From the UK Telegraph 26 June 2009
Christopher Booker
POLAR BEAR EXPERT BARRED BY WARMISTS
Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group, set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission, will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.
This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN’s major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world’s leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week’s meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with the views of the rest of the group.
Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching into the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.
Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming in the past 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.
He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists’ agenda as their most iconic single cause.
The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the ‘wind-sculpted ice’ they were standing on made such a striking image.
[Added by Anthony: Please follow this link to the original photographer. See the bottom right photo.
She just wanted a photograph more of the “wind-sculpted ice” than of the bears. Byrd writes:
“[You] have to keep in mind that the bears aren’t in danger at all. It was, if you will, their playground for 15 minutes. You know what I mean? This is a perfect picture for climate change, in a way, because you have the impression they are in the middle of the ocean and they are going to die with a coke in their hands. But they were not that far from the coast, and it was possible for them to swim.”
]
Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week’s meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming. The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor’s, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears: ‘it was the position you’ve taken on global warming that brought opposition’.
Dr Taylor was told that his views running ‘counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful’. His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as the radiation of the sun and changing ocean currents – was ‘inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG’.
So, as the great Copenhagen bandwagon rolls on, stand by this week for reports along the lines of ‘ scientists say polar bears are threatened with extinction by vanishing Arctic ice’. But check out also on Anthony Watt’s Watts Up With That website for the latest news of what is actually happening in the Arctic. Average temperatures at midsummer were still below zero – the latest date this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping – and after last year’s recovery from its September 2007 low, this year’’s ice melt is likely to be substantially less than for some time, The bears are doing fine.
(Note – this was sent to me via email as an advance copy. Also I should add that the photo was not originally part of the story sent to me, I added the photo since I know the reference. – Anthony)
Related WUWT story here
“Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming in the past 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.”
Warming caused by CO2 increase isn’t “dictated by the computer models” of the IPCC (which is itself wrong, as the models don’t belong to the IPCC anyway) – it’s “dictated” by basic radiative principles.
The comment is either sloppy reporting or an incorrect belief on the part of Dr. Taylor.
“Dr Taylor was told that his views running ‘counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful’.”
Opposing views are helpful to those searching for the truth, but not for those who are merely advocating a “cause.”
Things are tyeing together. If you watch the last years of the video I did on Arctic Ice, the powerful winds from the bearing sea are obvious.
It’s funny that a “Let’s stop global warming” advertisement came up on this posting with two cute (if predators can ever be called that) bears pining for sympathy are shown.
Re: Gary Strand
Dr Taylors point is that the models are bust. Who the models belong to are really of no concern. What’s important is that he was dismissed from the conference because of his heretic beliefs…
How about warming {of the magnitude} dictated by IPCC models? Read an interesting chat with a fellow, Chris Colose, who says that the observations were being brought closer to the models. That’s some scientific method, the observations don’t match the models, so the observations must be wrong! It’s in the comments at Thomas Fuller’s ‘Comment on the EPA’s stonewalling the global warming report’.
Clearly, polar bears don’t know the difference between weather and climate.
The Ministry of Climate released another mandate today. It was the third in the past six months but most people stopped counting these days. Joe knew that it wouldn’t affect him much- most of what had already been passed affected him past the point of caring. He was old, old enough to remember the days before the Ministry existed and old enough to know that the days when his voice held weight had long since passed. He knew he wouldn’t miss the extra 15 minutes of biking that the mandate curtailed, and had long since given up biking or other forms of exercise since the passage of MC1000. 1000lbs. The unthinkable amount of CO2 he exhaled each year. Was it so wrong? Did his every waking breath add so much of the dreaded CO2 to the atmosphere? Did he really have to put an end to some of his favorite activities in the name of the environment? The report released by the Ministry shortly before MC1000 said the science was irrefutable. The globe was still warming despite nearly 30 years of the harshest winters and mildest summers on record. Solid science. The models never lied.
Joe suspended his bitter musings and unhooked his methane capture receptacle. He only had a few minutes to take his monthly collection into the Ministry Measure station for his scheduled deposit. He knew he was light of his average measure on record with the Ministry which would result in a hefty fine, but he didn’t have the money to pay them anymore. So he farted a few times unhooked. Criminal.
I read one of his papers about 3 or 4 months ago but have apparently lost the link. It was an interesting analysis of the danger to polar bear populations. What was particularly interesting was that he used IPCC estimates for ice extent decline and even if you believe them there was a population loss but no danger of extinction. I’ll post the link later if I can find it.
Don’t you just love the warmists? Here’s one of the top researchers in the field they’re discussing and they bar him. That’s real science in practice.
Well, refusing experts with opposite views is how the warmists keep their doctrine alive. It is not democratic, but obviously it’s effective.
I must think about the “Rabarber, rabarber, rabarber, method first employed by the National Socialist Party to disturb political meetings.
As soon as the opposition was allowed to address the meeting, the party members
started to call “rabarber, raberber, rabarber, so nobody could hear the arguments of the opposition.
Just refusing opposition experts to a meeting is more effective.
For one it saves you time and you don’t have to shout rabarber.
We don”t have to underline that both methods are undemocratic and the people who applied those methods in the past have caused a lot of human suffering, death and destruction.
So stand up to those elements and kick them out because they are a the kind of breed that used to run countries on the other side of the former Iron Curtain and NAZI GERMANY.
This all sounds like tough talk but you better get the picture now before it is too late.
The conference’s qualification process has shown that it is a political conference, not a scientific one.
Gary Strand: “Warming caused by CO2 increase isn’t “dictated by the computer models” of the IPCC (which is itself wrong, as the models don’t belong to the IPCC anyway) – it’s “dictated” by basic radiative principles.”
OK, I’ll bite. Please explain how basic radiative principles dictate this. Please explain how the 0.0003 share of atmospheric CO2, which blocks thermal radiation at a few specific wavelengths (which coincidentally are the same wavelengths as for water vapor) is the culprit.
Please show your work. Use of models is not permitted.
Gary Strand (10:57:46) :
“The comment is either sloppy reporting or an incorrect belief on the part of Dr. Taylor.”
Actually, it’s neither. It’s sloppy thinking on your part. There is simply insufficient CO2 in the atmosphere (at <400 ppm/v) to have the sort of radiative effect you would like.
The warm-mongers have latched onto CO2 as their chosen bogeyman because this gives them the excuse to control virtually every activity on earth, seeing as how we are a carbon-based species on a carbon-based planet.
I have been a fan of Booker (and his colleague Richard North) for a long time. It doesn't surprise me that he got this story first; he's one of the few in the UK media that hasn't been at the koolaid.
But either way, Mr Strand, are you seriously happy with a system that actually refuses to hear a recognised expert on any subject because his views on that subject differ from that of the current paradigm? Is that how genuine science is supposed to work in the 21st century?
Or could it be that these are only pseudo-scientists more concerned with their next pay packet than with anything resembling truth?
Are they frightened that someone out there might actually hear what he says and might actually believe him? Are they frightened that what he has to say might actually be a damn sight more plausible than the BS they are churning out for the supposedly ignorant plebs?
See: Papers by MK Taylor on polar bears.
Polar Bears & Global Warming – Dr Mitch Taylor Video
Last stand of our wild polar bears, Dr. Mitchell Taylor
For polar bear model enthusiasts:
Mark-Recapture and Stochastic Population Models for Polar Bears of the High Arctic
MITCHELL K. TAYLOR, JEFF LAAKE, PHILIP D. McLOUGHLIN, H. DEAN CLUFF and FRANÇOIS MESSIER, ARCTIC, VOL. 61, NO. 2 (JUNE 2008) P. 143– 152
Polar Bear fact sheet
Department of the Environment, Nunavut, Canada
Dr. Mitchell Taylor, Polar Bear Biologist,
Department of the Environment,
Government of Nunavut , Igloolik , Nunavut , Canada
If I was a polar bear, I would be more concerned about this:
http://www.adventurenw.com/polar.shtml
the world has been taken over by “kooks & wackos”.
Polar Bear Populations are Stable and Healthy, so say the
“kooks & whackos” who want to make the polar bear endangered “just in case”. Here is a blog post, with a link to their own report begging to make the bear endangered, even though populations are stable. in fact, even with artic warming over the past 30 years, since the late 70’s, the bear population has grown. I hope the moderator will appreciate that this is not abusive language, but sadly true.
http://nofreewind.blogspot.com/2009/06/polar-bear-populations-are-stable-and_08.html
what is scary to our society and our wildlife is global cooling. here is what has happened to the birdlife in Churchill with this years frigid temperatures and not yet happening spring, the birds can’t breed.. I live in Pennsylvania and I haven’t even been able to use my swimming pool yet!
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/big-chill-in-churchill-47992231.html
JKS, thank you for your humor. It was well needed on this day after the US House of Representatives passed the Cap & Trade legislation.
Gary Strand said “Warming caused by CO2 increase isn’t “dictated by the computer models” of the IPCC (which is itself wrong, as the models don’t belong to the IPCC anyway) – it’s “dictated” by basic radiative principles.
The comment is either sloppy reporting or an incorrect belief on the part of Dr. Taylor.”
—–
Gary,
I don’t know which is the more absurd; your captious comment or my taking the time to respond to it. The preposition ‘of’ is more lexically versatile than to merely connote ownership. ‘Dictate’ is another word you could have looked up or thought about before caviling.
Your point is really that you’re convinced that warming is caused by CO2. That’s original! I’ll have to look into it.
Interesting that you may have acredited the image to the wrong person:
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/5360/polarbear.jpg
see
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/mar/04/climatechange.activists
Nice touch, JKS. Tragically, the way things are going, one day ‘Miniclim’ will be a household name.
Mike Abbott (12:46:54) : “If I was a polar bear, I would be more concerned about this:”
Your link to the hunting site is interesting but not very helpful. If one searches on polar bear numbers, survival, and hunting restrictions and reads enough you will find that bear populations were harmed by unrestrained hunting. With proper restrictions and management most populations have recovered, as the report says:
“far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.”
I think it is fair to say that Dr. Taylor and others and the responsible governments worked on the details of polar bear populations and management with considerable success. CO2 was not the culprit.
You folks need to look into Arrhenius, specifically “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground,” Philosophical Magazine 1896(41): 237-76″, available at
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/1/18/Arrhenius.pdf
I’m also not impressed by folks who post with silly handles, like “orthodoc” and “Sam the Skeptic”.
bill (13:08:42) :
“Interesting that you may have acredited the image to the wrong person:”
Sorry, Bill:
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own fact”—
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
http://newswithviews.com/Williams/carole7.htm
Carole “CJ” Williams
January 26, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
The following is paragraph #3 from the above link”
“Crosbie, who was also on the trip, pilfered the polar bear photo from a shared computer onboard the Canadian icebreaker where Ms. Byrd downloaded her snapshots; he saved it in his personal file. Several months later, Crosbie, who is known as an avid photographer, gave the photo to the Canadian Ice Service, which then allowed Environment Canada to use it as an illustration for an online magazine. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8121625.stm
After more than 18 years studying the Sun, the plug is finally being pulled on the ailing spacecraft Ulysses.
Bill,
I think if you dig deep enough into the photos, you will find a statement from Dan Crosbie that he “grabbed” the photo for use in something, and didn’t realize he’d “done anything wrong” until someone pointed out that it was actually Amanda’s photo.
I’ll dig around and see if I can find the story…
JimB
Here ’tis:
http://newsbusters.org/node/11879
So Anthony’s photo credit is accurate.
JimB
WARNING:
Do not feed the polar bears.
Survivors will be prosecuted.
http://whatthecrap.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/polarbear-eating-meat.jpg
For others, next of kin will be notified.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I’m not worried about the fate of the polar bears; they’ll do just fine. Mankind, however, is another story.
bill (13:08:42) :
Interesting that you may have acredited the image to the wrong person:
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/5360/polarbear.jpg
see
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/mar/04/climatechange.activists
She took the picture and tells us about the pic. Amanda was there. It is available for sale meaning you can buy the rights to use the picture.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2969/
It is a very much hi jacked picture and theme.
http://scottthong.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/nst-letters-al-gore-lied-about-drowning-polar-bears/
Readers can view the photo at Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project website, http://www.whoi.edu/beaufortgyre/dispatch2004/dispatch02.html where they will see Byrd’s innocuous caption for the photo: “Mother polar bear and cub on interesting ice sculpture carved by waves.”
Byrd uploaded her photos to her ship’s computer, where another member took it and passed it to the government department, Environment Canada.
Gore is making up stories regarding these pictures.
This is getting positively Galileian in it’s nature.It wasn’t the
church but the “Concensus” of the day-nothing in human nature has changed all that much.-Until the fact become obvious-like late springs,no summers,
crop failures-yet we continue to turn food into fuel…
Carole “CJ” Williams
January 26, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
Last March, global warming fanatic Al Gore used a picture of two polar bears purportedly stranded on melting ice off the coast of Alaska as a visual aide to support his claim that man-made global warming is doing great harm to Mother Earth. The one he chose, but didn’t offer to pay for right away, turned out to be a photo of a polar bear and her cub out doing what healthy, happy polar bears do on a wave-eroded chunk of ice not all that far from shore in the Beaufort Sea north of Barstow, Alaska.
The picture, wrongly credited to Dan Crosbie, an ice observer specialist for the Canadian Ice Service, was actually taken by Amanda Byrd while she was on a university-related research cruise in August of 2004, a time of year when the fringe of the Arctic ice cap normally melts. Byrd, a marine biology grad student at the time, was gathering zooplankton for a multi-year study of the Arctic Ocean.
Crosbie, who was also on the trip, pilfered the polar bear photo from a shared computer onboard the Canadian icebreaker where Ms. Byrd downloaded her snapshots; he saved it in his personal file. Several months later, Crosbie, who is known as an avid photographer, gave the photo to the Canadian Ice Service, which then allowed Environment Canada to use it as an illustration for an online magazine.
Today that photo, with credit given to photographer Dan Crosbie and the Canadian Ice Service, can be found all over the Internet, generally with the caption “Two polar bears are stranded on a chunk of melting ice”.
