Guest Essay By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The intellectual dishonesty of the Thermageddonites is well demonstrated in a particularly fatuous piece entitled Eight Pseudoscientific Climate Claims Debunked by Real Scientists at the hand-wringing-and-hysteria website billmoyers.com.
The article is full of ad-hom whining – the most childish form of that most infantile of all logical fallacies, the red-herring fallacy, the totalitarians’ customary substitute for serious scientific argument. We shall ignore it. Instead, let us scrutinize the “science” put forward by this self-appointed soviet of “Real Scientists”.
They begin by saying: “Most people who deny that human activity is warming the planet just dismiss a massive body of scientific evidence as a big hoax.” That is mere yah-boo – another instance of the red-herring fallacy.
They go on to say that the climate issue is “settled in the scientific community”. That is the headcount fallacy. More about it anon.
They say They “gathered eight of the most common pseudoscientific arguments” advanced by skeptics and “asked some serious climate scientists [yeah, right] … to help us understand what makes these claims so misleading”. That is the argument from appeal to authority. So far, no science at all from the “Real Scientists”. Just illogic piled upon illogic, fallacy upon fallacy.
The first of the eight “pseudoscientific arguments” of which They accuse us is that the Earth has not been warming recently. They are particularly offended by my reproducing the real-world temperature data, determining the trend on the data, and daring to publish the inconvenient truth every month.
These Pause Deniers are not at all happy that the global temperature record shows no global warming for well over 13 years (mean of all five global-temperature datasets).
Whether They like it or not, there is a large, growing and – for Them – embarrassing discrepancy between the predictions made by “Settled Science” and the inconvenient truth that over no period of ten years or more since the IPCC’s first report in 1990 has global warming ever occurred at anything like the predicted rate.
Since January 2005, the data from which the IPCC’s latest Assessment Report starts its backcast predictions, there has been no global warming at all. Yet compared with little more than nine years ago the IPCC predicts that the weather should now be a sixth of a Celsius degree warmer than it is (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. IPCC (2013) (orange region) predicted that there should have been a sixth of a Celsius degree of global warming since January 2005 (thick red trend-line). However, observed temperature (mean of the RSS and UAH monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly datasets) (thick blue trend-line) has if anything declined a little since that date.
However, They do not like to look at temperature change over such short periods. So let us oblige Them by going back to the IPCC’s First Assessment Report in 1990. If its predictions had been correct, there should have been two-thirds of a degree of global warming since then, but in the real world where the rest of us live there has only been one-third of a degree of warming (Fig. 2).
Figure 2. Predictions from the IPCC’s First Assessment Report compared with outturn since 1990 (RSS & UAH). The world has been warming at exactly half the predicted rate, and the trend falls wholly outwith the prediction interval (orange region).
That is why the IPCC has been compelled to reduce its central near-term global warming prediction from a rate equivalent to 2.78 Cº/century then to 1.67 Cº/century equivalent now.
They say I should have been monitoring ocean heat content and not atmospheric temperature. Two problems with that. The IPCC’s headline temperature predictions are for global atmospheric temperature; and, though the satellites can monitor temperature with something approaching reliability, there are far too few ocean measurements to allow a proper determination of change in ocean heat content – which in any event is rising at about one-sixth the predicted rate.
They also say I cherry-pick 1998 as the start date for my graphs. No: I ask the question, “What is the earliest month since when the global temperature record shows no increase?” The answer, at present, is August 1996, 17 years 9 months ago, predating the great El Niño temperature spike of 1998 by two and a half years.
The “Real Scientists’” second alleged skeptical error – again attributed to me – is that the difference between modeled and observed temperature change is weather, not climate, the latter being what happens over several decades.
Yet Fig. 2 goes back to 1990. It covers very nearly a quarter of a century. That is quite long enough to allow some sharp conclusions to be drawn about how unsettled the “Settled Science” actually is. The graph starts in 1990 because that is the date of the IPCC’s first report.
The “Real Scientists’” third nit-pick is that, notwithstanding Anthony Watts’ US Surface Stations project, which has amply demonstrated what a joke the terrestrial temperature record is, everything is really hunky-dory. They add, bafflingly, that “scientists are not idiots”. On the evidence, this lot are more idiots than scientists.
They say Anthony’s results were “the issue the skeptics were touting, but if you look at the peer-reviewed literature, this was stuff that was answered years ago.” Indeed it was – by Michaels & McKitrick (2007), who found a highly significant correlation between regional rates of industrial growth and of global warming, leading to the conclusion that warming over land had been overstated by double.
The “Real Scientists’” fourth assertion is that “Yes, There Is a Scientific Consensus”. As is now traditional, They define it with artfully-calculated imprecision as “the scientific consensus that human activities are causing the earth to warm”. Let us be as precise as They are vague. The existence of the greenhouse effect is definitively established both in theory and in experiment and needs no “consensus” to prop it up. CO2 concentration is rising, chiefly owing to our activities (unless Professor Salby is right). Therefore, it is established that our activities may cause warming.
But the true scientific debate is not about the long-established qualitative question whether there is a greenhouse effect. It is about the quantitative question how much warming we may cause. The IPCC, whose duty is to reflect the balance of the scientific literature, mendaciously and without statistical rigor assigns a fictitious “95% confidence” to the notion that we caused most of the 0.75 Cº global warming since 1950. However, Legates et al. (2013) have demonstrated that just 0.5% of 11,944 climate science abstracts published from 1991-2011 state that we are the major cause of recent warming. “Consensus” is lacking. The IPCC is wrong.
