step 5: Climate sensitivity is around 3ºC for a doubling of CO2
The climate sensitivity classically defined is the response of global mean temperature to a forcing once all the ‘fast feedbacks’ have occurred (atmospheric temperatures, clouds, water vapour, winds, snow, sea ice etc.), but before any of the ’slow’ feedbacks have kicked in (ice sheets, vegetation, carbon cycle etc.). Given that it doesn’t matter much which forcing is changing, sensitivity can be assessed from any particular period in the past where the changes in forcing are known and the corresponding equilibrium temperature change can be estimated. As we have discussed previously, the last glacial period is a good example of a large forcing (~7 W/m2 from ice sheets, greenhouse gases, dust and vegetation) giving a large temperature response (~5 ºC) and implying a sensitivity of about 3ºC (with substantial error bars). More formally, you can combine this estimate with others taken from the 20th century, the response to volcanoes, the last millennium, remote sensing etc. to get pretty good constraints on what the number should be. This was done by Annan and Hargreaves (2006), and they come up with, you guessed it, 3ºC.
Converting the estimate for doubled CO2 to a more useful factor gives ~0.75 ºC/(W/m2).
Step 6: Radiative forcing x climate sensitivity is a significant number
Current forcings (1.6 W/m2) x 0.75 ºC/(W/m2) imply 1.2 ºC that would occur at equilibrium. Because the oceans take time to warm up, we are not yet there (so far we have experienced 0.7ºC), and so the remaining 0.5 ºC is ‘in the pipeline’. We can estimate this independently using the changes in ocean heat content over the last decade or so (roughly equal to the current radiative imbalance) of ~0.7 W/m2, implying that this ‘unrealised’ forcing will lead to another 0.7×0.75 ºC – i.e. 0.5 ºC.
Additional forcings in business-as-usual scenarios range roughly from 3 to 7 W/m2 and therefore additional warming (at equilibrium) would be 2 to 5 ºC. That is significant.
Q.E.D.?

Naomi Muse

Climates change all the time. I'm quite tickled with the idea that there is a furore now as to whether the link between human activity and climate change can be truthfully made or not.

Whilst all the world focuses on whether it can set up another trading bubble in carbon and carbon offsets, then carbon derivatives and, sure to follow will be carbon default swaps...

I do remember thinking how much I was going to have to insulate my house back in the 70s when the doom laden papers were reporting to us all that the next ice age was coming and might only be 10 years away.

At that time I concerned myself with whether BR (British Rail) would be able to run a service of any sort as weather changes often stopped it, and with the oil prices which frightened us all to death at the time.

Copenhagen is at the least a magnificent jolly of the talking shop. As the basis for it is thrown into touch by recent revelations of filched emails, should it not be cancelled straight away, and the more scandalous activities of human beings, like pollution of communities and forests with toxic oil pools, reforming the banks and getting their own political houses in order be a better thing to do?

Desperate Dan

I haven't got time to read all these long-winded rants.

Rory the Deplorable

That's what we need - more Polar Bears with a sense of humour!(and penguins too,come to think of it).

Stuart Seacole Smith

That Stern-meister, he's a right old card - eh? eh?!

A bit of tetchiness creeping in I see. Impressive list of papers posted by Jimbo though - glad I'm not the poor sap who has to go through 'em all!

lma

But did you listen to today's Prayer for the day, just before Farming Today? I made that mistake and was informed that the Devil's tempting Jesus with the power to turn stones into bread was a 'metaphor for the agro-industrial complex ruthelessly mining the earth' for minerals which help er feed people but end up sending the climate phooey or something....

Hawkeye

Guido is reporting that Queen's Univ. Belfast are refusing to release climate related data. They have a huge collection of tree ring data.

Plus ca change...

http://www.informath.org/apprise/a3900.htm

Seacole Lucky

A measured and proportionate response to Jim Ryan:

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast heaven to hell so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labours left unfinished crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry of Essy-in-Possy of Testew and Cunard it is established beyond all doubt all other doubt than that which clings to the labours of men that as a result of the labours unfinished of Testew and Cunard it is established as hereinafter but not so fast for reasons unknown that as a result of the public works of Puncher and Wattmann it is established beyond all doubt that in view of the labours of Fartov and Belcher left unfinished for reasons unknown of Testew and Cunard left unfinished it is established what many deny that man in Possy of Testew and Cunard that man in Essy that man in short that man in brief in spite of the strides of alimentation and defecation is seen to waste and pine waste and pine and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts penicilline and succedanea in a word I resume and concurrently simultaneously for reasons unknown to shrink and dwindle in spite of the tennis I resume flying gliding golf over nine and eighteen holes tennis of all sorts in a word for reasons unknown in Feckham Peckham Fulham Clapham namely concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown but time will tell to shrink and dwindle I resume Fulham Clapham in a word the dead loss per head since the death of Bishop Berkeley being to the tune of one inch four ounce per head approximately by and large more or less to the nearest decimal good measure round figures stark naked in the stockinged feet in Connemara in a word for reasons unknown no matter what matter the facts are there and considering what is more much more grave that in the light of the labours lost of Steinweg and Peterman it appears what is more much more grave that in the light the light the light of the labours lost of Steinweg and Peterman that in the plains in the mountains by the seas by the rivers running water running fire the air is the same and than the earth namely the air and then the earth in the great cold the great dark the air and the earth abode of stones in the great cold alas alas in the year of their Lord six hundred and something the air the earth the sea the earth abode of stones in the great deeps the great cold on sea on land and in the air I resume for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis the facts are there but time will tell I resume alas alas on on in short in fine on on abode of stones who can doubt it I resume but not so fast I resume the skull to shrink and waste and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis on on the beard the flames the tears the stones so blue so calm alas alas on on the skull the skull the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the labours abandoned left unfinished graver still abode of stones in a word I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard (mêlée, final vociferations) tennis... the stones... so calm... Cunard... unfinished...

Lupus Lungfish

Whatever happened to acid rain?-did we actually sort that out or did it just go away?

Jeremy

Christ, it's cold today....I wish they'd get on with that Global Warming. Every time I look at them they're drinking tea...

cuffleyburgers

Very sensible balanced article by DD in the Indie. Should be official tory policy.

Then perhaps we could have a debate rather than the playschool name calling we get at present.

This is another area where Cameron is against his core vote, and is another reason (besides the EU) why his ratings are dropping.

Rory the Deplorable

Lupus - Acid Rain all sorted - it was the Polar Bears and penguins all along!

Optimus Prime

I don't care about climate change.
I would rather die in a glorious fight for survival with starving penguins than of a heart attack in a suburban semi. I don't want to be taxed or bullied by these neo-hippies either. Bring it on, I reckon I could take a penguin in a scrap.

Rhoda Klapp

Seacole Lucky: I disagree. Please explain in more detail, take as much space as you like.

Dixon

Rod, why do you waste time on this Ryan. I finally spent a few moments scanning one of his twaddled litanies and found it to first of all be a complete misreading of another persons comment ( so much for "comprehension" ) followed by one of your Granthamite lists. All greased up with quantities of rightheouss superiority. Strikes me he is a minnowed version of my elder brother who I described in your earlier thread on the arrogance of some of those who see themselves as scientists.

I know we are not supposed to be engaged in inter-personal asides here, and I do loathe ad-hominem, but, if I may be permitted a list of my own, the reasons for this comment being warranted are
1) Ryan is largely only about personal sleights himself, and
2) Rod, you have devoted loads of attention to him already, including even an entire thread!

The bottom line is that everything in his lists can be considered a worthy topic of refutation in ANOTHER debate. Simply overwhelming us with side-topics so that we would necessarily take a week responding to each list, is one of the oldest schoolboy debate-throwing tricks and doesnt warrant serious attention. Which is why I am not going to read any other comment prefaced "Jim Ryan".

Augustus

Last chance to save the planet?