It’s a hoax, folks. The bears, which can swim distances of 100 miles and more, weren’t stranded; they were merely taking a break and watching the boat go by when a lady snapped their picture.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Williams/carole7.htm
This original post had it corrrect the first time.
And Flock fleecing al gore preeches that the bears are being foreced off the planet, no where to go. Yeppers, they can pop back in the water and swimm from their olympic diving platforms back to land when they finish their fishing excursion.
Great Job amanda. She is a student from Australia and attending Alaska Fairbanks
Byrd, a marine biology grad student at the time, was gathering zooplankton for a multi-year study of the Arctic Ocean.
Do the environmentalists push ripping off pictures?
Dan Crosbie is being bad. He needs to be nice to lady students taking pictures.
Strand – If you believe “basic radiative principles” alone are adequate to model climate, you are an idiot.
BTW here is a link exposing the truth aboutht the ‘stranded’ polar bears-and ms.
Byrd does deserve credit: http://newsbusters.org/node/11879
On the polar bear photo, this melting ice floe must have been the biggest on record since about 10% of sea ice sits above water and 90% is under the water – this sea ice must have been about 50 metres thick at one time.
So, either it is actually a melted iceberg (the dirt and blue ice gives that away as well) and/or,
… it has been washed to near the shore and is now sitting on the bottom after being moved in by high tides (with the photo taken at low tide) – it would still have been extremely thick sea ice at one time so it is probably an iceberg remnant washed ashore at high tide.
Why did the polar bears get up on a small iceberg – because they are good places to rest, sleep or look around – polar bears need to sleep too.
Apparently polar bears like icebergs.
http://www.alaskastock.com/pr/704363066/Alaskastock_125SI_EQ0140D004.jpg
http://www.alaskastock.com/pr/704363066/Alaskastock_125SI_EQ0138D001.jpg
http://www.alaskastock.com/pr/704363066/Alaskastock_125SI_EQ0093D001.jpg
http://www.alaskastock.com/pr/704363066/Alaskastock_125SI_EQ0146D001.jpg
Jim (14:23:08) :
“Strand – If you believe “basic radiative principles” alone are adequate to model climate, you are an idiot.”
And scientists wonder why blogs like WUWT don’t get much respect.
Since I never said what you claim I said, are you going to apologize for calling me an idiot?
Great story about biology student Amanda Byrd’s photograph.
What’s Up With these wildlife photographers such as Crosbie? Oh, and – I can think of one other…
Gary says:
“You folks need to look into Arrhenius, specifically “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground,” Philosophical Magazine 1896(41): 237-76″, available at
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/1/18/Arrhenius.pdf”
I say:
1896? LOL. Gary – you need to look at something a bit more current. In any case, Arctic sea ice has rebounded and as NASA notes, the recent declines were related to changes in wind patterns (not CO2).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/10/03/nh-sea-ice-loss-its-the-wind-says-nasa/
Gary Strand:
You say:
‘Warming caused by CO2 increase isn’t “dictated by the computer models” of the IPCC (which is itself wrong, as the models don’t belong to the IPCC anyway) – it’s “dictated” by basic radiative principles.’
First, your comment is disingenuous – the quote pertains to Arctic warming, not ‘warming caused by CO2 increase’.
Second, you appear to suffer from the same misconception as many who think that the temperature is as simple as ‘basic radiative principles’, implying that your position is as certain as the ironclad laws of physics.
It should be obvious to you and anyone that climate is a function of myriad interacting physical processes – many of which impact radiative balance, others, particularly in the Arctic, involving advection of heat, as Taylor correctly notes.
You are badly misinformed if you think that temperature over the Arctic can be reduced to ‘basic radiative principles’. This is why the climate models exist in the first place. This is climatology 101, and your shallow, trite argument is not likely to convince most folks who occupy this site, who are sharper than your typical Congressional Democrat.
Gary Strand (14:43:38) :
Well, he did say “if”. So technically, he only called you an idiot if you believe it.
Gary Strand (14:43:38) :
“And scientists wonder why blogs like WUWT don’t get much respect.”
Boy, I really messed up that. What I meant to say was:
“And commentators on blogs like WUWT wonder why scientists don’t give them (the blogs and the commentators) much respect”.
Mr Strand,
do you agree or disagree with the banning of Dr. Taylor?
Well, how did I guess that the good Mr Strand’s link would take us back to 1896?
Unfortunately, Gary old son, Arrhenius changed his mind a few years later. Good scientists tend to do that when faced with more facts. You can read more on this very web site at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/13/6995/
By the way, science is still science whether you are impressed with aliases or not but you do demonstrate the one characteristic of all the global warming fanatics — when challenged either engage in ad hominem attacks or change the rules of the game. Or both.
Minor quibble: As has been pointed out before, climatology is not unique in denying experts a hearing when they proffer views that “differ from that of the current paradigm.” Just ask Dr. Halton Arp, who ran afoul of the astronomical establishment for suggesting that the redshifts of some objects were intrinsic, not caused by velocity, which if true would undermine the hypothesis of the expanding universe and the Big Bang. Viz. Arp, Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science.
But most such intolerance is usually limited to specific scientific communities; they do not become the foci of a worldwide ideological movements, seized upon by governments as an excuse for spending billions of dollars chasing chimeras and potentially destroying the energy economies of the civilized world.
/Mr Lynn
Gary Strand (13:21:11) :
No, you do. Citing only the 1896 paper, which was later repudiated by Arrhenius, is simply cherry picking.
Monckton of Brenchley writes on Arrhenius:
Since this information has been commented on many times here and elsewhere, please explain why you only cite the 1896 paper. You’re not one a them Gorons, are you?
Folks, please don’t feed the trolls…
JimB
Mr Strand said: (10:57:46) :
“Warming caused by CO2 increase isn’t “dictated by the computer models” of the IPCC (which is itself wrong, as the models don’t belong to the IPCC anyway) – it’s “dictated” by basic radiative principles.”
That is not my understanding of the case against carbon dioxide. My understanding is that increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, in particular a doubling from the current minuscule amount to a less minuscule but still minuscule amount, are likely (of themselves) to cause an insignificant amount of warming. No basic principles of anything support the assertion that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause anyone on earth any problems.
The alleged problems come from assertions, as yet unsupported by physical evidence, that modest warming from increased CO2 concentrations (if such warming will occur at all, which is debatable) will be amplified. The amplification process is, as far as I can tell, purely speculative; certainly no one has been able to identify it occurring at any time in the history of the planet.
Lots of shots at me, and all misses.
I didn’t say that warming was caused only by CO2, or by basic radiative properties – I noted that the article’s comment:
“Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming in the past 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues[…]”
The statement says that the “computer models of the UN’s IPCC” “dictate” that CO2 increases cause warming. That’s not true. Many studies, going back to Arrhenius, have shown that increasing CO2 causes increasing temperatures. That fact wasn’t created by the “computer models of the UN’s IPCC”.
As for the other comments – citing Monckton? Give me a break. He’s a joke. As for CO2 having too low a concentration in the atmosphere to be of concern – if you believe that, you need to do a lot of reading and catching up.
I used to think WUWT was chock-full of smart people with good things to say. I now realize it’s full of paper tigers.
Smokey (15:07:42) :
I do like “the Gorons”. Did Lord Mockton come up with that? Superb! They sound like some sort of alien race; indeed a possible foe of Dr Who.
(For the benefit of viewers outside the UK, Dr Who has been/is/will be a time-travelling superhero of British TV since the 1960’s; since long before AGW. (And for probably longer than Terran climate change has been/is/ and will be a natural phenomenon as well.)
FatBigot: Although only 380ppm of the atmosphere is CO2, 99% of the atmosphere has no greenhouse effect.
That makes C02 380 parts of the 10,000 parts that are GHG.
Back to the original article Brooker insinuates that,”This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN’s major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December.” Yeah right: they’ve met every 4 years since 1993 and have a policy to meet every 3-5 years.
However, if they did decide not to invite Taylor because of his views on AGW, I find that appalling.
Mr Lynn,
A timely reminder. Academia is awash with disputes which often get to be very personal and vicious. But this has been going on forever. Look at the dispute between Newton and Liebniz, or Newton and Hooke. The history of science is replete with such examples. It is, apparently, human nature.
What is different in relation to climate change is that large numbers of people have become involved – many of them far less inhibited in publishing vitriol and personal abuse than were the learned gentlemen mentioned above.
The precise reasons for this involvement of the masses would be absolutely fascinating to discover. There is topic for a doctoral thesis awaiting someone’s attention…
If I was a polar bear, You would find me where there’s food.
Unless the seals decide to go on vacation in southern France, I’ll be just fine. Although I may go on vacation in Washington DC. I hear there are some stupid crittiers down that way.
FatBigot:
“The amplification process is, as far as I can tell, purely speculative; certainly no one has been able to identify it occurring at any time in the history of the planet.”
Let’s try an experiment in positive feedback. Just hold the microphone to the loudspeaker and listen to it howl; that’s runaway positive feedback (the only sort there is).
Now turn off the mains supply to the amplifier. What happens to the positive feedback when there is no extra power fed into the system to drive it? It stops.
This so called process is not speculative; it is utter drivel. It is nothing but a perpetual motion machine. But it is convenient for speading panic.
Gary Strand points us all to Arrhenius for advice. But this will not do.
Arrhenius was not a climatologist, he was a chemist. He was therefore not qualified to speak on this matter. (ironosarc off.)
I think this is appropriate to this discussion. 🙂
The Cremation of Sam Mcgee, by Robert Service
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ’round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that he’d “sooner live in hell”.
On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.
And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.”
Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ’tain’t being dead — it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”
A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: “You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it’s up to you to cremate those last remains.”
Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows — O God! how I loathed the thing.
And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May”.
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here”, said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared — such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.
Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.
I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep inside.
I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked”;. . . then the door I opened wide.
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: “Please close that door.
It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and storm —
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
In the end, a competent scientist is discriminated against because he knows the AGW propaganda is a lie. In Canada. period. Totalitarism is coming to a municipality near you…
Keep digging your hole, Gary. But watch that global warming on the way down. High levels of subsurface CO2 = intense heating of the mantel. Temperatures are now averaging 5400F at the core and expect to increase to 5403 by the end of the century. The earth will have more frequent and intense volcanos. The science is settled. But keep digging if you must.
bill (13:08:42) :
Interesting that you may have acredited the image to the wrong person:
The WUWT faithful know that Amanda Byrd took the photo. WUWT2009/05/09.
For the rest of the story –
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/0706_byrd.pdf
Interesting last interview question –
9. How did the media obtain the image?
Dan Crosbie gave the image to the Canadian Ice Service, who gave the image to Environment Canada, who distributed the image to 7 media agencies including AP.
10. Will you seek compensation for the use of your image?
Yes.
Gary Strand (15:21:41) :
Ri-i-i-i-i-ght..
Either Mr Strand really believes that, in which case he’s just making an insufferable comment and hoping no one will dispute it, or he’s completely lost it.
Let’s go with the former for the time being. Rather than try to counter the science in Monckton’s statement, Strand does an ad hominem attack on Monckton [who has an extensive C.V. in the hard sciences], by stating: “…citing Monckton? Give me a break. He’s a joke.” That’s Strand’s answer? This isn’t realclimate or climateprogress. This is the “Best Science” site, and Strand can not get a free pass with a baseless ad hominem attack like that.
How does that personal attack answer Monckton’s assertion that Arrhenius corrected his *wrong* 1896 paper, with a corrected [and never falsified] peer-reviewed paper ten years later?? Either Strand is completely unaware of the 1906 Arrhenius correction… or he’s deliberately cherry-picking only the information that he wants people to see.
Unless Mr Strand can claim ignorance of the Arrhenius correction, it appears that the comment @15:07:42 wasn’t a miss at all. Avoiding answering my question… [“Since this information has been commented on many times here and elsewhere, please explain why you only cite the 1896 paper”] …shows that it hit the bulls-eye, and Mr Strand is just hoping it will quietly go away if he simply ignores it.
Nope. The question that hit the bulls-eye is still unanswered. So please answer my question, Strand. Were you ignorant of the Arrhenius situation of 1906, which falsified his 1896 excessively high climate sensitivity number? Or were you just being mendacious by citing only the incorrect 1896 paper, and hoping that no one who was aware of the 1906 paper would notice your omission? Or is it something else? Like trolling at the Best Science site, for instance.
RE Bill Ellis 14:32:10 on Amanda Byrd’s striking photo, do PBs ever attack seals in the water, or only on ice? Could these bears be peering into the water for prey to pounce upon from on high? At a flat angle, water reflects light, so the higher one’s vantage point, the more water one can see down into.
In any event, the PBSG has totally discredited itself as a scientific organization by barring Taylor for his un-PC views on AGW.
Dr. Taylor has become an inconvenient truth. Over the past couple of years I have had several exchanges with Congressman Inslee about polar bears while citing Dr. Taylor’s work. It was to no avail as he continued to insist that the bears were declining and imperiled. Congressman Inslee voted “yea” on cap and trade.
Is Smokey denying that increasing CO2 increases temperature, *ceterus paribus*? If so, then it’s flying in the face of over 100 years of science.
What are you going to tell us next? That the earth is 6000 years old, give or take a week?
Ooops – misspelled *ceteris paribus*. My bad.
Oh, and Monckton is still a joke. Why he has any cred whatsoever is a mystery.
Gary Strand: You wrote, “Lots of shots at me, and all misses. I didn’t say that warming was caused only by CO2, or by basic radiative properties.”
Agreed, you wrote, “Warming caused by CO2 increase…” was “…’DICTATED’ by basic radiative PRINCIPALS.” [My caps] But, to tell you the truth, I find your word games boring.
