The intro reads: Plagued by reports of sloppy work, falsifications and exaggerations, climate research is facing a crisis of confidence. How reliable are the predictions about global warming and its consequences? And would it really be the end of the world if temperatures rose by more than the much-quoted limit of two degrees Celsius?
This series features Steve McIntyre prominently, and well worth the read. See the series links below:
- Part 1: A Superstorm for Global Warming Research
- Part 2: Politically Charged Science
- Part 3: A Climate Rebel Takes on the Establishment
- Part 4: The Smoking Gun of Climatology
- Part 5: The Reality of Rising Sea Levels
- Part 6: The Myth of the Monster Storm
- Part 7: Climate Change’s Winners and Losers
- Part 8: The Invention of the Two-Degree Target
James Delingpole quips in the Telegraph:When the Germans give up on AGW you really do know it’s all over…
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A relatively balanced report, but still stuck on models regarding the future.
This: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-686697,00.html gives you the printable version of all eight parts.
“Part 4: The Smoking Gun of Climatology”
“There are various pieces of indirect evidence that support the theory of global warming. Glaciers are receding, sea levels are rising and sea ice in the Arctic regions is disappearing. ”
Don’t “reporters” do research anymore? Apparently, if you want the facts, you have to go to the source and check them for yourself:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
More like an eight-page article than an article in eight parts. The treatment is pretty good even though it tends to accept several selling points of the global warming orthodoxy at least half-way (e.g., sea level rises).
I’m currently midway through reading Christopher Booker’s “The Real Global Warming Disaster: is the obsession with ‘climate change’ turning out to be the most costly scientific blunder in history?” It’s a very thorough pre-climategate synopsis. It does, however, seem like it was rushed to print — the typos I’m finding on every third page are not what I expect from a professionally published hardcover book. But I’d still rate it as the best account of the global warming controversy ever written by a journalist.
Schellnhuber says himself he invented the 2 degree target because temperatures have been up to 2 degrees at higher at times over the past 130,000 years.
Billions of dollars on crap. We need to seriously oust these crooks in power who have burned our money away like cigarette paper.
“the prediction that all Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 — which was the result of a simple transposition of numbers ”
Come again?
My German is a bit spotty, but, let me summarize:
Eein AGW Dunkoff Science Fraudenscheitz CRU fahrt un Frakenstein Jones. Schnitzel Mann mat un Convalute Data to Stick Hockey for Gore under table transact Billion Kroner/Deutsch with Carbon Credit sgeem. Attension Max -1.0 c with Thermometer +/- .5 F acurate to Flugshaft Bomb Pattern WWI.
Okay. All clear?
“How reliable are the predictions about global warming and its consequences?”
They’re not predictions, they’re projections. Does that answer the question?
juanslayton (19:57:02),
The actual source of the 2035 date was some fellow in India who gave that speculative date to a reporter doing an interview for New Scientist. The New Scientist article was the source for the WWF’s claim using the same date. And, finally, the WWF piece was the source for IPCC using the same date.
It’s really embarrassing to cite a polemic by WWF based on speculation published in a periodical, but not quite so embarrassing to claim that it was just a typographical error.
Someone found a paper published by a Russian, if I recall correctly, and that paper said 2350 would be the date for deglaciation.
Et voila! Claim that 2035 was just an innocent transposition of 2350, and ignore the actual speculative, non-peer-reviewed newsy article that was the source for the claim.
John Wright (19:35:41) : … gives you the printable version of all eight parts.
Thanks, John.
Micajah,
We have the same understanding of the story behind 2035. But I am astonished that the Spiegel reporters apparently are not aware of it. Makes you wonder….
Yes, a step in the right direction that I think (I hope) will have a lot of influence on events in the coming weeks. Two points need addressing immediately:
1) “McIntyre doggedly asked for access to the raw data. Jones was just as dogged in denying his requests, constantly coming up with new, specious reasons for his rejections. Unfortunately for Jones, however, McIntyre’s supporters eventually included people who know how to secretly hack into computers and steal data.”
The hacker/theft myth needs to be finally laid to rest. Taking this up with these journalists may fall on sympathetic ears. It may be the opportune moment for the whistle-blower to reveal his or her identity.
2) “German climatologist Hans von Storch now wants to see an independent institution recalculate the temperature curve, and he even suggests that the skeptics be involved in the project. He points out, however, that processing the data will take several years.”
I think we would all agree to that and we should push for it. It is the reason I alluded to “sympathetic ears” above.