Fifthly, the “Real Scientists” say global warming is “Not the Sun’s Fault”. They begin by congratulating themselves and their ilk for not having “persecuted” Professor Svensmark for his cosmic-ray amplification theory, and for not having “run him out of the scientific community on a rail”.
In fact, the Royal Society – the world’s oldest whining taxpayer-funded pressure-group – treated the Professor so badly when he presented his results, howling him down and calling him names, that he suffered a serious heart attack not long thereafter. Professor Bengtsson, recently bullied by his peer climate scientists, is by no means the only distinguished scientist to have been subjected to Their global bullying.
The “Real Scientists” say Professor Svensmark’s results “don’t stand up to scrutiny” and add, falsely, that “there’s no evidence to support Svensmark’s contention”. The true position is that there is a considerable and growing body of evidence and support for it in the reviewed literature that so few of them ever read.
To make matters worse, They falsely say his hypothesis is that “the sun explains everything”. I have heard him lecture many times and have discussed his theory with him. Theirs is a monstrous and malicious misrepresentation of his position.
They maintain that if the Sun were the cause of recent warming all altitudes would warm, but that “the upper atmosphere is actually cooling”. Er, no. The stratosphere cooled in the 1990s but its temperature has shown little trend this millennium.
The “Real Scientists’” sixth assertion, in response to suggestions that the Sun has entered a cooling cycle, is that “there is no credible data nor any credible scientist who would make this claim.” Yet, as Dr Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute for Astrophysics has long pointed out, the lengthening of the past solar cycle from the usual 10.6 years to more like 13 years may well indicate that the next few solar cycles will be comparatively inactive.
This view is supported by research at NASA showing that the magnetic convection currents beneath the solar surface have slowed to walking pace for the first time since observations of their velocity began. Many solar physicists are at least open to the possibility that the Sun will be less active than usual in the coming decades.
On grind the “Real Scientists” with their seventh assertion, that I was wrong to point out that the fastest warming ever recorded by thermometers occurred in central England in the 17th century, before the industrial revolution began. They are upset that I have pointed out that this record centennial warming rate occurred between 1663 and 1762. This, They think, is “cherry-picking”.
No: I simply asked the question, “What was the fastest centennial rate of global warming in the instrumental record?” The answer is what it is, like it or not. There was more warming in that century than in any 100-year period since. The warming of 1663-1762 cannot have been caused by us. Therefore the possibility exists that some perhaps substantial fraction of the lesser global warming of the past century may also have been natural.
Inspecting the data seems to me to be the right starting-point for scientific enquiry. But, over and over again, the “Real Scientists” express their dislike of the real world and the inconvenient data that are observable here.
Eighthly and finally, They say Antarctic ice is not increasing, and that to say that it is increasing is “interesting given the two major studies … which found that six large West Antarctic glaciers are in an irreversible state of decline.”
Let us instruct these woeful scientific illiterates in a few facts. First, skeptics say – because that is what the evidence shows – that Antarctic sea ice is increasing. Indeed, it has repeatedly broken the 35-year satellite-era record. Secondly, the “two major studies” were concerned with land-based ice, not sea ice.
And, my oh my, six glaciers declining! Hold the Front PAGE!!! Here is an inconvenient truth that the “Real Scientists” may stumble upon if They ever read anything. There are more than six glaciers on Earth. There are thought to be more than 160,000. Nearly all have never been visited or studied by Man.
A little logic might also help these climate campaigners disguised as “scientists”. Antarctica has not warmed since the satellites have been watching. Therefore, it is difficult to assert with any confidence that the apparent retreat of half a dozen glaciers in a corner of Antarctica known to have an anomalous climate and to be affected by subsea volcanism is attributable to manmade global warming.
The “Real Scientists” say Antarctica’s land-based ice is “melting at an alarming rate”. Since the melting is not caused by warming (for the good and sufficient reason that there has not been any in the region across the entire satellite era), true scientists would first check that the land-based ice is melting “at an alarming rate” (hint: it isn’t), and then try to find out why, rather than adopting a naively but profitably aprioristic stance and blaming Man.
True scientists might also check where the “alarming” ice melt is going. For even the official (and questionable) satellite record of sea-level rise does not show much more than 3 mm of sea-level rise each year. Other records – such as the eight-year Envisat record – show sea level rising at a rate equivalent to just 3 cm/century (Fig. 3).
Figure 3. The Envisat sea-level record during its eight-year life, and before any “global isostatic adjustments” or other tamperings to sex up the apparent rate of sea-level rise.
Figure 4. The extent to which the raw sea-level data have been tampered with to force them to show sea level as rising alarmingly is alarming.
And the GRACE gravitational-anomaly satellites have shown sea level actually falling (Peltier et al., 2009) (Fig. 4). So where has all that melting ice hidden itself? Perhaps it’s skulking at the bottom of the ocean alongside the missing heat.
Sea level rose by about 7-8 inches in the 20th century, according to the tide-gauges. After adjusting for calibration errors and a bewildering variety of tamperings with the satellite sea-level data, that rate has not changed much. And why would it? For there has been very little global warming over the past decade or two.
