From The Legend of the Titanic at RealClimate (bold mine):
However, if the notion that information makes little impact is correct, one may wonder what the point would be in having a debate about climate change, and why certain organisations would put so much efforts into denial, as described in books such as Heat is on, Climate Cover-up, Republican war on science, Merchants of doubt, and The Hockeystick and Climate Wars. Why then, would there be such things as ‘the Heartland Institute’, ‘NIPCC’, climateaudit, WUWT, climatedepot, and FoS, if they had no effect? And indeed, the IPCC reports and the reports from the National Academy of Sciences? One could even ask whether the effort that we have put into RealClimate has been in vain.
Look at the data, then you be the judge:
From Alexa.com – note that the lower number for traffic rank is better
(Google is traffic rank #1 for example)
Source for comparisons: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wattsupwiththat.com+realclimate.org#
Seems like an order of magnitude slam dunk to me, RC can’t even get out of the grass at greater than 100,000 traffic rank…they aren’t even being tracked anymore. Here’s the last 6 months:
Source: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/realclimate.org#
Rasmus goes on to say at RC:
What do I think? Public opinion is changed not by big events as such, but by the public interpretation of those events. Whether a major event like hurricane Katrina or the Moscow heat wave changes attitudes towards climate change is determined by people’s interpretation of this event, and whether they draw a connection to climate change – though not necessarily directly. I see this as a major reason why organisations such as the Heartland are fighting their PR battle by claiming that such events are all natural and have nothing to do with emissions.
The similarity between these organisations and the Titanic legend is that there was a widespread misconception that it could not sink (and hence it’s fame) and now organisations like the Heartland make dismissive claims about any connection between big events and climate change. However, new and emerging science is suggesting that there may indeed be some connections between global warming and heat waves and between trends in mean precipitation and more extreme rainfall.
This is a good time to remind readers and the few remaining RC denizens of why Rasmus Benestad is clueless on the “emerging science” of severe weather = climate change:
As always, the left/alarmist denizens are entirely clueless about history.
The Titanic is not a legend.It broke in half and sank via an ice berg just as CAGW will.
gavin is right about one thing- the more information I attempt to present to AGW True Believers, the more they shriek their ignorance back at me.
Yes, gavin, since ‘PR wars’ were more important to you than REAL science (such as the increasing number of peer-reviewed papers showing NEGATIVE feedbacks), you HAVE lost- just too bad it is going to take an entire generation to get a lot of people’s thinking back on track.
The love of theory ..
Don’t worry Rasmus, the science is in and it is settled. It was a complete waste of time.
The similarity is between climate models and the Titanic, as Rasmus puts it “a widespread misconception that it (they) could not sink” .
Physics meets reality.
“…new and emerging science is suggesting that there may indeed be some connections…”
I think that sums it up pretty well.
I don’t think they should feel too bad about their ratings as compared to WUWT. The fact is that there is little need for warmist websites. We get all the warmist stuff we want or need from the mainstream media. If the CBC were skeptic, or even neutral I might not feel the need for a fix of rampant skepticism form WUWT with my morning coffee.
Seems to me the market for BS (Bad Science) is evaporating.
cool. the question has been breached. must be the answer passed by a few times for that to happen, eh?
WUWT has done more (i.e., alerted us to and prevented much damage) than all the protest.the.protest donation sponges having catered lunches with astronauts and pretending to be influential among themselves.
WUWT works. It has an inspired crew who knows what they are about. Sharp focus, relentless scrutiny and a frumious BS button. And the mods are the best i’ve ever seen anywhere.
Thanks. Nobody else does it like you do.
“One could even ask whether the effort that we have put into RealClimate has been in vain.”
Yes it has been. Enjoy your loneliness. Now about refunding all the money you took from taxpayers to do your site on the taxpayers dime?
RC was in a basic catch-22 situation. If they did not censor skeptics they would have been eviserated. However, by censoring they gave the impression they were afraid to debate the issues. The classic lose-lose situation.
Of course, the reason for this is very simple. There is almost no evidence to support alarmism. They simply wouldn’t let that fact sink in to their own little world of groupthink.
If you visit a blog and your comments (polite, reasonable, intelligent) always go awol, you tend not to visit anymore.
Could it be that sites stuffed with taxpayers’ money are bound to fail??
“what the point would be in having a debate about climate change” — now that is a hypothetical question! When another ship radioed to the Titanic to warn them about ice, the reply was to shut up. That does compare with the RC response to skeptics. Other than that, I think the Real Comparison to the RC climate change “debate” is WWF wresting — entertainment only.
AGW is similar to the Titanic in some ways: after the Titanic sunk in 1912 there was a series of investigations. Experts, learned engineers, etc. disagreed with eyewitness testimony that the Titanic broke in half as it sank. The official report, based on consensus and expert opinion, was that the Titanic sank whole. It took Robert Ballard to discover it on the sea floor in 1985 to prove the experts wrong. They just had to have the story turn out that the Titanic sank whole, against evidence to the contrary. So it is with AGW: they simply need the story to be true, contrary to scientific evidence.
“One could even ask whether the effort that we have put into RealClimate has been in vain.”
Oh, no. You have provided us with much amusement, and with many examples of why it is a bad idea to try to scare people into agreeing with you.
I used to visit RC once in a while to see what was up, so I apologize for boosting their miserable numbers even a little. I’ve also noticed WUWT regulars attempting to engage that lot in honest & thoughtful debate, only to be shouted down.
After the second round of Climategate emails and the total lack of attention paid to climate issues in the 2012 presidential campaign, I suspect they are a testy lot over there. Can’t say I feel sorry for any of them.
As we say in Chicago, “Stick a fork in ’em, they’re done.”
So Gov Funded Scientist are complaining because the proletariat have not been swayed by the Al Gored sermon on the mount and instead the average person seems to be accusing the scientist of playing version of 3 card monty.
It is MUCH WORSE then Expected.
Why resort to “new and emerging science is suggesting” when the debate was already ended by the grantee gravy train crowd in the first place? And the Oscar goes to the group think manipulators who continue to fight FOIA laws based on special case arguments of exceptionalism.
The Titanic sank because the reaction of the Captain exposed the length of the ship to threat. He tried to avoid the unavoidable instead of dealing with it.
According the first Alexa image, RealClimate’s rank improved 45,067 places in the last three months. I hereby confidently state that WUWT cannot equal that rise in the next 3 months. 🙂
There are advantages to being #169,732, you just have to know how to spin it!
Yes it was entirely in vain. As everyone knows, pontificating alarmists are full of self-importance and are tiresomely vain.
I never would have even heard of realclimate.org had it not been for WUWT.
Ironic.
I can’t wait to see the Josh Cartoon on the Titanic significance of RC in the climate debate. 🙂
We just finished our STAR tests here, and one question asked which of the choices can cause the temperatures on earth to rise. The correct answer was burning more fossil fuels.
I already told my students that was the answer they’d want if that question should happen to be on the test, but I’ve already told them the truth, too.
Jim Owen says:
May 3, 2012 at 9:38 am
As always, the left/alarmist denizens are entirely clueless about history.
JIm,
While I agree with the gist of your comment, please try to steer clear of the “lefty alarmist” / “right wing sceptic” stereotype. As a solidly left-wing (in fact, borderline communist) sceptic I don’t exactly find it offensive but I do see it as damaging to the “reasonableness” of our position. I’ve learnt over the years that one thing that’s guaranteed to annoy people is to be forcibly categorised according to one attribute, whether that’s skin colour, religeous beliefs or position in a debate and have assumptions made about their entire personalit as a result.
As the rational side of this debate we should be accepting that scepticism isn’t a political trait, any more than it’s a gender or ethnic one, and leaving the other side to continue forcing people into ill-fitting pigeon-holes 🙂
@martinbrumby, Real Climate is not funded with taxpayer money.
When Mann and
Schmidt created RealClimate they sought to blunt the Sceptics from telling the truth about the climate. Thanks to the Internet they weren’t able to monopolize climate science. Climategate I and II plus Fakegate emails were exposed to the world and the nefarious deceit these clowns tried to perpetrate on the world.
question…
Why would a traffic rank in another region be so substantially different than in the USA. I presume google is used everywhere and that most people have the same habits regardless of locale… That is everyone wants to download music, check the weather, do banking, etc.
So why would WUWT be so popular in New Zealand but ranked lower in the USA? It is a sociological puzzle to me.
New Zealand is a western society…. they bank, dance, buy cars….What’s Up with That anyway?
Surely a science historian could come forward now to compare and contrast past science scandals and group think enforcement tactics and how they unraveled. This is an opportunity on the scale of This Time Its Different by Reinhart and Rogoff on the history of sovereign debt crises. Or, where oh where is the intricate research of Robert Caro in looking at the parallels of LBJ’s rise to power. We need you now!
I agree with Chas…the true analogy would be between CAGW and the Titanic, not skeptics and the Titanic.
CAGW was the ship that could not be sunk, they had the “consensus” and the science was settled. Then one night the WUWT data iceberg appeared and gashed a giant hole their wonderful CAGW ship. Some of the crew and passengers bailed out quickly and saved themselves, however, “the band” (Hansen, Mann, Jones, Tenebreth, etc.) played on, lulling many into a false sense of security. The ship is sinking and they don’t even know it.
Tom Deutsch says:
May 3, 2012 at 10:10 am
@martinbrumby, Real Climate is not funded with taxpayer money.
OK OK OK…. Taxpayer funded nutty projects like Global Warming, and Solar Power and Wind Mills and all that eco religion nonsense, promoted at various web site, funded or not by more taxpayer money is doomed to failure since the entire premise upon which the web sites operate is doomed to failure.
OK Better..???
So… Because you get more traffic you’re right? It may comfort you, but it’s not science.
Anthony: The RC-Titanic Header is perfect–your best post header to date.
I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not.
— Sir Peter B. Medawar, Biologist
martinbrumby
ANY organization stuffed with goverment money is bound to fail. See Solendra[sp?].
Gavin is a public employee and it is apparently a large part of his day job to monitor and post at RC.
Let me get a quick-fix going on that first paragraph:
However, if the notion that information makes little impact is correct, one may wonder what the point would be in having a debate about climate change, and why certain organisations would put so much efforts into mindless panic, public disinformation, slander and character assassination, as described in books such as “The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Scientist; ClimateGate The CruTape Letters, The Resilient Earth, The Inconvenient Skeptic, The Hockey Stick Illusion, Don’t Sell Your Coat, and many others (sorry if I missed any – I’m not at home and can’t look up at my bookshelf!).
Chris Reynolds says:
May 3, 2012 at 10:23 am
So… Because you get more traffic you’re right? It may comfort you, but it’s not science.
====
Wrong way to look at it. WUWT gets more traffic because the science IS discussed, new research IS argued over, old science IS challenged and / or supported, and people are not screened out for having a different opinion of what the World is doing. People such as you, in fact.
surreal climate gets less traffic because their entire argument consists of Snark.
– I thought comedy was dead, but then I realised the BBC has sneaked in the NEW Monty Python : Harrabin, Black & Shukman & their North American sidekicks Hansen, Mann & Gleick (AKA the Joker) + the Australian Flannery wearing the big clown prediction shoes…oh and there’s a whole posse of Hacktivist sidekicks led by Monbiot “If the story fits my dogma, then I won’t check the facts, just churn it !”
…. if they all sink on RC Titantic ..who will there be left to laugh at ?