Since this post and the comments on this thread pertain to Arctic temperatures, sea ice loss, Polar Bear habitat loss, etc., let me offer this. Many us who comment here at WUWT and those of us who contribute posts understand that the recent bout of elevated Arctic temperatures is a result of natural poleward heat transport from the 1997/98 El Nino and the subsequent El Nino events in 2002/03, 2004/05, and 2006/07. This can be seen very plainly in the MSU TLT Time-Latitude Plot available from RSS. Just so happens that I combined a Time-Latitude Plot with a Time-Series graph in a post here. The combination provides a great visual indication of the source of the recent rise in mid-to-high latitude Northern Hemisphere TLT anomalies.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/06/another-look-at-polar-amplification/
A more detailed discussion can be found at my website:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/06/rss-msu-tlt-time-latitude-plots.html
Gary Strand,
Ah, the joy of pointing out that the site pest still hides out from answering inconvenient questions. And the ad-homs keep on a-coming:
It’s certainly easier on the old ego to do ad hominem attacks, rather than try to answer the very uncomfortable questions asked @16:51:28.
So what is it, Strand? Ignorance? Mendacity? Or just trolling?
And for anyone who thinks Monckton is a “joke,” I challenge them to put their resume up against his. Or for that matter, to credibly falsify any of Monckton’s science: click
I answered your question, “Smokey”. What I wonder is if you don’t believe that CO2 increase causes warming, then what else you might believe.
Nice Hovmöllers, Bob. You can also see the 82/83 and 97/98 El Niños in HadCRUT.
What this bill also is meant to be the start of — because a hyped lying IPCC, the stupid politicians and a completely good healthy gas which is emissions is 3% of the natural release of the gas and due to the the father of climate science Reid Bryson and thousands of relevant scientists doesn’t control our climate — is described in this good reading, from Investor’s Business Daily, March 27:
here is an interesting page of Dr. Mitchell Taylor talk in January of this year.
http://www.fcpp.org/main/publication_detail.php?PubID=2571
also, check out PDF of slides, on that page.
http://www.fcpp.org/pdf/MTaylor%20_%20Status_of_Polar_Bears011509.pdf
Gary Strand says:
Is that the best you can do Gary, trot out the old creationist jibe? Pretty sleazy, but I guess it is at the same level as the rest of your arguments.
For the record, physical systems are actually quite complex and dynamic and I have been convinced for a long while that evolution is an adequate explanation for the state of life on the Earth today and that the solar system and Universe is billions of years old.
I’m also married to someone with a different skin color, just to forestall any other labels you might seek to apply to me.
Finally, I think that it is not as simple as more CO2 linearly increasing the global temperature and that the atmosphere and hydrosphere form a complex self-stabilizing system and that ice-ages and warming are effected by the distribution of the continents and orbital parameters.
Gary Strand,
No, you never answered my question, not even close. Here it is again: Since the 1906 Arrhenius correction has been commented on many times here and elsewhere, please explain why you only cited the incorrect 1896 paper.
There. Have at it.
“Smokey”, does Arrhenius (1906) contradict Arrhenius (1896)? If not, then increasing CO2 still increases temperature, and my point stands.
Richard Sharpe (17:59:00) :
“Finally, I think that it is not as simple as more CO2 linearly increasing the global temperature and that the atmosphere and hydrosphere form a complex self-stabilizing system and that ice-ages and warming are effected by the distribution of the continents and orbital parameters.”
I never said that the climate system responds only to CO2, so your strawman died a needless death.
My whole argument is that the toss-away comment in the original article is flawed, in that the concept of increasing CO2 causing increasing temperatures is not from computer models, or the IPCC. It was basically a cheap shot.
Gary Strand: Reality check
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
This bill also like a cick off for what is described in this is described in this good reading, from Investor’s Business Daily, March 27:
VG (18:14:11) :
Gary Strand: Reality check
What exactly am I supposed to be checking? I’ve already talked about this year’s Arctic sea ice over on CA – am I supposed to be ashamed or dismayed about this year’s numbers, so far?
Explain.
Gary Strand (18:08:49) :
Well yes, as a matter of fact, it does. That’s the reason he corrected the record with a new peer-reviewed paper. The climate sensitivity number used in his earlier paper was wrong.
And you still won’t answer my question. That’s because you can’t — without admitting that you only cherry-picked the earlier, incorrect Arrhenius paper…
…but thanx for playing, and Vanna has some lovely parting gifts for you on your way out.
Smokey (18:26:48) :
“Well yes, as a matter of fact, it does. That’s the reason he corrected the record with a new peer-reviewed paper. The climate sensitivity number used in his earlier paper was wrong.”
Does it have opposite sign? If not, then 1906 doesn’t contradict 1896. A decrease in magnitude still allows increasing T from increasing CO2.
You’ve been gonged.
Gary Strand: You wrote, “Nice Hovmöllers, Bob. You can also see the 82/83 and 97/98 El Niños in HadCRUT.”
But the detail in the RSS presentation is sooo much better.
Regards
FWIW, Gary Strand’s first observation was correct. Either that was sloppy reporting or an incorrect belief on the part of Dr. Taylor.
So during this thread has anyone determined which?
Unfortunately, then the discussion seems to have degraded.
Either way, CO2 may have a warming effect, but it’s neither linear nor significant. Then again, neither is a 0.7K change over a century.
One irony is that some folks treat science as a buffet, in which they can pick and choose the items on the menu to accept. Science isn’t like that.
Directly from the wwf site:
“The largest proportion of a polar bear’s annual caloric intake occurs between late April and mid-July. Food availability during this period is critical for maintaining their proper body weight to survive the ice-free season, when prey is harder to catch for bears that remain on the sea ice and little or no food is available for bears who remain on shore.”
ie The threat for polar bears from a warming Arctic is of a longer ice-free season. However :
“When other food is unavailable, polar bears sometimes eat muskox, reindeer, small rodents, seabirds, shellfish, fish, eggs, kelp, berries, and human garbage (the garbage dump in Churchill, Canada, had to be closed and moved because of this activity).”
Which might explain why the shorter season isn’t affecting numbers. So if someone looks at the actual bear numbers and says bears are thriving there is a good explanation as to why – whether it’s politically correct or not. It’s not really enough to suppose a decline should be happening. You usually need to look for hard numbers because there is always something you just didn’t consider. If there isn’t an actual numerical decline then a lot of time, energy and money is being wasted.
Gary Strand:
Yes, that’s irony all right. But since I’m asking why you decided to ‘pick and choose’ the incorrect Arrhenius paper and never mentioned the corrected paper, I don’t think you see the real irony in your “buffet” statement. Science is not a buffet, even though you treat it that way.
True, I’ve been holding your feet to the fire on this, and it’s been interesting watching the contortions used to avoid answering a very simple question.
[BTW, the 1896 paper you cited was corrected by the author because it was wrong. Understand? The sign has nothing to do with Arhenius’ paper being right or wrong. The climate sensitivity number was completely wrong in the original 1896 paper, and the error was corrected ten years later. But you only cited the incorrect 1896 paper. Why? Is it because the factually incorrect paper fits your AGW agenda, and the later, corrected paper doesn’t? Or were you just hoping no one would notice?]
Now, are you going to answer exactly why you used the incorrect, *wrong* paper, and never mentioned the correction? Or are you going to continue answering questions that were not asked, and hope that everyone forgets what the original question to you was?
Take your time. I’ve got all night.
Gary Strand (18:11:39) :
Gary: you’ve said before you are not a climate scientist…. but as a computer guy you’re top-notch. I believe it. You built the models to the specifications. Let the master minds defend or assault those specifications. Guys like us can defend the processing… I once wrote an accounting system for a guy who needed to know the real value of his business, the value he wanted his investors to know and the value the tax authorities should know. System must have worked. Can I defend the integrity of the results? H*** no. (self-moderated snip, before Charles the fundamentalist moderator sends a minion), but they worked according to spec. I truly believe in withholding from the tax trolls whatever you can hide, but I’m not sure I’d want to defend it.
Smokey (18:26:48) :
Gary Strand (18:08:49) :
“Smokey”, does Arrhenius (1906) contradict Arrhenius (1896)?
Well yes, as a matter of fact, it does. That’s the reason he corrected the record with a new peer-reviewed paper.
I don’t think papers were ‘peer-reviewed’ back then.
Gary’s reference to Arrhenius was mainly for the purpose of showing how old the idea was… so contemporary arguments miss his point… right?
Question to Gary: Why have we not seen a linear rise in temperatures for the last century? i.e. How come we were worried about the coming ice age 30 years ago?
I don’t mean to be contentious. I am genuinely interested in Gary’s answer.
Leif,
Certainly Arrhenius and Einstein operated in a different environment than those dealing with the peer review industry of today.
Regardless of the attempt by trolls to distract from the topic, the FACT is that the world population of polar bears has INCREASED 300 to 400 percent over the last 30 years.
Is the Arctic warmer now than then? If so, it has not been a problem for polar bears.
Is the Actic warming due to Arrhenius models or ocean currents? The polar bears don’t give a rat; they’re fine with it.
Are the Copenhagen tiny minds having a cow about Dr. Taylor’s GW realist leanings? Again, the polar bears could care less. They are fat and happy, eating and breeding, and doing all those polar bear things, with SIGNIFICANT POPULATION INCREASE.
The polar bear scare is pure poppycock nonsense, another hysterical fantasy dreamed up by scaremongers with sticky fingers in your wallet.
Care to comment on polar bears, trolls? Or is the subject too REAL for your fantasy world.
Smokey (18:00:06) :
Gary Strand,
You’re wasting your time on this guy. He’s only trolling and the more responses he gets, the louder he howls.
Save your energy for someone genuinely seeking answers.
Gilbert,
Thanks, I needed that.
they’re fine with it, I meant to type.
But while we’re on the topic of Arctic wildlife, how about them narwhals and belugas. Those are whales. They are mammals. They breathe air. If the Arctic ice is too thick and the extent too great, whales suffocate. The great migrations of Arctic whales occur in the summertime, because in the winter the ice cap presents a respiratory problem.
So, the less ice the better, as far as whales are concerned.
Remember the eco battle cry, “Save the Whales”? Well, the less ice, the more whales. Arctic ice recession is the best thing that could happen to an Arctic whale. If the “Greeds” (whoops I meant “Greens”) really wanted to save the whales, they would be all in favor of melting the Arctic ice.
Warmer is Better, as far as whales and polar bears are concerned.
Jason S. gets my point – Smokey wants to wander. That’s fine, but let’s leave the hysterics and italics out of it.
Gary
Arrhenius is a total red herring. His new number didn’t presumably include positive feedbacks anyway. About 1 C rise per doubling pre-feedback is recognized by virtually everyone is it not? However Lindzen looked at the numbers of outgoing radiation – as blogged about here – and concluded that there was no positive feedback apparent in the data. This was after the data had been adjusted twice, once for drift and once to fit in better with model results. This is the real point of contention as you should know.
Dessler went on the CA blog and explained that he thought a higher value was justified on the basis of a combination of model experiments (trying to replicate paleo data) and a basic gut feeling. Which is fair enough if you are a pessimist (which most climate scientists seem to be). However the jury is still out and gut feelings need tested with real data.
But all those higher numbers come from model sims and the real numbers are not playing ball with the hypothesis even after they are all adjusted upwards (radiosondes, satellites, ocean temps, outgoing radiation) so your initial statement about the physics dictating things rather than the models was misleading, if not entirely incorrect. Would you settle for a value of 1.2 C per doubling – as dictated by the Physics and backed by data?
Also whether the particular Arctic warming is due to GHG’s, soot or winds+currents is also still mere conjecture at this stage. The mainstream view isn’t actually settled on one explanation there either as you probably also know. The only consistent theme we get time and again from those dismissive scientists that you mention is that, IF model projections are correct, then things MIGHT get worse. Again the pessimism stems mainly from believing the models. The models though as you also know, don’t have the level of credibility that is necessary to be trusted to that extent. And frankly neither do any scientists who display arrogant dogma and pretend it is real science.
Never mind to Gary…. sorry, I can see you said:
“I never said that the climate system responds only to CO2”
Smokey (17:31:15) :
Gary Strand,
Ah, the joy of pointing out that the site pest still hides out from answering inconvenient questions. And the ad-homs keep on a-coming:
“Monckton is still a joke… What are you going to tell us next? That the earth is 6000 years old, give or take a week?”
It’s certainly easier on the old ego to do ad hominem attacks, rather than try to answer the very uncomfortable questions asked @16:51:28.
Well Monckton is certainly the expert on ad hominem, he seems incapable of writing a sentence without one.
And for anyone who thinks Monckton is a “joke,” I challenge them to put their resume up against his. Or for that matter, to credibly falsify any of Monckton’s science: click
Monckton has no scientific credentials to compare with so that would be a waste of time. Outside science where you might think he had some expertise, at the Heartland conference he couldn’t even get his Churchillian quotation right!
Jason S. (18:56:19) :
“Why have we not seen a linear rise in temperatures for the last century? i.e. How come we were worried about the coming ice age 30 years ago?”
CO2 is far from the only driver of climate change – so even though CO2 has been increasing, other factors, at different times and with different importance (even changing with time), affect temperatures. Volcanoes, changes in TSI, land-use changes, ozone changes, and so on, all can impact temperatures.
A coming ice age wasn’t taken that seriously in the 1970s, despite what the blogosphere says. Consider this:
Strand: “A coming ice age wasn’t taken that seriously in the 1970s”
Wrong-O: click
And:
source
Claim falsified.
“Dr. Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this…to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.”
No one has addressed this biologist’s alternative explanation.
Does it sound like the escalation of a likely contributing factor, to the whole? That it’d be hard to push enough heat thru a 50 degree corridor, to heat a 360 degree Arctic Ocean. That the consequences couldn’t be missed, because the surrounding land areas would be relatively cooler.
The actual warming in the Arctic is greater than the warming in the computer models. So there is room for additional ideas.
“Newsweek”?
The late 19th century?
That’s the best you got, “Smokey”?
Next you’ll be telling us that medicine can’t be trusted because they talked for centuries about black bile.
REPLY to Gary Strand 19:41:22
Gary, I don’t know how old you are, and if you were around to witness it there, but there was a lot of interest in this at NCAR in the 1970s. There were a number of people in the meteorological community that started looking at this. I saw it happen with a front row seat. To say it wasn’t taken seriously would be to deny the interest then in the scientific community.
