Almost a whitewash

Noa

Thanks for the precis from the New Scientist.
Like it, I cannot escape the feeling that the non AGW community is being subjected to the mushroom treatment by those 'who know what's best' for the rest of us.

Simon Stephenson

" The editorial concludes: “Without candour, public trust in climate science cannot be restored, nor should it be.” "

Restored. Well there's a nice loaded word that presupposes that the public ever had trust in climate science. They didn't. What most of the general public have is a need to be associated with a mainstream position that is not going to cause them too many difficulties with their close friends and acquaintances, and for which there is a ready-made appeal to authority or appeal to popularity that they can use as justification if the validity of their position is challenged by anyone else. The rights and wrongs don't really come into it - just the comfort with which the position can be maintained.

Warmism has a popular following because the endless propaganda allows it to be portrayed as a mainstream position safe for the masses to hold as their own, and yet just controversial enough to be a happy home too for those who falsely classify themselves as free-thinking radicals.

Osred

Rod,

Good that you've highlighted it. More journos need to as the 'narrative' established by the BBC, C4, and the risible Ponce Charles (sp?) is that the issue has been rigorously analysed and the science is once again 'proven'. The only admission is that the propagandists involved were a little too wary of releasing raw data.

Jim Ryan

Rod, I recall in early 2010 when you satirised climate scientists such as Jim Hansen who prediscted that 2010 had a greater than 50% chance of being the hottest year on record, in the context of it being an unusually cold winter in some regions (local v global confusion yet again).

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100715_globalstats.html

Do you think there is any chance that the actual science of AGW will begin to sink into the rationally challenged contributers to this blog, and your occasionally reasoned good self. Nothing like a bit of manufactured controversy and flogginging a dead horse to get the blogoshere foaming and frothing. Not to mention an unholy alliance of contrarians, fossil fuel interests, paranoid libertarians and corporate media to perpetuate the lie that the 'CRU e-mail' story is meaningful in terms of the science (as opposed to communication of the science). One of your contributors (Stephenson) appears to have a PhD (in the same manner as Dr. Paisley has a PhD) in the psychological analysis of AGW proponents. Likely that said individual doesn't possess an scintilla of scientific credential. Afterall, if any of you understood the science you would realise that you haven't got a leg to stand on.

BalaamsAss

@ Jim Ryan

So it is lack of understanding of the science that accounts for all this skepticism then?

Science is all about questioning until there are no questions left. It is contended that AGW theory is ideology and not science at all, since it cannot be questioned.

Raffles

Rod, can you have a chat with your Speccie colleague Hugo Rifkind. I generally enjoy his wit but he is as smug as the next anorak when it comes to the great warming con.

Osred

Jim Ryan,

Over to you then on the science.
I'm always ready to be convinced - after all I used to vote Labour so I'm happy to defer to those who know better.

The floor is yours.

David Ossitt

@ Jim Ryan

“Afterall,[sic] if any of you understood the science you would realise that you haven't got a leg to stand on.”

Patronising pillock; “if we understood the science” what we understand is bullshit and codswallop when we hear it.

Fergus Pickering

Mr Ryan I(or vey possibly Dr, Ryan, Professor Ryan or Vice Chancellor Ryan) please tell me why my nice book ''Global Warming and other bollocks' is bollocks. Take your time for I am slow of study. Ph.ds don't mpress me per se. I know a lot of bloody fools with Ph.ds, as I am sure you do. But quiet, rational argument will impress me. Have you thought of trying that route?

EyeSee

Jim Ryan. Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. You broke the cardinal rule of Warmism. Whilst you attack rational people as idiots (the usual tactic) you then mention the science! For goodness sake look around -nobody who believes in AGW wants to debate the science. That is what the likes of Delingpole rattle on about. Look at Mann and his hockey stick. He got ripped to pieces. Why do you think the CRU emails need to be kept secret and investigations are only carried out by Warmists. Jeez.

Baron

Almost a whitewash? Hmm, more likely completely a whitewash, what could one expect?

few points that cut it for me, have no need for enlightenment by climate scientists of the Jim Ryan’s ilk, or the East Anglian variety:

human activity accounts for around 4% of the aggregate CO2 discharge. If all of us, the 6bn plus humans, dropped dead today, yet Krakatau resumed belching, the gas levels would if anything go up. Our switching bulbs and stuff is akin to pissing into the ocean to stop a tsunami.

the increase in CO2 density has gone up in the last 200 years by some 0.02%. The atmosphere’s still made up of 99.94% of stuff other than carbon dioxide. It defies common sense to argue that this infinitesimal hike in the CO2 levels is the primary cause of major climatic changes. If temperatures in the times of the Venerable Bede were higher than now and CO levels barely a third of today’s, perhaps the same mechanism or a part of it is kicking in again.

the substance is beneficial to organic growth, we human can breathe the gas with no harmful elects up to 8% concentration, the cost of essentially abandoning fossil fuels as the primary energy source is too high, the renewable sources are too unreliable.

My money’s on the ingenuity of the human race, it has worked in the past, it will work again.

C Cole

Here's another New Scientist piece on proposals for geoengineering - a practice which no existing legal framework covers:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727696.100-an-evil-atmosphere-is-forming-around-geoengineering.html

Linda Smith

Ah yes, science.

Now what exactly occurred consequent on the predicted bird flu pandemic? The pharmaceutical companies made plenty of big bucks for manufacturing mammoth stockpiles of unused bird flu vaccine for a pandemic that never materialised.

Mathematical models: seems that having grounded airline fleets based on mathematical models of volcanic ash, when reconnaissance planes went up, they couldn't find the ash!

Ah yes, science.

RichieP

Ah, poor old Jim eh? Back to the usual litany of scorn and sneer, bluster and smear. It doesn't work anymore old chap: you rely on these pathetic ad homs instead of evidence, because, of course, the observational evidence doesn't sustain the CO2 apocalyptics and your own evidence (as in CRU) is is so flawed and inadequate (or no longer exists) that you won't allow it to be tested by proper science.
AGW is dead in the water. You know it; you rant; we smile. You've been rumbled. And you certainly won't persuade anyone of anything until you get some manners.

Dixon

The fact that the most devoutly proselytising for AGW of any cabal on the planet (the staff of New "Scientist", who once published a reply to a letter in which they explicitly endorsed equations between AGW scepticism and holocaust denial) has now aired such views is positively Earth shattering!

I think The Liddler must have made it up or moved the words around creatively. That would account for the queer grammar in placs. I guess I shall have to pop into a shop and read it meself.

Dixon

And lets be clear about this, New "Scientist" is a piece of trash that alongside AGW endorses such things as telepathy, the idea that consciousness is located in the clothes we wear, ESP, emotive plants, etc, etc, etc...at one time or other every twaddle imaginable has been endorsed in an artcle in that rag.

Oedipus Rex

Re. Ryan shenanigans:

Jim Ryan does make an interesting point re. the often confused distinction between the controversy of how science is communicated to us and the actual science itself - they seem to be often conflated.

As for the continual warming - I can accept it, just as I can accept that in the next few years England will still be sh*t at football and the world's population will still rise.
But it doesn't explain the changes over much longer periods of time (early middle age warming/mini ice age after?). Are the causes the same or have they changed?

As a non scientist it would be great to have a rational debate over this rather than the quasi 16th C. religious style hysteria where AGWers and their cheerleaders such as Farcus Pigsock make apocalyptic pronouncements and condemn the anti- AGW heretics while AGW naysayers make equally vacuous mumblings on 'cultural marxism and taxes' as a riposte.