It takes but one counter example to an hypothesis to send the whole theory to the graveyard – unless it is CAGW and the demonization of CO2, then it can be wrong as often as needed since it doesn’t make predictions, just projections.. (ok this probably doesn’t need it, but let me add /sarc)
“Ice berg, what ice berg? Thanks to fossil fuel CO2, children in the future will be lucky to ever see an ice berg!…..So goodnight, Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain, James Hansen, r.c., signing off.”
Jenn Oates says:
May 3, 2012 at 10:09 am
Be careful. I would hate to see you lose your position because of your views. The paradigm has shifted on the internet, but proponents of AGW are still in positions of power. Perhaps even a zealot parent could do your career some tangible harm. I urge caution, and it is a very sad academic state of affairs to have to do so.
As an aside and to stay on topic, I would suggest that the ONLY traffic RC gets is due to WUWT?. That gives me a three mile smile.
Interesting philosophical question Rasmus raises: Does the CAGW alarmist propaganda have little impact on changing minds and if so, what’s the point of RC?
Katrina? Katrina? Oh yeah I remember now, that was that levee failure back in 2005 from a Cat 3. There’s an example of a REAL human caused disaster, unlike GW.
Early on, I visited “Real” (haha!) Climate a few times. It was immediately obvious from their venom-filled, spittle-spewing, diatribal drivel that their arguments were entirely based on fallacy instead of science. I seldom returned to sample their PC web-a-tronic Ipecac™. WUWT sank their Bismarck.
Mark Twain wrote a short story that highlited the slow speed of communication in the late 1800’s titled “Cecil Rhodes and the Shark” wherein a fisherman catches a shark in Australia that had swallowed a man in possession of a newspaper. The paper carried a story about the war that had just been declared in Europe. This news had not yet reached Australia and the man made out very well in the wool market.
“One could even ask whether the effort that we have put into RealClimate has been in vain.” Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. It did manage, at least for a while, to give the appearance of offering science, and of fooling the more naive and less bright. It was a good effort. Go ahead and give yourselves at RC and other pseudoscientific sites like the hilariously-named “SkepticalScience”, DeSmogBlog and others a big round of applause. You deserve it.
Paul Westhaver says:
May 3, 2012 at 10:15 am
question…
My hypothesis is, the better the education system in a given country the higher the WUWT rank. See Thailand.
My daughter sent me this cartoon which is perhaps on topic.
Heh. An Alarmist is far more likely to link to Skeptical Science-Cook’s Catechism of Correct Climate Thought- than RealClimate anymore. It’s a given that “climate scientists” are pathetic at communicating which is odd as their defenders hold them up as the smartest scientists on the planet, so elite that no other profession is allowed to challenge them.
“””””_Jim says:
April 19, 2011 at 8:03 pm
1942 – Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil invent frequency hopping spread spectrum communication technique
Missing: any mention of SIGSALY – the digital-based speech encryption system (built around ‘vocoder’ technology, as used in cell phone voice encoding today) developed by Bell Labs and subsequently deployed for meaningful secure comms usage between the top echelons of our government – and Great Britain’s head … it was EVEN posted about here on WUWT … pls also note that patents involving this system, though filed in the 40′s remained classified into the 70′s (Doh!) …
So … WUWT?
WUWT mention and links- http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/23/no-joke-air-force-actually-creates-supercomputer-from-playstations/#comment-630382
Sigsaly/NSA – The Start of the Digital Revolution – http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/center_crypt_history/publications/sigsaly_start_digital.shtml
Wiki – look at the number of racks of equipment required! – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGSALY
PS: Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil system amounted to a ‘list’ of frequencies one was supposed to ‘tune’ to to receive data … done so in a predetermined manner, like having a pre-determined, written-out list of CB channels one tuned to, in succession, at say, 1 minute intervals to receive a transmission … this is the essence of ‘frequency hopping’, not so much ‘spread spectrum’ (IF BW = signal BW for FH, IF BW = chip rate BW for SS).
I know; I am always the sourpuss with a different ‘take’ on things technical … “””””
Well Jim, you probably already know that one of the most common words in technical patents, or any patents for that matter is the word :- “MEANS”.
Which of course implies ANY way of doing something, whether known or unknown (at the time).
Technology is full of instances where the MEANS of doing something were quite inadequate at the time it was first recognised, that doing whatever was or could be a good idea.
Some people thing thermo-nuclear fusion energy is a good idea, even though no laboratory means of doing that exists. So the idea itself may be patentable when first thought of, even if not realizable at the time. Subsequently, when MEANS for doing so, or improved MEANS for doing so are proposed or developed, those improvements are themselves patentable, even though they may still be covered by the original idea patent.
Hedy Lamarr’s invention of “spread spectrum” communications was a good idea, even if at the time, it was realized by telephoning a selected list of people in order, and giving each of them a portion of a pizza order, to pass on to the pizza shop.
The lady inventor who first proposed the idea of polishing a round tip on the end of a sapphire crystal, to make a longer wearing gramophone needle, got a patent on it, even though she didn’t have the foggiest idea if and how that could be done. Those who did figure out how to do it, and made lots of money doing it, ended up paying her a lot of royalties for having first suggested the idea, of doing it.
“MEANS” means ANY MEANS .
Whether vain?
The Titanic was unsinkable, the ship was divided into water tight compartments.. Climate models can’t be wrong, its high school physics.
How could that iceberg possibly have known that the Titanic’s steam boilers were fueled by high-carbon coal, so it’s stacks must have been spewing ice’s enemy, many tons of carbon dioxide per hour?
To me this just says that people who believe in global warming, don’t go around looking for proof against it….
…and people that don’t believe in GW, want to know why
I hope RealClimate continues, it certainly helped me know who and what behavior the warming crowd defend and practice, plus obviously the most important: what are “science” for them and how they can extract “conclusions” and “consensus” from nothing.
Wow, what a hoot. I had never used Alexis before — I checked out my personal webpage/website and was pleased to learn that it is ranked just about 1,000,000 (750,000 or so in the US). By RealClimate standards I’m a Playah! That corresponds to around 800,000 hits per month on my site — down a bit, actually, as I used to get more like 1,000,000 hits per month, but beowulfery is no longer a hot topic and the traffic it used to generate is way down.
for the day (including the raw data, if you like). Westglen (KNCDURHA20) reveals almost to the minute the time the weather station went into the sun around 10:30 a.m. Compare this to the trace from Falls of New Hope (KNCCHAPE5). These two sites are about 4 miles apart (I live in between a mile from one and 3 from the other) and are actually in somewhat similar terrain — forested suburb, basically. It’s high temperature for the day is 86.7, ten full degrees cooler than Westglen. It has no sudden increase in temperature at 10:30 — in fact, the temperature there levelled off around 10:30, crept up a bit more around 11:30, and has been quite stable since, actually coming down some off of its peak. If you click through on the “Wundermap” on the right you can see where the two stations are relative to one another station 87 is Falls of New Hope, 98 is Westglen. I live in the little blob above the word “Solterra” in between.
. How about Falls of the New Hope? How about Rockwood, in the city more than most of the rest?
I should add a climate section. Specifically, I’ve thought about starting the Open Climate Project to crowdsource both data and code for doing climate science in an utterly open and completely documented development process.
I continue to be struck by temperature differences in my very local sample space. For example, in Durham the NWS temperature is predicted to reach roughly 100F. Yesterday it was reported to have reached 101F. That’s warm for this time of year, although not unheard of, and last week it was cold, next week it will be cool to cold again. However, I subscribe to the Weather Underground service and keep a tab open on it all day, and it lists some 20-30 “local weather stations” belonging to citizens. In it I’ve noted a strange anomaly.
If you visit it right now:
http://classic.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=27705
At the instant I’m typing this, the Durham (RDU Airport) temperature is reported to be 88 F. Since the NWS prediction is 99F (same page) and it is just after 1 pm, the NWS prediction seems a bit unlikely. However, if you scroll down to the list of area weather stations, a strange anomaly is revealed. First, only one weather station on the entire list reads 99F — Westglen, which is actually very near to my house. Westglen and my own household outside thermometer agree if and only if my thermometer is directly in the sun — true for part of the morning (mine isn’t a “weather station” — it is a radio thermometer just hanging on a rail of my deck 2 meters or so from the house, and it spends some part of the day with direct sun on its top).
There is one station reading 93.9F. There are four stations reading between 90 and 93F. all the rest of the stations are under 90F, with an eyeballed mean around 88 or 89F. That would be almost 30 of them under 90F, four a bit above, one more than a bit above, and only one that is roughly 10F or 5C above what is almost certainly the true air temperature outside at 99F. And it is almost certainly sitting square out in the sun.
Guess which one agrees with the “official” temperature in Durham, as far as the NWS is concerned, especially since nobody ever looks at the temperature yesterday, they only look at what the NWS says it will be today. For most people, the forecast is the reality. From the evidence, the NWS reality is true only for a weather station sitting directly in the sun and protected from the wind. There is no way in hell that the temperature outside today is as high as 90F in the shade, it’s actually rather nice.
I’ve verified this pattern fairly consistently — the nice thing about the participating weather stations linked to this page is (and the Weather Underground) that you can click through to them and read off their temperature trace
No, this isn’t “Urban Heat Island” — Station 90 on this map, Rockwood is in a neighborhood in the city proper, surrounded by houses and malls. If you click on it on the Wundermap you can see its temperature vs time plot! How cool is that! It reveals that it has warmed up to 90F in Rockwood, still far cooler than Westglen. Click on station 89, “Huckleberry Heights” (hey, I don’t make these things up:-). This is the site that registered a high of 94, and look at how it did it! You can see the exact instant it went into the sun at 11:30 and you can see right when it went back into the shade at 1:15. It is a cloudless day, by the way — this isn’t cloud modulation, it is siting. If Huckleberry had gone into the sun earlier, it might have matched Westglen.
Interestingly, even RDU airport (you can find it if you move the map around and click on site 88) shows a T(t) that is only up to 88F. Its graph is actually pretty smooth — no shadows or shade here. Sites 90 and 93 are highly revealing — they are only about 3/4 of a mile apart, both in nearly identical neighborhoods. 93 is KNCDURHA38 and has registered a high of 93F with a very strange bobble that peaked at 90F around 10, went down to 84F at noon, and has risen to 93 afterwards. I can almost see the shadow of the tree sweeping across the box and then leaving it in full afternoon sun. Site 90 (KNCDURHA14) almost across the road from it shows, on the other hand, a smooth warming to a high just under 90F.
The bottom line is that this is the problem that the CRU or GISS is trying to solve! And it is a damn difficult one. What is the average temperature of Durham today going to end up being, in some coarse-grained algorithm that is going to somehow smear that temperature out in some 5×5 bloody stupid latitude/longitude Mercator grid cell? I look at the Wundermap, having all of the data from some 30+ contributing stations literally at my fingertips — and these are all digital electric thermometers, one presumes really good ones in weather stations capable of actually producing these results and transmitting them in real time back to wunderground.com — and I have no idea. Clearly Westglen sucks (even though it is so close to my house, it always reads 10F too warm on a sunny day) but should I trust RDU Airport? We’ve just had a discussion of how airport siting is often horribly biased depending on the wind direction — warm air blowing off sun-heated runways can ruin your whole day’s worth of
Now imagine trying to “correct” temperature data from (say) 1954, or 1897, or 1821 and using it to estimate global temperatures in those years. Every one of the thermometers used — usually sampled by humans back in the not so very old days — was handmade or machine made on machines with very limited precision in the earliest of times, but probably continuing well into the 20th century. If they were consistently accurate to 1C I would be amazed. Then there is where and how they are sited. We can see at a glance that the high temperature reading for Durham is going to vary by well over 10F from the hottest weather station to the coolest, and that some of those stations are going to register the day’s high from a 1 hour stretch where the sun swept across the thermometer or the point in the afternoon right before it clouded up to rain. What are the odds that older thermometric records are going to have trapped these brief highs? Yet in modern times those highs are never missed. If there is a ten minute interval where the temperature in your weather station exceeds 100F between 1:30 and 1:40 in the afternoon, it will be recorded as the high for the day.