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."
-H.L.Mencken

Dixon

"Lupus Lungfish
December 2nd, 2009 3:24pm
Whatever happened to acid rain?-did we actually sort that out or did it just go away?"
Question discussed at Slate recently. Apparently it didnt. Still kills fish in rivers. Not that "environmentalists" care one whit, as they are focussed on the one issue about which they can never be proven wrong.

I remember in the 70's there were notions that it would "in the future" ( ie, now ) be impossible to go outside in the rain because of the acid. Well the "problem" was never "fixed", yet its "consequences" are so trivial ( in Human affairs ) that almost nobody is even aware that it continues.

Dixon

A large part of the problem we have with Sterns and Ryans of the world is they havent studied cultural history ( or any history, in general ).

Already, someone here has made a subtle allusion to the "South Sea Bubble" ( which Jim Ryan is going to have to look up on Google, no its not a methane burst ) and I would adduce the mammoth impact of the Tulip episode. These are things you need to know about if you are going to be able to understand the dynamics underpinning such cultural phenomena as "carbon trading".

I would also throw in the British tax on daylight in the 18th century. As well as the hysteria that arose surrounding the introduction of the leap-year. These are not attempts at comical whimsies, like others here amusingly provide, but actual, historical precedents for what we are going through now.

If you know about these things, it would be hard to justify a failure to recognise the parallels.

Simon Stephenson

Jim Ryan : 12.55pm

"And who do you turn to for sage counsel on the climate issue, that well known climate scientist David Davies"

Excuse me, but my impression of David Davis' article is that it is principally a commentary on the behaviour of the people strongly involved in the AGW debate, on both sides.

Does one now need to have qualifications in climate science to comment on human behaviour? If so, sorry, I didn't know.

Menopause Seacole

Does anyone actually read the long-winded pseudo-scientific piffle on this blog, written by those who are probably spurred on in their arrogance because they once got an A in physics? I always whizz past them, to more sensible comments like what may have been the Thought for Today, and suchlike. Personally, I find all this conjecture about AGW far less concerning than whether or not I'll have a hot flush tonight.

Jim Ryan

Dixon,

People like you scream about not having the data and when I provide you with the relevant links you throw a tantrum about all that 'twaddle', clearly illustrating you have no interest in the science. It's all a bit difficult when confronted with the science, not my science I hasten to add, but the climate science. And when you accuse me of a misreading do me the honour of describing it so I can at least address your accusation.

jon ryan

Jim, a scientific explanation won't work.

The proliferation of spoon-eaters around here are not equipped, mentally or from their position on the evolutionary journey,to be able to cope with anything approaching a shade of grey.

So saying that science is in many, most even, cases not dealing in certainties but probabilities will just make them dribble all the more.

They can only judge, using the term at the very edge of looseness, in terms of whether they think you are from the left (boo!) or right (hurrah!) of the political spectrum.

Beyond this, what you say is utterly irrelevant.

Bit late to change things now, but had you started by saying that all global warming is the fault of Gordon Brown (and it's best to give him an amusing misspelling to properly convey your contempt), and added how it's a Muslim (boo!) plot, you would have been in with a chance.

They still wouldn't have understood any of the long words of course, but they would have been on your side.

Fergus Pickering

Jim Ryan, surely a rant is something that goes on and on. Rhoda's posts are all short. Yours are the ones that go on and on and I'm not going to read them because I lose the will to live about a third of the way down. I am going to behave as if there is no such thing as climate change. I DENY IT! Hear me deny it. And now I'm going to throw another pensioner on the fire and get up a nice blaze. Then I'll take my big Lexus car out for a run up and down the motorway. And then a big fry up a cuple of jam butties and a series of very large whiskies. Oh and I must seriously catch up on my smoking. Bet I live longer than you. Copenhagen? That's where Danny Kaye used to live, isn't it?

jon ryan

The Moral Maze have a thing on this at 8pm tonight:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p2z8m

Naomi Muse

Menopause Seacole - You have your hot flush tonight, I'm having pasta with wild mushrooms and cavolo nero...I don't read the longwinded pseudoscientific stuff either. Life's too short!

bit thick... but trying!

Jim: respect for keeping up the good work in the face of ever-more unhinged rants.

Rod, you may wish to read Martin Wolf's piece in today's FT. Key paragraph:

"it is not enough to argue that the science is uncertain. Given the risks, we have to be quite sure the science is wrong before following the sceptics. By the time we know it is not, it is likely to be too late to act effectively. We cannot repeat experiments with just one planet.
Fortunately, the evidence suggests that the costs of action should not be prohibitive. The World Bank’s latest World Development Report argues that the costs of tighter restrictions on emissions would be modest. On the benefit side, I would stress the importance of avoiding the danger of a climate catastrophe. We do not have a right to take such risks." Further in piece he notes that recent studies suggest that each further year of non-action is likely to raise the cost of eventual action by about US$ 500 bio.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1f6c42fc-dead-11de-adff-00144feab49a.html

As to circularity, I fail to see what is circular about the Antarctic ice issue. It's a qualification of an existing theory, a revision thereof to explain an observed anomaly. This thing is routine in all walks of life, not to mention the science of complex systems. X --> Y becomes X --> Y, but under condition Z, X does not lead to Y, rather M is observed, for all areas where Z holds. This is a perfectly testable, falsifiable refinement of an existing theory. If you observe areas where X -->! Y and M is observed but Z is absent, then the thing is falsified, unless functional equivalents to Z happen to exist. That is the kind of thing you'd Expect of complex systems.

If anyone is dealing in circularity here, it would seem to be the "skeptics". I still have not heard from any of them what Would convince them that GW is not real/man-made/a problem. Their hypothesis is (no AGW). What would falsify this hypothesis for them??? I await your answers, but I'm not holding my breath. A scientific consensus is apparently evidence of group think, but if the science is dispute, by however small and, often, unscrupulous a minority, the science is 'not settled'. SO what is it?

The responses by some of the people here to JR's very measured, reasoned posts is extremely revealing.

James Murphy

As one of your stupidest and bitterest critics on this subject, allow me to applaud your coming down off the fence on this one Rod. Or perhaps you were never really on it, and I just misinterpreted the uncomfortable posture of your scepticism. But your current post surely proves my original point which is that polite scepticism is not enough: the AGW eco-fascists just ignore it - as they have done for the past ten years. Opposition to them, therefore, has to be as robust and ruthless as they are. If this means ruffling a few ad-hominem feathers, so be it! Surely a small price to pay?

Baron

jon ryan @ 5.09:

I admit defeat, I couldn’t figure what your two longish postings were all about. Deep ignorance of the subject. On top of it, I do belong to the imbecile class of the unwashed phylum, my wife will testify to it readily.

I beg you, just one last drop of wisdom from you, please. What is the right level of the CO2 density in the atmosphere? An idiotic, simplistic question, I know, but is it possible you answer it without relying on hugely complex models, referencing to Popper and the rest of the clever stuff. Please.

The level is…..

Rhoda Klapp

Bit thick:
"what Would convince them that GW is not real/man-made/a problem. Their hypothesis is (no AGW). What would falsify this hypothesis for them???"

Well, I put that all in. The CO2 = AGW is not so much in dispute per se, just the scale. I think CO2 is a bit player, far smaller than the natural variation. To support that, I go to the historical record. The data are in dispute, but the glaciers in greenland DO uncover trees, the viking graves are in permafrost, so there is definitely a case. For the little ice age, there are the frost fairs. They happened, they deserve to be accounted for. Scale and causes of natural variation: unknown. Number of natural influences: unknown. Claimed CO2 effect of those variations: nil, as far as I know. Sum of natural variation (from what norm?) currently: unknown. Therefore, CO2 contribution, currently : unknown.
Reliability of computer models: Zilch. That's an opinion, based on some knowledge of the field.