Not being very bright in the sciences, having a mere O level in Physics to my name, I would nevertheless like to learn more. New Scientist was good a few years back but it also seemed to become partisan, a trap scientists themselves often don't realise they are falling into.

John in Norwich

Can UEA really be taken seriously as an institution at the forefront of science? It closed the Physics department down in the mid-1970s (pre-Thatcher), the Chemistry department is second rate at best, and do the Mathematics and Biology departments really have much intellectual clout within the UK.

In such a second-rate environment can there be any proper intellectual debate and scrutiny of UEA's only prestigious academic department in the sciences - i.e. Environmental Studies and CRU.

If CRU is so important it should be moved to Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial. Indeed did they not defend the reliabilty of the CRU data on the basis that similar data was held by NASA. So why the deference and need for duplication.

Here's a quote from the UEA website 'Norwich has the fourth greatest concentration of ‘most highly cited researchers’ in the UK, after London, Oxford and Cambridge - thanks to the University and its Norwich Research Park partners'. This clearly has a science implication but is anyone - save UEA - contending that Norwich is a more important research centre than Edinburgh, Machester, Bristol (and feel free to add to the list).

Dixon

Oh not that "Jim Ryan" again, where the hell did that time-wasting troll-jan (a Trojan virus that simulates a troll) pop up from? Doesn’t the Spectator have proper anti-malware software installed?

Don’t be drawn by it folks. I remember from last time, everyone points out the errors in its arguments and it just ignores them and states the same arguments again in altered prose of identical substance. Its obviously some cunning software cooked up in Kazahkstan.

I havent read any of its automated guff this time and the rest of you should take my advice and just skip its posts.

Dixon

Actually,one worse for mumbo jumbo than NS is "Scientific" American. Now that really does present fairy tales as fact.

Dixon

Alright...so I do exaggerate. But you have to these days to be heard above the incessant whibe of diverse Troll-jans.

maddy1

They are still at at! Another researcher says "AGW" will destroy our reefs. No mention that most of them are already destroyed, anyway, due to any thing from eco tourism to dynamiting! The same helpful researcher helpfully points out that up to one billion people depend on the sea for food! Our credibility is further disturbed by the even more helpful suggestion that the population depending on the sea will increase exponentially. One of those, cushy places to research AGW is apparently the Celebes not Grimsby Docks! These people are absolute phoneys and they need scrubbing out!

rod liddle

Jim, good to have you back. If you remember I was having a go at the Met office and Marcus brigstocke for having informed us that for Britain - Britain - 2010 would be hotter than any previous year on record. The first quarter of the year was the coldest for 27 years. I don't remember having a go at Jim Hanson, though I've always hated the Muppets.

The problem, Jim, is that when you dismiss the CRU business as a "manufactured controversy" (clearly it's an anthropogenic manufactured controversy) then you gnaw away at the faith we have in disinterested science, if that isn't an oxymoron. The same is true when every statistic which seems to support your faith is cheerfully deployed, whereas those that contradict it ignored. So, for example, the years 1998 to 2008 showed much lower mean temperatures, but this trend should be discounted because it is far too short a timescale to be of significance. Yes, agreed. But you cannot then leap up waving 2010 around screaming told you, told you!

Just to reiterate; it still seems likely to me that th e earth is, over the long term, getting hotter and that we are probably responsible for all or part of that process.

Simon Stephenson

Rod

Aren't you being a bit unkind to Marcus Brigstocke? I mean, he's in the entertainment business, and so his job is come out with any old bollocks that creates the mood his audiences want to be in. This is what he does. What he makes his, doubtless, very comfortable living from.

The way I see the problem is not that these celebrities come out with such bollocks, but that their audiences both demand it and are so asinine as to take it as worthwhile comment.

Jim Ryan

Mmm, What a response! Rather easy to be patronising to a community as evidently out of touch as this one. All the usual suspects present, reinforcing each others prejeudices and paranoia.

Dixon, didn't you get taking to task on the science a few months back by 'thorn in your side' (an apt name if ever). He/she reeled you in and then challenged you on several assumptions you made about AGW and provided you with appropriate cited references. You couldn't even muster a response except to dissemble. Of course you couldn't respond because you have no credible reference with which to counter. Almost pitiful, particularly for a so called scientist. And you have the temerity to disparage New Scientist and Scientific American. Why even Nature, Science, GRL can't be trusted can they? Who needs peer review when we can solicit the truth from guru Dixon.

Baron, human CO2 is indeed a small fraction of the total but this small amount has distorted the finely tuned balance between natural mechanisms of emissions and adsorption. Much of human emissions are adsorbed by natural sinks but the rest have entered the atmosphere as evidenced by isotopic analyses. This has accounted for the highest CO2 levels for at least 800,000 years. See David McKay 'Sustainable Energy without the hot air' for a good explanation why small amounts of CO2 can have a dramatic outcome - freely available on web.

Eyesee, the point is that you are irrational when it comes to AGW. You constantly talk about scientifc debate but hardly ever engage in one. Then you quote Delingpole for Christ's sake. Read the literature and find me a consolidated and robust hypothesis against AGW. Other than occasional studies from Lindzen and Spencer you'll find very little and quoting scientifically illiterate contrarians like Delingpole just doesn't cut it.

Baron

Jim Ryan @ 10.52:

listen you AGW genius, if, as you assert, CO2 levels are running at the highest levels for 800,000 years (makes me wonder what makes you to be sure of that) what engendered the medieval warming spell, or the inverse mini ice age at the 2nd half of the 17th century, or the flipped climate during the mini ice age in the 2nd half of the 17th century, ha?

and please, avoid fluffing around the question.

Jim Ryan

Rod, what has Marcus B got to do with anything. The point is that Jim Hansen made his prediction based on probabilistic analyses of decadal trends in the data, modelling and the recent downturn of la Nina. To quote "Global warming on decadal timescales is continuing without let-up ... we conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.2C/decade that began in the late 1970s." This, as opposed to cherry picking one particular year and making extrapolations from that one data point. Anyway it now looks reasonably likely that 2010 will be the hottest (globally) year on record which would make it rather difficult for ‘sceptics’ to cherry pick 1998 as a baseline.
Perhaps you should read the late lamented Stephen Schneider's 'Science as a contact sport' and realise that the process of science is not an activity conducted by Gentlemen. Peer review is a ruthless and competitive process designed to weed out bad science, particularly over the long term. It’s also a necessarily flawed and conservative process in which established scientists wield greater control over what is published compared with young upstarts – can you think of another profession in which this doesn’t happen? So individual scientists are rarely disinterested but the scientific process is. Why? Because any scientific hypothesis worth its salt will have to run the gauntlet of time and be tested over and over again; if it fails it will perish. For example, this is exactly why cold fusion died a sudden death? It was published in a reputable journal but the results could not be replicated by any other scientist. It really is very easy to publish an initial paper because ultimately there is no way of knowing whether the submitting scientist has made errors, cheated or deluded themselves. However, if the hypothesis published has any significance other scientists will be keen to repeat the results. This is the beauty of the scientific process, you inevitably get found out. Fundamentally this is why the CRU debacle is a storm in a teacup. The sometimes unsavoury behaviour and poor communication skills of a handful of scientists has been wilfully used to undermine the AGW hypothesis whilst ignoring the fact that said hypothesis continues to be supported by multiple independent lines of observation. Unless you are prepared to entertain the notion of a worldwide global conspiracy I suggest you start evaluating the science rather than the scientists. Whilst AGW is incontrovertible in the way evolutionary theory and the theory of gravity is, the extent and effects of AGW into the future remains fertile ground for debate.
Your final qualifying paragraph is welcome. Although if true you might ask yourself why you don’t turn that fine penmanship of yours on the hoards of ‘sceptics’ who have demonstrated a mind numbing resistance to understanding the science and who seem to quote any jackass on the subject so long as he/she is not a climate scientist. Let the love-in begin…….again…… you never did buy me a drink last time, are journalists always so tight?

percy permafrost

"Global warming on decadal timescales is continuing without let-up ... we conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.2C/decade that began in the late 1970s."

but that only gives us 4 points on the graph, hardly 'continuing without let-up', and my understanding is the last decade wasn't as warm as you wanted..