And I’ll point out, as a member of the media then, “Newsweek” didn’t just one day decide to say “hey, there’s an ice age coming!” and start writing about it. Journalists, particularly at places like Newsweek, are really lousy at interpreting science or seeing science trends. They don’t have the skills, vision, or time.
PBS did a NOVA special on sunspots in 1977: The Sunspot Mystery” February 2, 1977 Season 4, Episode code# 0404
It was citing Jack Eddy’s work and looking into the possibility of an ice age then, comparing to the LIA. I know first hand, I did a half hour TV science special using excerpts from it, and mentioned scientists and studies cited at the time.
The point is that both Newsweek and PBS Nova were driven by scientists and the state of science at the time. They didn’t just conjur it from thin air.
Here’s an example. Today we have people like NSIDC’s loose cannon, Dr. Mark Serreze, who made a bold statement last year about the possibility of an “ice free north pole” in 2008, which of course bombed spectacularly. Similar sorts of things were said by scientists in the 1970’s about global cooling, and thus they drove the media just like Serreze did last year.
To say it “wasn’t taken seriously” is disingenuous on your part, and also, simply wrong. The “black bile” crack is simply uncalled for. Maybe you just weren’t around, or weren’t of age to see it then. Smokey was, I was, were you?
Here is another example of science driving the media. Dr. James Hansen drove the media with his address to congress in 1988 on “global warming”. It was theater, with one of the aides then making sure the a/c was not on high on that June 23rd hot day and the windows open. The psychological effect on members of the media and congressmembers present was noted.
Senator Tim Wirth talks of that day here.
The MO is the same now as it was in 1988 and in the 70’s; “We see something alarming that might happen, I have some scientific studies that support it, we need to be concerned. We need funding to study this threat to our planet.”
Same storyline, different decade. In both cases the scientifically clueless media wrote about what the scientists said without questioning it much. How could they? Wordsmiths can’t usually compete with graphs, computers, and equations. It’s a different language to them.
I suppose you’ll now cite Oreske’s study, which is fine. But Oreske has an agenda. My advice; don’t go there.
Cheers
– Anthony Watts
Here’s Gary at his office desk at UCAR, courtesy of the “StrandCam”. Looks youthful to me. Good for you.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/strandwg/campage.html
But who puts a live webcam of themselves online while typing at a computer anyway? Oh, wait, what business are you in again? 😉
A new report from the US FWS says that polar bear numbers in Alaska are declining. They go on to blame global warming – meaning sea ice melt – for the loss yet looking at the numbers it’s clear that the decline is really due solely to illegal poaching of bears by Russians.
Officials say the drop among the Chukchi and Bering bears is likely steeper than for those in the Beaufort, due to a more dramatic melt of sea ice — which the bears need to travel and forage for food — and an illegal Russian hunt believed to be killing 150 to 250 bears a year.
Here’s the important part:
The worldwide polar bear population is generally believed to be about 20,000 to 25,000, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which lists the species as “vulnerable”.
That means the illegal poaching is responsible for killing about 1% of the global population of polar bears annually! At least now we know what the real threat is!
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN18294663
Francis (19:37:59) :
The actual warming in the Arctic is greater than the warming in the computer models. So there is room for additional ideas.
I don’t think we know much about arctic temps. There aren’t a whole lot of weather stations there. Extrapolating the temps from ice extent is a circular argument. Even NASA notes that much, if not all of the loss of ice is due to changes in circulation patterns.
Gary Strand (19:20:56) : “CO2 is far from the only driver of climate change – so even though CO2 has been increasing, other factors, at different times and with different importance (even changing with time), affect temperatures. Volcanoes, changes in TSI, land-use changes, ozone changes, and so on, all can impact temperatures.”
I think many (most?) here would agree to that, the difference being how the pie (cherry?) was sliced:
skeptic: I don’t know yet.
luke-warmer: Yeah, man is having an effect, but we can manage it.
warmer: We’re all gonna’ die!
Gary: “A coming ice age wasn’t taken that seriously in the 1970s, despite what the blogosphere says.”
I’ve seen magazines from the 70’s (glaciers on the cover?) that sensationalized the rapidly approaching Ice Age. Wasn’t Hansen promoting cooling then?
Leif Svalgaard (18:51:56) :
I don’t think papers were ‘peer-reviewed’ back then.
Good God! Leif, please tell me you’re joking, that you really do remember!
A piece of useless information: the cross between a male grizzly and female polar is called a prizzly. Did you know that? I didn’t until a Canadian aquaintance told me. It’s true too.
And a terrible nuisance polar bears are, like all bears they are always hungry and only too keen to snack on anything they can get their paws on, including the odd human. Ingenious as well, those claws can prise open all sorts of things from dumpsters, as I think you call them, to house doors and windows. Even been known to take the roof off to get to the larder apparently: and I am assured they know just how to tear the doors and lids off fridges and freezers: as well tearing tins open.
Mind you they do like to tell tall tales up in that part of the world.
Nevertheless they really do have bear patrols, the Canadians rather than the Americans in Alaska I believe, which pick up those that wander into town and send them back. And that’s a sort of perpetual motion if you like since apparently many turn out to be serial offenders who enjoy visiting the bright lights for their regular holidays.
As for Arrhenius he did not invent the idea, it certainly goes back as far as Foure and possibly before so it is at least two hundred years old.
What he did do, when he realised that the effect of CO2 was very weak, if it exists at all, was to introduce the idea of amplification from water vapour, essentially the same concept that is promoted today. That is that warming oceans increase the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere which in its turn traps far more energy than CO2 could do by itself.
There is no evidence as to whether this actually happens, it is a simple extrapolation of elementary physical principles about evaporation without considering other basic physical principles of the partial pressures of condensible vapours in gases: and please note that all observation to date suggest that as an effect it doesn’t exist in the real world.
Also it is as I pointed out in a previous post a stunning non sequitur. If water vapour in the atmosphere does this it would not matter what the source of the initial warming might be: it could be CO2 or the stokers in the Infernal Regions working overtime. It might even be the sun.
And no his papers were not peer reviewed as we understand the term but they were, in my opinion quite rightly, fiercely criticised at the time for the utter bunkum they were, and duly forgotten. Until recently.
Kindest Regards
don’t tarp me bro (14:21:56) : Don’t steal all of someone’s text to explain a photo theft.
Gary Strand (19:20:56) :
Gary, I was well past childhood at that time and I remember. Progressively harsher winters until the year Long Island Sound froze… OK, I’m exaggerating a little… it froze out to the breakwaters outside New Haven harbor. It was also the era of Eric VonDaniken’s Chariots of the Gods, Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb and the rest of the neo-Malthusian excrement from the Club-of-Rome. Gary, people try to re-write history, but I knew well people with serial numbers on their arms who might, perhaps, be willing to talk of places like Berchenau, Treblinka and Auchwitz – and the improbable heroes who liberated them. I knew a few of those improbable heroes. That time was real and true. Don’t tell me I don’t remember the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s… I remember very well. I also remember in the late 50’s and early 60’s American scholars trying to blame the strange weather and extreme cooling on Soviet Atmospheric testing of their Nuclear Bombs, culminating with what, if memory serves, was the largest-yielding man made explosion ever… a 100 megaton bomb. Spasiba, Comrade Kruschev.
wattsupwiththat (20:10:31) :
Maybe you just weren’t around, or weren’t of age to see it then. Smokey was, I was, were you?
You’re absolutely right. I was around then too. Back then I regularly read mags like Science digest, Discover, Scientific American etc. All had coverage directly from the horses’ mouth. (with apologies to all horses)
Gary Strand wrote:
“My whole argument is that the toss-away comment in the original article is flawed, in that the concept of increasing CO2 causing increasing temperatures is not from computer models, or the IPCC.”
That clarifies things a bit. But I believe the concept of runaway global warming, due to positive feedback effects from water vapor, does come from the sources that the IPCC relied on, not Arrhenius. In addition, Monckton has claimed that there are four factors that the IPCC has exaggerated without scientific-paper support and multiplied together to get an outlandish projection of future temperature increase. That’s what the debate is about–runaway warming, catastrophic warming.
Posts on this site have also disputed the idea that the earth’s atmosphere can be likened to, or modeled as, a greenhouse.
I don’t have all of these arguments and links and facts at my fingertips, so I’ll let others carry the ball from here.
Likewise on the cooling issue in the 1970s. I took many science classes and taught introductory earth science and based on the literature of that time I gave guest lectures about the perils of a cooler climate. I didn’t have much to say of why this might happen but traced the history of climate change as then known and the temperature time-lines at that time. It happened before and many reported it was/would happen again.
The ice age did not come. Instead we now have reports of doom from CAGW. This is based on unreliable temperature data and flimsy science. I’m not impressed with the current data, science, and alarmists mentality. Until something changes I’m questioning everything.
Maybe I should move to Missouri.
Smokey (19:32:20)
Anthony (20:10:31)
“The Myth of the 1970’s Global Cooling Consnsus” (Peterson, Conolleley, Fleck) is the definitive response. For peer reviewed articles from 1965 to 1979:
“The survey identified only 7 articles indicating cooling compared to 42 indicating warming. Those seeven cooling articles garnered just 12% of the citations.”
I never read any of these. But I did avidly read the articles in the popular press.
I never did understand the twist in some of the scenarios. How it was expected to warm up again, briefly. And it this warmth that would actually trigger the ice age.
I’m no spring chicken you can dismiss, Anthony. Since this is your blog, you can moderate away others’ comments that have analogous irrelevancy, but perhaps your own comments need some auditing for maturity.
That said, it’s a myth that in the 1970s, it was believed widely and strongly by the climate science community that we were headed for an ice age. I wouldn’t rely on “Newsweek” for anything – my guess is their current issue is all about Michael Jackson, not anything substantial.
REPLY: You’ve totally let the point blow over your head Gary. And you know, if you can’t take a little friendly ribbing, don’t say silly things yourself in the first place, such as the “black bile” comment. If you want to believe science did not drive media stories including Newsweek, in the 19070’s be my guest. I don’t care for Newsweek either, but the connection between science and driving news stories has always been there. – Anthony
I don’t rely on media stories to get the science – I go to the scientists and their articles themselves. Francis kindly provided the definitive source – I recommend a read.
Besides, the 1958 film clip I provided ought to tell you something.
REPLY: We cite scientists and papers as well here, but the media is a reflection of the current mindset of the nation, and often drives public policy in some cases. There’s also a feedback effect. Scientists see stories in the media, and think “You know, I should be studying that” and seek out more information. Everybody does this, scientists, scholars, citizens. Witness the “Cold Fusion” research explosion once it hit the CBS Evening News. Science was all agog at that, driven by two blunderers who captured media and scholarly attention. It took awhile before science realized the claim of cold fusion was hype.
You can’t simply dismiss the impact of the media and the connection to science. The simple fact is that both science and the media were talking about global cooling in the 1970’s, and enough to make some waves nationally about it. – Anthony
Gary Strand said:
I see you didn’t withdraw your cheap innuendo that we are all creationists.
Pretty pathetic, really.
Oh, and Monckton is still a joke. Why he has any cred whatsoever is a mystery.
Well, he is a peer reviewer of IPCC AR4 (and therefore shares the Nobel Beauty prize). And he caught a substantial error that they had to correct, you know. So I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss him.
Guys, please be polite to Gary S. (Note Anthony’s reasonable tone.) Most of us no doubt disagree with him; he is operating in largely (though not entirely) hostile territory. I have a certain amount of respect for that. Therefore we can afford him a certain degree of noblesse oblige.
BTW, Gary, FYI, you won’t find many (if any) creationists here. Waving red flags does not strengthen your position. Besides, Newton was an alchemist (he considered his alchemy a more important contribution than fluxion), astrologer, and end-of-the-world “Biblical decodist”. Nonetheless, his work in physics and mathematics is hardly to be ignored.
Gary Strand (13:23:50) :
I’m also not impressed by folks who post with silly handles, like “orthodoc” and “Sam the Skeptic”.
It is obvious you are jealous over the originality and creativity of those that post here. Get a real life and stop fantasizing in ours.
Now, now, chillun . . . let’s play nice.
And scientists wonder why blogs like WUWT don’t get much respect.
You have to admit that is pretty mild compared to what skeptics get called on pro-AGW blogs.
Stick around, though, and check out some of the arguments and data. You may not agree with all of it, but you may find some of it worthy of consideration.
Gary Strand (22:21:06) :
I don’t rely on media stories to get the science – I go to the scientists and their articles themselves.
————
Have you not read the main story here Gary? When the science of the best and most knowledgeable scientist in certain area (here polar bear population) has become incovenient for a certain group of the society with a global agenda, how much faith can you really have in those people you seem to prefer? Where is your analytical mind?
smallz79 (22:45:28) :
Do you have a problem with “Charles the Moderator”? ‘wink, wink’
If Gore’s “Incovenient Truth” movie would have been peer-reviewed, it would have been rejected due to major flaws and bad science. His science fiction movie is not a peer-reviewed document. Yet, it has been accepted globaly as Truth, given awards and even a Nobel Price and promoted in the education system everywhere.
The real truth is that the science in his media show has been rejected by scientists and the courts of law… yet we still hear that is is a great movie showing that global warming is caused by humanity, etc, etc…
When science has been politicized and so many people with little scientific knowledge are self-declaring themselves experts as much as the situation with global climate, you can’t rely on peer-reviewed science anylonger since, as we have seen, there tends to be a peer-revision circle… and to me this sort of paper is highly questionable.
Gary Strand (21:53:03) :
That said, it’s a myth that in the 1970s, it was believed widely and strongly by the climate science community .
There were no climate scientists in 1970. The species didn’t evolve until the late eighties.
Anthony has the pulse of it. Scientists and the media each played back and forth to the benefit of the other. Is the FIRE AND ICE article by BMI here:
http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/fireandice.asp
dismissed by some for pointing out the inconvenient founding of Earth Day due to the coming ice age?
What about this section of the article which says:
“Three months before, on January 11, The Washington Post told readers to “get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters – the worst may be yet to come,” in an article titled “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age.” The article quoted climatologist Reid Bryson, who said “there’s no relief in sight” about the cooling trend.”