Signs that the CO2 = AGW effect is working, in actual observation: Well, not much. Predicted troposphere temp changes, not seen. Proof of CO2 sensitivity, nope. Observations of radiation budget, currently not showing CO2 effect, but early days.

So, you can prove it by the sensitivity and the radiation budget, and by quantifying the natural variation. That's what I want to see. Is it asking too much? For proof by fiddling the temperature record and comnputer models is not enough.

A. MacAulay

Talk of acid rain till the mad cows come home.

By the way can't Britain get an extra rebate for stopping all those bovine farts by killing the beasts before their letting rip with BGW gasses?

bit thick... but trying!

"I don't bother reading all of that long-winded pseudo-scientific shit, I know it's wrong anyway, so why bother dealing with their points?"

Surely the sign of a losing argument if ever there was one.

Dixon

"bit thick... but trying!
December 2nd, 2009 7:23pm
"I don't bother reading all of that long-winded pseudo-scientific shit, I know it's wrong anyway, so why bother dealing with their points?"

Surely the sign of a losing argument if ever there was one."

That would be true, if anyone had said it. Ive had a good look, and I cannot find anyone here who has.

Dixon

The news from Australia is refreshing. When Rudd was elected the "general consensus" was that aman who can speak Mandarin must be an expert on the climate. Now he's on the slippery slope to a recall of Parliament in the spring, which CH4 declared would be the first national election fought on the issue of climate change.

back in my days as an ESL teacher we once had a newcomer on the staff who claimed to be a former diplomat and spoke Mandarin to some of our Mandarin speaking clients. It sounded impressive. The only problem was they couldnt make head nor tail of what he was trying to say!

No doubt he was also an expert on climate change.

Dixon

Orwell advised us to rely on the proles. they who are not swayed by intellectual fads and pretensions.

Australia is of course the worlds only Prole Nation. They are maybe about to vindicate Orwells admonition.

Dixon

It only bugs me that the warm-mongers continue to dodge the most basic questions, which are not anything about science at all. Principally, why the hell should we care?

Admittedly, as a nihilist I have an advantage in that I maintain the sooner everything ends the better anyway. But even if I didnt have that view, everything IS going to end anyway! The AGW hysterics seem to base their hysteria on the queer notion that they are going to live forever! Which is only marginally more stupid than the notion they definitely express that ...if we all did as they tell us...life on Earth, even our species, will live forever! Well, reality check, it wont! Whatever you do. Theres nothing to change the certainty of death and extinction.

It strikes me that environmentalism like health-faddism are attempts to deny the most basic reality in every life, the certainty of death. Its cowardly, small-minded and cheap. Worrying about unborn generations is a matter of metaphysics, not physics. There are no unborn generations. They dont exist. WE DO. And we remain to be shown why we should be made to suffer for those hypothetical descendents who do not.

Indeed, if you are so worried about the world you leave your children, theres a simple answer, choose not to have any.

jon ryan

"jon ryan @ 5.09:

I admit defeat, I couldn’t figure what your two longish postings were all about. Deep ignorance of the subject. On top of it, I do belong to the imbecile class of the unwashed phylum, my wife will testify to it readily.

I beg you, just one last drop of wisdom from you, please. What is the right level of the CO2 density in the atmosphere? An idiotic, simplistic question, I know, but is it possible you answer it without relying on hugely complex models, referencing to Popper and the rest of the clever stuff. Please.

The level is….."

No idea, mate. Best to ask a scientist. Try Jim. (See how important it is to be accurate in these matters? How easy it is to become confused?)

PS: If you are given a CO2 value, do you have the scientific knowledge to interpret it? Just wondering.

Baron

bit thick… @ 5.34:

Not unlike the theory of evolution, the AGW theory cannot be falsified because of the nature of their construction.

MaxSceptic

These ardent supporters of 'combating climate change' (as if!) are like watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside.

Guido Fawkes calls them 'Climate Cooling Deniers'. Cool.

Augustus

The old global think tank, the Club of Rome, came out with a report in 1974 entitled 'Mankind
at the Turning Point'. In it was the statement: "It would seem that humans need a common motivation...either a real one,
or else one invented for the purpose. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself."

It seems that total control over everybody is still with us.
And growing!

george

Under the open access philosophy, Redalyc looks forward to contribute to the scientific editorial work produced in and about Iberoamerica, making available for the students and researchers the content of more then 550 magazines from different knowledge areas.

Baron

jon ryan @ 8.59:

Kind of you to respond. I have no idea what the ideal level should be either but scientists are telling me that plants positively rejoice at 1500ppm, man can breathe safely at 3,000ppm, and the danger to us only emerges after the level steps over 8,000ppm.

What’s wrong with 380 or even 500ppm? Plants that provide the bulk of our sustenance and fodder for animals we slaughter for steaks will grow better, and hopefully we get more sunshine in this rain sodden island, ha?

Jimmock

Rhonda has enumerated a few of the many places where Jim Ryan's immense house of cards can be (and has been) pushed over. The significance of Climategate is that Team Climate's desperate, devious and authoritarian measures to protect the edifice have been revealed.

theunbrainwashed

Lard Stern? I cannot think of a more repugnant and less qualified individual to head this inquiry?

Can YOU!?

The charlatan is a supposed 2 bit Economist, so what have his professional credentials got to offer climatology and earth science?

OH! That's right, Carbon Credit Value!

What he means is it's the last chance to save his ass so that he can con you into paying more for less. SURPRISE!

Yip, It'll be difficult to find a Chair to oversee this slovenly mess.

Maybe someone like BjØrn Lomborg, Sari Nusseibeh, Richard Posner, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Richard Rorty, Peter Singer, Slavoj Žižek?
or maybe Paul Wolfowitz! Hang on! Lard Stern would be better than him!

Geoff

Nobody reads all Jim's stuff do they?
Do they???

jon ryan

"...back in my days as an ESL teacher..."

I think that has to be one of the most frightening sentences that I've ever read.

Doom monger

We are like a plague of locust and will keep breeding and consuming until the system that supports us implodes under the pressure.

James

Fergus Pickering: "Yours are the ones that go on and on and I'm not going to read them because I lose the will to live about a third of the way down"

Possibly that sums up a lot of people positions. They have a very strong opinion, but can't really be bothered to put in the effort to read something long and complex that argues a different point.

Unfortunately, much of the climate science is long and complex.

Maggie

I think most people might read lengthy arguments if they were well-written, followed grammar and spelling rules, avoided cut-and-paste and were written by someone who'd had precis on the curriculum when they were at school. Otherwise the style and wordiness tends to signal Nutter Alert.

Fergus Pickering

But my dear fellow, why do you suppose I have a very strong opinion about all this stuff. I don't. If I say the professors at East Angular are lying in their teeth, that is not an opinion, great Heavens, it is a fact. If I say I will go on using my car and using old-fashioned lightbulbs that is not an opinion, it is a course of action. I will go on doing what I have always done because I'm a conservative sort of a chap. When you scientists have got it all sorted out, which you plainly haven't at the moment (all the lying tells me that), then you can get someone who knows how to write literate English to put it all down and then I will read it and think about it and THEN I will have an opinion. Meanwhile I shall turn to the sports pages like a sensible man. What do you think of Strauss's chances in South Africa?

(LISOG)

THE LIDDLE INSTITUTE FOR SANITY ON GLOBAL WARMING.

Despite not having been an actor on Eastenders, even failing to be an extra with a part, sitting or standing in the Queen Vic, for which Rod Liddle, it has been said, has much experience. Mr Liddle has turned his mind to the question burning every mad politicians agenda. 'Global Warming' (or put another way 'Scare the common herd totally who will pay massive taxes, gladly, and be convinced they are saving the world')

The Liddle Institute for Sanity on Global warming (LISOG) has called for all politicians to save the planet by walking everywhere. No more Govermental cars, No more security cars, No more Aeroplanes here there and everywhere and the banning of resource burning television twenty four hour news programmes. The news, in future, to be shown on resource saving t'internet on LIDDLE NEWS.