Back in the old days, people did tend to get up early and go to work early. Early morning is quite consistently the day’s coldest time — it is rare for the coolest part of the day to be anything else. But to record a high, you have to be looking, and to be looking consistently enough to record it you have to be looking to the exclusion of all else, to have nothing else to do. It might happen at 11 am, it might happen at 5 pm. Some days it might happen at midnight. This suggests that if anything, early thermometric records should be biased low — they are much more likely to have recorded the day’s low temperature either accurately or consistently and minimally offset from the true temperature by the bias/error in the time of sampling and thermometer itself. The high temperature, however, is at best the temperature measured at some consistent time in the mid-afternoon, at worst the temperature recorded at the wrong time altogether, perhaps 12 noon or 6 pm at a place where the real peak occurs near 2 pm — except when it doesn’t, which is 1/2 of the time. As a glance at actual thermal traces on the Wundermap reveals, nearly every day the temperatures are nearly flat and stable near the low around dawn, but the high can happen anytime, blink and you’ll miss it.
rgb
REPLY: Welcome to my world of thermometry – Anthony
Chris Reynolds says:
May 3, 2012 at 10:23 am
So… Because you get more traffic you’re right? It may comfort you, but it’s not science.
—-
You are correct, sir! One other way to put that would be to say consensus doesn’t determine correctness. A lesson the people at Real Climate should have taken to heart as opposed to censoring skeptics and snarking at everyone else who dared question their religious faith in catastrophic global warming. If they had treated people with respect and fostered open and honest debate…
Well if they had done that they never would have been alarmists to begin with. So goes life.
Real What?
The only thing missing from the RC article was a tag line saying they needed more funds to study the phenomena
@ Bob Tisdale: Anthony: The RC-Titanic Header is perfect–your best post header to date.
Thanks, they opened the door below the waterline with their post title, all I did was report on it visually.
Warning! the Titanic is to be rebuilt!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/dec/31/theobserver.uknews2
“”””” Paul Westhaver says:
May 3, 2012 at 10:15 am
question…
Why would a traffic rank in another region be so substantially different than in the USA. I presume google is used everywhere and that most people have the same habits regardless of locale… That is everyone wants to download music, check the weather, do banking, etc.
So why would WUWT be so popular in New Zealand but ranked lower in the USA? It is a sociological puzzle to me.
New Zealand is a western society…. they bank, dance, buy cars….What’s Up with That anyway?
“””””
Well Paul, perhaps Lord Rutherford said it best:- ” We haven’t the money; so we’ve got to think. ”
Then there was that famous statement by a former NZ Prime Minister, regarding a principal NZ export industry (brains).
” When New Zealanders emigrate to another country, it raises the IQ of both countries. ”
Well a little poetic licence there; he specifically said it about emigration to Australia, but the general case is also true.
And those Aussies aren’t so dumb either; they just talk funny.
I have a new and emerging theory suggesting that RealClimate folks may indeed owe me some money. Therefore, the question being settled once and for all, I expect them to transfer all their money and more to my bank account with no complaint or delay whatsoever. Otherwise it does not bode well for their future prospects to be miserable money deniers, now does it?
@RGB, you may find this post interesting – airport ASOS stations have all sorts of issues, not the least of which is that after they fail and set new records, the records remain.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/19/more-on-noaas-fubar-honolulu-record-highs-asos-debacle-plus-finding-a-long-lost-giss-station/
RDU is part of the climate record:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425723060000&data_set=14&num_neighbors=1
Strange that they felt a need to paint the asphalt near the ASOS station white:
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=35.89239,-78.782031&spn=0.000744,0.000873&t=h&z=21
Drag that view to kick it into 45 degree mode
Here it is before the painting:
http://binged.it/JWBPfP
WUWT?
The problem with left wingers is never themselves – it is always a VRWC (just like the Monica story). You can give them the answers on a gold tablet – and it will make no difference. Because they will never believe they are wrong. Or do anything about it.
The media is complicit in their ignorance. It makes excuses for their losses, never confronting them with the ugly facts. The right have no choice but to face the facts – they have no one to cover for them.
It is a astounding to see how ignorant these people truly are. They ignore all the metrics turning against them and just march on as if it isnt happening ( in their world its not). They use Katrina, well since that year we are below normal as far as US impact goes ( exception 2008) and the global ace has tanked. How has that Moscow heat wave been working for them lately?Within 6 month, crushing cold hit that area and winters are turning more brutal. Its one thing after another. They tried to use this winter as a ploy to push their warped vision here, but 2 winters ago they were pushing the idea that SNOW AND COLD was because of warming.
Next winter, and I am already out as saying I think the JAMSTEC is correctly seeing the cold pdo double nina -nino response such as we saw in 09-10 and 76-77, should be a doozy across the US. These folks will then claim that as evidence, Never mind they ignored the rest of the n hemisphere land masses going into the tank. They have being trying to bet on the ignorance of people to push their point, BECAUSE THEY ARE IGNORANT of what the weather has done and is capable of doing.
The position of real climate, given the mountains of evidence that at least cause doubt and when one considers the physical realities of the minute role ( if any) co2 can have in the climate, make the overwhelming explanation of the ups and downs one that is natural, is pathetic
Not in vain, it made Al Gore and others milllions.
I hope it was not in vain and will be useful when judges will have a look at the matter.
Richard deSousa says:
May 3, 2012 at 10:11 am
“When Mann and Schmidt created RealClimate they sought to blunt the Sceptics from telling the truth about the climate. Thanks to the Internet they weren’t able to monopolize climate science.”
Yes. In Norway the media is completely controlled by left wing journalists. So there has been no stories about Climategate. None of the stories you can read about here at WUWT is ever mentioned. It is total silence.
One interesting thing has happened, though.
On the Web-versions of the newspapers, in the comment-field. Whenever Benestad and his ilk has had a press-release regarding Global Warming, the comments have been flooded by negative remarks. So much so, that the articles has been stacked away from the front page within hours.
It is simply to embarrassing for the newspaper.
One of the reasons this site draws traffic is that it provides a forum for discussion, allowing both dissent and agreement. I’ve tried engaging in discussions on other sites but end up being attacked or my posts never see the light of day – as if they’ve been thrown into a borehole. I’m not an expert but sometimes I do have something of value to add to the conversation. Unfortunately if what I have to say contradicts The Team message in any way, then I’m either stupid, need to learn more science, or my reply vanishes. That drives sane people away.
To Anthony and the rest of the staff at WUWT, thank you for the hard work and for providing a FORUM for congenial discussion on these topics.
One of the links in the article are a good reason why Real Climate is losing credibility: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/03/extremely-hot/ by By Stefan Rahmstorf and Dim Coumou.
They use several examples of how the probabilities really can change the degree of a heat wave. One degree of GW doesn’t necessarily mean the next record heat wave will be one deg. higher. But in the final paragraphs and summary they turn an innocuous but useful demonstration of statistics into a polemic:
“For illustration, let’s take the most simple case of a normal distribution that is shifted towards the warm end by a given amount – say one standard deviation. Then, a moderately extreme temperature that is 2 standard deviations above the mean becomes 4.5 times more likely (see graph below). But a seriously extreme temperature, that is 5 standard deviations above the mean, becomes 90 times more likely! Thus: the same amount of global warming boosts the probability of really extreme events, like the recent US heat wave, far more than it boosts more moderate events. ”
A shift of 1 std. deviation!!! We are talking about global warming being 1 deg. C. in a world where the daily, monthly, and yearly temperatures have standard deviations of about 10 deg. They don’t discuss that. Shifting the temperature 0.1 std. deviation will make barely measurable changes in the temperatures of heat waves, which is not the message they want to send. So they load the dice and take fallacious example, 1 std. deviation and get numbers to show heat waves will be 90 times more likely. That sounds worrisome but truly highly unlikely. Blatant misrepresentation will cause many folks to doubt you. Ask any snake oil salesman.
I just submitted the following comment at RC and it is in moderation:
That was a sincere comment on my part.
John
At the end of the day … I consider these fraudsters such bad scientists … that I wonder whether we sceptics shouldn’t re-examine the case for catastrophic global warming because who knows what kind of mistakes these fifth rate guys have made and where the truth lies with these kind of charlatans.
We can’t rely on them being wrong! And just take it that means the world won’t be as warm as they predicted … their predictions were just lousy … it could go either way!
It will sound daft, after all the time we’ve spent trying to stop the world going daft about warming. But when you are so tied up in group think as they were, they were probably just as incapable of seeing the evidence that pointed to warming as they were to seeing the evidence against warming.
Perhaps we risk the same one-sided group think: thinking that bad science must mean it won’t warm as much. Bad science is just bad science.
As responsible people, now that the warmist gravy train is tipping over, shouldn’t we at least keep our minds open to the possibility that they totally balls up their own case and global warming is a lot worse?.
There is a very direct correlation between CAGW and the Titanic sinking.
‘Belief’ in climate change is, first and foremost, a guilt reflex – a belief that the transportation and energy technologies man has developed over the past couple hundred years are a hubris that must, just MUST have a nemesis right around the corner.
A similar pattern of somber hand-wringing can be found in the literature that followed the Titanic sinking – the certainty that mankind’s efforts to master the forces of nature had been proven not just technically but morally wrong.
@ Ken Coffman – “Gavin is a public employee and it is apparently a large part of his day job to monitor and post at RC”
I find it odd that there is a lot of focus on ad hominem on a site that purports to be about science
They really are obsessed with Heartland, aren’t they?
wikeroy says:
May 3, 2012 at 12:14 pm
Oh, we get a certain amount of that here too.
The San Francisco newspaper’s website will sometimes float some alarmist scare-piece on their front page, for a while the most common examples of this were blog posts from a guy named Gleick you may have heard of.
The rate at which these posts disappeared from the front page, indeed in some cases became almost impossible to find anywhere on the site, was almost entirely driven by the volume of skeptic commentary the piece attracted.
Tom Deutsch says:
May 3, 2012 at 10:10 am
“Real Climate is not funded with taxpayer money.”
Maybe not on your planet.
But on this planet Schmidt and Mann definitly have their snouts in the taxpayer trough, and RC is being run 24/7 by them.
I still visit RC as I want to hear both sides of the argument, but they don’t impress me at all. In fact I would say the effect of RC on me is to harden my sceptic stance. Their arrogance really gets to me, and the way they are so dismissive of “deniers”. Having a few innocent and polite comments deleted didn’t help either. Can’t they see that they are offending the very people they are trying to convert?
There really is no hope for them.
Hi Scottish Sceptic
You said: “I wonder whether we sceptics shouldn’t re-examine the case for catastrophic global warming because who knows what kind of mistakes these fifth rate guys have made and where the truth lies with these kind of charlatans”.