If someone like Al Gore can receive a “Peace Prize” for science fiction in 2007, then I suppose Fortune Magazine can get a “Science Writing Award” bestowed upon it by the American Institute of Physics in the 70’s. Does this say then that a major magazine was actually published and then “peer reviewed” by science? I always thought that “P.R.” stood for “Public Relations” when addressing the media?
As Francis pointed out,
@ Francis (21:03:57) :
Peterson, Conolleley, and Fleck identified 7 articles indicating cooling compared to 42 indicating warming? This seems like an earnest job at arriving at a predetermined outcome, based on the need of each profession to acknowledge the other but only when it is advantageous. So before bristlecone proxies there where media proxies?
Mr. Strand apparently works for something called the University Corporation for Atmospheric Reseach. What the heck is that? I went to their website, but they seem to have no physical address. Nor do they disclose their budget or source of funding.
I think one can learn a great deal about Alarmists and Alarmist organizations by following the money. In this case, however, the money trail is obscure. I rather suspect it is public, taxpayer money that funds them, my money in other words, but that is only a suspicion.
In the interests of full disclosure, I hope Mr. Strand will enlighten us. What is the budget of your organization, where does the money come from, and what are the salaries of the people involved?
Thank you ahead of time, Mr. Strand, for your cooperation in this matter.
Mr Strand,
I’m curious.
Would it be a reasonable response to your comments to say that, because I disagree with you, you are a joke, and I refuse to consider anything you write? If not, why should it be reasonable to treat Monckton this way?
The use of the word “Climate Scientist ” is oxymoronic, there is no such thing
however much we might wish it. Its continued use by the media has devalued the credibility of all true scientists the world over.
A scientist is defined as a person who uses the Scientific Method (A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses)
In the area of climate study there are few if any testable hypotheses which give clear results. As yet we do not have a sound theoretical basis to claim the use of the word Climate Scientist.
Carl Popper would be turning in his grave at some of the rubbish which is published in the name of Climate Science !!
Dont worry when the folks at Copenhagen need some bear footage they will just send Nature out to harrass another young male bear till he starves to death for the camera. Or maybe they can drown a few more bears while they shoot them with tranquilizer darts to tag them in the middle of their morning swims.
I believe the question was first asked here almost a year ago.. if the bears are in danger due to lack of ice, where are all the dead bears? For that matter since last years lowest point of ice was above the years before.. whew! global warming solved!! Bears Safe!!
I think if you look back in time.. about every 30 years or so you will see a sky is falling theory about climate. Its hot, its cold, its hot.. some of us have been there, done that, and got a freekin drawer full of t-shirts. Please dont fault us for not buying this new climate change garbage. Maybe if records of the past weren’t discounted and we learned from HISTORY, we wouldnt have to remake this mistake every stinkin time.
Having read through these comments it seems that Gary Strand lecturing us on the existence of Arrhenius resembles somewhat a pubescent teenager who imagines they have just invented sex for the first time in human history.
Or if you want to [snip] that how about teaching his grandmother to suck eggs.
I’m trying to show solidarity. I just bought a genuine Stetson (the best I could get in the UK). But I refuse to trade in my piano for a “geetarr.”
So all you good chappies over there:
Ye.
Haa.
Anthony
For your references on the scientific pursuit of global cooling in the 1970’s – if you don’t have this already
Nature Vol 271 23 Feb 1978 Reviews
Climatic shifts John Gribbin
“Climates of Hunger: Mankind and the World’s Changing Weather. By Reid A. Bryson and Thomas J. Murray. Pp. xv + 171 (American University Publishers Group: London, 1977) 6.75 UK Pounds.
Professor Bryson is perhaps the leading proponent of the view that anthrogenic pollution of the atmosphere is hastening the world into a pronounced cooling – at least a little ice age – through the effects of aerosol particles blocking out some of the heat from the Sun. – – -“
Jimmy Haigh (23:50:56) :
The above reference (1978) refers to Bryson as a belonging to a “peer group of climatologists”
Ray (22:56:59) :
smallz79 (22:45:28) :
Do you have a problem with “Charles the Moderator”? ‘wink, wink’
To answer your question, no, he does a great job.
smallz79
Arrhenius, while a brilliant scientist for his day, was quite wrong in his original paper – not unlike the current estimates of the influence of carbonic acid in the air on temperatures at the surface.
Arrhenius’ calculations from the original paper would have temperatures up by about +3.0C or so already. (See Table VII from the paper.)
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/1/18/Arrhenius.pdf
Since he is off by about 80% so far, I imagine his CO2 doubling estimate of +5.25C could also be cut by 80% as well to about 1.05C per CO2 doubling.
So, when the warmists trot out Arrhenius, one should note that while the theory has been around for quite some time now, that just means it has been wrong for even longer than now thought.
The “conversation” has turned out about as I expected. Attacks on Al Gore, using the popular media in lieu of the actual science, smears of climate scientists and climate science as a whole, irrelevant demands, and so on.
WUWT isn’t “hostile”, it’s immature.
REPLY: Gary, you aren’t impressing anyone, and you duck the issues put before you by hurling labels. You could run along to the comfort zone of RC then, instead of dealing with citizens of the real world, or you can tough it out here. Running to that zone is what most of NCAR/UCAR and the climate scientists community does, rather than deal with that inconvenient public. It seems you simply can’t handle regular people. If you move on to RC or some of the other blogs, you’ll get to interact with people like “dhogaza” that think skeptics should try out sarin nerve gas experiments on themselves. No kidding. Here we’ll have lively discussion, and such sorts of things won’t be said. But you have to do your part by maintaining some degree of civility also. Your choice. – Anthony
Another Ian (02:16:08) :
Jimmy Haigh (23:50:56) :
The above reference (1978) refers to Bryson as a belonging to a “peer group of climatologists”
Perhaps I should have said, then, that there were no global warmers before 1988 or thereabouts. (Who then evolved into climate scientists a few of years ago when the temperatures started dropping.)
Here’s Professor Reid A. Bryson’s Wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_Bryson
Here is the introduction.
“Reid Bryson. (7 June 1920 – 11 June 2008. He was an American atmospheric scientist, geologist and meteorologist. He was a professor emeritus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He completed a B.A. in geology at Denison University in 1941 and a Ph.D. in meteorology from University of Chicago in 1948. In 1946 he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and in 1948 he became the first chairman of the Department of Meteorology. He became the first director of the Institute for Environmental Studies in 1970.
He was, indeed, a climatologist. But I suspect that he may not have been welcome in the world of modern climate science…
Gary:
Your arguments boil down to “CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so it must be causing global warming.” Correct or incorrect?
Gary – You make such a big deal of CO2. The way I see it, CO2 is merely the pilot light of our Earths temperature regulation mechanism. It is necessary for the good (good for life as we know it that is) functioning of the climate. You add a little more of it, the pilot light gets a little hotter, but otherwise no big deal. The real purpose the pilot light does serve is to keep in play the real and necessary GHG that keeps our Earth warm and regulated: Water.
“Gary, you aren’t impressing anyone, and you duck the issues put before you by hurling labels. You could run along to the comfort zone of RC then, instead of dealing with citizens of the real world, or you can tough it out here. Running to that zone is what most of NCAR/UCAR and the climate scientists community does, rather than deal with that inconvenient public. It seems you simply can’t handle regular people.”
And you’re basing this on what? I do request civility, respect, and intellectual honesty – things in short supply around here, based on this thread.
Re-read the comments addressed to me – they’re bereft of those three. Why is that? Because the overall tenor allows it. Anthony, you’re happy to sit back and let folks take potshots, issue smears and slurs, and otherwise engage in silly games.
Like I said way back, that’s why WUWT (and CA, and the other skeptic sites) aren’t taken seriously by scientists.
REPLY: OK then, address the issues put before you and leave the external arguments out. I made my point (based on personal experience with science and the media) about science and the media and you responded with this:
Yet you didn’t address the premise of the argument I made, you only put up a deflection. Address the issues directly without adding deflections and you won’t have to worry about other comments you don’t like.
So here are the questions: What age were you in 1978? “no spring chicken” doesn’t count as an answer, it is not a data point.
Do you believe that science drove the media stories then, yes/no?
– Anthony
Jim (08:17:16) : And many others!
I think Gary might have a pretty full WUWT ‘inbox’ when he gets to work on Monday morning…
Jimmy Haigh (08:54:11) :
I think Gary might have a pretty full WUWT ‘inbox’ when he gets to work on Monday morning…
And maybe we should all have a look at his webcam!
Gary Strand (08:37:06) :
“I do request civility, respect, and intellectual honesty – things in short supply around here, based on this thread.”
Gary. You have stopped being funny now and are flying your true colours.
This comment is just way out of order.
REPLY: No he has that right, lets give the man some air. I’ve asked two simple questions, let him respond. – Anthony
Mike D. (00:44:25)
UNIVERSITY CORPORATION FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH
Governance:
http://www.ucar.edu/governance/
Financial Statements:
http://www.fin.ucar.edu/treasury/afs/audfin08a133.pdf
http://www.fin.ucar.edu/treasury/afs/audfin08.pdf
Not surprisingly, they are heavily financed by the Government as well as foreign entities. Tax payer money in use to further the global warming BS.
http://www.ucar.edu/governance/meetings/feb00/sept99fin.html
Wow, Gary. After looking at some of your papers, I can see you have no monetary interest whatsoever in keeping the CO2 hoax alive. Right.
Gary Strand (08:37:06) : Anthony, you’re happy to sit back and let folks take potshots, issue smears and slurs, and otherwise engage in silly games.
Mr. Strand, once again I request that you divulge the budget of your organization, the funding source, and the salaries of the people involved.
That is not a “potshot”. It is a reasonable request. I wish to know your financial stake in these matters. After all, I am NOT a public employee — I am one of those who pays their salaries.
Just to clarify: I pay you, you do not pay me. You work for me, I do not work for you. You are a public servant, I am a member of the public who is (allegedly) served.
Therefore it is proper and just that you comply with my request for full disclosure. If you are unable to do so, then please reveal the name of your immediate supervisor so that we query him on the matter.
so that we may query him
I was reading a book called “Champlain’s Dream” by David Hackett Fischer (a very good book by the way). He described Anticosti Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as having a dangerous population of polar bears during Champlain’s time in the early 1600’s. He didn’t have that fact footnoted, so I couldn’t check his sources. This seems terribly far south for them–they surely would have had to be able to survive without ice for very long periods. What do you Canadians think? Have you heard this before and would it have been possible?
Thank you Jim. Our posts crossed. Am studying UCAR’s financial statement now.
Mike D. (09:31:22) :
Jim (09:17:08)
WOW indeed! Good work guys.
Hey, Gary! Can you spare a dime?
Gary Strand there’s two simple questions for you inline in your comment above.
I’ll hold all other comments so that you can answer them without any interference. Also, you would score some points if you apologized for the inappropriateness of your “black bile” comment. – Anthony
If you want to discuss what the media covers, and how it covers it, that’s fine, Anthony – but that’s not the science.
What my age has to do with anything…
REPLY: The point is that people with first hand observation (including myself) see it differently. Do you discount the value of first hand observation? If you were 5 years old in 1978, you would have no first hand observation and would be arguing without that benefit. That is why it is relevant to the media issue.
Two simple questions, again which you’ve deflected. Will you answer them directly? The floor is yours, no other commenters will be allowed so that you can do so without any interference. – Anthony
The “black bile” comment was an appropriate analogy – as medicine has become scientific and matured, it has abandoned and/or altered previous theories. Likewise, as climate science has matured, it has abandoned and/or altered previous theories.
Referencing the late 19th century and the mid-1970s (using the popular media [!]) as some sort of means to dismiss current climate science is no more honest than referencing the Middle Ages and the medicine of that time to somehow dismiss current medical knowledge.
REPLY: The comment’s snark is the issue, not the historical perspective. You used it to denigrate, not to enlighten. Which is why an apology is in order. Nobody here is trying to dismiss the current climate science, we only point out that then, the science, and popular press went another direction. Yet there are people who write whole papers trying to argue that historical event didn’t happen. – Anthony
for Gary Strand
In case you missed them in the inline comment
Here are the questions again:
What age were you in 1978? “no spring chicken” doesn’t count as an answer, it is not a data point.
Do you believe that science drove the media stories then, yes/no?
The floor is yours.
– Anthony
The US is now poised to take leadership on the CO2 issue by passing the Cap and Tax bill. I’m sure if the Senate follows the House in this massive fraud China and India will soon follow suit and Europe will jump aboard the Obama Express driven to the abyss by Al Gore. Why do I think the US will be out on that Iceberg all alone instead of the Polar Bears with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the Anointed One playing Pied Piper to the rest of the world. Obama is trying to be Mr. Popularity at the expense of the US and taking us to places no man has gone before. What a horrible joke these people.
Those Polar Bears looked pretty content. I don’t think Obama will find the US public so content when word filters down about this massive tax he is trying to impose and what miss directed racketeers he has in his employ and how few they represent outside the circles of power. So much in common with the European Parliament.
Lindsay H (01:45:57) : “Carl Popper would be turning in his grave at some of the rubbish which is published in the name of Climate Science !! ”
Judging from what I’ve seen, I doubt there are many people involved in the pro-AGW side of this who even have a clue who Karl is. Certainly no politicians.
Another of his contemporaries who would be spinning is E. T. Jaynes.
How old were you in 1958, Anthony? After all, the science of the time drove that film clip I provided.
I still don’t get the obsession with what the media reports and the state of the actual science.
“The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus”, by Peterson, Connolley, and Fleck (DOI: 10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1) is the definitive source.
REPLY: I was 2 years old, but I’m not commenting on that film like you are on the 1970’s, so I’m not citing any firsthand knowledge of the event surrounding that film. William Connolley and Petersen have an agenda BTW. Connolley deletes views on Wikipedia on a regular basis. He’s a censor.
Your turn to answer or deflect again. Two simple questions.
-Anthony
Some UCAR financial statement excerpts:
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) is a nonprofit membership corporation engaged in scientific and educational activities in atmospheric research and related fields. UCAR operates the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and also operates other scientific projects funded principally by other United States government agencies.