Real “Real Scientists” would have examined sea-level reconstructions over the past millennium to see how sea level changed in response to the medieval warm period (warmer than the present) and the little ice age (cooler). That is what I have done in Fig. 5. Grinsted et al. (2009) reconstructed 1000 years of sea-level change. Note how well the sea-level curve corresponds with the curve of 1000 years’ reconstructed temperatures over the same period. Note in passing how poorly both curves track the ludicrous “hokey-stick” graph from the IPCC’s 2001 Third Assessment Report.
And note in particular how small the change in sea level has been: just 8 inches up or down in 1000 years.
Figure 5. Reconstructed sea-level change (Grinsted et al., 2009) and global temperature change (IPCC, 1990) compared over the past millennium. The evident correlation does not necessarily imply causation, but at least the possibility of causation exists.
Let us suppose, ad argumentum, that the main reason for sea-level change is temperature change, and that Grinsted’s sea-level reconstruction is plausible. In that event, the small sea-level response to the large temperature change between the medieval warm period and the little ice age suggests the possibility that even a global warming far greater than what is now likely might not have much impact on sea level.
Given that the “Real Scientists” are manifestly wrong in substance on every point They made in their article, why did They bother to expose Their ignorance and intellectual bankruptcy by writing it in the first place?
The reason is simple. The evidence-based, science-based arguments of the skeptics are gaining traction, and the true-believers in the Thermageddon cult know it. Their shoddy technique is to parade their negligible scientific credentials, to write utter garbage such as that which I have exposed here, and to publish it on some friendly website or another. This allows other climate campaigners to link to the garbage and assert – quite falsely – that our arguments have been “repeatedly and thoroughly debunked” by “Real Scientists.”
In truth, the “Real Scientists” have debunked themselves by writing such transparent drivel that even a layman can see right through it.
The dishonorable conduct of the “Real Scientists”, to which no real scientist would ever sink, is a measure of their sheer, panic-laden desperation. They cannot even pray for deliverance in the shape of another record-breaking el Niño, for remarkably few Thermageddonites believe in God. They are too busy believing in whatever line the Party has handed down, Comrade.
The malevolent bunch who perpetrated the nonsense I have here debunked sneer at Roy Spencer because he is a believing Christian. They do not realize that They have Themselves gotten religion – but that They have made the mistake of subscribing not to a true religion but to a mere shamanistic superstition – a pseudo-religious belief system dressed up as science that can be, as it has here been, demonstrated to be obviously false in just about every material particular.
But haven’t you heard the latest news? You don’t need observations anymore to verify model results. The models ARE reality!
Excellent article.
.Having just watched with despair the otherwise excellent “new Sagan-esque” Cosmos series episode that bythely parroted the “science is in” mantra, it was refreshing to get my mind back on track and not be overly dismayed by the plethora of scandalous acceptance of CAGW and its supporting misinformation – thank you..
Thanks, Christopher. As always a treat to read.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Cheers
The Envisat sea-level record during its eight-year life, and before any “global isostatic adjustments” or other tamperings to sex up the apparent rate of sea-level rise.
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Envisat had to be tampered with from day one….it originally showed sea levels falling and/or no sea level rise at all
” The IPCC, whose duty is to reflect the balance of the scientific literature, mendaciously and without statistical rigour….” The post is worth reading just for that line.
Great analysis!
Obama and his government money are still on point. Facts are not relevant when he is in control of government agencies and the dole to universities. Thank you Anthony and Christopher for all of your efforts.
A very informative read. Well presented, factual and educational. Thank you. It is a pleasure to read informative articles like this. I also appreciate the way you show grace and diplomacy to the people who argue against you and prove them incorrect with unbiased unemotional factual arguments.
Excellent point! I didn’t know they were adjusting sea level readings to such an extent. That’s good to know.
There’s a mistake in the beginning paragraph for the eight point. It refers to West “Atlantic” glaciers, which is a type-o for West “Antarctic” glaciers. Here is the whole paragraph:
Eighthly and finally, They say Antarctic ice is not increasing, and that to say that it is increasing is “interesting given the two major studies … which found that six large West Atlantic glaciers are in an irreversible state of decline.”
[fixed thanks, -mod]
Can I have one thing made clear here, are we allowed to use the term “Denier” or not? Seems to me you can’t with any integrity allow one side to go there and not the other.
Not just 6 glaciers out of some 160,000, but 6 in W Antarctic Peninsula, not the main body of Antarctica.
Skewered the chickens as usual….
Cris, I have recently (well not so recently) decided that because CAGW is a moral issue for the comrades, that their belief system needs to be tackled not on scientific grounds but moral ground. The best demonstration of this is that by targetting a preindustrial CO2 effect the comrades are attempting to shift us back to a climate regime nearly at LIA levels. An event that took the lives of a good proportion of Europe’s population. In doing so they are depriving the population of the very thing needed to survive such colder temperature (cheap energy). Is it their contention then that having winters at the depth of 2012 (Europe) and 2013/14 (America) is good for the planet? What if their cooling influence tips us into the long overdue ice age? Is New york under a km of ice going to be a good thing for humanity?
How many people are they willing to have die to reach their ideal pre-industrial temperature where food production will be up to 15 percent lower. How are they going to make their solar panels work under 5 inches of snow, or their windmills turn with frozen bearing and hundreds of kg of ice on now aerodynamically useless blades. What are they going to do about the inevitable multiyear crop failures that their success is likely to bring about..? especially in a coincident solar minimum.