That’s a FANTASTIC idea! Yes, why don’t you publish original science that shows that (for example) C02 isn’t a GHG or that the GE doesn’t exist, or that sensitivity is low, or that you can explain glacial-interglacial cycles without C02?
Of course you won’t…you let never have (except in Energy and Environment!).
The article above sounds like the pleading of a condemned man. Not a single bit of science, says so much for their science. they actually don’t mention any science. I think that article sums up the warmists and shows that warmists have lost this fight. Like many here I have noticed how they are looking for other causes to replace man made global warming. Keep hearing noise about consumption, air pollution etc. They will never stop.
I have also learned a lot about politics. I now know socialists just hate us, they just hate the west. I now know socialists just lie. Everything they say must be treated as a lie until proven true. They have no answers or solutions to problems we face. Socialism is just another belief system like Moonies, Scientology, [SNIP: Let’s not do anything to get this thread derailed, OK? -REP]. In this belief system capitalism is Satan. Anyone who disagrees is of course working for Satan.
Big up for AW, I learnt a lot about science and, again I learnt more about the stupid, fascist left.
It would help if Gavin wasn’t stuck on old talking points.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/the-tragedy-of-climate-commons/
In this post, he totally ignores that China has become the leading emitter. Tries to cover up his mistake as he was talking about population, but even that doesn’t make sense.
Real Climate disappoints. – gavin.
I’m delighted.
Lovely pic, Anthony.
Nice touch too, that it was the cold iceberg that hit the proverbial “unsinkable” pride.
RC = More big government BS…
It’s the simple things that confound those that think they are wise.
Scottish Sceptic says:
May 3, 2012 at 12:30 pm
At the end of the day … I consider these fraudsters such bad scientists … that I wonder whether we skeptics shouldn’t re-examine the case for catastrophic global warming because who knows what kind of mistakes these fifth rate guys have made and where the truth lies with these kind of charlatans.
Precisely the same thought has occurred to me. And how would we know the real truth? As an engineer, I am particularly interested in actual measurements and measurements in relation to historical backgrounds. Also of interest are real human responses to real weather events and even longer term phenomena like land subsistence as seen in the southern United States gulf coast.
I think buried somewhere on the blogosphere Anthony has posed the question of Arctic ice trends on solid earth as opposed to sea-borne ice trends as a better indicator of warming since sea ice extent is dependent on many factors, not just warming, like ocean currents, ocean current temperatures, wind, precipitation patterns and possibly other factors as well.
Mankind’s fractional addition of CO2 to the atmosphere might just be entirely trivial – or not. Atmospheric science is important. Too bad the topic was hijacked by political hacks and second-stringers. Sad really.
Hi Anthony,
for any linear trend fit, even given the warming in the very late 90s, is visibly going to be what, 0.01, across over 100 years.
I’m not sure why they painted it, but if you zoom out on the location and note the following (from the RDU History site, section on “the 80s”):
Terminal A opens to great fanfare in 1981.
Trans World Airlines begins service in 1984 as the sixth carrier to serve RDU passengers.
American Airlines begins service in 1985 as RDU’s seventh carrier.
RDU opened the 10,000 foot runway 5L-23R in 1986.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Air Traffic Control Tower opens in May 1987.
American Airlines opens its north-south hub operation at RDU in the new Terminal C in June 1987, greatly increasing the size of RDU’s operations with a new terminal including a new apron and runway. American brought RDU its first international flights to Bermuda, Cancun and Paris Orly.
I started school at Duke in 1973. At the time the airport was a single terminal and serviced maybe two or three airlines with infrequent flights. Cary was still a sleepy little town outside of Raleigh, and so was Morrisville. Most of highway US-70 was still forested between Durham and Raleigh. There was just one runway, and it was a small one, so the planes that came and went from RDU were similarly small.
In the 1980s, as you can see, they opened two new terminals! Terminal A was four or five times the size of the original terminal (which became Terminal B and is still there and still functioning, although for some reason they’ve closed Terminal A and are ready to tear it down). If you back off on the overhead map you post you can easily see the relative sizes — Terminal B is at the east corner of Terminal Blvd, with A running southwest of it and C the BIG terminal — bigger than A and B combined — due west of the two on the other side of the Terminal Blvd U. The old runways are still there on the Southeast side. The “new” runway — built in the early 1980’s and completed in 1986 — is clearly visible west of Terminal C.
Note that it is huge. As they say, 10,000 feet long. It may have even been built that long partly so that RDU could land a B-52 — in the late 70s a friend of mine was a B-52 pilot located in Goldsboro and he said that RDU wasn’t likely to be a nuclear target because its runway was too small to land a B-52, and somebody in SAC may have decided to nudge it somehow for strategic reasons. Then look at where they located the weather station — right there at the end of the big runway, with the entire airport complex to the south and a big expanse of hot asphalt runway a hundred meters or so away.
And there are so many better places! Probably the best place is the southeast corner of the complex, over next to the William B Umstead State Park, in that patch of ground past the National Guard. But even where they built it, they could have gone across the street and put it in the open patch in the woods a quarter mile or more away from the actual runway and it would have been better.
Now, look back at the GISTEMP record for the site. That peak in the early 90s was sure impressive (although check out 1890! WUWT too!) but it strangely enough happened just after they built a huge new runway and started landing a lot more, and bigger, planes at RDU. Did I mention that from 1987 to 1996, RDU was the US North-South hub for American Airlines, so basically every flight up or down the east coast ran through RDU? Or that they began international service with flights to e.g. London, Paris, Bermuda in that time frame? It was probably the single busiest stretch of air traffic in the entire record — flight numbers have gone down since (the cold war ended abruptly, no more need for big runways for B-52s and:-) they shut down the hub.
Even with a half a degree jump from the “are we starting the next ice age” hysteria of the early 60s — an event that they failed to “erase” from the RDU record, at least — what fraction of the jump was due to the steady blanket of CO_2 and water being dumped every five minutes all day long as jumbo jets were burning huge volumes of gasoline taking off literally over the top of the weather station? What fraction of it is due to the warming of air as it passes over the hot summer asphalt of at least one square mile of almost unbroken buildings and asphalt that lies due south of it, beginning a mere 100 or so meters away? What fraction of it is from the further CO_2 enhancement from the eight lanes of jammed rush hour traffic that uses the roads that bracket the airport on three out of four sides now? Only one of those roads was even there in the 60’s, and what is now I-40 was a lightly travelled four lane highway in the 70s (I once drove a friend from Duke to the airport in 10 minutes flat to catch a flight — try that now!)
And with all of that, we see less than 1.5 C warming from the coldest part of the record (your choice 1890s or 1960s). And
If you look at personal weather centers located just a tiny bit further away from concrete in that general vicinity, they generally record temperatures around 1C cooler than RDU. It was almost cow pasture and forest back in the 1960s, after all. And there goes all of the land-use based warming, along with it.
rgb
Way to go! Looks like the truth is finally gaining traction.
I spent quite a few years on the talk.origins newsgroup and web site, where the creation vs. evolution battle went on, keeping it from wasting time and space in the .science newsgroups. Without fail, the creationists were allowed, nay, encouraged, to offer their arguments, again and again, to be patiently shot down by the newsgroup regulars
If one had to make an equivalence between creation/evolution and CAGW/sceptic, one would be correct to place the CAGW side with the creationists. When you really have the science on your side, “shut up and go away” is not a necessary argument.
[MODERATOR’S NOTE: The posting of this comment does NOT mean that we can start discussing the merits of creationism vs. evolution. Any attempts in that direction will be snipped. -REP]
Go easy on Rasmus if only for the sake of the fact that he shares a splendid name with my eldest son. Rasmus is the god of the Baltic sea. When you’ve sold the catch, scrubbed the desks and battened down the hatches, pour two schnapps. One goes in the sea to thank Rasmus for bringing you home safely, the other down the throat to take the morning chill off…
“…one may wonder what the point would be in having a debate about climate change, and why certain organisations would put so much efforts into denial…”
This is debate? Somebody failed Debate class, or forgot to sign up. I cry “FALLACY!”
RC did themselves in with their dishonesty. They were never interested in scientific debate only propaganda that furthered their cause. An early commenter, Richard M says: “RC was in a basic catch-22 situation. If they did not censor skeptics they would have been eviserated. However, by censoring they gave the impression they were afraid to debate the issues.”
They put themselves in that situation by trying to to spout propaganda as science. They knew it would not stand up to real review because it is not science, it is propaganda and nothing more. Real science invites discussion and critique and is better for it.
Reality still has not won though because our dumbass government and lapdog LSM are still carrying the AGW banner and we are paying through the nose for it. http://www.climatedepot.com/a/15741/Pentagon-Goes-Full-Stupid-Defense-Sec-Leon-Panetta-Climate-change-has-a-dramatic-impact-on-national-security
Monty says:
May 3, 2012 at 12:47 pm
“…why don’t you publish original science that shows that (for example) C02 isn’t a GHG or that the GE doesn’t exist, or that sensitivity is low, or that you can explain glacial-interglacial cycles without C02?”
More proof that Monty is no scientist. He doesn’t understand the scientific method: skeptics have nothing to prove. The onus is entirely and exclusively on those who put forth the CAGW/AGW conjectures.
So, to help educate Monty:
First, Monty should read The Hockey Stick Illusion by A.W. Montford, available on the right sidebar. Monty will see how thoroughly corrupt the climate Pal Review system is. It is rotten to the core. The alarmist clique has gamed the system and intimidated the spineless journals. Montford thoroughly documents the corruption in detail. But somehow I think Monty will prefer his blissful ignorance to turning over that particular rock.
Next, the mis-named ‘GHG’ CO2 acts to slightly delay heat loss. But it is only a delay, akin to insulation. Real world evidence shows that the effect is so small it is unmeasurable; probably ≈1ºC per 2xCO2, ±0.5ºC. And feedbacks? Empirical evidence is completely lacking. Feedbacks are supposed to amplify the effect of CO2 by up to 4X. But from all the evidence, feedbacks are on balance negative. Positive feedbacks exist only in computer models, not in the real world. That is why sensitivity is low. If it were higher, temperatures would track rising CO2. They don’t. The more observations that are taken, the more apparent it is that there is very little connection between CO2 and temperature. The effect is minuscule and not worthy of all the wild eyed arm-waving from folks like Monty.
Finally, there are other explanations for glacial cycles that do not require the extraneous CO2 molecule. Saying that stadials and inter-stadials cannot be explained without CO2 is the usual Argumentum ad Ignorantium: [“Since I can’t think of any other explanation, then it must be due to CO2.” The argument from ignorance fallacy.] Furthermore, ΔCO2 follows ΔT on all time scales, from months to hundreds of millennia. CO2 is the effect, not the cause, of rising temperature.
The more Monty comments, the more obvious it is that he is winging it. He really doesn’t understand the subject at all, he is just repeating the same old talking points that have been repeatedly deconstructed here.
*BLINK* *BLINK* What!!??
The Titanic actually existed, struck a ‘berg and SANK … what is this ‘legend’ business?
Have they (RC), many of whom have worked to erase the MWP, set their sights on erasing the factual event known as the Titanic’s sinking as well?
What’s next, the Andrea Doria? LBJ did-in JFK using hired marksmen on the grassy knoll? We never walked on the moon? Wheaties are not the breakfast of champions? The Axis powers won WWII?