2008 Total assets: $144,357,000
2008 Total revenues, gains, and other support: $203,898,000
2008 Total expenses and losses: $211,741,000
And where did the money come from in 2008?
National Science Foundation: $104,546,000
Other government agency funds: $16,671,000
Other government award funds: $97,124,000
Other contract funds: $20,673,000
Donated property: $0
Membership fees: $56,000
License fees and royalties: $332,000
Proceeds from sale of assets: $12,000
Investment (loss) income: ($5,739,00)
Taxpayer supported to the tune of over $200 million per year. Your tax dollars at work, or at something.
I’ve already provided a definitive reference, Anthony. Please feel free to read it.
My age in 1978 is a red herring.
REPLY:I read it when it was first published. Last chance Gary, I’ve given my age. Why can’t you. You tried to turn the argument around on me in 1958. I answered, at your request. Yet you cannot seem to bring yourself to do so. Are you so bereft of the ability two answer two simple questions?
The issue goes to first hand observation, and observation is what scientists do. By not answering you’ll be saying that first hand observation has less value than post facto research, which is what Connolley and Petersen did.
Two simple questions Gary, your turn to answer directly or to deflect again.
– Anthony
“Nobody here is trying to dismiss the current climate science, we only point out that then, the science, and popular press went another direction.”
Not true. Read Peterson et.al.
“Yet there are people who write whole papers trying to argue that historical event didn’t happen.”
Peterson et.al. don’t just “try”, they succeed in showing that the popular media’s presentation of the state of the science was flawed. The focus on what and how the popular media reports about science isn’t terribly relevant, if what the science was actually doing is quite different. The subject is far more the popular media than it is the science, and last I checked, WUWT wasn’t a blog about the popular media – at least, that’s not its pretension.
REPLY: Two simple questions Gary, why can’t you answer them? – Anthony
Gary: You aren’t doing yourself any favors by continuing to post deflections to the two simple questions asked. I’ve given you the floor why can’t you answer directly? True scientists don’t fear answers to questions, or the questions themselves. – Anthony
Still no answer, from Gary Strand. It appears he just isn’t capable of direct question and answers. He asked me the same question reversed, and I answered immediately. Then he goes on to say the question and answer is a red herring. Yet he employed the same question.
a reader (09:30:34) :
“I was reading a book called “Champlain’s Dream” by David Hackett Fischer”
Interesting comment.
Bears are very opportunistic consumers and from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticosti_Island
we have this:
“For thousands of years, Anticosti Island was the territory of the indigenous peoples who lived on the mainland and used it as a hunting ground. The Innu called it Notiskuan, translated as “where bears are hunted” and . . .”
I know, it doesn’t mention the type of bear.
Hope you get good responses to this reference.
Because my age is irrelevant, and how the popular media reports on science isn’t a good indicator of the actual state of the science.
Do you think that a story in “Newsweek” is the best way to learn the state of an issue in science? It’s a simple question.
REPLY: More deflections Gary. Do you fear the question and the answer? Apparently not, since you turned the same question around and I answered immediately.
The question is relevant because it goes to direct observation of events versus observation by proxy post facto. I observed the events in situ, with full understanding of them then. Why is it so hard for you to tell us if you observed the same events in situ or not? Not looking good for your integrity. – Anthony
Gary – Since your forte is computers/programming and not climate science per se, you might have something constructive to add to the deconstruction of Mann’s hockey stick or Steig’s Antarctic temperature re-construction.
See
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/hockey-stick-cps-revisited-part-1/
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/29/steig-et-al-falsified/
Anthony, if you had “full understanding of them”, you would have known that Peterson et.al. are correct and that “Newsweek” was reporting on a minority view. That is, unless your “full understanding” consisted of “Newsweek” and not much more.
REPLY: OK then, let it be known that Gary Strand won’t answer simple questions posed to him about the relevance of in situ observations, but employs deflection at each turn, and when turning the same question around on the person asking the question, upon getting an immediate answer, still refuses.
On the question of Petersen et al, I haven’t blogged about that here yet, so I’m going to elevate you and your argument to a front page post, because I think this question is highly relevant. Does post facto research trump direct observation of historical events, especially when written by people whom have a vested interest in the outcome?
– Anthony
May want to check your acceptable use policy at UCAR to be sure you can participate during work hours, since I’ll post it during the week.
Jim (10:56:48) :
“Gary – Since your forte is computers/programming and not climate science per se, you might have something constructive to add to the deconstruction of Mann’s hockey stick or Steig’s Antarctic temperature re-construction.”
I have nothing to add to either, since neither are my areas of expertise.
REPLY: Along those lines, is the media your area of expertise? – Anthony
“REPLY: OK then, let it be known that Gary Strand won’t answer simple questions posed to him about the relevance of in situ observations, but employs deflection at each turn, and when turning the same question around on the person asking the question, upon getting an immediate answer, still refuses.”
Do you also think eyewitness testimony in a criminal trial is unassailable, and that the practice of forensic science (necessarily after the fact) is therefore suspect because of the ΔT involved? After all, (say) the coroner didn’t witness the events; her work is therefore questionable. Correct?
“[…]Does post facto research trump direct observation of historical events, especially when written by people whom have a vested interest in the outcome?”
You’re accusing Peterson et.al. of somehow not telling the truth? That’s a fairly serious allegation, one that would require compelling evidence. But of course, that would be *post facto* evidence, so by your own standards, that alone would make your research questionable.
REPLY: It goes back to the two simple questions. Which you won’t answer. I figure if the questions are indeed a “red herring” as you say, then it would be easily refuted, yet you continue to deflect the question. Since you are a modeler, I’m really not surprised that historical examination post fact by proxy is more palatable to you than direct observation. This is the central problem with climate science today. There is more value given to the models than to direct observation, and even the direct observations, such as the surface temperature records are adjusted. Confirmation bias is rampant in models, the surface record adjustments, and yes in Petersen et al
BTW I would add since you mention “Do you also think eyewitness testimony in a criminal trial is unassailable” Well you won’t even provide an opportunity, since you won’t answer the question of whether you had any eyewitness experience with the issue or not. I think at this point it is safe to assume that you don’t, or you’d be forthcoming with an answer. – Anthony
“REPLY: Along those lines, is the media your area of expertise? – Anthony”
I’ve interacted with some members of the media on a few occasions. I’m not a media expert.
[answer the question Gary and stop posting deflections]
Peterson .. He once made results showing UHI in the US only to be 0,05K.
When Steve McIntyre finaly got the data from Peterson, the very same data gave 0,7K..
That is until McIntyre found out that the stations considered “Rural” and “Urban” respectively where not correctly catagorized.
After correcting the catagories For “Rural” and “Urban” respectively, the data gave McIntyre 2,0 full degrees Kelvin.
I will be more direct than Anthony:
These errors are so grotesqe and abnormal in size that ANY “scinece” hereafter in ANY way connected with “Peterson” MUST be dealt with and interpreted with highest degree of caution.
The revealing of Peterson is one of the worst cases of data manipulation i have seen in the whole climate debate.
[answer the question Gary and stop posting deflections]
Gary in the interest of fairness, you posed the same question to me, that I posed of you, I answered immediately yet you won’t answer it.
I simply want to know if you had any cognizant first hand experience with science and the media around 1978. Your refusal to answer and your continued posting of deflections seems to indicate that is a weak point with you. So unless you say otherwise, we’ll say that you had no experience with science and the media then.
Wait, I may be wrong, when was this photo taken? http://www.facebook.com/gary.strand
– Anthony
RE: Global cooling in the 1970’s, new Ice Age, etc.
I am submitting my comments strictly from memory. At my age it is possible (almost a certainty) that the mind may wander. The key points, however, should be accurate.
During the1970’s I was in my 20’s. Part of my professional activities had me deeply immersed in air pollution, pollution control, etc. Occasionally you will see me comment on how the government, specifically the EPA, forced the use of catalytic converters too soon. They did this despite the pleas of many scientists to wait a year, perhaps two, so late some issues with the device could be resolved. As a result the EPA was to some extent responsible for the acid rain problem.
I recall the EPA telling people the ‘rotten egg’ odor coming from their car exhaust was nothing more than sulfur dioxide….. a harmless gas. Anyway, with millions of cars now belching out concentrated volumes of SO2 acid rain came to a peak. The EPA was then responsible for the closure of our nation’s copper industry as it generated SO2 in the smelting process. The industry could not remain competitive in the world market and pay for necessary modifications to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. Improvements in automotive catalytic converters eventually was a big part in curing the acid rain problem.
That is an event I lived and was part of. First hand life experience.
Also during that era was the talk and media coverage of potential for an approaching ice age. I don’t recall their being a “consensus of science” but I do recall some scientists in agreement. How many would, without doing research on it, be hard to say. Without easy access (Internet) at the time to large portions of the scientific community I don’t think many knew how many stood in support of cooling or against it. To say there was a ‘consensus’ then would be no more accurate than the present claims regarding catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Some did … yes. Others did not. Just like present times.
I also recall the existence of a CIA report stating that the desert southwest (my neck of the woods) would become the agricultural center of the nation, more fertile, more wet, etc. I remember media fanfare about the CIA report and also a number of people who gave it great weight as a statement that a coming ice age was a certainty. If I am not mistaken the CIA used information from scientists in creation of their report. I don’t recall them citing the media as their authority behind the potential scenario.
That is a brief recollection of a time, an era, I lived through and experienced with my own eyes and ears.
Heres Mr Peterson in the hands of Steve McIntyre.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1859
Climate AUDIT is certainly needed, sadly.
By the way, this is one of the “urban” areas, according to Peterson:
http://www.trainmuseum.org/Trains/Snoqualmie_Falls.jpg
“If the facts don’t fit the theory, then change the facts.”
(supposed to be a quote from Einstein, but what he meant by this is anyone’s guess)
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/702.html
I think this is de facto evidence that this organisation is religious not scientific.
It wishes to issue a report with pre-determined conclusions, rather than record fairly the diversity of views currently prevalent in their research community.
That’s a position.
But it’s not a scientific one.
IMHO.
Gary Strand (10:59:23) :
Oh, I see Gary. Unless one has a PhD in a given subject and is “officially” in the field in question, one can’t understand it. You are just promulgating the BS that “only scientists in the global warming field can understand global warming.” That’s a convenient excuse not to look at the facts, Gary. The truth is that there is much that can be comprehended by the common man. I dare say even you could understand the material in the links I cited. More and more, you appear to be nothing more than a common troll.
As much as they’ve been used by some as poster animals, I’m not sure the polar bears are really the primary concern with accelerated holocene climate change. Even if that’s the case, I thought the claim was that populations would be endangered once sea ice reached a critical point. That is, not the winter sea ice extent (subject to a fair amount of short-term fluctuation from wind and precipitation), but the thickness and minimum summer extent (an indicator of what’s happening with the PERENNIAL ice).
“Warmists deny Copenhagen access to polar bear scientist”
As long as they have the power, they will be silencing the voice of science. It’s evident there is censorship of truth.
Make of this what you will…
“Scientific projections of effects of climate change on sea ice in the Arctic vary— sometimes widely—and so we recommend that model-averaged projections, such as those presented by the 2007 report of the IPCC and 2004 Arctic Climate Impact
Assessment (ACIA), be used to anticipate effects of climate change on the distribution and abundance of polar bears. Projected changes in sea ice in the Arctic as outlined by the IPCC are presented in the chapter of Christensen et al. (2007). In summary, the Arctic is very likely to continue to warm during this century in most areas, and the annual mean warming is very likely to exceed the global mean warming. There will be an increase of 5°C in annual temperature from now to the end of the 21st century (as estimated by the MMD-A1B ensemble mean projection of the IPCC); however, there is a considerable across-model range of 2.8°C to 7.8°C. Warming is projected to be greatest in winter and smallest in summer. Annual arctic precipitation is also very likely to increase in winter. Arctic sea ice is very likely to continue to decrease in extent and thickness, but it is uncertain how circulation patterns in the Arctic Ocean might change.”
Taken from page 16: “COSEWIC Assessment and Update Status Report on the Polar Bear Ursus maritimus in Canada”
And guess who’s one of the authors… (page 75)
Dr. Mitch Taylor has devoted the past 30 years of his life to the scientific study and management of polar bears in Canada. Mitch is author to over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles on the species, largely presenting results of his own field-based research program. Mitch is also an author of the 2002 COSEWIC update on the status of polar bears in Canada. Mitch is the Manager of the Wildlife Research Section of the Government of Nunavut’s Department of Environment, and a long-term member of both the PBTC and IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group.
Lee Kington (11:33:03) : I recall the EPA telling people the ‘rotten egg’ odor coming from their car exhaust was nothing more than sulfur dioxide….. a harmless gas.
I believe the rotting egg smell is hydrogen sulphide.
Frank Lansner (11:28:51) :
Frank Lansner (11:48:23) :
Frank, considering the new WUWT posted article below, I wonder if Peterson ever worked with NOAA? Oh wait, he has. 8^)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/28/an-australian-look-at-ushcn-20th-century-trend-is-largely-if-not-entirely-an-artefact-arising-from-the-%E2%80%9Ccorrections%E2%80%9D/
I find it interesting that Francis as well as Gary Strand cite Peterson et.al as “definitive” science on the 70’s cooling not being a “crisis”, since only Peterson seems to be the only “scientist” in that paper. According to Comment from:
Gordon Robertson September 27th, 2008 at 4:33 pm, at
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/09/the-myth-of-the-1970s-global-cooling-consensus/ ,
[i]One author, William Connolley, is a contributor to realclimate. He’s a computer programmer who works as a computer modeler. He moonlights at Wikipedia making sure any articles on climate follow the peculiar logic of RC. He talks down his nose at Fred Singer, a real scientist who knows far more about the climate than Connolley will ever dream of knowing.
Then there’s John Fleck. He’s a science writer for the Albuquerque Journal. That leaves us with Peterson, who seems to be a legitimate meteorologist. Why would he want to put out a paper with a computer programmer and a writer for a newspaper?[/i]
My comment would be that if Peterson et al itself was included in their research, which pile would it have been placed on? That very paper used a member of the media as one of its authors. So that is the “definitive” paper that is used to separate science from media hype? REALLY? I think Peterson et al proves Anthony’s point that science and media feeds off of each other.