When I debate warmists these days I like to point out to the Useful Idiots what the consequences of their SUCCESS is for the planet, and how immoral their crusade is.
NB other immoral outcomes are diversion of money away from the great challenges like curing cancer, space travel, and other real science. Burning food for fuel. Killing and displacement of popoulations to make way for carbon farms. Depletion of rare earths. Death of pensioners from fuel poverty. Etc, etc.
If They had a sense of shame……
Arrgh, sorry about the misspelling LM, my tablet’s virtual keyboard is virtually unusable
Christopher wrote, “They have made the mistake of subscribing not to a true religion but to a mere shamanistic superstition – a pseudo-religious belief system dressed up as science …”.
In ancient times, the shamen and religious leaders would have the People deliver items of value to “sacrifice” to appease the angry gods. They demanded livestock such as cows, goats, and sheep (likely for the BBQs), nubile virgins (post-BBQ entertainment no doubt), and other valuable offerings be delivered to the temples. Today, the Progressive climate change establishment just demands more money sacrifices from the People. The scientist-believer-enablers keep getting their grants, the media gets their sensationalism-laced stories to sell, the “green-related” industries get their subsidies, and the politicians get their money to buy more votes on the road to power.
Christopher, I disapprove of your Fig 2. You should not be creating linear trends across an obvious step event ie the large ElNino event from 1997-2000.
From beginning to end, the 1998 ElNino added about 0.25C to the global surface temperature. You can clearly see where it settled down in about 2001.
If you discount that 0.25C from temperatures after that, you will see that apart from the 1998 ElNino, there has been basically NO WARMING in the whole of the satellite record.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1997/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1997/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/offset:-.25/plot/rss/from:2001/trend/offset:-.25
Furthermore, you should not be extrapolation even that linear trend out to “per century”. You should be stating it as a “per decade” number. “Century” is not relevant to the analysis.
Only strawmen and badly educated scholars without valid argument triesAd Hominem, Ad Hoc and/or argumentum ab auctoritate. The Alarmists seems to have forgotten or never learnt these essential parts from their lessons in Theories of Science combining one or more with the forth worst fallacies using Appeal to fear for their “case”
When do they ever learn?
Excellent rebuttal. Unfortunately, the likes of these “folks” have the ear of woefully ignorant politicians, with the Commander in Chief leading the parade. History will not be kind to the “scientists”, politicians and others that would enrich themselves by perpetrating the Obamanation of AGW.
@Hunter,
Most of the useful idiots do have shame, they are with it for the moral crusade, the morally bereft outcomes of their success really shakes them, that’s why I recommend that after you debunk the science you proceed to demolish the moral arguments holding up their faith. They need to be deprogrammed like any religious fanatic cult. The useful idiots don’t actually care if the science is right or not, their moral crusade is true and just, and they are in line for a green halo. (Some are truly misanthropic though, one couple when I challenged the immorality of diverting funds from cancer treatments said, “The world is overpopulated, we should leave all the people with cancer to just die” thouse people are a minority though and are probably in the Australian Greens senate team.
Most supporters think like this, reducing CO2 pollution couldn’t hurt, all my friends will love me because I’m a friend of the planet, and I’d be able to self-agrandise…so OK I’ll be pro CAGW.
When you show actions reducing CO2 “pollution” is killing people NOW, and they can’t selfagrandise using a religion that kills millions and takes food and medicines out of babies mouths, their moral compasses can be shifted away from “the planet” and back to humanity. Once that happens the reality of the science can have effect.
And so, if we evicerate our US economy by attempting to change over to ‘green’ energy, which does not work economically even when it does work, and even when the government dollars are not outright stolen, as in Solyndra, and eliminate coal ( about 50 % of US electrical production ) and oil use, do any of these green idiots any longer even claim it will change the path that climate is on? Or do they claim we will have less droughts, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, ocean rise or what have you? I don’t think that I am seeing any such claims. Even among those with such outlandish claims regarding what man’s CO2 is doing to this planet, I do not see any forecasts of what their solutions will provide in benefits for the price of the destruction of our economies. The economic conflagration is already upon us and will just continue to get worse. A significant portion of US jobs and GDP has already been sacrificed at the altar of the AGW religion while developing countries ignore their contributions to that heinous pollutant, CO2.
This is all about control and the leftist often used game plan to cause turmoil, out of which they then take tighter control. This game has been played over and over and every time Lucy moves the football the Charlie Browns of the world just take another kick at it. Well, I guess it is continuing proof that there is a normal distribution of IQ’s, but I fear that it is skewed way to the left.
Excellent read. I am glad that you brought up the climate change that took place from the Medieval to the Renaissance periods. I don’t think there were lots of factors and cars polluting then.
Someone joked that the Little Ice Age was responsible for the snow and bare trees at the Battle of Bosworth shown in “White Queen.”
The temperature graph in Figure 5 shows no units for the Y-axis.
Also the flattening from 1950 until 2000 is suspect.
Sorry, eviscerate.
Simple question for the warmers:
If the earth is warming now (as claimed by Dr Mann), and we apply your prescribed mitigations, how we know when we have been successful, or, even worse,if the remedies aggravate the problem (by increasing warming)?
I had thought previously it was the global surface temperature record, but that seems to have been discarded once it stalled. So simple question, what observable, measurable evidence defines if the earth is warming, cooling or stable?