(Perilously close to: “Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”)
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The ship needs photoshopped so it says FAIL
I blog [ debate ] about AGW CAGW on a religious site.
Faced with an hmmmm… not so nice a debater – who got all their arguments from RC – even at times inviting RC posters to come to the site to gang up on me.
They kept demanding, “I go to RC and get Real Scientists to set me right.” 🙂
I told them, “for some reason my posts at RC didn’t ever get posted,” sooooo 🙂 they started copying and pasting my debate arguments to RC – AND RC’s responses to me at the religious site.
It was one of my most brilliant moves. Worthy of my GOLD STAR AWARD from WUWT.
You see, their [ RC ] and my arguments showed up on a board which the RC staff couldn’t censor or change…..Which also showed up in search engines. Where they exist to this day. When my not so nice debater and staff of RC found out what was happening….. …..silence.
Flights of beauteous passenger pigeons once darkened the midwestern skies. In quite short order, the very last breeding pair was identified and its nesting place destroyed (a matter of Minnesota historical record).
While we regret the 19th Century’s cavalier extinction of this wondrous creature, we greatly look forward to hearing that the very last iatrogenic Warmist scamster has gone plucked to his great AGW Stewpot in the sky..
The places which actually provide information are having a quite healthy debate. Those which aren’t providing information or suppress debate are having trouble. RC, for a place which claims to have scholars, is an extraordinarily slow learner.
I’ll bet that 97% of the passengers on Titanic thought it was unsinkable. There are never enough lifeboats when you need ’em.
Tom Deutsch says:
May 3, 2012 at 12:36 pm
@ Ken Coffman – “Gavin is a public employee and it is apparently a large part of his day job to monitor and post at RC”
I find it odd that there is a lot of focus on ad hominem on a site that purports to be about science
KC’s comment that you quote hardly constitutes an ad hominem and I would point out that, from my scan of comments, no one was addressing the topic of RC’s funding until you raised it with your dubious comment about their not receiving government money.
Monty says: May 3, 2012 at 12:47 pm
Hi Scottish Sceptic
That’s a FANTASTIC idea! Yes, why don’t you publish original science
Some people just can’t get it. I said let’s investigate the science and you just about suggest I manufacture it. Can’t you see that difference? A dispassionate review of the evidence (most of it probably already available) versus publishing utter junk to make a stupid point.
As I said, these guys at realclimate were so bad we can’t even rely on them to make their own case properly. We have to be open to all possibilities including that being wrong … meant they failed to understand evidence that supports the warming scenario.
mods
Please delete my comment above, i was mistaken.
[REPLY: OK. Done. -REP]
Kim2ooo – Fanatics do not usually use their brains. They do not have to n order to be part of the group. So your “trick” beats Mike’s nature trick all to hell!
Wasn’t there a UN IPCC report very recently that showed no link between extreme weather events and climate change meaning that Katrina, the Moscow heatwave and widespread floods were not caused by us driving 4×4 SUVs.
Are those cAGW religion believers at real climate now claiming that the IPCC are a bunch of deniers too?
Jim Owen says:
May 3, 2012 at 9:38 am
As always, the left/alarmist denizens are entirely clueless about history.
============================================================================
More like literature: Aesop’s fables feature “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” It’s a tried and tested
fable, and has claimed yet another crier.
When the predicted/prophesied fails to eventuate, the people don’t fuss, they just ignore.
Anthony’s recipe for this site is based on the tried and true: it’s honest, direct, civil to all and consistent. Consquently the people here keep coming back. They tell others, who come, test the waters and start coming back. Most peole possess good filters for both BS and BS and eventually recognise when they’re being gamed.
As with the Titanic, mother nature prove’s man is not the most powerful force on the planet,
you’d think they’d figured this out by now!!!
rgbatduke says:
May 3, 2012 at 11:21 am
I really enjoyed your post. However, I should point out that there are old thermometers that record the daily minimum and maximum as well as paper wheel recording thermometers that make weekly recordings. The problem is knowing what type of measuring device was used, where it was housed, and when it was read. Until that information is made available, any reported “change in temperature” is simply a wild guess.
They were doomed from the beginning when they named their site – “Real Climate”!!
Therein lies the biggest fallacy of all. But then “Real Average Weather During an Arbitrary Period of Time, over a Geographical Area” doesn’t roll of the tongue quite the same way, does it….
Smokey says the following: “He doesn’t understand the scientific method: skeptics have nothing to prove. The onus is entirely and exclusively on those who put forth the CAGW/AGW conjectures”. I disagree…there is well established science that shows you are wrong.
S/he says: “Monty should read The Hockey Stick Illusion by A.W. Montford, available on the right sidebar”. So you think science written by accountants (or whatever Mr Montford is) without a PhD is the way to go?
Smokey says: “Real world evidence shows that the effect is so small it is unmeasurable; probably ≈1ºC per 2xCO2, ±0.5ºC”. Yes, this is well known…and it’s well known that feedbacks (albedo, water vapour etc) act to amplify this. Which is how we have glacial/interglacials.
Smokey says: “But from all the evidence, feedbacks are on balance negative. Positive feedbacks exist only in computer models, not in the real world”. No they aren’t and no they don’t. You think albedo feedback only exists in computer models?
Smokey says: “there are other explanations for glacial cycles that do not require the extraneous CO2 molecule”. Such as?
Smokey: “Furthermore, ΔCO2 follows ΔT on all time scales, from months to hundreds of millennia. CO2 is the effect, not the cause, of rising temperature”.
No it doesn’t…warming now is following CO2 rise. The role of CO2 in glacial/interglacials is probably as an amplifier of Milankovitch forcing (although recent paper by Shakun suggests this is complicated by bipolar seesaws). I suggest you do some reading.
In the end, EVERY major scientific body and EVERY National Academy of Sciences of ALL the industrial nations agrees with me. And NONE agrees with you. Makes you think doesn’t it!
For the good of humankind, why can’t we just make RealClimate the homepage of all browsers. [/sarcasm]
The similarity between these organisations and the Titanic legend is that there was a widespread misconception that it could not sink (and hence it’s fame) and now organisations like the Heartland make dismissive claims about any connection between big events and climate change. However, new and emerging science is suggesting that there may indeed be some connections between global warming and heat waves and between trends in mean precipitation and more extreme rainfall.
Interestingly, it is an urban myth that it was said that the titanic was unsinkable. It was only after the event that this was said and this urban myth was born.
philjourdan says:
May 3, 2012 at 1:50 pm
Kim2ooo – Fanatics do not usually use their brains. They do not have to n order to be part of the group. So your “trick” beats Mike’s nature trick all to hell!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thank you! 🙂
If ‘they’ were good, ‘they’ would have conducted ‘baseline radiative temperature profile measurements’ (field observation ‘experiments’) decades ago in a pristine (non-urban, primarily vegetative) area like “The UP” or somewhere else and noted the rate-of-drop in temperature as the sun went down; as a kid, I don’t remember anywhere becoming as cold as quickly with the loss of ‘daylight heating’ as I saw it when in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (we had been cautioned about this ‘phenom’ too, so were prepared, still …)
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Looks like whenever Real Climate gets a spike it comes from WUWT readers following a link, such as the post about the odd timing of RC’s post on 28th April 2011 about Dr Roy Spencer’s book, The Great Global Warming Blunder.
Incidentally in the UK there is a move to build up countrywide independent automatic weather stations. They are independently-run stations owned by individuals, schools, colleges, businesses etc. which upload weather reports automatically to a website several times a day.
http://www.weatherstations.co.uk/aws_map.htm
The fool Monty: In the end, EVERY major scientific body and EVERY National Academy of Sciences of ALL the industrial nations agrees with me. And NONE agrees with you. Makes you think doesn’t it!
The sceptic view is that:
* Carbon Dioxide has been increasing
* There is a greenhouse effect
* There has been a doubling of equivalent CO2 over the past 150 years
* There has very probably been about 0.8 C warming in the past 150 years
* Increasing CO2 alone should cause some warming
(about 1C for each doubling)
And you tell me that you, and every National Academy of Science deny this?
Ummm, Damian, why so few lifeboats on the Titanic (not enough for the number of souls aboard) if they didn’t believe it was unsinkable?
Hmmm?
(Actions of the designers/engineers/ship builder/the steam ship operating company all seem to concur *they* thought there was little risk of sinking, hence, they thought she was unsinkable went the further distance of saving money by not equipping the ship with a full complement of life boats?)
You are aware, are you not, of the internal design of the Titanic, with ‘sealable’ (or partition-able compartments) in the case of hull breech or rupture (usually a prelude to ‘sinking’ on a normal ship, so thought the designers and engineers of the Titanic) so as to ‘contain’ a rupture to a manageable size or compartment in the ship?
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I just posted this on RealClimate – 5 bucks says it will never see the light of day.
“Has it ever occurred to any of you guys about the real reason why you are losing the argument on CAGW?
Well, to start with the original temperature data is almost always ‘adjusted’ beyond all recognition.
Historic temperatures are routinely lowered with every update, and all modern temperatures are increased. No acceptable explanation is ever given for this.
Climate models are regularly produced which have a pre-devised conclusion, namely “it is worse than we thought amd it is getting worse”.
The ‘scientists’ behind CAGW all suffer from the twin problems of being grant addicted and having huge over-sensitive egos.
Ask yourselves the question “Why can’t I ever find a geologist (private sector only, government ones have to toe the party line) who believes in CAGW? After all, geologists are the most knowledgable group about the past’s climate.
Why won’t you ever debate your ‘climate science’ in public with sceptics? The answer is simple: your leaders know your arguments will be shredded and your theories left in tatters.
That is enough for now, as this will never pass the moderators’ censorship pen. Try posting on a sceptic site and your comment, unless obscene, will always be published. RealClimate is famous for its censorship in keeping the faithful well away from impure thoughts like the facts.”
Damian says:
May 3, 2012 at 2:38 pm
“However, new and emerging science is suggesting that there may indeed be some connections between global warming and heat waves and between trends in mean precipitation and more extreme rainfall.”
Do you have any links for that? From what I’ve seen even the alphabetic nomenkultura that comprise the backbone of CAGW have issued after action reports that indicate no CO2 connection to any of the ballyhooed sequence of supposedly “extreme” climate events of recent times.
monty said:
“In the end, EVERY major scientific body and EVERY National Academy of Sciences of ALL the industrial nations agrees with me. And NONE agrees with you. Makes you think doesn’t it!”
heh. it makes me think you should resign as spokesman for EVERY and stick to what you know. meanwhile, please adjust the deck chairs.
Monty says:
May 3, 2012 at 2:26 pm
No it doesn’t…warming now is following CO2 rise. The role of CO2 in glacial/interglacials is probably as an amplifier of Milankovitch forcing (although recent paper by Shakun suggests this is complicated by bipolar seesaws). I suggest you do some reading.
In the end, EVERY major scientific body and EVERY National Academy of Sciences of ALL the industrial nations agrees with me. And NONE agrees with you. Makes you think doesn’t it!
In the beginning of EVERY scientific discussion, EVERY major scientific body and EVERY National Academy of Sciences of ALL the industrial nations has been WRONG about the “science”, the engineering, and the theory of EVERY SCIENTIFIC ADVANCE EVER MADE!
You go on to say “And NONE agrees with you. Makes you think doesn’t it!”