Jim Ryan

Baron, just briefly, where have you read anywhere that CO2 is the sole arbiter of global warming. Not in any climate science publication. MWP was localised to areas of the Northern Hemisphere and globally averaged temperature now is higher than then in any case. Global temperatures in the past have been affected by a myriad of factors. In the late 20th century the dominant factor has become the release of CO2 due to anthropogenic activity. Solar output has been flat since 1970 and Milankovich cycles don’t come into play. If you have an alternative hypothesis which explains the late 20th rise in global average temp I’d love to hear. Definite Nature paper in the making. Finally, what you claim on my behalf is ‘assertion’ is anything but , which would be obvious to anyone remotely au fait with the scientific literature.

Noa

Jim Ryan
"GW is incontrovertible in the way evolutionary theory and the theory of gravity is.."

Not so, as you correctly identify its a theory and open to speculation and rigorous intellectual critique. Your hectoring approach to those who don't share your views simply reinforces the pro-AGW stereotype as a rambling, intolerant wild-eyed, spittle-flecked loon.

Having read your posts with care and interest I conclude that you exemplify the sort of person whom I identify in my post of 21.07 @ 11.28am.

Baron

Jim Ryan @ 3.05:

OK then, a myriad of factors effect global temperatures, so why single out CO2? Well, you will most likely tell me, because there’s a visibly tight correlation between the two variables in the last 300 years, right? (the ‘other’ factors kicked in to break the correlation before 1750, you follow?).

Have news for you. If you were to plot monthly the UK inflation figures from the start of he second half of the last century and the cases of dysentery in Scotland the correlation’s strikingly better, you wouldn’t have to hide the equivalent of the medieval warming and the mini ice-age at all. Try it, it will amuse you.

You reckon then UK inflation is one of the factors effecting the Scots’ lower bowels, or is it the other way round, or is it just nonsense, ha?

Alexandrovich

I agree with Jim Ryan:
"...what has Marcus B got to do with anything?"

Jimmock

Jim Ryan, Try your propaganda and hyperbole on a fresh bunch of school children. As you can see, our lot are sick of it.

rod liddle

@Jim: Not to mention an unholy alliance of contrarians, fossil fuel interests, paranoid libertarians and corporate media to perpetuate the lie that the 'CRU e-mail' story is meaningful in terms of the science (as opposed to communication of the science).

The problem is, as you should understand, that the communication of science has become indistinguishable from the science itself. It probably always was.

Richard of Moscow

Jim Ryan, "MWP was localised to areas of the Northern Hemisphere and globally averaged temperature now is higher than then in any case."
I thought there was broad agreement that there is not enough data for the Southern Hemisphere to confirm a glogal MWP, although there are indications New Zealand had a warm period around that time.
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/CookPalmer.pdf

Please post accurate globally averaged temperatures for the medieval warm period

Jim Ryan

Baron, try to address the issue in hand rather than deflecting and conflating causation with correlation. Unfortunately for you CO2 does trap heat, unless you want to question basic physics. I asked you to put forward an alternative hypothesis for the late 20th century increase in global average temperature. Anything?

Noa, of course all theories are open to questioning, provided the questions are based on a coherent theoretical framework and are predicated on evidence and observation. Im delighted that you appear to be interested in 'rigorous intellectual critique'. Why not take a look at these rigorous papers from Nature and critique them..........Yes I can already envisage your eyes glazing over and pretending that you just haven't seen the science.

Robust warming of the global upper ocean 2010 Nature 465 (7296), pp. 334-337 2

Global change: The ocean is warming, isn't it2010 Nature 465 (7296), pp. 304 0

The next generation of scenarios for climate change research and assessment 2010 Nature 463 (7282), pp. 747-756 2

Ensemble reconstruction constraints on the global carbon cycle sensitivity to climate 2010 Nature 463 (7280), pp. 527-530 5

El Nĩo in a changing climate - 2009 Nature 461 (7263), pp. 511-514 11

Atmospheric science: Fixing the sky - Schiermeier, Q. 2009 Nature 460 (7257), pp. 792-795 0

The proportionality of global warming to cumulative carbon emissions 2009 Nature 459 (7248), pp. 829-832

Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne - 2009 Nature 458 (7242), pp. 1163-1166 22

Prolonged suppression of ecosystem carbon dioxide uptake after an anomalously warm year - 2008 Nature 455 (7211), pp. 383-386 5

Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change - 2008 Nature 453 (7193), pp. 353-357 99

Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector - 2008 Nature 453 (7191), pp. 84-88 57

Osred

Jim (Ryan),

I cant find any source which establishes the danger/tipping point of ppm for CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and the time lag after that amount is reached before , say, the Amazon, Poles or Himalayan glaciers are destroyed in their current form. Nor can I find the data which tells me when those points are likely to be reached.

Can you help?

S Arse

Jim,

Certitude is a trait found in the dull, and is almost as irritating in scientific believers as it is in the religious

James Delingpole

I do like this Jim Ryan comedy spoof character. Is he one of your creations, Rod?

Fergus Pickering

Sorry, Jim Ryan. It's all too hard and I can't understand a word of it. I sort of feel you're a lying toad, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Noa

Ah Jim
Thanks, all is now clear. You are a pot pourri conspiracy theorist - AGW variation mk 1.

Simon Stephenson

Jim Ryan : 10.08am

Can we just take it that the editorial policy of Nature is that:-

(1) If the average temperature in Miami goes up to 100°F it's humans' fault for causing global warming.

(2) If the average temperature in Miami falls to 40°F, and they start getting blizzards and frozen lakes in winter, then it's humans' fault for causing global cooling.

(3) If the average temperature in Miami doesn't change much from how it has been for the last 100 years, then humans are to blame for the warming/cooling that's definitely going to happen in the near future.

Have you got any pro-AGW papers from sources that might impartially be regarded as neutral towards humanity, or even, perhaps, mildly complimentary towards humans and their ability to cope with most things that are thrown at them?

Jim Ryan

Oh Dear you guys clamour for the science and when presented with it you have no come back. Shame.

Osred
Good question but there's hardly going to be a definitive paper on the occurence of a future event, is there? Again there is near certainty that AGW is happening; there is uncertainty as to what the consequences will be. Try this for starters.
(2007), Dangerous human-made interference with climate: A GISS modelE study, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 7, 2287-2312.

Arse,
Apt name if ever there was. I guess when you fall out of the wrong side of the bed you're mildly excited by the uncertainty that you may fall down or up. Can't be arsed more like.