Methinks Anthony has acquired a real fan of his surfacestations project here-
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/24/ncdc-writes-ghost-talking-points-rebuttal-to-surfacestations-project/#more-8837
Darell C. Phillips (15:46:06)
The collusion between the media and the global warming cult is bad enough, but the bastardization of science by the government is the true travesty here.
Indeed.
‘”Have courage to use your own understanding!’–that is the motto of enlightenment.” — Immanuel Kant
Pretty much the whole basis of our civilization depends on freedom of speech and freedom of thought for every man and woman. If AGW is real and only 1% of climate scientists think it is real (and 99% think we’re headed for an ice age), then it is up to those 1% to explain in ways we can all understand rationally, and demonstrate rationally why they are right. If 99% of scientists think AGW is real, and only 1% think cooling is going on, then is is up to those 99% to explain in ways we can all rationally understand, the simple logic and evidence for why they are right. (“we’re a majority” is not a rational explanation).
Now, if you are one of the 99% who think AGW is real, but must of the public is not listening, then here is the key: what you don’t do is go off in a huff and complain that the public are morons who don’t want to understand because they are too selfishly attached to a consumerist lifestyle. What you actually do is you continue to explain in rational terms why you are right. And you keep doing that, and keep doing that, until we understand.
So that also means being prepared to listen to questions, like, how do models actually prove anything? What is your proof? What is your evidence?
You never get to say, “we’re experts, you don’t understand, so we won’t answer your questions”. That is just a power trip, that is like the Church telling me I have to believe in God because they are the theologians with the secret knowledge and divine connection, and they know better than I do.
If we need enlightening, then enlighten us.
I think the truth is in the middle on the cooling issue. That is, I’m sure the extent of the scientific support for the cooling hypothesis wasn’t as strong as we skeptics like to think. Surveys of the scientific literature on the topic that came to this conclusion, even by a partisan author like Peterson, couldn’t (or wouldn’t have dared) to have diverged so strongly from the truth if the consensus hadn’t been mostly non-cooling.
Still, there was a good deal of alarmism kicked up in popular circles by the proclamations of a few alarmist scientists, and they weren’t effectively challenged in public by scientific disbelievers, or not very often. Therefore, the points can be made that alarmism can get traction vastly disproportionate to its basis in reality, and that alarmism has a strong attraction to people with an apocalyptic mind-set, or who like to entertain a view of themselves as world-savers. These lessons should remind us to be cautious before getting swept off our feet by AGWA-ism.
I remember there being a thread here a few months ago wherein the extent of cooling alarmism among scientists was discussed in great depth. I wish someone who participated would put up a link to it. One poster stated that he’d done a bibliographic survey of scientific articles on the topic at the time, and that they are hard to track down, because their titles don’t always give clues to their treatment of the topic. He also said that there were more pro-cooling articles than is generally recognized now. Unfortunately, he discarded the box of articles he’d photocopied.
It’s important to not confuse mention of ‘cooling’ with the expectation of an ice age. The existence of cooling was excepted by scientists and generally attributed to atmospheric pollution (aerosols), extrapolation to an imminent ice age was not generally accepted (discussion of a future ice age was a different matter).
H.H. Lamb summed it up best:”Recent research……has rendered more specific the expectation that the beginnings of the next glaciation will be upon our descendants within 3000 to 7000 years. It is to be noted here that there is no necessary contradiction between forecast expectations of (a) some renewed (or continuation of) slight cooling of world climate for a few decades to come, e.g., from volcanic or solar activity variations; (b) an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, lasting some centuries until fossil fuels are exhausted and a while thereafter; and this followed in turn by (c) a glaciation lasting (like the previous ones) for many thousands of years.”
rogerkni (19:43:33) :
I think the truth is in the middle on the cooling issue.
I think the truth is not on any side, although it’s more realistic a warmhouse than an icehouse, given the behavior of the global climate in the past:
Icehouse: From ~3.5 billion years ago to ~500 million years ago.
Warmhouse: From ~500 million years ago to ~440 million years ago.
Icehouse: From ~440 million years ago to ~437 million years ago (short-term).
Warmhouse: From ~437 million years ago to ~360 million years ago.
Icehouse: From ~360 million years ago to ~291 million years ago.
Warmhouse: From ~291 million years ago to ~ 289 million years ago (short-term)
Icehouse: From ~289 million years ago to ~248 million years ago.
Warmhouse: From ~248 million years ago to ~104 million years ago.
Icehouse: From ~104 million years ago to ~65 million years ago (extinction of dinosaurs… Sorry Leif, it was cold what killed the dinosaurs, not meteorites).
Warmhouse: From ~65 million years ago to ~45 million years ago (short-term).
Icehouse: From ~45 million years ago to present…
What follows? Supposedly, the world has just emerged from an Icehouse about 5000 years ago, so we are now starting a Warmhouse, not an Icehouse.
I would like you not put too much faith on a cooling age. The point is that we are about entering to a warmhouse and I would not like to think in what AGWers would say of us if the ice age does not come and instead a warmhouse prospers.
The point is not to focus on a cooling period which advent is speculation, but on the fact that we humans are not causing any change of climate. The climate change is natural and obeys to cycles.
It is true that the Sun is the absolute donor of energy for the Earth. It is true that the Sun drives the Earth’s climate. It is also true that the small changes in the Sun output of energy originate huge changes on Earth’s climate many years after the solar event; however, there are internal/intrinsic factors on Earth which regulates those climate changes: the oceans and the subsurface materials of the ground.
There are more factors which influence on the regulation of the Earth’s climate. But… is carbon dioxide “contributing” to this climate change? HAH! Of course not!!! Carbon dioxide is not a source of energy; carbon dioxide does not “burn” and does not go into nuclear fission or fusion. Carbon dioxide only disperses the energy that it absorbs from one state to many other available microstates.
Phil. (22:08:34) :
(b) an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, lasting some centuries until fossil fuels are exhausted and a while thereafter…
By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
Jim (16:51:42) :
Darell C. Phillips (15:46:06)
“. . . the bastardization of science by the government is the true travesty here.”
I respectfully beg to differ; government bastardizes & perverts science to its own ends at every opportunity – the true travesty is the debasement of Science by scientists.
Mostly, I lurk and try to learn, so it’s distressing when the WUWT community jumps at the bait and lets a troll hijack a thread (and probably a mercenary kamikaze troll at that, since he works for UCAR (on our dime)). The subject of this thread is not even Polar Bears per-se, but that a well-qualified researcher got disinvited to the Copenhagen party for resisting group-think. How about some discussion on that? Are there other qualified researchers who’ve also been snubbed? I’d certainly welcome more discussion/exploration along those lines.
Anthony – there was a food fight a few months ago regarding the Connelly, et al paper puporting to prove that the cooling scare of the 70’s was just media hype, and not representative of what researchers were thinking. I allowed myself to get dragged into it way more than is my usual wont, but at any rate, there was no resolution. It would be great if you could do a thread on it sometime – actually look at Connelly’s sources and see if his sampling was representative, or as many suspect, heavily biased in favor of the desired outcome.
Nasif Nahle (22:53:45) :
Phil. (22:08:34) :
(b) an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, lasting some centuries until fossil fuels are exhausted and a while thereafter…
By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
Er, it wasn’t Phil who said that: he was quoting Lamb. And nowhere does it imply that C02 is a primary source of energy. C02 is what you get from burning the fossil fuels and Lamb is saying that CO2 will increase until fossil fuels are exhausted. HTH.
PaddikJ (23:24:24) :
Good point(s)! But most of the scientists in question do work for or are funded by the government. It’s difficult to tease apart cause and effect here.
This has been a fun thread to read through.
What the climate will do in the future in response to increasing levels of CO2 will depend on the real feedbacks operating in our planet.
I don’t think the computer models have them right. After all, these models have seriously overstated the temperature in their projections to date. Also, there is the simple fact, that while CO2 goes up, the global temperatures have certainly at least gone flat, if not down over the last ten years or so.
What upsets me the most about the current debate is the constant name calling and career threats aimed at those professional scientists who disagree with the current consensus.
Just finished reading “Kicking The Sacred Cow” by James P. Hogan. I recommend it to anyone interested in how a view catches on, and once seized by society, becomes unstoppable.
It was noted earlier how Dr. Arp has been expelled from the US astronomical society for his thoughts on Hubble’s constant. This in spite of the observational evidence he has produced calling into question the whole expanding Universe paradigm.
You’ll enjoy the chapter entitled “Rip-Out Rip-Off: The Asbestos Racket”.
Did you know the head of the EPA that banned asbestos went on to become the president of the largest asbestos abatement company in the US? Did you know, I didn’t, the asbestos ban contributed to the collapse of the WTC towers?
From the book:
Another sobering chapter is entitled “Saving the Mosquitoes: The War On DDT”.
Again from the book:
Yes, there is an unholy alliance between some scientists and the media. Once the momentum kicks in on any issue, facts and those who cite them are steamrollered out of the way. We pay a big price as a society once we are in the grips of hysteria.
Sad.
I notice Gary never answered my question, either.
Gary is good at deflection, straw man arguments and claiming personal attack whenever somebody questions him or offers counter-arguments.
The Copenhagen event has all the hallmarks of corruption and self-serving.
Surely no self-respecting scientist would want to be any closer than a bull’s roar to it. Perhaps the organisers need to erect a banner along the lines,
“Any evidence not supporting our hypothesis will be barred “
tulbobroke (04:42:49) :
Nasif Nahle (22:53:45) :
Phil. (22:08:34) :
(b) an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, lasting some centuries until fossil fuels are exhausted and a while thereafter…
By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
Er, it wasn’t Phil who said that: he was quoting Lamb. And nowhere does it imply that C02 is a primary source of energy. C02 is what you get from burning the fossil fuels and Lamb is saying that CO2 will increase until fossil fuels are exhausted. HTH.
Where did I say it was Phil.? Phil. wrote the post, so I addressed my message to the writer of the post, that is, Phil. On the second assertion, this is what Lamb wrote:
“an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide…
Need it more clearly?
The IPCC does not do any original science nor does it develop computer models. What it does do is aggregate studies that support it’s agenda and ignore all those that do not.
This is what politicians and lawyers do. Imagine a court of law where only one side gets to present a case. That’s what’s been going on for all these years.
John Galt (07:22:19) :
Of course it only presents one side. Look at the name, in fact, just look at the first part of the name: Intergovernmental.
IPPC is a political, not a scientific, organization. It has a political agenda.
Beautiful cover for people who want to raise taxes and control other lives.
Nasif Nahle (22:53:45) :
Phil. (22:08:34) :
(b) an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, lasting some centuries until fossil fuels are exhausted and a while thereafter…
By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
Where on earth do you get that idea from, try reading up on the physics of the atmosphere, I suggest: Chemistry of Atmospheres: An Introduction to the Chemistry of the Atmospheres of Earth, the Planets, and their Satellites by Richard P. Wayne
Slighly OT.
It’s not just scientists, like Dr. Taylor, being denied access to important meetings when they don’t hold the “correct” faith, now we have Paul Krugman using the “treason” descriptor for those that don’t hold the warmist views. See: http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/028558.html
Reference to the photo by Amanda Byrd:
IMO the forlorn looks on the bears’ faces were because the photographer looked mighty tasty, and they couldn’t figure out how to reach her.
Jim
Where did I say it was Phil.? Phil. wrote the post, so I addressed my message to the writer of the post, that is, Phil. On the second assertion, this is what Lamb wrote:
“an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide…
Need it more clearly?
Actually yes!
Phil. (07:57:02) :
By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
Where on earth do you get that idea from, try reading up on the physics of the atmosphere, I suggest: Chemistry of Atmospheres: An Introduction to the Chemistry of the Atmospheres of Earth, the Planets, and their Satellites by Richard P. Wayne
The creation of energy from nothingness? Sorry, Phil, I didn’t… I know enough thermodynamics, climate physics and heat transfer as to say that barbarity. Warmists did.
What do you wish I teach you more clearly? Just tell me.
I wonder if these Arctic conferences about polar bears take into consideration jet stream and wind patterns during ice melt season? The animated data from 2006 on is easily available. The data for 2006, compared to years 07 and 08, demonstrates less wind heading out to lower latitudes during peak melt months. It would have been useful to have prepared a poster session of weather pattern variation during the current decade without tying it to AGW. One could justify it by saying that “knowledge of weather pattern variation will be informative and valuable to the group as a whole”. Sometimes we submarine ourselves by taking a fighting stance with our reports instead of letting the data speak for itself. People like to go to pleasant conferences. Letting the data speak for itself, such as data on what’s in polar bear poop, or data on weather pattern variation, can just live on its own, without us using fighten words and raised hackles.
” Nasif Nahle (09:53:49) :
Phil. (07:57:02) :
By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
Where on earth do you get that idea from, try reading up on the physics of the atmosphere, I suggest: Chemistry of Atmospheres: An Introduction to the Chemistry of the Atmospheres of Earth, the Planets, and their Satellites by Richard P. Wayne
The creation of energy from nothingness? Sorry, Phil, I didn’t… I know enough thermodynamics, climate physics and heat transfer as to say that barbarity. Warmists did.
What do you wish I teach you more clearly? Just tell me.”
Why are you being so agressive? Lamb wrote “an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide…”
By “due to the effect of CO2” in that context it is clear that he is referring to an enhanced greenhouse effect. Your claim that he is calling CO2 a source of energy comes across as rather odd.
Nasif Nahle (09:53:49) :
Phil. (07:57:02) :
“By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
Where on earth do you get that idea from, try reading up on the physics of the atmosphere, I suggest: Chemistry of Atmospheres: An Introduction to the Chemistry of the Atmospheres of Earth, the Planets, and their Satellites by Richard P. Wayne”
The creation of energy from nothingness? Sorry, Phil, I didn’t… I know enough thermodynamics, climate physics and heat transfer as to say that barbarity. Warmists did.
The only person talking about the ‘creation of energy from nothingness’ is you. As you correctly point out that is scientific nonsense so I don’t know why you do so.