Yes, it does make one think that you (the CAGW theist community of tax-paid “scientists” using tax-paid computer programs created by tax-paid agencies accountable ONLY to tax-paid government agents who require CAGW-favorable answers to get 1.3 trillion dollars (US alone!) in additional control over worldwide energy and policies) are going to be proven wrong.
Again.
Monty ,
The Shakun paper has been discussed at length here . I suggest you do some reading :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/s=shakun
Here’s the link – hopefully I got it right this time :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/s=shakun
..and here was me thinking it’s because “deniers” are well organised and well funded? Funding aside, when alarmists say things like that, you have to question their organisational skills.
Perhaps, just like the Titanic, the captain and ship builder will go down with her.
One can hope…
In seriousness, I don’t know why they are surprised. All they do 24/7 is try to convince everyone how bad mankind is while doing irrepairable harm to the planet. That is a message very very few people want to hear for very long…
“Captain, cloud dead ahead!”
“Hard to port!”
@ MattN – “That is a message very very few people want to hear for very long…”
How we emotionally process the science isn’t a good indication as to the importance or merit of the science itself Matt.
Thanks for giving us a link out to RC.
Always enjoyable to see their traffic jump….with referrals from WUWT!
Gavin “It burns….it burns!”
The belief the Titanic couldn’t sink was a theory just as AGW is a theory. Both theories have not compared well against their corresponding NULL hypothesis which is all boats can sink and climate has always changed.
In the early days of questioning the supposed consensus, I was loftily told to go to RC where THE climate scientists do science. I went, observed, checked the science, and watched while other climate scientists tried to challenge their rock solid pronouncements with polite questions on relevant aspects. I was astounded at the way those questions were treated by Gavin and his sock puppet Dhogoza, the gloating, the one sided put downs, turned me off that site.
They shot themselves in the foot, and became the most quoted reason scientists gave for taking the time to have a closer look at the underlying science and not liking what they saw. Then to cap it off, the revelation of the unethical behaviour of the Climate team, as revealed in the CRU emails. No amount of spin will wipe away that stain.
All I can say to Gavin is that the team that was RC is, “THE climate scientists”, who messed their own nest, by their own arrogant behaviour.
Worse, those central to the damage wrought by the activities of the team, have never, ever apologised for bringing such disrepute to climate science.
Monty says:
May 3, 2012 at 2:26 pm
In the end, EVERY major scientific body and EVERY National Academy of Sciences of ALL the industrial nations agrees with me. And NONE agrees with you. Makes you think doesn’t it!
========================================
…is this printed on flash cards?
Maybe Fenton communications’ playbook doesn’t work so well in the age of the New Media anymore.
It wasn’t an ad hom, but a refutation of your claim that “Real Climate is not funded with taxpayer money.” (It isn’t directly funded, but it’s funded underhandedly.)
RC isn’t that far behind in Thailand. Better watch your back over there!
Tom:
Science “is” or “is not”. Emotion is not really part of it. And *that* is exactly what is eventually going to undermine “the cause”.
Monty says:
May 3, 2012 at 12:47 pm
That’s a FANTASTIC idea! Yes, why don’t you publish original science that shows that (for example) C02 isn’t a GHG or that the GE doesn’t exist, or that sensitivity is low, or…
=========================================================
Everything we need has been already published. Let us see.
1.How CO2 is called does not matter. However, the term “greenhouse gas” implies a strong warming effect, but in reality the effect is neither strong (http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html) nor has the NET warming effect ever been physically proven, the latter is important, because the “greenhouse gases” block some IR radiation coming from the Sun, too.
2.The calculation of the “climate sensitivity” of the “greenhouse gases” is, according to my information, a pure hoax, based on the unproven claim, that the “greenhouse gases” cause 33 degrees warming, from which the CO2 causes like 7 degrees, as they claim. From these 7 degrees the “scientists” derive the “CO2 radiative forcing”, that they use again to calculate the warming the CO2 causes. To me, it is a clear case of a logical fallacy called “circular reasoning”.
The problem with calling the other side deniers and stating the over science, is the subject of discussion is planetary climate. How does one cover up a cooling planet?
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif
Planetary clouds resist forcing changes. The planetary feedback response to a forcing in change is negative (resist forcing change) as opposed to positive (amplify the forcing change).
A reduction in the solar magnetic cycle results in an increase in GCR which after an unexplained 10 to 12 year delay (the delay is fundamental to explaining how the sun can cause the very large, very abrupt Heinrich type climate change events and is interestingly the reason why dinosaurs could be so large, why solar cycle changes can cause an increase in volcanic eruptions and can cause changes to the geomagnetic field.) will cause the planet to cool.
It is difficult to imagine the back peddling excuses by the extreme AGW supports if the planet cools. I would expect that RealClimate will close, rather than try to explain obvious observational data which unequivocally disproved the extreme AGW hypothesis.
The question is not if the planet will cool but rather how much it will cool at this point in time.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/02/09/understanding-the-global-warming-debate/
“The problem for global warming supporters is they actually need for past warming from CO2 to be higher than 0.7C. If the IPCC is correct that based on their high-feedback models we should expect to see 3C of warming per doubling of CO2, looking backwards this means we should already have seen about 1.5C of CO2-driven warming based on past CO2 increases. But no matter how uncertain our measurements, it’s clear we have seen nothing like this kind of temperature rise. Past warming has in fact been more consistent with low or even negative feedback assumptions.”
Richard Lindzen,
“It has long been observed that global warming offers opportunities for a huge number of interests to exploit and that the eagerness to exploit the issue has led to a remarkable corruption of institutions – public, private, and academic. In a set of cogent and well-written contributions, Climate Coup documents what is happening intelligently and in depth. There is no need for indignation in the contributions: the situation speaks for itself. One can only hope that the ordinary citizens of both the developed and developing worlds, who are the primary victims of all the Canute-like efforts to control climate, will take notice.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf
On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications
We estimate climate sensitivity from observations, using the deseasonalized fluctuations in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the concurrent fluctuations in the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) outgoing radiation from the ERBE (1985-1999) and CERES (2000-2008) satellite instruments. Distinct periods of warming and cooling in the SSTs were used to evaluate feedbacks. An earlier study (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) was subject to significant criticisms. The present paper is an expansion of the earlier paper where the various criticisms are taken into account. The present analysis accounts for the 72 day precession period for the ERBE satellite in a more appropriate manner than in the earlier paper. We develop a method to distinguish noise in the outgoing radiation as well as radiation changes that are forcing SST changes from those radiation changes that constitute feedbacks to changes in SST. We demonstrate that our new method does moderately well in distinguishing positive from negative feedbacks and in quantifying negative feedbacks. In contrast, we show that simple regression methods used by several existing papers generally exaggerate positive feedbacks and even show positive feedbacks when actual feedbacks are negative. We argue that feedbacks are largely concentrated in the tropics, and the tropical feedbacks can be adjusted to account for their impact on the globe as a whole. Indeed, we show that including all CERES data (not just from the tropics) leads to results similar to what are obtained for the tropics alone – though with more noise. We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. The results imply that the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity. ….
….However, warming from a doubling of CO2 would only be about 1oC (based on simple calculations where the radiation altitude and the Planck temperature depend on wavelength in accordance with the attenuation coefficients of wellmixed CO2 molecules; a doubling of any concentration in ppmv produces the same warming because of the logarithmic dependence of CO2’s absorption on the amount of CO2) (IPCC, 2007). This modest warming is much less than current climate models suggest for a doubling of CO2. Models predict warming of from 1.5oC to 5oC and even more for a doubling of CO2. Model predictions depend on the ‘feedback’ within models from the more important greenhouse substances, water vapor and clouds. Within all current climate models, water vapor increases with increasing temperature so as to further inhibit infrared cooling. Clouds also change so that their visible reflectivity decreases, causing increased solar absorption and warming of the earth….
After years of yelling Fire! Fire! Fire! it is not unexpected that some politicians and green scam artist will take advantage of the situation. The food to biofuel scam has estimated to result in the addition of 100 million malnutrition people. That is a great accomplishment for Greenpeace, Worldwide life foundation, and the Realclimate cohorts. Billions of dollars have been wasted on green scams which will make no appreciable difference on CO2 emissions.
Of course those how live on anti industry and anti development propaganda, do not care if Western governments face bankruptcy. I am curious how far the “green” backlash will reach.
http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/bioenergy/NewsReleases/Biodiesel%20Energy%20Balance_v2a.pdf
Vast amounts of agricultural land are being diverted from crops for human consumption to biofuel The immediate consequence of this is a dramatic increase in the cost of basic food such as a 140% increase in the price of corn. Due to limited amounts of agricultural land vast regions of virgin forest are being cut down for biofuel production. The problems associate with this practice will become acute as all major Western governments have mandate a percentage of biofuel.
Analysis of the total energy input to produce ethanol from corn show that 29% more fossil fuel input energy is require to produce one energy unit of ethanol. If the fuel input to harvest the corn, to produce the fertilizer, and to boil the water off to distill ethanol/water from 8% ethanol to 99.5% ethanol (three distillation processes) to produce 99.5% ethanol for use in an automobile, produces more green house gas than is produced than the production consumption of conventional gasoline. The cost of corn based ethanol is more than five times the production cost of gasoline, excluding taxes and subsides. Rather than subsiding the production of corn based ethanol the same money can be used to preserve and increase rainforest. The loss of rainforest is the largest cause of the increase in CO2.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html
The Clean Energy Scam
The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol–ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter–in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil’s filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group.
But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it’s dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.
Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.’s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn’t exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-04-14/biofuel-production-a-crime-against-humanity/2403402
Biofuels ‘crime against humanity’
Massive production of biofuels is “a crime against humanity” because of its impact on global food prices, a UN official has told German radio. “Producing biofuels today is a crime against humanity,” UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told Bayerischer Runfunk radio. Many observers have warned that using arable land to produce crops for biofuels has reduced surfaces available to grow food. Mr Ziegler called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to change its policies on agricultural subsidies and to stop supporting only programs aimed at debt reduction. He says agriculture should also be subsidised in regions where it ensures the survival of local populations. Meanwhile, in response to a call by the IMF and World Bank over the weekend to a food crisis that is stoking violence and political instability, German Foreign Minister Peer Steinbrueck gave his tacit backing.
Monty says:
May 3, 2012 at 2:26 pm
Smokey says the following: “He doesn’t understand the scientific method: skeptics have nothing to prove. The onus is entirely and exclusively on those who put forth the CAGW/AGW conjectures”. I disagree…there is well established science that shows you are wrong.
It doesn’t work the way Monty hopes. He cannot simply make a baseless statement like that with no examples, and then credibly decree that someone else is wrong based on his mistaken beliefs. That is simply more proof that Monty is no scientist. He still does not understand the scientific method: Skeptics have nothing to prove. The onus is entirely on those who put forth their CO2=CAGW conjecture. It is a misunderstanding of the scientific method common to the alarmist crowd: the onus is upon him who asserts, not upon him who questions.
Monty asserts that CO2 causes glaical cycles. Nonsense. As I have shown with the graphs linked above, rises in CO2 follow rises in temperature on all time scales. There is an 800 ±200 year delay, which means that much of the recent rise in CO2 is the result of the Medieval Warm Period [MWP]. This empirical evidence is derived from ice cores taken from both hemispheres.