Secondly the(LISOG) demands that the Royal family, especially those that talk to plants should be confined to one palace,of their choosing, and for them to stay there and live out the rest of their lives. The other palaces be used by (LISOG)for the research programmes they wish to conduct.

One being, The brain of Al Gore- is he truly mad or just plain ignorant?
That research will be extended to cover every politician who has banged the global warming drum!

Idea's for further research programmes are to be forwarded to (LISOG)as soon as possible.

Applications for employment can also be sent for consideration with a full CV. Please note every applicant who advances towards the interview stage will have to agree to undertake a lie detector test, under certain legalised drugs, to establish that they are deniers and not global warming facists after a job!

Please send your applications to this website. Secrecy cannot be assured.

Baron

For anyone, including Jim, the one who has the answers, could have a peep at Monckon’s take on the East Anglian conspiracy. It reads well, and cheers one up

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/01/lord-moncktons-summary-of-climategate-and-its-issues/#more-13529

Dixon

Baron, you keep barking up the wrong tree. Its not about whether the CO2 levels are actually poisonous. Its about the reflectivity of CO2 to radiated heat.

Fearless Frank

Anyone would think this whole "AGW" debate was to do with science!
Of course it isn't.
In spite of the worthy efforts of Jim Ryan, almost nobody on either side can follow or cares about the science.
It's all about the number of angels that can stand on a pin-head.
Every time you say "I don't believe in global warming", another little angel dies.
There's a lot to be said for flat-earthers.

Michael Seacole Sweeney

Many years ago I recall reading Auberon Waugh who, angered by anti-smoking fascists, said he'd trained his children to clap every time they saw an adult lighting up. I have now trained my own kids to do this whenever anyone slags off Lord Stern.

Jim Ryan

CLIMATE SCIENTIST RESPONDS TO RHODA (as she is too shy to ask herself)
The Bell it tolls for thee. Link if you want to continue the debate (or knockout as I would say)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/cru-hack-more-context/comment-page-3/#comments

[Rhoda]
Well, I put that all in. The CO2 = AGW is not so much in dispute per se, just the scale. I think CO2 is a bit player, far smaller than the natural variation. To support that, I go to the historical record. The data are in dispute, but the glaciers in greenland DO uncover trees, the viking graves are in permafrost, so there is definitely a case. For the little ice age, there are the frost fairs. They happened, they deserve to be accounted for. Scale and causes of natural variation: unknown. Number of natural influences: unknown. Claimed CO2 effect of those variations: nil, as far as I know. Sum of natural variation (from what norm?) currently: unknown. Therefore, CO2 contribution, currently : unknown.

[Response: This is a logical fallacy. The existence of natural variation does not imply that human forcings are negligible. Furthermore, even if the attribution of 20th C change to CO2 and other human drivers was zero (which it isn't), the potential change of climate based on the much larger forcings projected for the future would still be a concern. - gavin]

Reliability of computer models: Zilch. That’s an opinion, based on some knowledge of the field.

[Response: Argument from personal incredulity, and not correct in any case. These models do have skill in many different measures - including in predictions ahead of time. - gavin]

Signs that the CO2 = AGW effect is working, in actual observation: Well, not much. Predicted troposphere temp changes, not seen.

[Response: See above, but this point is based on a confusion about what the fingerprint of GHG forcing is, and ignorance of what has actually emerged from the analysis. (See here). - gavin]

Proof of CO2 sensitivity, nope.

[Response: 'proof' only exists in mathematics. But evidence that climate sensitivity is non-negligible is plentiful. - gavin]

Observations of radiation budget, currently not showing CO2 effect, but early days.

[Response: Not true. See Harries et al (2001). - gavin]

So, you can prove it by the sensitivity and the radiation budget, and by quantifying the natural variation. That’s what I want to see. Is it asking too much?

[Response: No, but that exists - see IPCC AR4 Chapter 6 and 9. - gavin]

For proof by fiddling the temperature record and comnputer models is not enough.

[Response: This is just a smear. - gavin]

Rhoda Klapp

Jim, seriously thanks for getting Gavin's responses. Do they look all right to you? Most of them seem to be 'because I say so'. Because of predicted change? Computer models run in secret with the results cheery-picked are OK? I'm supposed to trust them, knowing they are parameterised to create past results? Which are not well known because they have been fiddling the history, which is not a smear when we have undenied quotes for them doing it. And no I don't think the emails are innocent fun. I think they are indication of criminal activity. The code comments too. The excuses they came out with are an insult.

Are we not paying attention to the recent Lindzen on radiation budget?

Doom Monger

We'll all be dead soon- you mark my words.

Ian C

Rod

You obviously manage to put words together without doing much initial homework! You are right to be sceptical about AGW, as ordinary people and especially scientists needed to be. So much has been accepted on the back of what the CRU has proclaimed in the past 20 years without real critical, independent enquiry. Like the rating agencies and the banking crisis. That is why the scientific community as a whole have been badly bitten in the backside. See today’s Wall St Journal for an article by Mike Hulme – ex-CRU and currently at E Anglia Uni.

However, I should caution you against the input from RealClimate.org and your pen pal Jim Ryan. RC is a long established members of ‘The [CRU] Team’. They are a blog site set up by a PR company set that is a well known leftie causes PR man in the US. They are allegedly backed or closely associated with/by Soros and Gore and so you may not get the sort of independent input you sound as if you need. It was set up to hammer the sceptics so that green investments would pay. The data that they and other warmists claim is still relevant and points to warming beyond previous climatic norms, regardless of the loss of the credibility of CRU, is stretching the actual reality a long way: -
a) These ‘proxy’ sources are key components to the four main temperature databases that ‘the settled science’ is based upon and are now worthless. This means that the databases have to be re-constructed – this time by those without a vested interest in the outcome, and
b) They are interpreted by the sceptics in a very different way.

For example, one source of data produces a graph that purports to show that past CO2 rises lead to temperature rises. Sceptics say that the graph is being misrepresented and should be read the other way round. I have seen no ‘debate’ about such basic items – because, one can only presume, that debate has been closed down. Now we have an inkling as to how and why.

Others, on the sceptical side, who claim to know (geologists) will tell you, for example, that melting of glaciers in the past 150 years has nothing to do with the contemporary climate and everything to do with climate 200 to 1000 years ago. This is never 'debated' openly. The same people will tell you that climatologists cannot model one glacier, let alone the thousands more around the globe - all at different altitudes and in various weather environs. I tend to believe them rather than the warmists. I can't think why. But they are not reported at all by the MSM, in particular you alma mater the BBC, who decided a long time ago that the ‘debate was over’ and they should side with the warmists.

Basically, whatever anyone thinks about other 'surviving' evidence of warming, it has been handled in such an unscientific manner, if the 'translations' so far provided by the sceptical blogosphere are one-tenth true, then the game is up for anyone contemplating continuing with the 'alarm' message. This has happened because money and power got involved early in the piece in the mid-80’s, and it happened to be at a time when the other themes of world conflict were dropping away while we all became aware of the environment and how man can screw it up - Bhopal, Chenobyl etc. The climate scientists can wave good bye to anyone believing them unless they go back to the beginning and allow us all to look over their shoulders while they start again.
Nothing short of this is going to be acceptable to a public who have just bailed out the world banking system and are being told that the next 100 years will be based on cutting their lifestyles to the bone for something that is at best extremely dubious.
There is little substitute for hard graft on this subject because for every claim there is a counterclaim that the sceptics/warmists have an answer for. But if you want to get a good summary of the egregious nature what the emails have summarised I recommend a start at http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/crus_source_code_climategate_r.html
Andhttp://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/worst_scandal.html if you want the ‘full fat’ version read the SPPI attack at: -http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/worst_scandal.html
It has a hang ‘em and flog ’em conclusion, but there is a logic to it and it is written by Mrs T’s former science adviser. So you will be innately prejudiced against it.