This graph
says they bumped up the rate of sea level rise 1.9 mm/yr
That’s a full millimeter more than I’ve found. Here’s my graph
http://oi58.tinypic.com/331k5ya.jpg
of the changes made to the first ten years of the satellite record since 2004. Which I found by examining the old data files available on the Internet Archives Way Back Machine.
Where did Cazenave find the extra millimeter?
The problem with insults arises not the word itself but from the context – the intent behind the choice to use that word, the intended meaning and how that meaning is received. Who is using the word is very relevant in assessing that. Consider for example the word “nigger” which is often affectionately used by black people to refer to other black people (“my nigger”) with no insult intended or received. But if someone who isn’t black uses that word, that is going to be judged on a very different basis.
The article at billmoyers.com admits that Antarctic sea ice is increasing even though ocean water temperatures are increasing. Supposedly, increased winds caused by decreasing ozone is spreading the ice and somehow causing more surface water to freeze. I’m still confused about how warming ocean water could melt West Antarctica ice sheets while, at the same time, allow sea ice everywhere else to increase to record levels. I guess I would have to be a true believer to understand it.
The article also makes the claim that overall Antarctic land ice is melting at an alarming rate. They link to information that shows ice volume increasing in East Antarctica and decreasing in West Antarctica, but I couldn’t see anything about overall ice volume. Are there no reliable measurements of Antarctic land ice volume? If not, how can anyone claim the overall volume is increasing or decreasing? What basis does Kevin Trenberth have for making the claim in the article that the land ice that covers 98% of Antarctica “is melting at an alarming rate”?
Notice how the warmists are still living large? Using electricity, heating their homes, driving cars flying on airplanes. That says a lot to me.
antiwhitequeen says:
May 17, 2014 at 4:57 pm
Maybe the show runners had Bosworth (August 22, 1485) confused with the Battle of Towton (Palm Sunday, March 29, 1461), which was fought in a snowstorm.
chuck says:
May 17, 2014 at 5:04 pm
The temperature graph in Figure 5 shows no units for the Y-axis.
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That’s the way it was presented…here’s a better look at al
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/ipcc1.jpg?w=300
John Boles says:
May 17, 2014 at 5:12 pm
The levels of hypocrisy achieved by Prince Albert & his Warmunista minions have not been recorded since Cesare Borgia & other Renaissance popes. They’re almost unprecedented.
Louis says:
May 17, 2014 at 5:12 pm
“Are there no reliable measurements of Antarctic land ice volume? ”
..
NASA’s GRACE satellite measures the mass of the ice in Antarctica by noting how the mass affects the gravitational field.
..
http://congrexprojects.com/docs/12c20_docs2/2-grace_esa-clic_forsberg.pdf?sfvrsn=2
You mentioned that “to the notion that we caused most of the 0.75 Cº global warming since 1950”. The rise in temperature is about a half of that.
[Is not the rise since 1890 about 0.75 deg C? Mod]
Latitude says:
May 17, 2014 at 5:20 pm
“That’s the way it was presented”
…
Yeah, using data 25 years out of date with no y-axis increments is not conducive to proving much of anything, especially since there are dozens of reconstructions that have been done since 1990.
My dear Christopher Monckton, I do so enjoy your posts. Especially this one. I would ask a real question of you — are there any real scientists working in the climate science field? If there are, what percentage would you guess they make up of the total of people working in that horrifically unscientific field? (my guess is less than 1%)
Thanks.
chuck says:
May 17, 2014 at 5:26 pm
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that’s the way the IPCC presented it in their 1990 report…the MWP existed in 1990
Dear Monckton, while the ridicule of others makes your posts fun to read, it also upsets the communication of the facts. You can accomplish one or the other, but not both.
It’s a name I can’t recall having heard before.
Again I have been succinctly educated. Elegant read. Thank you.
Lord Monckton,
Thank you for again taking time to debunk nonsense. This though, I do find disheartening:
…“The evidence-based, science-based arguments of the skeptics are gaining traction, and the true-believers in the Thermageddon cult know it. Their shoddy technique is to parade their negligible scientific credentials, to write utter garbage such as that which I have exposed here, and to publish it on some friendly website or another. This allows other climate campaigners to link to the garbage and assert – quite falsely – that our arguments have been “repeatedly and thoroughly debunked” by “Real Scientists.”…”
One of their tactics seems to me to be to just keep talking – no matter how silly, illogical and even ridiculous their arguments. As long as they can command air-time the scam lives on since few on the receiving end of media have disciplined minds, either through education and self-development, or even a kind of naturally occurring toughness of mind (call it “street smarts”). What are left over, the vast majority, are easily suckered by this and any other nonsense.
Keep calling them out on their nonsense! Bracing, entertaining, and inspiring are your words.
Always enjoy reading your articles Chris. Very uplifting .
Best Regards.
Txomin says:
May 17, 2014 at 5:35 pm
Dear Monckton, while the ridicule of others makes your posts fun to read, it also upsets the communication of the facts. You can accomplish one or the other, but not both.
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Nonsense, they deserve everything word of it. It didn’t affect the “communication of facts” for me.
Christopher, did you coin “Thermageddonites”?
Tmoxin,
Have been, for some time been thinking of the right way to say it. You just did.
Monckton rates a solid 10 for theatrics, entertainment and attention grabbing.
It’s hard to not also rate the authenticity of his science highly. However, the showmanship of the presentation, though convincing, makes me feel like we are outside the realm of science.