Pickering,
Sorry but hardly surprised you can't understand a word. That's not where you are coming from, is it? Nonetheless just in case, you can check this out:
http://globalwarmingkids.net/

Noa,
Many thanks for your intellectually coherent and rigorous response. Look forward to your follow up comments once you've digested the papers.

Stephenson,
So now even Nature, and presumably Science, GRS,and the whole scientific canon can't be trusted. Not likely to be persuaded by science are we? Which begs the question, on what do you base your views. Hang onthere is a 'neutral' source which would be perfest for you. It's called the Daily Mail!

Like shooting fish in a barrel, this is becoming wearisome.

Rod,
Seriously, I note your comments on communication and it is an issue, always has been. Although I'm sure you can glean from your posters that they are not interested in communication of science. As a matter of fact they are not interested in science at all, at least not AGW science.

Frank P

Fergus Pickering (6.42pm)

Steady on, Fergus! There are more Jim Ryans than you can shake a hockey-stick at! Will the real Dr James Ryan stand up please?

Simon Stephenson

Jim Ryan : 10.25am

"So now even Nature, and presumably Science, GRS,and the whole scientific canon can't be trusted. Not likely to be persuaded by science are we? Which begs the question, on what do you base your views. Hang onthere is a 'neutral' source which would be perfest for you. It's called the Daily Mail!"

Jim, I know it must be deeply frustrating for you, and I'm very sorry about that, but as part of my training to be a Chartered Accountant, I was introduced to the concept of auditing. The principal thing about auditing is to start from the premise that there is a human failing of telling porkies for personal gain or advantage, and that therefore what we need to look for is independent corroboration of what people tell us. So if Mr X tells us that his figures can be taken as correct because Mr Y has verified them, we need to ascertain that Mr Y is indeed independent, and that Messrs X and Y do not have a common interest in X's figures being falsely signed off as correct.

The auditing principle is, I'm sure, not that far away from scientific method in so much as it tests the hypothesis that Mr X is telling the truth, by changing the variable Mr X to Mr Y and seeing if the same outcome arises by Mr Y confirming Mr X's results. I presume you are a scientist of some sort, so you'll be fully aware that in changing the variable it's critically important to ensure that the second is in no way dependent upon the first, because otherwise you are not really checking anything.

All we skeptics are really asking is for conclusive proof that the claims of the AGW lobby have been comprehensively and independently audited. Is this asking too much?

Mother Hubbard

Jim,

I cannot pretend to be an expert in modern climate science, but I do hold a fellowship studying Palaeolithic archaeology, with a particular interest in quaternary paleaoclimatic reconstruction (Ice cores, ancient pollen analysis and the like).

I can assure you that climate variability has been considerably higher in the deep past - our best data suggests temperature oscillations of up to ten degrees C within one century during OIS 5 (approx. 100 000 years ago)and this sort of variability is likely to be typical of interglacials.

The past 600 000 years have been characterised by long, long ice ages, punctuated by short, unstable temperate periods (interglacials). These interglacials are characterised by extreme variability (eg, during the OIS 5 interglacial, Yorkshire ranged from being tundra to being home to lions and hippos and back again). I need hardly point out that we are currently in an interglacial.

My biggest problem with both sides of the global warming debate is an obsession with temperature variability over the last few hundred years. Quite simply, the climate operates on a far longer timescale than this. The medieval warm period is a total irrevelance as it is the blink of an eye in terms of the great glacial-interglacial cycle.

Temperature data collected over a period of a couple of hundred years has never been and will never be an accurate means of predicting the future. In fact, in the scheme of things it is statistically meaningless. I consequently cannot understand why palaeoclimatic science is never discussed in these debates. It's as if the world only started turning two thousand years ago and everything prior to this date is irrelevant!

I urge all of you to type 'Oxygen Isotope Stages' into google images - a simple, easily interpretable graph will show you the true climate vraiability over the last 600 000 years. I promise you it will change your perspective a little.

Fergus Pickering

Sorry Ryan. I went to the webite you mentioned and found it was engaged in promoting Islam to children. No good at all, I'm afraid.

rod liddle

@ mother hubbard:My biggest problem with both sides of the global warming debate is an obsession with temperature variability over the last few hundred years. Quite simply, the climate operates on a far longer timescale than this. The medieval warm period is a total irrevelance as it is the blink of an eye in terms of the great glacial-interglacial cycle.

Yes, my main problem too, among a few others. But still, despite this, it is very difficult to contend with the suggestion that in the last 150 years we have not contributed to what may have been a natural period of warming.

Frank P

Mother Hubbard

That was an excellent bone of contention you found in the cupboard, unlike on your ertwhile famous visit to the larder (wags tail in glee). Something we can all get our teeth into, thanks for the link.

John Holland

To anyone interested in the psychology of belief,this site is weird but fascinating, in a car-crash sort of way.
What happens is Jim Ryan posts something about scientific research, with sources, and all the respondents display their self-proclaimed 'superior rationalism' by finding fifty ways to say 'you smell, you Nazi/moron/Communist/nerd etc., etc, we're too clever to fall for that."
The only time anyone attempts any kind of scientific rebuttal,
it either confidently displays the most embarrassing level of confusion, such as the old favourite "there's only a tiny bit of CO2 in the atmosphere so it can't do anything", or it states some arbitary piece of internet rumour-as-science as if it were handed down by Moses, such as "It's a fact that global temperatures are entirely a result of the sun's gravitational field, or is it the moon's, I can't remember."
As has been pointed out, six months ago, everyone on this site found the cold weather definitive proof that warming was bunk. Now, with world grain harvests shrivelling in the heat, you've all gone quiet on the subject.I suppose that's because your objectivity is of a higher order than I can understand.
Ultimately, any more half-digested science-babble would be less interesting than a serious and detailed explanation of the one basic idea that underlies the certainty of the absolutist anti-AGW camp; the conspiracy theory. How, precisely, does this vast scientific conspiracy of lies work? Like all conspiracy theories, it sounds like fun until you look into the logistics of it; like the idea that the Jews were behind 9/11, it's very difficult to prove it's wrong to an enthusiast, it's just that if you look at the practical impossibility of maintaining such a massive deceit among such a big and disparate mass of people, it all crumbles into absurdity. After all, if the entirety of climate science is based on stupidity and/ or lies, there can be no reason not to assume that the rest of science is also. You all, no doubt, have made your minds up as to the mendacious nature of astro-physics, quantum theory and probably gravity. Think about it- who benefits from apples falling out of trees? Scientists, probably.
Virtually no-one on this site is a sceptic in any meaningful sense of the word- you have made your minds up completely, based on your political and philosophical beliefs, and attempt to fit any evidence you can find into a system to prove yourselves right. This, of course, is what everyone does most of the time. Just please, for God's sake, stop droning on about irrelevant concepts like science and reason.

Noa

Jimbo

If I had wanted to be a good Communist party member I would have taken the Socialist worker and Pravda.
If on the other hand I was genuinely in search of a comprehensive objective perspective I would also have read the Times, the FT and the WSJ.
So as your proposed pro-AGW articles in a known subjective journal are not counter-balanced by contrary or even objective articles that you might have read I shall continue to treat them, and you, with the same degree of skepticism that I do with the man who used to deliver leaflets saying The End is Nigh.