Which is good for balance.

kevinc

Re Mr Jim Ryan - one wonders what job he does that allows him the luxury of spending Thursday afternoon posting gobbledegook on websites.

N.B. I have no idea what he's on about, but I do know that cutting and pasting from the Internet does not constitute a valid scientific argument.

bit ... tired of banging head against wall

Rhoda,
I think you'll find most of the detailed information underlying Gavin Schmidt's response at realclimate.org There, as JR previously posted, you'll also find the data sets and models. Why don't you work through that stuff, and then explain what is wrong/insufficient about GS' responses?

Realclimate.org is a website set up by a bunch of leading climate scientists, see

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/extras/contributor-bios/

They are not a 'PR company'. Before making wild allegations about their funding, please provide some minimal evidence. Btw, it doesn't take much money to set up and run a minimally-professional website, so it's not clear why they would need financial backing from Soros, Gore, etc.

Or are you suggesting that Soros, Gore etc. have now started funding these people's research? If so, please offer evidence?

Or is the idea that Soros et al. are paying Schmidt et al. to maintain this website? Please show evidence.

Baron

Jim’s near religious belief in computer modelling beggars belief. From the leaked e-mails, and notations on programming instructions it appears that what the East Anglian boys did was to fit a curve on a data series. Listen to this:

Fitting a curve to existing data is not prediction, it is curve fitting. I used to do that for a living and I have several computer programs that do curve fitting by different error criteria. One program minimizes the absolute error, another the squared error, another minimizes the maximum error (minimax criterion) and one will draw a curve thru all the data points by calculating a Lagrange interpolating polynomial. You can also do a spline fit if you have to go thru all the data points. There are lots of ways to fit a curve to data.

I believe it was Von Neuman that said if you have enough adjustable parameters you can fit a curve to an elephant. The climate models have lots of adjustable parameters.’

So, here you have it. You input adjustable parameters and you can easily fit a curve to a long series of even random data, and come up with a hockey.

Dixon: thanks for slap on the wrist. I don't have time to explain, but point taken.

bit thick... but trying!

Rhoda - sorry for getting somewhat irate.

But seriously, where Gavin Schmidt's answers don't satisfy you, work through the large and detailed information readily accessible on realclimate.org (he actually links and references to parts of it in his reply), and show where that information remains faulty, incomplete and unsatisfying.

Ditto for the models and data sets you so deride. realclimate has a detailed, (linked) list of readily-accessible data sets and models up on its site. Examine that stuff, show where you think parametres have been chosen to give desired answers, explain how the model ought to be specified instead (what alternative variables and parametres, etc.), and in what alternative, less biased ways you think the data ought to have been analysed. Otherwise your comments are, well, just rants.

james Murphy

Who'da thort it? News just in! Good old Saudi Arabia loudly debating the point of anyone attending Copenhagen in the light of the UEA ClimateGate scandal! - Bravo for the good old House of Saud! I'm growing a beard and putting my wife in a burkha immediately by way of gratitude. And what's even more delicious is that the 'useful idiot' Leftists will be bent double, doing moral contortions as they desperately try not to appear 'waycist' or Islamophobic in criticising the Saudis! Ah the gods are just, after all!

Jimmock

Rhoda, Apologies for referring to you as 'Rhonda' in my previous post.

Bit..., I understand there is some controversy about Schmidt 'working' on the RC website on the taxpayer's dime, as they say.

Rhoda Klapp

I don't think it is in dispute that realclimate is run by the PR firm Fenton Communications.

Here's a link on Mr Fenton.

http://www.activistcash.com/biography.cfm/bid/2807

And that's why I regard the site and Mr Schmidt as a non-reliable source.

Computer models? Not to say models are no use for anything, they are, but when they have multiple parameters, and (as in the climate case) those parameters must be guessed or estimated, and they are in a field as complicated as the climate where results are chaotic, and when they are run multiple times with those multiple parameters, and runs which do not provide suitable results are discarded, and the modellers admit they do not even have the theory to explain, say, cloud behaviour, then anybody who placed any kind of reliance on the results would be unwise to bet trillions of dollars, and disingenuous to expect anybody else to.

Jim Ryan

Rhoda,
What shameless nonsense, what abject propaganda. Gavin took the time and bother to respond to your assertions, error and innuendo with links to three significant data sources and all you can say is that his responses were mostly 'because I say so'. Have you looked at the links - No. Have you looked at the publicly available raw data and come up with your own models (apparently you have some ‘expertise’ in modelling, do share with me your contribution to the literature) - No, never. When you are shown up for most of your points you ignore that fact and dare not respond except in some vague allusions to unreliable computer modelling parameters as if models were the be all and end all for AGW. Although one can hardly decry the models in terms of climate prediction if it is borne out by what has happened in reality. Perhaps climate scientists have access to a time machine? You pile smear and accusation on dedicated professionals without substantiation or without evidence, only a generic reference to those e-mails. I'd like to see the text from the e-mails that unambiguously demonstrates 'cheating'. Provide it to Gavin and let him respond and see what a fair minded jury thinks of your exchange. You can J'accuse all you like but it is just a cover for your political dogmatism, contempt for truth and refusal to engage in debate with those you disparage.

Mr Murphy, I have ignored you for obvious reasons. Not obvious to you I grant but apparent to anyone with a thinking brain. You have waxed lyrical about nothing at all other than to disparage any attempt to understand the science behind AGW. Without any reflection you dismiss it out of hand and scream lies and conspiracy when ever the topic is raised. A totalitarian Islamic state spins that the CRU e-mail fiasco to undermine all climate science - a charge that is breathtaking in its manipulation and dishonesty – and you praise them for that act, deliberately ignoring the historical and entirely self-interested antipathy of the world’s greatest oil repository to AGW. What a beacon of contrarian light you truly are.

Ian C

Rod

Read Christoper Booker's recently published book - The Global Warming Disaster.
It gives a forensic and referenced account of what has been going on - I am only 1/3rd of the way through but it is riveting and difficult to put down.

One of the allegations is that of the thousads of climate scientists who were supposed to have backed the UNIPCC reports, it boils down to 14. They are all on 'The Team'. So surprise, surprise warming is real (not in dispute) AND dangerous (the source of the dispute).

The UNIPCC themeselves have been forced to set up their own enquiry. Don't hold your breath, but now the genie is out there will be no putting it back in.

In the meantime, Newsnight have begun to wake up that their reputation is on the line and last night had Benny Peiser (sceptic climatologist) and the former UNIPCC chair and now adviser to Defra, who clearly does not understand that his protestations are weak while notionally accepting 'transparency from now on'. Worth a view. Peiser said it: " They eliminated the Middle Ages warm period". That is the scandal - and all post- 2001 alarmism has been based on it, even though Mann's Hockey Stick was dropped in the 2007 pronouncements.

No substitute for your own reading on this.

James Monbiot Delingpole

@jimryan That is the most pompous, disingenuous, intellectually dishonest, climate-fraud-excusing post I think I have ever read. And God knows you've got some stiff competition right now from all the Goreistas out there watching aghast as the edifice crumbles.

bit thick... but trying!

Ian C.

Benny Peiser is a social anthropologist. See his own website:
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/

As far as I can gather from the wiki entry, he has degrees in political science, English, and "sports studies". I.e. his views on societal responses to climate change may be worth taking seriously, but there is no evidence that he is worth listening to on the science itself.
Incidentally, it seems that Peiser has a bit of a history of doctoring evidence to fit his on climate change/the politics of climate change:

http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/BPeiser.html

So maybe not that worth taking seriously after all

On realclimate and Fenton communications: nope, apart from vague allegations on rightwing websites, I find no evidence that Fenton "runs" realclimate. What would it mean for Fenton to "run" realclimate? That they are paying all of these professors to toe a particular line on climate change? That they are giving them the line?
But even if they were (something I don't believe for a minute), that as such would not have any bearing on whether their science is right or wrong. 2+2=4 no matter who says it and what they get for it. So would the excellent Rhoda please give specific examples of where their science is faulty, how their models ought to be specified instead, etc. etc.