I say that Monckton vs Bill Nye the science guy would be like Ali vs Frazier!
My prediction………Monckton in 10 rounds but only because the IPCC officials, alllow Nye to be knocked down 15 times before Monckton takes him out!
Sir Monckton of Brenchley,
I came to your aid when you asked it of us.
This is the best response for Dr. Bengtsson’s pain?
Perhaps less sugar and more heat in your tea Sir!
If ice mass in Antarctica is decreasing, could it really be melting? Temperatures there are rarely above freezing, and then only on the coasts, whereas the bulk of the ice would I assume be inland:
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_antarctica/geography/weather/temperatures.php
Seems to me then that we should look for another cause of the satellite readings that indicate a loss of mass over the Antarctic continent, not melting. Sublimation? Or something else not related to ice?
/Mr Lynn
‘The IPCC, whose duty is to reflect the balance of the scientific literature, mendaciously and without statistical rigor assigns a fictitious “95% confidence” to the notion that we caused most of the 0.75 Cº global warming since 1950 …’.
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And that net warming (over 50% purported to be human-caused) occurred over less than 50% of the time: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/to:1980/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997/trend.
Pope Gore and Cardinal Mann will have the inquisition round for you Monckton! Just don’t expect it! 😉
L. E. Joiner says:
May 17, 2014 at 6:27 pm
” Or something else not related to ice?”
Ocean water temperature. The ice floats on ocean water. Cold water falls to the ocean basin, and incoming water is transporting the heat to the floating ice.
Lord Monckton, always enjoy your erudite essays.
But let me point out, as Bob Tisdale has, we are at war.
So I suggest more radical prose, and more radical measures. Please see Climate Etc. Tomorrow for a small example ( or so I have been told).
Highest regards.
Rud Istvan says:
May 17, 2014 at 7:12 pm
“we are at war.”
..
..
If you are “at war” you are not doing science.
It’s sea ice that’s floating, and that’s increasing not decreasing, at least in extent. I assume the mass they say is decreasing is on the vast land mass of Antarctica. So what’s causing those readings?
/Mr Lynn
I take exception to one statement in the above, on my blog:
There Is No Valid Climate Science and No Competent Climate Debate
Your respect for good reasoning and your joy in explaining fallacious reasoning make for a wonderfully enjoyable article. In addition, all of us should be grateful that you take the time to reveal just how terribly thin is the gruel that Alarmists offer as their main course.
I, too, am a great fan of the Red Herring fallacy. Once upon a time at the Bishop’s, I described a Red Herring so vividly that Josh did a cartoon of an Alarmist emerging from the surf holding a red herring.
Thanks again for your great gifts to readers of WUWT, to science, and to humanity.
Nice!
I submit another entry to the “OH THE PAIN” moment award in climate history.
I feel the squirming of many, no?
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
“The intellectual dishonesty of the Thermageddonites is well demonstrated in a particularly fatuous piece entitled Eight Pseudoscientific Climate Claims Debunked by Real Scientists at the hand-wringing-and-hysteria website billmoyers.com.”
=======================
Cute writing.
I didn’t read past the first paragraph.
Then again, I’m not the occasional reader/inquisitor, that might have stumbled into the site and just as quickly exited.
It is obvious that AGW – let alone CAGW – has not been robustly confirmed.
It is obvious that in science, zealous skeptical scrutiny of any theory that has not been robustly confirmed should be welcomed in proportion to the popularity of the theory among scientists and especially in proportion to the degree to which those scientists who favor the theory treat it as robustly confirmed. Call this the “principle of zealous skeptical scrutiny.” It is an important and fundamental principle of epistemic hygiene and it is essential to the health of science.
Therefore, it is obvious that AGW advocates who shun skeptics are violating the principle of zealous skeptical scrutiny. It’s not just that they are being rude or cruel in the course of scientific debate. They are in violation of a fundamental principle of epistemic hygiene essential to the health of science.
What is the scientific evidence of this “true religion” you speak of? Surely it’s hardly better than that behind warmism.
-ß
@milodonharlani says:
May 17, 2014 at 5:20 pm
Cesare Borgia was never pope, but his father was.
I am unaware that Professor Svensmark was mistreated by the members of the Royal Society, nor that the consequence was a heart attack.
Where does Monckton get this stuff from?
Maybe he is still smarting from being denied membership in the House of Lords.
I notice at the end of the post on Moyers that is is just a repackaging of skeptical science material and then it refers the reader back to that website. Seems like the CAGW group rehashes the sks “most used climate myths” every three months and disguises it as something new in some other venue. Thanks for the enjoyable rebuttal to this round of rehashing.
You da man, Christopher.
“perhaps it is sulking at the bottom of the ocean with the missing heat”
Still chuckling. All the more amusing because neither the melt water nor the missing heat can possibly get there.
LevelGaze says:
May 17, 2014 at 8:48 pm
I meant Rodrigo. But as a cardinal, Cesare was also pretty hypocritical.
Lord Monckton, I like your sardonic approach to writing. I too consider these mugs, something like medieval or Elizabethan prophets who told us what we have to believe, and if we don’t we get put on a stake for heresy. They are below the contemptible, and ridiculing them is one line I would take too. Well done. I mean folks who dislike the form of banter, the alarmists are not short of calling skeptics or deniers ‘Holocaust deniers’. Tit for tat.