But supposing for a moment that your tapestry of hslf baked rationalisations and jumped-to theories and conclusions had even some basis in fact, why aren't you chained to the railings of those global mega-polluters, the Indians and the Chinese rather than railing here?
Global warming? No, just hot air.

Simon Stephenson

John Holland : 1.30pm

You won't get anywhere, you know, by painting all those who disagree with you as hopeless incompetents. Even you, surely, must have become aware during your lifetime that a lot of things aren't exactly as people make them out to be. We live in a world of wall-ro-wall advertising, marketing and misinformation the primary object of which is to persuade people to believe something that they wouldn't have believed had they not been subject to the persuasion.

So successful has been the commercial world in using persuasion by deceit for their own advantage that the practice has spread through the rest of the world - why bother to go through the arse ache of persuasion by proof, when you can get the same result much more straightforwardly by using deceit?

Of course, the proliferation of tactical dishonesty through every aspect of life has led to a class of people becoming highly suspicious of everything they are told, particularly when their hesitation is greeted by the promoters accusing them of being simpletons. Having smelt one rat in the way the initial message was presented, they then smell another one with the total refusal of the message-givers to provide them with what they need to extinguish the stink of the first rat.

So this is where we are John. We don't believe you, and it's not because we think you are stupid, but because we think you're using the fiction of AGW to stir up emotions so as to ease the passage of measures that will achieve your real objective, which is to reduce the level of human consumption.

This isn't to say that we are all against the limitation of human consumption, just that trying to achieve this by propagating a lie is not the right way to go about doing it.

Noa

Rod
"..it is very difficult to contend with the suggestion that in the last 150 years we have not contributed to what may have been a natural period of warming..."

Do you mean 'may' rather than 'not?

Frank P

See WHEB Ventures.

All very worthy, I'm sure!

john miller

Jim Hansen was a climate scientist?

Hah, I never, ever believed the Muppets were real anyway.

Well, except maybe Animal. And those two guys on the balcony.

rod liddle

Put badly by me, Noa; I think it likely we have contributed, thanks for clearing that up.

John Holland; I think I probably fit into the sceptical category, about both AGW and those who, through some sort of faith, oppose it. Not sure what category you fall into mate. The ever-so-tiny-bit patronising category, from your last post. With respect.

Jim Ryan

Mother Hubard,
Paleoclimate has been extensively studied by, funnily enough, climate scientists!There's a wealth of literature. In fact past climate variability demonstrates that climate is very sensitive to changes in CO2. Take the middle miocene 15 million years ago, when CO2 was at the level we find today and solar activity is comparable. What do we find? CO2 is approx 400 ppm and global temperatures were 5-10 degrees (oF) higher, sea-level 75-120 feet higher, no permanent sea ice in Arctic and little ice in Antarctica and Greenland. Might have implication for a planet of 7 billion many of whom are concentrated on the coast, don't you think?
The problem with you and Rod is that you suppose their are two sides to the debate kidding yourselves that you are somehow exhibiting balance. Within science there is very little debate. 97% of actively publishing climate scientists accept AGW.

John Holland,
Brilliant capture of the mindset here. Mind you they won't thank you for it but at least the responses appear to confirm your evaluation. I have never came across a community of people so entrenched in their idealogical objection to AGW. No amount of science (Nature is a 'subjective' journal for f**k sake) will convince them and yet an unreferenced source or a distorted graph from a journalist or a historian is sufficent to overturn the whole scientific canon. I ask you, at least creationists admit they have a faith position.

DZ

Do you think that the Earth's orbital geometry could have anything to do with Ice Ages and warm periods? The shape of the orbit and the 'tilt' of the planet change in predictable cycles. Sometimes warming, sometimes not warming.

Google - Milankovitch; and also Vostok. It is interesting. And in case you think Milankovitch is a Serbian loony, the original work was done by a Scot.

Or ask a geologist in oil/gas exploration what is known about climate change in the distant past. They are the people who know.

rod liddle

Not right, Jim; as I say I think it is probable, maybe highly probable that AGW is a fact. Not 97 per cent, which is a silly misrepresentation, but high enough nonetheless. It still doesn't excuse arrogance, falsehoods, secrecy and downright lying from those who, out of faith, believe it to be 100 per cent.

Jim Ryan

Rod,
Quick clarification, 97% per cent refers to the proportion of surveyed climate scientists who contend AGW is real. It is not an actual measure of the certainty of AGW itself although obviously reflects its robustness. No theory in Science is 100% certain and I defy you to name a climate scientist or any scientist who thinks so. You infer their certainty on the basis of their interaction with a 'sceptical' community that wilfully distorts and ignore the science, issues death threats and has a warped view on how science operates.The consensus of scientists exists because there is a consensus of evidence. By your reckoning Newton's theory of gravity is undermined by the fact the man was a complete bastard.

DZ,
Anybody with even the slightest knowledge in this area will know of Milankovitch cycles, they don't come into play. The notion that petrochemical geologists know better than the body of climate science is preposterous. What next, particle physicists, rather than cosmologists, are best qualified to pronounce on cosmology?

John Holland

Steven S; If I accuse people on this site of being simpletons -which I didn't, at least not until now- it's because their scientific understanding and their easy reliance on half-baked conspiracy theories are simplistic.
(Sorry if that's patronising Rod, but I don't know how else to put it.)
But yes, you're right, I and my secret army of Machiavellian henchmen are indeed plotting the downfall of your decadent civilisation, laughingly composing the most outrageous lies over our organic sheep's yoghurt and Fairtraid decaff. Damn you, and your pesky meddling.

Simon Stephenson

Jim Ryan : 8.48pm

"Within science there is very little debate. 97% of actively publishing climate scientists accept AGW."

To me, it's one fallacy after another with you, Jim. Tell me, what proportion of the people who are experts in the history and philosophy of the Roman Catholic church are themselves Roman Catholics? How many people who are experts in Communism are Communists themselves? Was the Gaussian Copula Formula supported by less than 97% of the experts in credit derivatives? Before Copernicus, what proportion of scientists believed the sun (and everything else) revolved round the earth?

The question you are posing is "How can such a high proportion of experts all be wrong?" to which there are two answers:-

1. Because climate science has become a sect to which only believers are welcome, and from which the uncommitted are repelled by the unspoken entry requirements which are an affront to their own code of ethics.

and/or

2. Groupthink. To misquote Keynes thoughts on bankers, "a sound climate scientist, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way with his fellows, so that no-one can really blame him."

In other words, most of them are driven to taking the orthodox position because it is the orthodox position, and they will do this irrespective of how confidently they personally believe this position to be correct.

The way for you to convince just about the whole world that you are right is to have your claims independently audited. Sure, this won't convince the cranks who will be against you whatever, but the vast majority of your non-supporters are undecideds, not contrarians. And, like I wrote in an earlier comment, you're throwing a second rat to the undecideds by adopting the attitude that to be a non-believer you must be half-witted. And a third rat by taking the line that independent corroboration is a worthless exercise because anyone competent is bound to support you, and any contrary opinion must be from someone either incompetent, or biassed, or both.

And another thing, Jim. What you also have to do is persuade the unconvinced of your personal disinterest in all this. Your defence of AGW as the moral high ground, and your insistence that the only way to join you is to dismiss reservation as being wrong, rather seems to me like you, yourself, needing to sustain the idea that you are morally and intellectually superior to the rest of us. Maybe we'd jointly make some headway if you could become so minded as to give us the chance to reach your rung of the deserving-of-praise ladder, without feeling that such a success entitles you to step up to the rung higher?