What do you wish I teach you more clearly? Just tell me.
As to your ability to teach anything on this subject, you have yet to demonstrate any capability in that area.
tulbobroke (11:58:00):
Why are you being so agressive? Lamb wrote “an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide…”
Nope, you don’t know me when I get angry… I use to crash laptops on others’ heads. 🙂
By “due to the effect of CO2″ in that context it is clear that he is referring to an enhanced greenhouse effect.
No, Lamb is not clearly referring to any enhanced greenhouse effect. Besides, the carbon dioxide is so poor in its thermal properties that it’s not capable of retaining heat for long periods, and not too much heat, besides.
Your claim that he is calling CO2 a source of energy comes across as rather odd.
It’s not my claim… He said it very clearly: abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide
Let’s start the lessons:
Formula for “knowing” the change of temperature “due” to a doubling of the “standard” concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere:
ΔT = 5.35 W/m^2 [LN (2)] / 4 (5.6697 x 10^-8 W/m^2 K^4) (T) ^3 = 0.98 K
However, when considering the whole atmospheric column of air at 305.45 K of temperature, above the surface at 316.95 K, the change of temperature (not the ridiculous “warming”) is:
ΔT = 9.94 cal/1.168 kg (240.37 cal/Kg*°C) = 9.94 cal/280.75216 cal*K= 0.035 K.
Considering that the solar photon stream interacts with matter and pushes it to emit photons following the trajectory of that photon stream and that there is no other sources of energy more powerful than the Sun, the change of temperature by doubling carbon dioxide would be extremely low. The rest are AGW exaggerations.
The Sun provides the energy of the Earth. The oceans and subsurface materials of the ground keep the Earth’s warmth, not the ridiculous “greenhouse” effect of carbon dioxide. Once the solar radiation hits on the surface and it is absorbed by oceanic water and the ground surface, it is the thermostatic effect exerted by the oceans and the subsurface materials of the ground what warms the Earth, not the “greenhouse” gases. The “greenhouse” gases distribute the heat everywhere… they don’t heat up anything.
If you don’t have a source of energy which heats the carbon dioxide up, the sun for example, the carbon dioxide would be thermally inert. Point.
Phil. (12:56:11) :
“By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
The only person talking about the ‘creation of energy from nothingness’ is you. As you correctly point out that is scientific nonsense so I don’t know why you do so.
Hah! I wrote: “By creating energy from nothingness or something like it?” Have you realized it is a question, not an assertion? Need reading classes also?
What do you wish I teach you more clearly? Just tell me.
As to your ability to teach anything on this subject, you have yet to demonstrate any capability in that area.
Hah and Hah! I am certified on every one of those disciplines… Sorry, it doesn’t work with me, Phil… 🙂
That little film clip from 1958 was from a movie about an hour long. That clip is only about a minute and a half.Dr Research, Prof Frank Baxter, actually a PHd English Lit professor was most likely presenting a theory or possibility as what could happen, not cut and dry fact.Those films were excellent and entertaining. It was one of the Bell system films that were originally televised in the late 1950’s I was about 5 years old or so when I first saw them usually on a winter Sunday afternoon. Perhaps they were already in reruns. That film was about the weather as far as I remember.Disney produced a film on weather at about that time called “The Storm” ,I believe, which trace a storm developing in the far away Pacific and moved into the US mainland.
Moving to the mid 1960’s, when I was in the 7th and 8th grades I along with my buddy were the projectionists(16mm, of course) for the elementary school and I showed two of those films, one was about the sun the other about the heart, I don’t remember showing “Unchained Godess”.Back in those days the telephone company supplied the films, and when done after a few days, I was allowed to go downtown to the telephone companies main office, got paid a quarter or fifty cents to do that, and signed them in and was asked a series of questions by the person at the desk that were recorded asking if the kids found the films informative ,etc.
Also at the time , I was able to buy for a under a dollar each, a Little Golden Books series on trees, rocks and minerals and of course, weather. In that little book published around 1955 or so and reprinted numerous times, there was a page or two on the increasing level of CO2 in the atmosphere most likely caused by man. It also said it was still uncertain what exactly would happen , because we don’t have enough information yet.
So yes, there was some mention of CO2 and global warming but there was trememdous uncertainty about it.
Things were different in the late 1950’s and 1960’s , NASA’s golden age and man’s potential was unlimited. And there was actually some educational stuff on TV.
Bill Junga (13:44:25) :
that little film clips from 1958 was from a movie about an hour long. That clip is only about a minute and a half. Dr Research, Prof Frank Baxter, actually a PhD English Lit professor was most likely presenting a theory or possibility as what could happen, not cut and dry fact.
Yes, it happened as you say. I recommend the readers here not to take the stuff on a glacial age like a dry fact, but only like a possibility to the far future. The possibilities of being wrong about the occurrence of an Ice Age are 50%, so the same is on the possibilities of the occurrence of a warmhouse. It’s better to talk about a cooling period, not on ice ages.
Nasif Nahle (13:42:13) :
Phil. (12:56:11) :
“By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
The only person talking about the ‘creation of energy from nothingness’ is you. As you correctly point out that is scientific nonsense so I don’t know why you do so.
Hah! I wrote: “By creating energy from nothingness or something like it?” Have you realized it is a question, not an assertion? Need reading classes also?
Actually your rather poor english makes it difficult to follow, however you said “Sorry, Phil, I didn’t… I know enough thermodynamics, climate physics and heat transfer as to say that barbarity. Warmists did.”, which I interpret as your accusing ‘warmists’ of making that statement.
What do you wish I teach you more clearly? Just tell me.
As to your ability to teach anything on this subject, you have yet to demonstrate any capability in that area.
Hah and Hah! I am certified on every one of those disciplines… Sorry, it doesn’t work with me, Phil… 🙂
Considering the rubbish you’ve spouted above perhaps that should be reviewed, e.g. “If you don’t have a source of energy which heats the carbon dioxide up, the sun for example, the carbon dioxide would be thermally inert. Point.” The sun does not heat the CO2 up.
Phil. (14:31:18) :
Actually your rather poor english makes it difficult to follow, however you said “Sorry, Phil, I didn’t… I know enough thermodynamics, climate physics and heat transfer as to say that barbarity. Warmists did.”, which I interpret as your accusing ‘warmists’ of making that statement.
That’s because English is not my mother’s language. I would prefer Hebrew or Spanish, but I have to follow the rules of this blog.
Considering the rubbish you’ve spouted above perhaps that should be reviewed…
Uh! Oh! That rubish is IPCC preferred Arrhenius formula… Heh!
e.g. “If you don’t have a source of energy which heats the carbon dioxide up, the sun for example, the carbon dioxide would be thermally inert. Point.” The sun does not heat the CO2 up.
Yes, you’re right! You’re learning something, at least. The Sun does not heat the CO2 up; the Sun heats the surface up and the surface heats the atmosphere up. However, the CO2 absorbs a small amount of solar SW radiation directly (Lesson No. 2).
Lesson No. 3: The carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy and has to be heated up by the energy transferred from other systems which can absorb SW radiation.
Warming caused by CO2 increase isn’t “dictated by the computer models” of the IPCC (which is itself wrong, as the models don’t belong to the IPCC anyway) – it’s “dictated” by basic radiative principles.
Hey, someone alert the GCM scientists: they can scrap all that and just go with “basic radiative principles.”
Boy, are their faces going to be red when they realize all the time and effort they wasted.
For the record, the amount of warming attributable to basic radiative principles is about a fifth of what is claimed by GCMs. Apparently Gary either hasn’t heard of feedbacks or doesn’t believe in them.
Heh, this thread reminds me of when I meet people who claim Venus’ high temperatures and 95% CO2 atmosphere prove carbon dioxide causes warming.
No matter how many times I see it, I still love the expression of dismay when I point out Mars also has a 95% CO2 atmosphere and is rather frigid.
The difference, of course, is density.
Yes well. Of course Venus is rather warm and Mars a trifle chilly. Possibly some of this may be due to CO2.
But personally I rather think it has more to do with their respective proximity, mean orbital distance of course, H/T LS, to the sun.
Kindest Regards
I’m not surprised that members from a specialist group are to be denied access to a government meeting. I suppose governments would not be granted access to a specialist group meeting either.
[snip – both of you children, stop it]
Gary Strand (10:57:46) : (etc…)
Gary – You obviously hold the position that “Man Made Emissions of CO2 Will Cause Catastrophic Global Warming.”
Could you please answer a couple of questions.
[1] What are the falsification criteria for the above idea?
[2] If a dogmatic, religeous idea was masquerading as science – how would you tell, what would be the criteria that you would use to tell the difference?
[3] Do you hold with the recent notion that “Global Warming” means “Climate Change”? (I.e. includings cooling…)
[4] IF – Man Made Emissions of CO2 Will Cause Catastrophic Climate Change (instead of just “Global Warming”) – What would be the falsification criteria of that idea?
Hopefully waiting for your answers.
Here’s a link to the whole article by the insufferable Krugman:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/opinion/29krugman.html?_r=1
Remember the MIT model games that made scary headlines? Krugman swallowed the bait, hook, line, and sinker:
The MIT ‘study’ he mentions (no citation) was discussed here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/25/global-warming-of-7c-could-kill-billions-this-century/#more-8018
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/26/how-not-to-make-a-climate-photo-op/#more-8038
It hard to imagine a more egregious column than this one.
/Mr Lynn
FWIW, I sent Krugman an e-pistle, using the form on his Times blog page:
/Mr Lynn
Graeme Rodaughan (00:01:47) :
[3] Do you hold with the recent notion that “Global Warming” means “Climate Change”? (I.e. includings cooling…)
Recent? As in 1988 when the IPCC was set up? You do know what the CC in IPCC means don’t you?
tulbobroke (06:22:36) :
Graeme Rodaughan (00:01:47) :
[3] Do you hold with the recent notion that “Global Warming” means “Climate Change”? (I.e. includings cooling…)
Recent? As in 1988 when the IPCC was set up? You do know what the CC in IPCC means don’t you?
tulbobroke – Good point. Yes I do, I’m actually referring to the “media shift” that has occured in recent times (over the last few years) where it is no longer “Global Warming” – But “Climate Change”.
Of course nearly everyone participating in this deabate realises that “Climate Changes”. The distinction is what causes it, natural variation, or human activity.
In the context of my earlier post I was going to the idea that “Climate Change” is not disprovable by events, i.e. is supported by the world getting warmer, cooler, wetter, dryer, etc.
Sorry for being imprecise, and now somewhat long winded…
Gary – still waiting.
Gary – BTW – IMHO the idea that “Man Made Emissions of CO2 Will Cause Catastrophic Global Warming is simply a notion that is masquerading as Science, embedded in a Pseudo-Religeous Green Myth, .
The key criteria for judging this are as follows.
[1] The dogmatic assertions based on appeals to authority (Classic Religeous Behaviour).
[2] The ad-hominen attacks (No appeal to Evidence).
[3] The crushing of Dissent (just like Catholic Church in the 1600s vi Heliocentric theory). – Pertinent to the topic of this thread.
[4] Science is willing to engage with contrary evidence – This Green Myth isn’t.
So Gary – how can you tell that you arn’t simply a deluded devotee to a pseudo-religion.
Interesting article, for anyone who’s interested, invited specialists include WWF and PBI (polar bears international), whom Derocher is a scientific advisor too. Both lobby groups that look to sympathetic public for donations…much like greenpeace, etc.
Amanda Byrd’s picture (awesome grab shot….I’m jealous) of the ‘stranded’ polar bears is a perfect example of something I’ve known about all wild bears in general for years….after working with wildlife biologists on Black Bear studies in my old job. They are playful highly intelligent knuckleheads with a keen sense of adventure. Anytime I had a chance encounter with a bear they were always f*rting around like labrador puppies….until they spotted me.
When I first saw the shot I knew exactly what these wookies were up to. It was obvious to any observant bear afficionado. They were messing around on a frozen jungle gym. It’s characteristic behavior of higher mammals. They were bored and swam out to it because it was there and felt the need to check it out.
There’s an amazing picture taken through the periscope of a sub that surfaced through the polar ice of a family of curious polar bears sniffing around it and touching the hull. They might be thinking “Wow! This Walrus will feed us for years!” I don’t know how to link to stuff yet….but I saw it on an official US Navy image bank.
The truth will out:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/07/christopher_bookers_misinforma.php
” Dr. Taylor retired from the Nunavut government last year and was replaced on the Polar Bear Specialist Group by Dr. Lily Peacock. Further, Dr. Taylor was not re-appointed the to the PBSG by the Canadian government that decided to appoint 3 other people to the PBSG meeting here in Copenhagen. Involvement with the PBSG is restricted to those active in polar bear research and management and Dr. Taylor no longer fits within our guidelines of involvement. Dr. Taylor years ago was involved in drafting the rules that govern our Group – we are restricted to 20 members of which 15 are appointed by the 5 nations with polar bears in their range and 5 members are appointed by the Chair. I appointed 5 people that are active in polar bear issues on an ongoing basis.
It was an unfortunate article and it was grossly misleading. For example, I never was a student of Dr. Taylor’s and for him to suggest so is more than a little surprising to me. I have know Dr. Taylor for over 25 years but I can assure you that at no point did he ever supervise me in any capacity.
I am unsure what the intent of Dr. Taylor’s comments were but I can assure you that the PBSG has broad representation. Given the 20 members and my appointing of only 5, it is largely up to the 5 nations to construct the Group that I Chair. The Chair position rotates by nation – my term is up and it will be up to the next Chair to appoint 5 members because my term will end and my membership in the PBSG will end. I will also note that our former Chair, Scott Schliebe of the US Fish and Wildlife Service is not attending this meeting. He also retired in 2008 and is no longer active in the field.
I hope this clarifies the situation some. This meeting is about coordinating ongoing and future research and management. Dr. Taylor is no longer in a position to assist with such issues. The PBSG has heard Dr. Taylor’s views on climate warming many times. I would note that Dr. Taylor is not a trained climatologist and his perspectives are not relevant to the discussions and intent of this meeting.”