Monty is clearly in over his head here. At one point he asserts that CO2 must be the cause of stadial cycles, wondering what other explanation there could be [asking: “Such as?”]. Later he refers to Milankovitch, answering his own question. Monty is confused.
Regarding A.W. Montford, Monty appeals to authority by demanding that Montford must possess a PhD in order to speak on the subject, saying: “So you think science written by accountants (or whatever Mr Montford is) without a PhD is the way to go?” Wrong question. Montford was not doing science, he was doing investigative journalism, writing a well researched, heavily footnoted book showing the corruption of climate pal review. And because Monty is no scientist, he will not post his own CV. [Now is a good opportunity to show that I’m arriving at a wrong conclusion: post any CV you might have, “Monty”.]
Next, I commented that ΔCO2 follows ΔT on all time scales, from months to hundreds of millennia. I provided verifiable links showing that to be the case. CO2 is the effect, not the cause, of rising temperature [just like a warming Coke outgases CO2, a warming ocean outgases CO2]. Monty’s lame response: “No it doesn’t…warming now is following CO2 rise.”
Wrong, as I have repeatedly shown. That is simply Monty’s mistaken belief, as P Walker’s link above makes clear.
Monty needs to get up to speed on the subject. I suggest reading the WUWT archives, keyword: CO2. Based on his misguided opinions, Monty certainly needs the education.
They are losing because they made the gross mistake of hyping the truth. They are being laughed out of court.
kim2ooo says:
May 3, 2012 at 1:35 pm
—————————–
LOL!
Kim, I must confess it took me a couple of reads to get exactly what you did and when I finally clued, well, I’m still laughing. That’s brilliant. Elegant, too. Folks, check this young lady’s post, it’s worth it; I bet no ne else thought to pull that one on an Alarmist site.
I should mention, Kim, that one of my colleagues has a 12 year-old son who complained to him that his textbooks are peppered with repetitious references to global warming and that his teachers are annoyingly dictatorial over the topic. Apparently he’s becoming pretty knowledgable about the issues. When I see him this weekend, I’ll ask him if he’s interested in citing some examples and sending them over to your site for you to do as you see fit. My daughter, who just turned eleven is beginning to venture out of the pony and princess world, straight into serious matters of all sorts. Last week I told her about you and how you casually blew away my beautiful Gleick document analysis and got a gold star from Anthony, and she asked me to set up a link on her profile to your new site. Bang, just like that; you kids can move back and forth between pink fairy castles and the rough climate debates as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. One day, when you have kids, you’ll understand how stuff like this can make us parents both deeply sad and intensely proud at the same time.
Greg House might be interested in conducting some ‘field work’ observing how a ‘humid’ (high RH/much H2O GHG in the atmosphere albeit in the boundary layer) evening cools compared to a ‘dry’ (lower RH) evening (given all other factors being equal) … seems so few skeptics (and warmists as well) have taken the time (or maybe they don’t live where these ‘extremes’ can occur/be observed in the same place albeit at different times) to perform and observe this ‘field work’; note also while performing this experiment the conditions under which dew does, or does not, form …
Alternatively, meteorology (as a science) can shed light on this, for those inclined to ‘hit the textbooks’ either first or instead of (or in lieu of) their own field work, after all, someone else has already made some of these observations. Page numbers with pertinent material for books by authors Aguado/Burt or Ahrens supplied upon request.
.
“Rasmus goes on to say at RC:
What do I think? Public opinion is changed not by big events as such, but by the public interpretation of those events.”
Aahhh, tha’s vert sad Rasmus? Soo it turns-out that the public isn’t so easily fooled as you and your fellow CAGW cultists believed them to be, afterall. Drats!! Obviously come as a bit of a shock for you.
But you see Rasmus, most people in fact, have no difficulty in detecting your brand of cargo-cult BS at 1,000 paces, upwind. Most people over time have come to see your cult for the liars, theives, frauds, data fudgers, data creationists, the ‘green’ anti-humanist doom-mongers, and Post Normal Science peddlers that you so very clearly are.
And what’s more, the compliant MSM propagandists only serve to sign-post your ilk in the same way that a swarm of flies sign-posts a freshly-laid turd. The game really is up old chap. And guess what? You lost. It only gets worse from now on.
On RC.
Using whois.com search at http://www.who.is/whois/realclimate.org/ gives the following information:
[+emphasis, and paste abbreviated]
Google search on Environmental Media Services yields this interesting site article:
I note that the Union of Concerned Scientists uses the services of EMS as well.
One may read and draw one’s own conclusions about RC and EMS, but, to me, the “association” with EMS is a bit umm, unsavory.
RE
Monty says:
@ May 3, 2012 at 2:26 pm
“In the end, EVERY major scientific body and EVERY National Academy of Sciences of ALL the industrial nations agrees with me. And NONE agrees with you. Makes you think doesn’t it!”
—————-
Makes me think you’re a shameless brown-noser trying to ‘butter-up’ one of those Post Normal Scientists at the RS or NAS – in the hope of a fellowship one day…
Have you been at sleep in your ivory tower for the last decade? Don’t you know the credibility of these organisations now lies in tatters? Yes, ‘fraid so. It was discovered they no longer bother with the stuffy old scientific method, with integrity and honesty and boring old traditional values any more. No siree. They gave those up for a seat at the political table. Not so much respect but the pay is much better apparently. The little emperors now stalking the once-hallowed corridors of the Academies and Societies have been found to be utterly naked with grotesquely shrivelled scientific credibilities.
_Jim says:
May 3, 2012 at 8:10 pm
…‘field work’ … evening… ‘hit the textbooks’ … observations…
=======================================================
Very sound counterarguments, Jim, I am very impressed.
_Jim says: “…What’s next, the Andrea Doria? LBJ did-in JFK using hired marksmen on the grassy knoll? We never walked on the moon? Wheaties are not the breakfast of champions? The Axis powers won WWII?”
Uh, the jury is still out on that last item as the unelected EU, headquartered in Belgium, daily increases its stranglehold on the UK and its legal system. Neville Chamberlin would be proud of the current UK government.
I’ve always found it curious, and telling, that there is no link to WUWT on RealClimate. It’s not that RC has an obligation to do so, it’s just that WUWT is one of the most popular and influential climate sites in the world. The folks at RC don’t want to recgonize that there are other views, let alone engage them in discussion. Their attitude is very condescending to say the least.
Same goes for RC dis-allowing any adverse comments or searching questions. They can’t stand anything contrary to the party line or against the “settled science”.
As for RC being partly/largely taxpayer funded, I am sure glad that my Australian taxes don’t help support it. Instead mine go into the left-leaning ABC. Gotta do something about that…..
I wouldn’t totally say that all of the effort at RealClimate has been in vain. I feel that it was wildly successful at showing how petty, narrowminded and pathologically groupthink oriented a certain politically motivated subset of the whole ‘climate science’ field really is. Climategate just reconfirmed and expanded that what was in plain view in the comments section.
From their snarky and atrocious treatment of folks who didn’t tow the line such to their ridiculous policy of using editing and ‘the voice of G(od)vin’ to even respected professors, it’s no wonder to me that it’s turned into a vacant echo chamber of self important blowhards.
I can’t trust the content on that site. When I need to read something from the other side of the debate, I generally go to scienceofdoom.com, Judy Curry’s Climate etc or Lucia’s Blackboard. The moderation policies at these sites seems a lot better and there’s a much more respectful engagement from both sides of the debate.
In my experience of engaging with the debate at the Guardian environment section, RealClimate is dead and buried. No-one mentions it. No-one refers to it.
It is forgotten.
However, the gold standard source for interpreting the climate seems to be the Skeptical Science website. At least to the true believers. They link to Skeptical Science every day.
It makes me wonder if the funding and green charity strategy has switched after the revelations of Climategate 2.
If so, that must really hurt.
No matter how clever you are at maths (I’m not).
2+2=4 no matter how you spin it.
James Bull
Following my comment to Monty: “they are so bad we can’t even trust them to have made their own case well” I.e. we can’t even rely on them to have shown the worst aspects of CO2, … so we have to be open to the possibility It could be worse than they say.
Monty replied: “do some original research”. Obviously, that’s crackers … the key to good science is an open mind, not going off on a wild goose chase.
But, I will thank him, for at least I did sit down to think of a few things which I’ve never understood why we haven’t heard more about and which I suspect is largely because of their obsession with CO2.
The first thoughts of that list are here. If anyone else would like to brainstorm a few ideas, please do add comments.
Monopole 10:29pm.
#1
“Same goes for RC dis-allowing any adverse comments or searching questions. They can’t stand anything contrary to the party line or against the “settled science”.”
That’s the pot calling tne kettle black!!
My last comment couldn’t get by the censors – because it critisized this website?
[REPLY: Your comment was stuck in the spam filter and there were no duty moderators at the time to retrieve it. Your comment was consigned to trash because it violated site policy, which you can see here. If you have something substantive to say, it will get posted. Insult, snark, and condescending arrogance will not. -REP]
contd #2
I wonder which bit the Gatekeeping Priesthood didn’t like…..
Try asking RC if most of their hits come after an article in WUWT.
Go easy on Rasmus if only for the sake of the fact that he shares a splendid name with my eldest son. Rasmus is the god of the Baltic sea. When you’ve sold the catch, scrubbed the desks and battened down the hatches, pour two schnapps. One goes in the sea to thank Rasmus for bringing you home safely, the other down the throat to take the morning chill off…
The Friends of Science Society (FoS), on its tenth birthday, is delighted to be recognised by RC as a thorn in the side of the warmists.
Kim 2000 = Hope for the future
There is one very fascinating page at Real Climate. The RC Bore Hole. Some of the very best questions show up there. Often well worth a read.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/the-bore-hole/comment-page-18/#comments
The rest of RC is propaganda nonsense. The cult of climate science enforced through censorship. No questioning of the orthodoxy is allowed in any cult. No questioning of the supreme leader, the godhead is allowed in any cult.
Here is an example of the sort of comments RC cannot tolerate.
851
tim lanigan says:
3 May 2012 at 12:25 PM
‘One could even ask whether the effort that we have put into RealClimate has been in vain.’
With only 9 comments I would have to agree with that proposistion.
Here is another comment that RC cannot tolerate:
858
vukcevic says:
4 May 2012 at 2:07 AM
#17 Daniel Bailey says:
vukcevic’s comment above is quite off-topic on this thread. At a minimum, please consign it to the open thread and delete this comment.
Yes, I agree, indeed it is off topic, but it may be of a fundamental importance to the climate science and geophysics.
– fact that (as it appears) fluctuations in the intensity of the geomagnetic field are synchronized with solar magnetic activity, to a degree of two orders of magnitude greater, is totally unexpected and eventually may lead to redefining of the sun-Earth link.
– from practical and more immediate concern to the climate science are the interpretations of the Antarctica’s 10Be data from the Dome Fuji ice cores, which are widely used for various assessment in numerous academic papers (see graph no. 3) in
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN-dBzAa.htm
Finally, there are strong indications that the GW may be experiencing either plateau or a possible decline in the near future, in which case the above discovery may provide some of the answers.
James Bull says:
May 4, 2012 at 12:24 am
2+2=4 no matter how you spin it.
2 + 2 = 10 (base 4)
It will be interesting to see how the paradigm changes when Greece followed by Spain defaults. The extreme AGW end of the world story created an imaginary crisis that justified lunatic deficit spending on ‘green’ scams that had no economic or practical energy benefit. This will be the most cost policy blunder in history. The cause of this madness is not, however, a scientific blunder. There is obvious widespread evidence of massive scientific cover-up, data manipulation, and blocking of analysis and data concerning this subject.