Let me just get the Antarctica ice thing straight. The sea ice which is growing to record levels is melting at a rapidly increasing pace and sending cold water down to the bottom of the sea where the warm water from Global Warming lurks. As the ice melts it contracts (for the first couple of degrees above 0) and this contraction of the cold water causes the sea level to rise in conjunction with the expansion of the warm water which isn’t being cooled by the cold water and doesn’t rise even thought it is less dense than the cooler water above it.
Have I got that right?
The other day I found;
A particle traveling faster than light
A Zeta function zero with a real part not equal to 1/2
A map that could not be coloured with four colors
An even number that was not the sum of two primes
A spotty animal with a ringed tail
A couple of identical snowflakes
etc
I dismissed the whole lot. It was just cherry picking.
1. Like a every editor, I could not have written the original words, nor could I arrange and format it as well as the original author, but I feel it needs two more graphs from the WUWT Sea Ice page in the Antarctic section.
Your information will be much more clear, much more effective, when the Antarctic satellite temperature graph from 1979 to 2014 is added (to clearly prove that Antarctic air temperature is going down at the same time “They” are blaming global warming for the melting Antarctic Ice). Right below the Antarctic air temperature, please add the Antarctic Sea Ice Area plot proving the near-continuous Antarctic sea ice increase since 1996.
2. Anthony: I would like to print this as a stand-alone pdf file with the charts and formatting, but NOT as print-to-file web page pdf. Printed as an article or pdf document, it can handed out, duplicated and distributed, and discussed in meetings. A web-page document dilutes, distorts, and distracts significantly from the vivid impressions and images created by Lord Monckton.
How can that be best done?
Txomin says @ May 17, 2014 at 5:35 pm:
Dear Monckton, while the ridicule of others makes your posts fun to read, it also upsets the communication of the facts. You can accomplish one or the other, but not both.
———————
Go with the former.
Bruce,
There is video of a prominent member of the RS walking out of a Svensmark presentation.
I don’t think so.
But their Antarctic ice claims bear very close inspection because they contain many mutually contradictory things to happen at the same time, almost none of which match with the actual data and long-term trends actually measured!
It is the land-based ice caps that are claimed to be melting at ever-increasing rates, not the Antarctic sea ice which surrounds the Antarctic continental or land-based ice. This melting (of land ice and glaciers) is further constrained to the West Antarctic Peninsula when you read the actual papers, and not the publicized press releases. Further, and never publicized at all, this Antarctic land-ice melt is promoted even though the entire Antarctic continental air masses have been cooling at a slow but consistent rate since 1979.
Now, the tiny Antarctic Peninsula stretching up towards South America has warmed through the past years, and yes, the coal fields and fossil bones recently discovered there prove the continent was much warmer in the past, but it is just this peninsula that has warmed. But, the two (yes only two!) Antarctic glaciers mainly promoted as being in danger of collapse the the Pine Island glacier and Twaites glacier. And those two glaciers flow from an area many hundreds of kilometers further down the peninsula than the area of maximum temperature rise! ((For example, closest permanent base (permanently monitored gauges and instruments) is 1300 km from the middle of these glaciers.)
So, these two glaciers are being blamed for an up-coming sea level disaster based on a melt rate of some 6 meters/year, which – if continued for 200 years, “might” cause an imbalance underneath from sea water melting the base that “might” raise sea levels 2-4 feet after another 800 years.
And this while the surrounding Antarctic Sea Ice is reaching record highs – which implies that the water under that ever-increasing Antarctic sea ice is getting increasing colder and increasingly more salty! Exactly opposite of what the “melt-the-bottom-of-the-glacier by hot sea water at the ground line” and “the Antarctic land ice is melting and diluting the 19 Mkm^2 of sea water under the surface of the Antarctic sea water so it freezes faster” . Note that saltier water a few millimeters under newly freezing sea ice DOES get heavier than “common” sea water and it DOES flow down towards the ocean depths, but this downward-flowing sea water is COLDER than the ‘common salinity” sea water that would be displacing.
Also, the edge of Antarctic sea ice is much, much further “out” from the continent than the end of the glaciers – the source of the melted low-density fresh water that is supposedly doing the diluting of the sea water to allow the ‘excess” sea ice to freeze while air temperatures (supposedly!) are going up worldwide – even though they (the global air temperatures) are not!
Your question is a good one, and the data cannot be reconciled with all we are being told and the measurements now known.
If you get a group of people who are not accountable for what they say or believe (such as a group of scientists), there is always a chance that errors and fantasies take over from reality.
I’m just waiting for an alarmist to claim the missing heat is ‘being lost to space’. Or that the c02 greenhouse effect only works when the temperature is rising, or that ‘bad’ c02 from fossil fuels is being masked by ‘good’ c02 from renewable energy.
But I have seen them say:
-temperatures would be rising, if it wasn’t for the negative effect of cooling.
-sea level would be rising, if it wasn’t for the land rising.
-observations don’t have to match models, it would be a mistake to think so.
-11%, 19% or 50% of coral reefs have already been destroyed.
Welcome to the bizarre world of climate science.
Actually folks, I was told at UNE that before each ice age or Mini ice age, there was period of warming. But – the sea ice around the Arctic did melt and the fresh water influx changed the direction of the gulf stream, that kept Northern America, parts of Northern Europe and UK, from freezing. And the snow never melted and was compacted with moving glaciers forming. This of course changed the landscape. Permafrost took over too.