As to "betting trillions of dollars" on the models being wrong, you've simply ended up doing the opposite - betting trillions of dollars (and frankly, potentially the planet), on the models being wrong. Given that we only have one planet, that does not seem a very reasonable stance. You may wish to read Martin Wolf's FT piece on the matter:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1f6c42fc-dead-11de-adff-00144feab49a.htm

Ian C

Bit Thick

You're quite right about Peiser but seem to miss the point

"Benny Peiser is a social anthropologist with particular research interest in human and cultural evolution. His research focuses on the effects of environmental change and catastrophic events on contemporary thought and societal evolution." This gives him plenty of knowledge to comment as he did.

And don't repeat "only peer reviewed climatologists should be trusted" because they clearly can't be and we need more human insight into the effects of 'alarmistgreenery' that has credence way above its paygrade.

Wolf has swallowed the alarmist cause like most MSM pundits an dthe FT as a whole, who have relied on the 'authority' of the UNIPCC and its discredited process.

Please refer to to the rather more important article in today's FT entitled
"Green zealots should get out more".

Quite a surprise to see it in the FT. They're all slowly padding their backsides because of the homework they have failed to do because of over-estimating the cred of the green lobby.

Jim Ryan

Editorial
Nature 462, 545 (3 December 2009) | doi:10.1038/462545a; Published online 2 December 2009

Climatologists under pressure

Stolen e-mails have revealed no scientific conspiracy, but do highlight ways in which climate researchers could be better supported in the face of public scrutiny.

The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists' scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial 'smoking gun': proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.

This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country's much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.

First, Earth's cryosphere is changing as one would expect in a warming climate. These changes include glacier retreat, thinning and areal reduction of Arctic sea ice, reductions in permafrost and accelerated loss of mass from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Second, the global sea level is rising. The rise is caused in part by water pouring in from melting glaciers and ice sheets, but also by thermal expansion as the oceans warm. Third, decades of biological data on blooming dates and the like suggest that spring is arriving earlier each year.

Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming. The strong implication is that increased greenhouse-gas emissions have played an important part in recent warming, meaning that curbing the world's voracious appetite for carbon is essential (see pages 568 and 570).

Mail trail
A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists' conspiracy theories. In one of the more controversial exchanges, UEA scientists sharply criticized the quality of two papers that question the uniqueness of recent global warming (S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick Energy Environ. 14, 751–771; 2003 and W. Soon and S. Baliunas Clim. Res. 23, 89–110; 2003) and vowed to keep at least the first paper out of the upcoming Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Whatever the e-mail authors may have said to one another in (supposed) privacy, however, what matters is how they acted. And the fact is that, in the end, neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers.

If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden.

The theft highlights the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers.
The e-mail theft also highlights how difficult it can be for climate researchers to follow the canons of scientific openness, which require them to make public the data on which they base their conclusions. This is best done via open online archives, such as the ones maintained by the IPCC (http://www.ipcc-data.org) and the US National Climatic Data Center (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html).

Tricky business
But for much crucial information the reality is very different. Researchers are barred from publicly releasing meteorological data from many countries owing to contractual restrictions. Moreover, in countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the national meteorological services will provide data sets only when researchers specifically request them, and only after a significant delay. The lack of standard formats can also make it hard to compare and integrate data from different sources. Every aspect of this situation needs to change: if the current episode does not spur meteorological services to improve researchers' ease of access, governments should force them to do so.

The stolen e-mails have prompted queries about whether Nature will investigate some of the researchers' own papers. One e-mail talked of displaying the data using a 'trick' — slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of fabricating their results. It is Nature's policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.

The UEA responded too slowly to the eruption of coverage in the media, but deserves credit for now being publicly supportive of the integrity of its scientists while also holding an independent investigation of its researchers' compliance with Britain's freedom of information requirements (see http://go.nature.com/zRBXRP).

In the end, what the UEA e-mails really show is that scientists are human beings — and that unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance, and tempt them to act in ways that undermine scientific values. Yet it is precisely in such circumstances that researchers should strive to act and communicate professionally, and make their data and methods available to others, lest they provide their worst critics with ammunition. After all, the pressures the UEA e-mailers experienced may be nothing compared with what will emerge as the United States debates a climate bill next year, and denialists use every means at their disposal to undermine trust in scientists and science.

Jim Ryan

Ian C,

Is this Christopher Booker the climate scientist? No, No, No it's Christopher Booker the HISTORIAN! Is this the same Booker who contends white asbestos is the same as talcum powder and is not toxic, that there is no link between second hand smoke and cancer, that evolution is based on faith and a priori assumptions.
My goodness you've convinced me! A giant of science with such an impeccable record must be right.

'It all boils down to 14 scientists' does it? A study for the journal Science randomly sampled 928 published peer-reviewed scientific papers that used the words "climate change". It found that 100 per cent – every single one – agreed it is being fuelled by human activity.
'No sustitute for your own reading on this'
Yes, you've clearly done a lot of reading. Shame none of it has been on the Science.

rod liddle

Jim - there is no proven link between second hand smoke and cancer.

Kevinc

I see Mr Ryan is still trying to impress us by copious cutting and pasting when a simple link would do. He obviously comes from the school of thought that believes arguments are won by verbosity rather than incise reasoning.

I, too, would be sceptical (in the proper sense of the word)of anything written by Mr Booker particularly after the nonsense he peddled about asbestos, but the fact that he is an HISTORIAN (Why the capitals??) does not necessarily invalidate his views on other issues, particularly as I understand his book concentrates more on the machinations behind the politics of AGW rather than the science (I admit to not having read it, but then has Mr Ryan?)

My point being that if proponents of AGW spent more time framing rational, accurate responses to honestly held doubts and questions rather than resorting to sophistry and childish abuse perhaps they would convert more "Deniers" (hateful term) to their cause.

Rhoda Klapp

Jim, your stuff is getting desperate, that editorial from Nature, justifying the cheats. Wow.

Thanks for the homework, I'll be on that just as soon as you get me the money. A grant equivalent to those who did the work first will do. See. I don't do computer modelling, but I do know what passes for testing in commercial computing. Things called validation and verification. Programming standards. All required before a piece of software is relied upon. Out here in the world we do not just hope it will work, we try to make sure. Please to point me to any publicly available model code which has met any such requirement. Does it do clouds? My information is (and it may be wrong) that the GCMs don't do clouds. Do they reproduce the ocean circulation modes? Do they get the changes right? Did they predict the last El Nino? Did they predict the current slowdown in warming? Do they have sunspots programmed in? Do sunspots make a difference (there is an apparent correlation between cold periods and sunspots, perhaps you've heard of it?). Do they think Svensmark is right or wrong? Do they have another mechanism to link the magnetically quiet sun to climate, or do they discount any link, this failing to explain the little ice age?

Baron Pipin II

Jim Ryan @ 3.42:

Stop shouting at Booker, please. A year in a room filled with tobacco smoke equals to one smoked cigarette. That was the conclusion of the last report by the research agency that the anti-smoking lobby hired. They got sacked for it, and report got suppressed.

On Newsnight the other day, a computer programmer examined the code used in the scare modeling, and was more than critical.

Lupus Lungfish

Jim- 'and that unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance'

I get goaded to the limits of tolerance all the time, it's no excuse to cut corners and not present the facts as they are. After reading some of those CRU e-mails a layman like myself comes away with the impression that these people are plain arrogant. They are so 100% cock sure that they are right and 'denialists' are all thick as two short planks. As it happens I think its highly likely that pumping CO2 into the atmospere maybe causing some warming but I find the green lobby intensely annoying. Why have they suddenly all changed their tune on nuclear power?, why don't they ever talk about the real problem which is massive population explosion? Why do they all wear those multi-coloured stripey jumpers? etc etc.