Simon Stephenson

John Holland : 11.50am

Conspiracy's a loaded word, because by definition it implies that the goal is an illegal act. Therefore the use of "conspiracy theory" as a catch-all description of every suggestion of concerted dishonesty is unhelpfully pejorative.

Unless. that is, you believe that truth and honesty are just vestigial stages in the development of the human being, and that the real quantum leap we must make, as a race, is to adapt to the concept that it is ethically superior behaviour instead to be both natural purveyors, and willing recipients, of false impressions.

DZ

Jim Ryan 10.43

Good Heavens. I wasn't talking to you, whoever you are. There are people reading this site who may find such things interesting and may take the trouble to read about them, and make their own judgement.

And I wasn't talking about 'petrochemical' geologists, whatever they are, just geologists who routinely look at rock from deep drilling.

What next indeed? How about politicians posing as 'climate scientists'?

Noa Zrk

Simon Stephenson
July 25th, 2010 12:17pm

An acutely observed analysis of the psychosis of certainty and its concomitant contempt for any divergence from the faith.

Non AGW believers are only a few steps away from being consigned to the flames with the new Torquemadas of Temperature.
Still at least it's more entertaining than being proffered the Watchtower.

Andrei Osred Vishinsky

I'm still working through one of Jim Ryan's 25 page precis links but I am reminded of the great Trofim Lysenko. In his days more than 97% of scientists in his field agreed with him. Jim Henson/Lysenko - IPCC/Soviet Academy of Sciences...plus ca change.

John Holland

Simon Stevenson; conspiracy might be a pejorative term, but it's surely the appropriate one.
If you believe that a large and powerful group of people are deliberately, and on an organised basis, spreading lies to further their own secret agenda, then, according to my dictionary, you believe in a conspiracy.
And you still don't really answer the question of;
a) Why you are so certain that the entirety of climate science is a lie, and
b) How you can even trust the computer you're using when, as I said before, there can be no reason not to apply your theory to the rest of science. Everything, from plate tectonics and cosmology to genetics is most likely to be a huge web of lies. Why do you believe, if in fact you do, that the earth does indeed move around the sun?
People very rarely change their views just because of the existence of evidence, they simply decide the evidence is wrong, or a lie. By concluding that the climate debate is a conspiracy, you have ensured that no evidence, by definition, would pass your test of objectivity. How could it, when the only people in a position, technically, to obtain and quantify the evidence are, ipso facto, liars.
By and large, people (including scientists) don't change their minds. A theory becomes accepted when it's opponents die.

Wot's Charlie?

I think I believe in violence against warmists. Am I really so very, very sick?

John Holland

Yes, Andrei, and at least 97% of scientists agree with the theories of gravity, evolution and the transmission of disease by virus. So what's your point?
The horrible fact is this just means that people might have to try their best to weigh up the truth of each theory on the basis of evidence and probability rather than try to score glib points by making uncontextualised and inept syllogisms; all you're saying is that because some fruit are lemons, all fruit are, therefore, lemons. Well done, that helps.

John Holland

Wot's Charlie; no, but you are a moron.

Simon Stephenson

John Holland : 8.09pm

"conspiracy might be a pejorative term, but it's surely the appropriate one. If you believe that a large and powerful group of people are deliberately, and on an organised basis, spreading lies to further their own secret agenda, then, according to my dictionary, you believe in a conspiracy."

Well you're wrong, I think. Conspiracy, according to the definitions I have found, involves an illegal act. I'm not claiming the AGW supporters are engaged in anything illegal. I think they are in the most part acting with good intentions, but they are seeking to achieve a change of attitude in one area by creating in a collateral area a demon that doesn't exist. To me, this is an affront to adult humanity, and as such is unethical behaviour.

"And you still don't really answer the question of;
a) Why you are so certain that the entirety of climate science is a lie,"

Well I don't think it is all a lie, but as I've said above I think that to some people the plus of the good intention outweighs the minus of the disingenuity that goes into achieving it. So I think the overwhelming goal of climate science is, by hook or by crook, to get the general public to believe AGW theory, just as the fundamental goal of commercial advertising is to get the public to believe that product A is better than product B, irrespective of whether it is or it isn't.

"b) How you can even trust the computer you're using when, as I said before, there can be no reason not to apply your theory to the rest of science. Everything, from plate tectonics and cosmology to genetics is most likely to be a huge web of lies. Why do you believe, if in fact you do, that the earth does indeed move around the sun?"

Five words, John - ulterior motives, politicians, pressure groups.

There's no political involvement in plate tectonics, cosmology or whether the earth goes round the sun, so I'm fairly confident that what I read is what it is. There's political involvement in GM and stem-cell research, so with genetics I take what I read with a pinch of salt, trying to identify the ulterior motive, the likely effect this will have on the presentation of the information, and from there what the true picture is most likely to be.

Take passive smoking. There's no evidence whatsoever that passive smoking constitutes more than a minuscule health hazard either to smokers or non-smokers. So much research has been done in the desperate hope of finding a health linkage that if there had been one, we can be positive that it would have been found. But it hasn't. However, despite all the brouhaha, the smoking ban wasn't about passive smoking, it was about trying to reduce active smoking, by pushing smokers into pariah status through falsely accusing them of damaging the health of non-smokers.

Pressure groups? Politicians Ulterior motive? All there in spades. Good intention? Perhaps, but what are the other consequences of treating adults as though they are 5 year olds?

"People very rarely change their views just because of the existence of evidence, they simply decide the evidence is wrong, or a lie."

Not me. I follow Keynes:-

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

"By concluding that the climate debate is a conspiracy, you have ensured that no evidence, by definition, would pass your test of objectivity. How could it, when the only people in a position, technically, to obtain and quantify the evidence are, ipso facto, liars."

Well I haven't called it a conspiracy, but we'll let that pass. The myth you seem not to be able to shake off is that the only people with the competence to check climate science for validity are climate scientists themselves. This is hogwash. What's being checked is the logic of whether the claims made are consistent with the evidence, and whether the evidence is sufficiently detailed and complete to justify the generalisation of the claim from the specificity of the evidence. One would certainly need considerable skills to be able to carry out this validity check, but, to be honest, one wouldn't need to know all the ins and outs of climate science.

"By and large, people (including scientists) don't change their minds. A theory becomes accepted when it's opponents die."

Not if they're Keynes or one of his followers, though.

rod liddle

No, John Holland - but it does mean that some fruit are lemons. The only obvious parallel with Lysenko is the political imperative. But that IS a distant parallel of a sort, even if not a terribly fair one to make.

And I bet 97 per cent of scientists don't agree with current thinking on gravity...........

Richard of Moscow

According to Doctor Phil Jones, "There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8511670.stm

Whereas on here, Mr Ryan states, "MWP was localised to areas of the Northern Hemisphere and globally averaged temperature now is higher than then in any case." but refuses, or forgets, to post evidence when asked.

I wouldn't be surprised one bit if global warming was partly down to humans, but on this seems a little evasive.

Jimmock

JR: 97% of 'climate scientists' believe in AGW. Well how about that? 99% of chiropractors believe that 'popping' the spinal joints is safe and therapeutic. It is part of the definition of climate scientist (a neologism in any case) that one is a fully-funded believer. See the CRU leaked emails on 'redefining what is meant by peer reveiw'.