The scientific data and analysis unequivocally supports the assertion that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in less than 1C warming with most of the warming occurring at high latitudes where it will result in an expansion in the biosphere. Planetary cloud cover in the tropical regions increases or decreases thereby reflecting more or less sunlight off into space which resists any forcing change, negative feedback. The IPCC general circulation models (GCM) used positive feedback, which amplifies any forcing change. Analysis of changes of top of the atmosphere radiation (from satellites) Vs changes in changes in ocean surface temperature unequivocally shows the planet’s feedback response is negative. Even assuming all of the observed warming in the 20th century was caused by carbon dioxide increases, the observations are consistent with negative feedback rather than positive feedback. The science is settled. The extreme AGW prediction is an urban legend, a myth created to justify lunatic policies.
Carbon dioxide is essential for life on the planet. CO2 is not a poison. Plants eat CO2. Commercial greenhouses inject CO2 into the greenhouse to levels of 1000 ppm to 1200 ppm, to reduce growing times and to increase yield. Cereal crop yields increase by 30% to 40% in response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Western countries particularly the EU used the extreme AGW end of the world prediction, as an excuse for massive amounts of deficit spending on “green” scams such as the construction of solar farms and wind farm which result in minimal reduction in the CO2 emission if one includes the energy input to construct the facilities and the very expensive and inefficient back natural gas power plants that are required due to the intermittent nature of solar and wind. (A peak load single cycle natural gas plant has an efficiency of 30% as combined to 60% efficiency for a combined cycle natural gas power plant.)
http://www.advancegreenhouses.com/use_of_co2_in_a_greenhouse.htm
“Carbon dioxide is one of the essential ingredients in green plant growth and is a primary environmental factor in greenhouses. CO2 enrichment at 2, 3 or four times natural concentration will cause plants to grow faster and improve plant will quality. …Carbon dioxide is an odorless gas and a minor constituent in the air we breathe. It comprises only .03% [ 300 parts per million, or PPM] of the atmosphere, but is virtually important to all life on this planet! …Plants are made up of about 90% carbon and water with other elements like nitrogen calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus and trace elements making up only a small percentage. Almost all the carbon in plants comes from this minor 300 ppm of carbon dioxide in the air.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6036529.ece
“There is no doubt that the enrichment of the air with CO2 is increasing plant growth rates in many areas,” said Professor Martin Parry, head of plant science at Rothamsted Research, Britain’s leading crop institute.”
http://www.amazon.com/The-Real-Global-Warming-Disaster/dp/1441110526
The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with “Climate Change” Turning Out to Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History? By Christopher Booker
“A ‘story’ for our time”
“…the fear that mankind might be heating up the planet to the point of destruction had mushroomed into the greatest and potentially most expensive scare the world has ever known.
The first of these, preparing the ground for all that followed, was that profound shift in consciousness which took place in the 1960s giving rise to what came to be known as ‘environmentalism’. For all those caught up in it, this gave them a way of looking at man’s place in the world as …thoughtlessly wreaking untold havoc on the natural world around him and seemly bent on destroying all life on earth. …we are consciously aware, see the world in terms of stories, ‘narratives’ which help shape the way in which we try to understand the world around us…The next few years are going to be increasingly uncomfortable but very interesting. At the moment, it begins to look in many ways as though the lunatics have taken over the asylum. One of the greatest challenges confronting us in the years ahead may be to find ways of pulling them and ourselves back from that headlong rush towards chaos and self-destruction which is now hanging over our blindly comfortable Western world very much more than most of us realize.”
If you visit a blog and your comments (polite, reasonable, intelligent) always go awol, you tend not to visit anymore.
To me this goes to the heart of my problem with realclimate.org. I posted there a few times, the first couple were questions that were answered by a long series of snarks by someone who had harassed me on another blog venue (I have been on the internet since 1984 and you tend to accumulate people who don’t like you). This person was an ardent warmista and as I noted had a long record on RC. When I started putting forth an argument based on known history in response to this person, my comments were never published.
After this happened about four or five times, I said the heck with this and never came back. That was in 2007 so in five years I have not visited that site. I know from reading here and other places that this is a normal occurrence there, thus I would posit that it is a pretty good reason why their traffic is low.
I have noted in my own blog that people love to argue and I have tested this theory on multiple occasions by posting some good science, which gets maybe two or three responses, and then something controversial in the political realm and the responses go on for days….
Those cowards. I posted this at RC on the “Titanic” thread and it’s now Bore Hole # 860.
It’s ironic and strangely fitting that a supporter of CAGW hypotheses should argue on RealClimate in favor of a proposition that the sad fate of the Titanic was chiefly due to the inactions of the stupid people aboard another ship.
Susan Anderson wrote: …with the doubting and delaying efforts of [climate alamism skeptics] [climate change] is in the process of becoming a much bigger disaster.
Ah, you must be talking about the Hanson temperature projections? But they were wrong, too high. Ah, so you must be talking about the polar bear extinctions. No? I’ve got it, it’s the 50 million climate refugees from two years ago. No, that didn’t happen. It must be the shrinking alpine glaciers in the Himalayas. No, wait, is it the rising sea levels?
Clearly, the need for actual Real [tm] disasters is why there is such a big push from your side to suddenly link weather tragedies and deaths to climate change, That’s funny, too, because up until now, there at least seemed to have been a gentleman’s agreement that short term weather and long term climate should not be conflated, lest we begin to delude ourselves for emotionally satisfying, but inaccurate reasons.
Now, it would seem, your side NEEDS this specifc delusion so that the tragedy of tornado or flood deaths, which have been occurring to humans since they’ve existed, can keep alive your silly and unsupported assertions of impending global doom.
The Tree House !
Ajmal was young kid and , he wanted to make a tree house all of his other friends were making tree houses of their own. Ajmal asked tons of people to help him make the house but nobody agreed but his son and daughter Adam and Laila. In the end Ajmal had to make the tree house on his own with his kids.
He cut the wood and hammered all the pieces together until the tree house was finally made. Even though the house wasn’t as good as his friends Ajmal still played in it. Then one day a gush of wind came and blew all the tree houses to the ground.
The only tree house that was still in good condition and was still in a tree was Ajmal’s tree house. All the people admired his tree house. The lesson learned in this story is that when a person works hard to make something he expects people to like it and admire it.
This story is exactly like how God (Rab) made the earth. He made everything so lovely and beautiful, then he made the first man who we all know as Adam to live in the wonderful world he made. When Adam first came on earth the sun was just rising. Adam opened his eyes and took a sneeze (The heart start pumping) and said, “ Allhum Dulila Hey Rabulalameen” meaning Thank you God (Rab)for the beautiful earth and it’s life !
Human Faith is heavenly light of knowledge restriction on sacred light is eclipse on humanity and blasphemy.
Human Faith is a religious of God (Rab) of humanity (Rabi). The definition of humanity (Rabi)in our faith is the quality of being humane and respectful for life. The Divine Affirmations of human faith are the commandment of God (Rab) of Humanity (Rabi). The crime against the Divine Affirmations is blasphemy and great disrespect for our God (Rab) of humanity (Rabi).
Our method of teaching moral values and human fealty can give realistic purpose of achieving complete fulfillment of internal life. The spiritual change from loneness to loveliness is based on love by giving unlimited trust in God (Rab) and faith in humanity.
Human mind is miracle of Supreme Being when we struggle to boil it at lukewarm temperature of wisdom to understand fundamental of life by reading (Rabi). The ever lasting stage of satisfaction for mind is to reach Supreme Being before death. The journey of memories can be pleasant with divine affirmations of human faith. We believe that it is time to joggle every conscious to show them that human mind is superior matter not material.
The festival of life can be celebrated with wisdom of human faith knowledge once we realize that we are part of the superior race . We advocates spiritual and moral principles on very high scales for the longest term in human history. Human faith is monotheistic faith and knows that God is the creator and overseer of the universe at all the time and all matters.
God Bless America
Written By Ajmal Mehdi of Mehdi LLC Medics Home Healthcare/ Lucky’s Mini Mart 37 center Street Bristol CT 06010 860.582.2226/860.583.3338 http://www.humanfaith.info
contd #3
Let’s see if we can’t tack down the forbidden thoughts or words.
I commented on the above. Monopole 10:29pm:
“The folks at RC don’t want to recogonize that there are other views, let alone engage them in discussion. Their attitude is very condescending to say the least.”
The word acknowledgment was used in my censored comment.
Engagement would be acknowledgment
Ok so far??
[REPLY: No. Good try, but no. I presume you have the brains to read the site policy and figure it out for yourself. If you don’t have the brains, why are you here? -REP]
Village Idiot,
Appropriate screen name. Since you’re an idiot, I’ll use simple words: “Censorship” can only be done by governments. RealClimate is run 24/7/366 by people who are paid by the taxpayers. They censor skeptics’ comments while representing the government. They are censors. That is their correct label.
WUWT does not censor. WUWT is privately owned. WUWT allows all scientific points of view without censorship. Moderation is done with a light touch.
That does not mean you can post anything you like. There is a site Policy that you should read. If you violate it, your comment can be snipped or deleted by a moderator. That is not censorship. That is following the site rules.
RealClimate censors the scientific views of skeptics. Do you understand the difference? RC is run by government workers, who censor scientific comments they do not agree with. They censor peoples’ opinions using their taxpayer-paid positions.
If you still don’t understand the difference, ask questions and I will explain further, to the point that even someone with your disability can understand.
Peter Kovachev says:
May 3, 2012 at 8:10 pm
Yeppers!!!
When RC posted at RC – they knew they were protected. They could “edit” or “delete” at will.
Once those claims – arguments were copied and pasted to the site we were at…it was out of echo-chamber edit control.
When their comments and my referenced rebuttals started showing-up on search engines……:)
ABOUT KIDS and inundation.
The very best thing adults can do in providing critical thinking skills, Is teaching basic logic, and what a “divergence” from a hypothesis – means…. to that hypothesis. Such as, temperatures falling, or held steady, while CO2 rises.
It takes about 15 minutes of your time….AND isn’t taught.
Thank you!
David Ball says:
May 4, 2012 at 7:22 am
Thank you!
RE
William Astley says:
@ May 4, 2012 at 8:49 am
————
Thanks William.
Jimmy Haigh says:
May 3, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Real Climate disappoints. – gavin.
========================================
Think the real climate is what disappointed RealClimate.
Their internet traffic went down because they censored so many visitors that they left and never came back.
Way to go RC!
contd #4
Smokey 3:27pm
Definition of censor = “to delete or make changes in”
You don’t have an argument.
Let’s talk about site policy. This appears only to apply to those accepting mainstream climate science.
Policy: “..those without manners that insult others..may find their posts deleted”
Smokey to Village Idiot:
“even someone with your disability”
Moderator to Village Idiot:
“I presume you have the brains to read the site policy and figure it out for yourself. If you don’t have the brains, why are you here?
Ok to use this tone if you are someone who rejects mainstream climate science.
In my next comment I’ll use some expressions allowed further up in this thread
[snip. Site Policy violation. Stop it. ~dbs, mod.]
Since the owner of RC is Fenton, a PR firm, I’m sure the focus is firmly on that aspect. But its ineffectuality is sure to disappoint the bosses …