He appears to accept that some degree of global warming is occurring, but he probably should have mentioned that there has been no warming for 15 years, and cooling for the past 5. Furthermore, these non warming events are in spite of the fact the Jim Hansen and Phil Jones are cooking the books like crazy trying demonstrate that the warming is real.
The time for treating these guys like they are respectable scientists has past. This whole shameful episode needs to be investigated like the crime that it is…
There is no anthropogenic global warming. There never has been. Everything, and I mean everything presented by Gore and Mann and Jones and Hansen and their ilk is nothing more and nothing less then absolutely coldly calculated fraud.
A decent attempt at tackling the whole picture and calling spades as spades….something no American journal would have the kahunas to do.
Nonetheless there were some inconsistencies like this one:
“Wind shear, however, is likely to increase in a warmer climate. For this reason, many computer models now even point to a decline in hurricane activity.”
“On balance, temperature differences on the Earth’s surface will decrease, which in turn will even reduce wind speeds — meaning the much-feared monster storms are unlikely to materialize.”
Ehhhhhh….these two statements do not completely jive.
Also the sea level rise page has alot of bunk in it:
“Two factors influence the sea level.”
Just two?? Come on, guys!
At any rate, this article is an admirable attempt to get at the truth, regardless of the obligatory, cookie-cutter AGW assumptions.
Not to worry, Speigel contributors. We sift through the chaff. Nice job overall!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
“We climatologists can only describe possible futures,” Storch points out. “It’s also possible that things will be completely different.”
And they get paid for this?!
The most schizophrenic article I have read in a long time.
The sky is still falling, sort of, only not in the scientific areas that can be checked with empirical data. It’s holding up OK there.
So relax, the alarmists were mostly wrong, except when they tell us that things are getting really bad soon, and that there will be palm trees on Helgoland.
It is getting closer to a reasonable narrative. Still a ways to go.
Der Spiegel disappoints…
I enjoyed this description of McIntyre in Part 3!
——–
Steve McIntyre lives in a small brick house near downtown Toronto. It is a Sunday afternoon and he is sitting at his well-worn desk, illuminated only by a small energy-saving bulb on the ceiling.
This man, with his thinning gray hair, is an unlikely adversary for climatologists, and yet he is largely responsible for the current tumult in their field.
“This is the computer I used to begin doing the recalculations,” he says, holding a six-year-old Acer laptop with a 40-gigabyte hard drive. “My wife finally gave me a new one for Christmas.”
The climate projections are based on trends that in turn have been adjusted into the raw data. The projectors assume that the trends created by the data manipulators will proceed unabated to the quarterback, and take his knees out.
The real world says differently already, and has blown the play dead.
10-15 years of no warming or downright cooling has ensued.
Nature made the call, and has thrown the flag on the projectionists and the manipulators. It just so happens that Steve McIntyre did the instant replay and the ruling on the global field of climate stands. 15 yards, loss of credibility.
From Part 7 comes a most revealing statement:
Excuse me – “old flood plains”? Sounds like climate change will, in this instance, create conditions that once existed in the past, so, how is this bad? Seems that the climate is cycling back to a previous state.
“It will become more arid, however, in many subtropical regions. Industrialized nations, which bear the greatest culpability for global warming, will be most heavily affected.”
It was pretty even-handed until page 7. Then it became apparent that even though the entire foundation has vanished, the authors believe the house is still standing.
Bishop Hill covered some of this recently over here where he specifically focused on Peter Webster’s (Georgia Tech) comments on CRU data
johnnythelowery (20:04:57) :
I think what you were trying to say was:
CRU Klima Betrüger Phil Jones und seine Mitverschwörer American Michale Mann fabriziert die berüchtigte einzigen Baum Eishockey aus der Luft-Stick für den IPCC Third Assessment Report im Jahr 1998./
Which thanks to the new enhanced translator at the IPCC is the German equivalent of:
CRU climate pioneer Phil Jones and the eminently respected American climate expert Michale Mann created the universally accepted paleo-temperature graphic for the IPCC third assessment report in 1998.
Just The Facts (19:36:48) asked :
Don’t “reporters” do research anymore?
Alarmist Climate Science is designed to be too complicated for the average reporter (oh, sorry, “journalist”) or reader to understand, so the liberal arts-trained journalists just repeat what they’ve been told by the sciency-type people.
It’s better to be safe than sorry, doncha know.
juanslayton (19:57:02) : ” ‘the prediction that all Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 — which was the result of a simple transposition of numbers’
“Come again?”
A transposition that was quickly discovered and then allowed to remain uncorrected.