Rod. I understand your desire to be polite to an apparently reasonable (certainly voluminous, to the point of fillibustering) commentator such as Jim Ryan, but there is no need to concede any such thing as near certaintly on the science. Until the field is free of corruption and hyperbole, climate alarmists and their self-interested hangers on ought to treated with scorn.

rod liddle

Jim - my worry is that the 97 per cent is gerrymandered a little. It would not surprise me that 97 per cent of scientists who have a vested interest in the reality of AGW agree with AGW. The figure beyond that sphere is somewhat smaller; still very large, I grant you. But even then it's perhaps 75 per cent of scientists believe that there's a 95 per cent chance that the earth is warming up and a 60 per cent chance that this is a consequence of our own behaviour. Do you see where this is getting us? The NS editorial is roughly my position: strong evidence that we should be taking action.

rod liddle

@jimmock: It is part of the definition of climate scientist (a neologism in any case) that one is a fully-funded believer.

Yes and apologies; hadn't read your post when I posted my response to Jim. There has to be some truth in that assertion.

John Holland

Simon S; Your analogy with passive smoking is ok up to a point, I guess. Though I personaly have no idea as to the truth or otherwise of the research, no doubt exaggerated claims have been made to "simplify" the medical position by doctors with essentially good intentions.
As you suggest, some climate scientists have clearly been doing the same thing. No one is suggesting that science, still less scientists, are pure.
Nevertheless, to carry the analogy, you would be concluding from this that, in all likelyhood, cigarettes probably pose no threat to health, which even the tobacco lobby now (eventually) accepts is not the case.
The fact that for many years the scientists who claimed that smoking causes cancer were subjected to just the same accusations of promoting false science to further their anti-free market and statist views is obviously no coincidence.(Not withstanding the fact that the first scientists to seriously investigate the link were, literally, Nazis.)
It seems to me that very likely that, in a fairly short timescale, AGW will similarly be largely accepted as true. The politics will then come to the fore; most climatologists promote a "green" policy of abstinence, some, like Lomberg, say this is pointless and economically damaging. As someone with a big emotional attachment to our present, complex, ecosystems, I'm sympathetic to the green agenda. I'm not sure, though, that I see much of a case for the more apocalyptical "end of humanity" stuff. That does sound essentially religious, and though I hate the idea, mankind can probably live ok with the likely mass extinctions that may accompany our full blooming.

NR

Simon Stephenson is spot on. Richard Feynman understood and communicated clearly that scientific integrity is not about telling the truth, only. It is about exposing all the reasons why you might have been mislead in your reasoning or experimentation. As a a practicing scientist myself I know how hard getting accurate measurements in the lab can be. I know how bias can occur *even when you guard against it*. I know that modelling is ultimately not science - that is only based on independent corroboration.

Before you go off the deep-end Jim Ryan, I neither know *or care* whether AGW is happening. But some of the AGW proponents are playing with fire by advocating catastrophic economic action based on the output of a computer model. I'm a physicist-turned-engineer and what we model can be measured very, very accurately. Even so, I'm not sure I'd bet the house on the results.

Wot's Charlie

Why are we standing back whilst these people pull our civilised society apart?

Let's make slaves of the warmists, starting with Ryan, Holland, Jones and whoever else puts their head above the parapet. Then, on those long, cold, dull evenings with no electricity, we'll have someone to do all the work by hand and we'll have the consolation of having some of the smuggest people EVER enduring misery and deprivation before our very eyes. They advocated it - they can reap the benefits.

Let's start picking on the greenies - no more enjoying the adulation of the dullards for them, just relentless harassment and abuse.

Given their head they'll have us in penury, in abject conditions. Why ARE we giving these repellent traitors such an easy ride?

Thucydides

Jim Ryan,

I have no idea why you choose to spend your time engaging with the science-deniers and other assorted loonies that frequent this site, but more power to your elbow - it's entertaining stuff.

John Holland

Wot's Charlie; When you say "our civilisation", do you regard yourself as an exemplar of that? You're like those unfortunate members of the BNP who, while looking like the tatooed result of a union between an iguarnadon and a cro-magnon, nevertheless claim to members of the Master race, the very pinnacle of evolution.

Jim Ryan

Rod,
So experts should be distrusted on the basis that they have a vested interest in their own area of expertise. Rather tautological don't you think?You might as well say 99% of doctors propound the germ theory of disease because they have a vested interest in promoting medicine? Perhaps the LHC is a vast conspiracy of Quantum Physicists? As John Holland has implied, the assumption about AGW theory would have to be applied to other equally robust scientific theories. As I have said, a consensus among scientists is not sufficient unless there are also multiple lines of evidence and independent observation to justify such a consensus.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract
I agree with your qualification on the liklihood that humans are making a contribution to global warming i.e. 95% or very likely. Not sure why you might think a non-expert might be more reliable than an expert which is the inference of what you say. I suspect in real life you rarely practice that philosophy.

Jimmock,
It would be all too easy to direct you to hundreds of publications supporting AGW and which have no CRU association. No doubt you would reject these on grounds that they don't comply with your personal opinion.

Simon Stephenson,
Passive smoking is a 'tiny risk'! Are you sure?

This referenced passage from CRUK:
Several studies have shown that breathing in other people’s smoke causes cancer in non-smokers. 2, 71Second-hand smoke contains several cancer causing chemicals. Many of these chemicals are present in higher concentrations than in the smoke inhaled by the smoker themselves. 2

One study analysed 55 studies from around the world found that non-smoking spouses of people who smoke at home have 27% higher risks of lung cancer. 72 And a review of 22 studies found that people exposed to second-hand smoke in the workplace have 24% higher risks of lung cancer. Those who were exposed to the highest levels of second-hand smoke at work had twice the risks of lung cancer. 73

One study estimates that passive smoking may kill over 11,000 people every year in the UK from cancer, heart disease, strokes and other diseases. 74

Second-hand smoking also causes other health problems in non-smokers including asthma and heart disease. One study showed that even 30 minutes of exposure to second-hand smoke can reduce blood flow in a non-smoker’s heart. 75

it must be another damn conspiracy, this time concocted between medical scientists, doctors, epidemiologists etc etc.

Wot's Charlie,
I believe its time you returned to your padded cell.

Simon Stephenson

Jim Ryan : 4.15pm

"Passive smoking is a 'tiny risk'! Are you sure?"

Minuscule, actually. Far smaller than hundreds of other activities that no one would ever dream of banning.

As sure as I need to be Jim, especially as I have an explanation for all the hysteria that is more plausible than that the second-hand smoking arguments are mere reflections of the analysis.

But then it's completely impossible that you will ever change so as to agree with me, no matter what happens. However, if for either AGW or passive smoking, there is ever an independent appraisal of their claims and their methodology that concludes that the claims are true, fair and justified in the light of the total of the evidence available, then I would as a matter of course change my position to one agreeing with you. Just as Keynes suggested.

No further comments from me on this thread, I'm afraid, as I'm going to be in an internet-free zone for about a fortnight. I await the independent audit with interest.

rod liddle

Jim, with respect, that's a misrepresentation and I think you know it. As I keep saying, you cannot separate the singer from the song. The main reason behind my mistrust, as you put it, is the financial and political and personal gain in perpetuating AGW - EVEN IF THERE IS AGW. The same processes come into play in all science, of course, but not to the same degree. The search for the Higgs Bosun - which will be won by the worn out and creaking Fermilab, incidentally - is not the subject of summit meetings attended by the PM and Barack bleedin Obama. Do you not see the difference? There is probably a graph to be drawn which would show the distortion of objectivity in science as a function of funding and political orthodoxy. It would start, I suppose, with Ptolemy.