Andy Carpark

Dr Ryan, Have you converted anyone here to your point of view in the past week? Water that down. Have you tilted anyone's point of view by a few degrees? If you have, can you provide the names and times, as I fear they may have become lost in the noise? If you have not, and if you can exercise a bit of self-detachment for a few moments, do you think your recent arguments have been delivered in the sort of tone that is likely to convince anyone with their mind ajar?

Because if you cannot answer one or more of these questions in the affirmative, I suggest you are making yourself look a bit of a twerp.

Ian C

You can see the extent of abuse throwing the alarmists go to, without accepting the message of what has happened last week -a bit like MP's and their expenses and bankers and their bonuses. They are not smelling the coffee.

Whether the alarmist view is right or not is irrelevant. It has not been squarely dealt with by scientific process. And it looks as if it is much worse than that. That has been quite obvious for anyone who has been watching for a while of a curious nature. And that is because the UNIPCC and its associates have been behaving like bullies.

This from a young Israeli peer reviewed physicist: “There is nothing in those emails that I was not expecting to come out at some stage.” Those in the business know what has been going on and there is going to be one helluva scramble to limit the damage. You've probably been witnessing a proxy for what is to come. They'll get onto every sceptic site to do this sort of thing while the process is gone through.

In the meantime, we might eventually get the right sort of exposure of the subject that clarifies where we really are in those extra-ordinary fiasco.

Fergus Pic kering

Climatologists appear to have invented a science. Then they write a load of papers and review each others stuff. It's called 'log-rolling' outside the scientific community. Anybody who ISN'T a climatologist can be ignored because none of them know what they are talking about. Look back over what I have written and replace 'climatologist' with 'the Roman Catholic Church'. Yeah!

Jim Ryan

Rod,
Just a brief aside on the link between second-hand cancer and smoking from the National Cancer Institute. Nobody said proof (only found in maths) but there appears to be a link.

NCI
Does exposure to secondhand smoke cause cancer?
Yes. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), the U.S. Surgeon General, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) have classified secondhand smoke as a known human carcinogen (cancer-causing agent) (1, 3, 5).

Inhaling secondhand smoke causes lung cancer in nonsmoking adults (4). Approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths occur each year among adult nonsmokers in the United States as a result of exposure to secondhand smoke (2). The Surgeon General estimates that living with a smoker increases a nonsmoker’s chances of developing lung cancer by 20 to 30 percent (4).

Some research suggests that secondhand smoke may increase the risk of breast cancer, nasal sinus cavity cancer, and nasopharyngeal cancer in adults, and leukemia, lymphoma, and brain tumors in children (4). Additional research is needed to learn whether a link exists between secondhand smoke exposure and these cancers.

Alexandrovich

I don't wish to appear rude Mr. Ryan, but will you be long? You see, I'm expecting friends soon and I have to put the Hoover round.

denverthen

The penny finally drops, eh?

Fine writing.

Dixon

Ive been away a day and come back to find you are most of you still wasting your time by actually bothering to read the Ryan catechisms. Please take a llok at what I wrote on December 2nd at 4.17 or thereabouts about Mr Ryan. Now I detect others are beginning to recognise this rather belatedly. Please, everyone, just ignore the irritating little twit. Then maybe he'll go away and we can get on with the discussion.

Dixon

WOW! Who saw that spot on Newsnight? Some creepy creature with rolling eyes, pallid yellowed skin and the demeanour of a 3rd former found with an open handerchief and a copy of Mayfair behind the bicycle shed was wheeled on to speak up for his "colleagues" at Anglia. Confronted by a confident American opponent his responses entailed first of all declaring "...oh will you shut up" and, after more epileptoid eye-rolling, the declaration "What an asshole".{ Sorry, moderator, that is actually what he said, on the BBC ).

Absolutely brilliant, if thats their best spokescreature I hope they rely on him increasingly.

Of course, the irony, even more so for anyone following the debate so far, is that the spokes-creatures repeated assertion was that critics are attacking the personalities of AGW proponents and not their work! Ha bleedin Ha! Hows that for pathological projection, and in the same interview that his best debating shot is to call one who disagrees with him an "asshole"!

You really couldnt make it up! They wouldnt have allowed it to be broadcast if it had been.

Jim Ryan

There seems to be an objection to cutting and pasting - KevinC. But it's all good stuff. You lot have demonstrated a distinct inability to look at the science - goodness knows I've posted enough links - and therefore I have seen it as my duty to bring the science to you. Mohammed to the mountain, mountain to Mohammed if you like. Forgive the Islamic reference, I know some of you wasps are a bit twitchy about that particular faith. Unhappily for me, with a few notable exceptions, it hasn't been very successful but then again I don't normally have success with flat earthers when I try to convince them of the spherical nature of our planet. I see it as their failing, not mine.

And I'm deeply sorry the tone has changed but that is but a reflection of the deeply anti-scientific culture here. A nihilistic, misanthropic, politically dogmatic culture that hand waves, ignores or misrepresents any evidence which contradicts their own faith position.

@ Rhoda,
you're not a computer modeller! I canna believe it. Apparently Gavin has passed on your penetrating insight to Jim Hansen and he's re-working the models in desperation, even the ones that have made the correct predictions. Rhoda, academic science needs you; for a starter you can dismantle the AGW conspiracy at Nature, what would they know about the scientific process anyway.

@ KevinC,
Of course Booker been a historian does not necessarily disqualify his viewpoint. But his appalling track record on science coupled to the fact he is not a climate expert coupled to an enthusiastic review of his book from someone (IanC, is that you?) who assiduously avoids the scientific literature and yet cites Benny Peiser is a climatologist (he’s not, he is a social anthropologist!), then I pause for.....doubt.
---------------------------
So how many of the 34 articles does Benny Peiser stand by? How many really "reject or doubt" the scientific consensus for man-made global warming? Well when we first contacted him two weeks ago he told us... "Only [a] few abstracts explicitly reject or doubt the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) consensus which is why I have publicly withdrawn this point of my critique." -- Email from Benny Peiser to Media Watch. And when we pressed him to provide the names of the articles, he eventually conceded - there was only one. (Ad Hoc Committee on Global Climate Issues: Annual report, by Gerhard LC and Hanson BM, AAPG Bulletin 84 (4): 466-471 Apr 2000)
Since he thinks only one paper belongs on the list we can do a little math. 33 wrong / 34 total = 0.9705 So Benny admits he was 97% wrong. The only paper he continues to stand by wasn't even peer reviewed. Considering that was a requirement for Oreskes's study, maybe he should admit the last paper doesn't belong either.
--------------------------------
In this context your claims of 'honestly held doubts' are rather difficult to sustain.

@ Dixon,
The ESL teacher is back and is advising all of you not to read me. Haven't stolen what little thunder you possess have I? And I didn't realise you were having a discussion. I thought it was the white noise of contrarian conspiracy, a cacophony of scientifically illiterate outbursts.

Good discussion with Rod though even if we didn't ultimately agree and I can conclude that you are at least a genuine sceptic......but only if you looked at the links I’ve sent you ;o)

Still buy you a pint though.
I've had afew tonight or can you tell.

Bye all, I’m returning to the land of scientific discourse and reason. Enjoy your incestuous self-validating little denial club.

Of course you'll miss me.

Rhoda Klapp

Anybody who has doubts about secondhand smoke and who has not heard of numberwatch.co.uk should get across there and read the entire site. It will tell you how to read scientific papers, and especially the statistics therein with a thought to seeing what they are actually saying, and why. You can't get a null result published. You have to have a headline. Now. I occasionally post a link and I don't expect many to read it, but please invest an hour or two in this one. It will be worth your while. (Yes, I know the site itself is not the best presented ever, but the wisdom within is priceless.)