Wot's Charlie

Ha! Good to see that the Ryan / Holland hybrid has stirred itself in my honour. By the way, it's "Iguanadon". No "R", you see. And it's "Tattooed", with two "T"s in the middle. Never mind. They're only details. Nothing important. Don't let it sting.

When the power is cut on a regular basis, causing the demise of:- T.V., Playstations, computers, supermarket cash registers, petrol pumps, the lottery machine, cash machines etc I think that the great unwashed will be looking for a scapegoat. Preferably one which can be easily located and assaulted, to relieve the boredom. Your abuse and condescension serves only to make me more determined to ensure that the anger of the untermensch is directed at the right people - greenies.

It's a comforting thought that all ones enemies are mad or morons but an inaccurate one. Still, why change the habits of a lifetime?

Anyway - it won't be the first time that a "moronic" section of the population has taken it upon itself to wreak vengeance upon it's "intellectual superiors".

Enjoy!

Thucydides

What's Charles,

"... to make me more determined to ensure that the anger of the untermensch is directed at the right people - greenies." Can you, Charles, direct the anger of the untermensch? No, thought not. Feel free to keep commenting on blogs, though, if it makes you feel better.

And - how predictable was this? - it's its intellectual superiors, not it's. No apostrophe, you see (that's the curly squiggle that people wot aren't too good at English chuck in when they aren't sure whether it's needed or not).

Ta ta

Wot's Charlie

Dear Thucydides, it must be a quiet night round your way, that you have time and inclination to mix it with people so far down the food chain. How DO you stand it?

Anyway - I should have thought that someone of your plainly superior cranical capacity could see clearly what sort of response you and your bredren will get from the tattooed masses when you take their 4x4s away etc. etc. Tell yourself it ain't so. But to the vast majority of people you're about as welcome as an outbreak of smallpox and I'll be doing my little bit to encourage people to cause your and yours grief. A small bit, no doubt, but these things can grow. I feel encouraged by the fact that I'm pushing downhill really - overblown, smug, sanctimonious, self-righteous windbags are hated for their personalities alone, before you even get to their grossly unpopular and unwelcome opinions.

Anyway - thanks for the encouragement. I'm even more certain than I was before that you are a good target. I'm energised! Now - away, horrid, vicious little man. Don't waste any more of your valuable time on the likes of me - you're far too important to spend your evening exchanging blog abuse with some social pariah. Aren't you?

John Holland

Wot's Charlie; I forgot to ask-
I've got two yoghurts (yogurts? yogerts?) in my fridge, rhubarb (rubharb?) and tangerine. What one do you think I should take to work? I like rhubarb best, but it's nice sometimes to save it so I have something nice to look forward to. Any ideas?

Thucydides

Charles,

Cranical? Bredren? Or clever, deliberate mistakes? Whatever.

How exactly will you be whipping up the masses to cause people like me – attractive, intelligent, popular people – grief? But you’re right: I have spent enough time on you, so no more. I hope the thread can go back to Jim Ryan’s enjoyable toying with the rest of the weirdos.

Jim Ryan

Rod,
Methinks you doth protest too much.I agree that science has a social and political context - don't recall ever denying it - particularly in regard to the funding and application of science. However, the focus (at least, my focus) of this thread is theory. I believe it is incumbent upon you to explain how you think the actual theory is being shaped by socio-political forces. Other than banging a hollow drum, I'm not aware of any wholescale changes being brought to bear by our political masters to address AGW. A slight skewing of policy towards alternative energy but that makes sense in the context of energy security and approaching peak oil, let alone AGW. No, it is robust theory which is driving the empty words, not deeds, of our political elite. A notable exception is China which is making huge strides with solar and wind energy but coontinue to burn coal at a massive rate. Economics > science I'm afraid. Of course the corollary is that there are socio-political forces which have a vested interest in undermining or denying the science of AGW. Why do you ignore these. As with the link between smoking and cancer these have being well documented. Ever since Copernicus and the Vatican, and probably before as you allude, I think you will find that enlightened theory, if not always the scientists, has been the harbinger of uncomfortable truths for a largely ignorant public and a self-interested oligarchies.
Anyway I digress; it's the nature of capitalism that vested interests will amplify any message that perpetuates those interests. This cuts both ways.
Although none of this is without importance, my point is that it should in no way impede the evaluation of a theory backed up by a mountain of evidence which can be independently affirmed. It's the evidence Rod, it's always the evidence. I urge you you to check out this presentation by a leading climate scientist and contrast his approach to that of the contrarians.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmlHbt5jja4&feature=related

Simon Stephenson,
Enjoy your holiday but before you go can you just reflect on your previous post and ask yourself why you choose to ignore an extensive literature on passive smoking and cancer/ill health. Do you actually think that making an assertion without support carries any weight?
And what's all this about AGW and an independent audit as if auditing was some higher principle. Do you not realise that all significant analyses by climate scientists have been independently and repeatedly attested using different techniques and methodologies and converge around a central, thus far, unassailable theory. In spite of this mountain of evidence, this theory would be consigned to oblivion if it could not explain one significant and repeatable observation. That's the beauty and the tribulation of science.

John Holland

Wot's Charlie; I took the tangerine in the end. Can't wait till supper.
Couple more questions;
a) why does my stupid dictionary spell iguanadon wrongly? And not even have cranical?
b) Is it possible to post a picture of yourself? I was wondering what a man as unsmug as you might wear- first I thought upmarket sportswear, you know, the common touch but not one of the "masses". But then I thought no, it's got to be a really nice pair of Chinos with deck shoes. But sturdy deckshoes, not puffy ones. Am I right?
c) Given that you want beat me up because I'm "vicious", have you any more tips to make me a better person? For example, my favourite cheese is Shropshire Blue, but I'm worried it's a bit smug. Have you any suggestions? Medium chedder, perhaps?

Noa

John Holland

"my favourite cheese is Shropshire Blue..Have you any suggestions?..."

Mine too! Yummy, isn't it?

To preseve it in the face of inexorable the AGW I've learned about from Jim Ryan, (thanks for fixing it Jim!), I'm torn between a waterproofed and insulated float and a larger fridge, however much I know that fridge just adds to the problem.

Or should I just switch back to Lancashire Tasty?

John Holland

Noa- I think you should try those individualy wrapped Kraft Slices. They taste a bit funny, but they can survive anything.
C'mon Wot's (can I call you Wot's?)- we need some answers.

Jim Ryan

No problem Noa,

Now you won't be able to mask your stupifying ignorance as 'intellectual rigorous critique'or parade your denialism as scepticism.

Noa

Jim

So certain of you of your own beliefs and keen to impart knowledge of them, whether requested or not, that you never asked me about about mye knowledge or otherwise of AGW.
So really, an accusation of 'stupefying ignorance' can only be interpreted by the objective viewer the overweening arrogance of the technical wonk.
I have nothing to prove to you. Having failed to provide a balanced argument you have proven nothing to me.
The next grant application should prove instructive for you. If your superiors are so imprudent as to let you present it and answer questions on its robustness.

Noa

John Holland

"They taste a bit funny, but they can survive anything".

May I suggest you try taking them out of the wrapper before putting them on your cracker.