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/number%20watch.htm

George Steiner

Because I am very dutiful, I have read trough the twaddle of Gavin the Modeler. Based on the 10 millisecond it took me to do the reading, I have concluded that Gavin understands not what he is twaddleing about. I give just one example of his ignorance. The planet and its atmosphere is not like a greenhouse.

Liz

To quote Danny Kay "Wonderful,Wonderful Copenhagen", that was fiction too.

Rhoda Klapp

Jim. I think you'll find that the models have not been claimed to predict anything. They project. This was a feature of AGW debate when first sceptics criticised the predictions. And indeed, project is what they do, because you have to have a parameter choice based on a projection. IF this parameter, tihs result in this many years. You could only predict if the setup was exactly correct, and there remain many unknowns. No doubt you can answer this with some sort of sarcastic ad hom, but you aren't reading here any more.

You have done your cause no favours, because you can only use the language and tactics of an activist, an advocate, and that just gets people's backs up. That is why the AGW cause is under such pressure at the moment. Scientists were caught out as advocates, and the parade of AGW supporters we have seen on the TV and heard on the radio (and here) have stuck to the old script without seeming to realize that the debate is back on, because your side pushed too hard without coonvincing us. You have to do it all again, right this time. Not because I say so, but because your case is blown in front of the public.

Lupus Lungfish

Dixon- I'm sure he said 'arsehole' not 'asshole'. These climate scientists do all seem to come from the same mould. I think the guy on Newsnight was called Prof. Watson and he pretty much fitted the bill for what I imagine these blokes are like. They have turned what is actually an extremely important issue into a farce. Arrogant lefties who want to bring down capitalism is the impression I get.

Baron Pipin II

Dixon @ 11.01:

Spot on, my friend, I also heard the last ‘observation’ by the learned man, as must have many others. What I particularly savored was that only seconds before he kept wingeying that what the skeptics did was attack ‘Prof. Jones’s character’. It’s a rule worth remembering; Never to get angry in a debate, anger confirms one’s losing it.

Lupus Lungfish

Baron- Tell that to John Sweeney!

Dixon

"Rhoda Klapp
December 5th, 2009 12:12am
Anybody who has doubts about secondhand smoke and who has not heard of numberwatch.co.uk should get across there and read the entire site. It will tell you how to read scientific papers, and especially the statistics therein with a thought to seeing what they are actually saying, and why. You can't get a null result published. You have to have a headline."

Actually, Rhoda, it depends on whether the field is genuinely scientfic or merely activist-driven. In psychology, a field which itself has long striven to demonstrate how truly scientific it can be ( and consequently makes "climatology" look like complete mumbo-jumbo ) many papers are published which report failure to replicate headline findings of previous researchers. "Nill" findings, if you like. That is how it should be. Itherwise, I accept what you say completely with reference to a money-grubbing sphere such as the industry of "climate science", which thrives on the begging-power of sensationalism and implied threats.

Baron Pipin II

Lupus, my friend, will do, but will he listen?

David Ossitt

That Jim Ryan; he really is a barrel of laughs.

Just for the record Jim; you can rant and rave and produce reams of spurious evidence but you will never convince the rational majority that climate change is man made.

Lungfish

Baron and David O.
Sorry to be a bit of a traitor here but I think AGW could well be a reality. Its not really based on any particular scientific knowledge but purely instinct. Sorry to be rude but its based on my 'don't shit in your own backyard' theory. Suffice to say that in life there always seems to be a price for everything. The human race is generally a selfish and profligate consumer with the one aim of making life more comfortable. I know this sounds like hippy drivel but maybe nature could wreak revenge on us?
Of course this paranoia is exactly what drives the climate debate.
Anyway the Mrs is back from the rugby at Twickers in a minute so I must have the dinner on the table for her return- talk about role reversal!.

Lungfish

Baron&David
My recipe went well but I have been forced to watch some thing about the 1st WW on Film Four- which of course is a one sided load of tripe.
Rod- could you get me unbanned from the Coffeehouse wall please? - I promise I won't use bad language. No I really do. Even though I love the Fox family- they are such wonderful actors very talented superb luvvy chaps.Quite liked that 'how long is a piece of string' you did the other week- now unban me please?

Dixon

"Lungfish
December 6th, 2009 2:01am
Baron&David
My recipe went well but I have been forced to watch some thing about the 1st WW on Film Four- which of course is a one sided load of tripe.
Rod- could you get me unbanned from the Coffeehouse wall please? - I promise I won't use bad language. No I really do. "

Ive been visiting here many moons and have only recently noticed a new wave of censorship taking hold. Ive had loads of comments never appear. They almost all have had one or two things in common: critical mention of the Conservative party or anything suggesting we should have cuts in the NHS.

I think it must be button-down-the-hatches-for-election-time.

Oh, and I think Melanie Phillips has personally banned me because I am the only "Kehaneist" who disagrees with her on anything.

Will this note appear? I wait with mass-debated breath!

Baron Pipin II

Lungfish, my swimmingly uxorious friend, it’s fine with me that you pray at the AGW altar, provided you can live with my scepticism. You see, my theory of nature-humans coupling rests on a deadly primitive doctrine that states that the power of nature trumps the power of any and all the species that ever inhabited this planet so decisively that any attempt by humans to interfere could only hurt humans.

get me right here, I have no quarrel with curbing waste, preserving few barrels of oil for the future and all that stuff. I just cannot force myself to accept that by burning fossil fuels we get anywhere near to harming the majestic clocking of the universe, of which our patch is but an insignificant speck. I reckon a different mechanism has been responsible for the ups and downs of the CO2 density and temperatures. You can hardly explain the harsh winters between 1600-1730 by the absence of CO2, or the rising Mars temperatures by the presence of Humwees, or whatever the contraptions are called.

you be good to you wife, one day she may even need you.

and another things. Many of my postings failed to appear, too. Just as well, I suppose.

Baron

Lupus and others, please read this. It's a must.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/understanding_climategates_hid.html

seacole australus

Jeez! Here am l reading the Spectator to get away from Igonikon Jack and blow me, the bugger has metamorphed into Jim Ryan. Arrrrgh! pass me the fags and a lighter.!!

Jonathan Cracknell

Thank you for another fair and sensible assessment of the latest nonsense about climate change!

Lupus Lungfish

Baron & Dixon- My ethereal and kind of imaginary friends we must meet up for a drink some time and blither and blather about the state of the Union. Baron thats a new word I never knew existed 'uxorious' excellent!. (I had to look that one up)- Dixon- how do you set up a website?

Lupus Lungfish

Baron and Dixon- It must be said that actually the moderator has moderated a few posts of mine that I'm glad did NOT appear!- so in some resects censorship is OK by me. (but I am a raging alcoholic or thereabouts)

Lupus Lungfish

I find the Ryan brothers highly annoying.

Lupus Lungfish

Baron- just read the American Thinker thing, just about to climb the great wooden mountain to Bedfordshire- maybe chat tommorow about global warming but right now am having an erotic dream about Diane Abbott and her terrible trouser suits. Inshallah friends.

Lungfish

Dixon- we must both suffer the insufferable- barred, banned, constrained and generally gagged by the sixties hippies and seventies punks. I'm gonna be a rebel and sneak through to my own kitchen and polish off Sundays roast beef and Yorshire pudding with extra horse radish sauce and Damn you all-especially Diane Abbott.

Derek

Fergus Pickering (December 3rd, 2009 10:37am) I am planning to return to Europe from Asia if I make an enormous amount of money. Will I really be able to buy and use the old-fashioned lightbulbs there, covertly if necessary? I have experienced the new kind here and do not think I can face life without the old ones.

Dara Gallagher

Of course you don't believe in the threat unfettered environmental destruction causes. Of course it all just a gigantic conspiracy by self-interested scientists.
But can you show anywhere that the data from the scientists in East Anglia has been shown to be flawed?