What the palaeoanthropologists could not really answer was before the last ice age reverted, that Cro-Magnon humans arrived in Europe from Africa around 40,000 – 45,000 years ago. It is believed they had lighter skins, but they may have separated from the Negroid race thousands of years before, maybe around Northern parts of Africa and came via Eurasia and maybe more lighter tanned or Mediterranean in color. Obviously they survived and the Neanderthals died out or retreated further North. It is one of the blank spots in the archaeological record. But if we have to recall, that the metabolic system of the newer arrivals may have been able to use carbohydrates more than the Neanderthals, unlike Inuits. And that there may have been a short periods of warmer weather during this period. Considering they may have not lived too long either. They are classed in the same class of humans as us.
But with our technology now, we should be able to cope with a colder phase, until any glaciers encroach on former agricultural land.
I believe this bunch of alarmists already have this information, nearly all archaeologists and geologists do.
Does oil freeze? I think it can, as the Germans and Americans had trouble in the first and second world war, maybe they add anti freeze now.
Bruce says:
May 17, 2014 at 9:05 pm
I am unaware that Professor Svensmark was mistreated by the members of the Royal Society, nor that the consequence was a heart attack.
Where does Monckton get this stuff from?
Stuff gets around…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6812981/Copenhagen-climate-summit-global-warming-sceptic-scientist-has-heart-attack-live-on-TV.html
A climate change “sceptic” scientist, Prof Henrik Svensmark, has suffered a heart attack at the Copenhagen summit that was caught live on primetime Danish TV.
The world renowned physicist, from the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen, collapsed mid-sentence during a debate on global warming at the weekend.
While answering a question, the 41 year-old, one of the world’s leading climate change “sceptics”, spasmed, while making coughing-styled noises before collapsing to the floor, according to Danish reports.
While his fellow panellists looked baffled, Prof Svensmark, who argues the recent warming period was caused by solar activity, then mumbled “It’s my heart”, before falling to the ground in agony.
The distubing video of the incident shows him screaming and then shuddering, before his pacemaker kicked in.
Fellow panellist Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish professor who achieved international fame with his previous book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, was sitting next to him.
fwiw
bushbunny, you are likely talking about diesel fuel which gels in cold weather. Also, Diesel engines have a hard time starting in extreme cold, thus the need for electric “block heaters” in cold climates like I have lived in. Had a diesel car once, never again.
There was frost here the other night–two weeks past the official date for the last frost. While people are afraid to state the obvious (“It’s awfully and unseasonably cold considering that we are supposed to be dangerously warming the planet”) they do see it and it makes people wonder. My daughter is being fed an unceasing quantity of global warming drivel in school, but the kids talk about the fact that most of their parents don’t believe it, and a few brave teachers are actually mildly skeptical. The chinks in the argument are growing. It will be like the fall of the Berlin Wall–no one believed it would happen, and then it came down almost overnight. Most of us will live to see it.
Sea ice is different than land ice as seen in the Antarctica. Antarctica records the lowest temps on earth. And like the North Pole does have reduced sunlight in winter months, and longer ones in summer. So does the Hebrides and parts of Scotland. Any sea ice breaking away from Antarctic doesn’t pose a threat to shipping as in the North Atlantic, nor does it change the climate.
if it melts. But it does control our weather patterns why wouldn’t it, its one of the largest continents on earth and all ice and snow. However there is a great DVD out by explorer and film maker
and it shows warmer parts under the ice, that grow coral in bright colors. Plenty of sea urchins too.
Just Google ‘Nature – Under the sea ice’ (Antarctica)
Thanks Cold in Wisconsin. We don’t do much here in Australia other than put anti freeze or over heating stuff every few years in our radiators. I don’t think a lot of people realise how much colder it is in UK and Northern America. But it’s like people thinking that it doesn’t snow in Australia and we all live in the outback with kangaroos jumping down the streets in urban areas.
I made the same mistake. Actually we do see the occasional kangaroo jumping down my street sometimes, during summer of course. LOL. And the occasional koala and echidna. Not often.
the day of reckoning will soon be here:
18 May: UK Daily Mail: David Rose: Revealed: How green zealots gagged professor who dared to question global warming
According to Prof Bengtsson’s paper, it is more likely to be 1.2C to 2.7C. The implications of the difference are huge. If the planet is warming half as fast as previously thought in response to emissions, many assumptions behind targets for reducing emissions and green energy subsidies are wrong.
The subsidies in turn have led to a significant increase in consumers’ power bills…
Some climate scientists have long been warning that the planet is approaching a tipping point. Future historians may one day reflect that we reached it last week.
If they do, they won’t mean that this was when global warming became unstoppable. Instead, they’ll be pointing to the curious affair of Professor Lennart Bengtsson of Reading University as the moment that the rigid, authoritarian campaign to shut down debate on climate science and policy finally began to unravel.
For several years, this newspaper has been at the forefront of efforts to publicise the highly inconvenient truth that real world temperatures have not risen nearly as fast as computer models say they should have, thanks to the unexpected ‘pause’ in global warming which has so far lasted some 17 years.
As Prof Bengtsson has now discovered, anyone who draws attention to this will be vilified and accused of ‘denying’ supposedly ‘settled’ science.
The dogma – the insistence, as Bengtsson put it yesterday, that ‘greenhouse gas emissions are leading us towards the end of the world in the not-too-distant future’ – dominates many aspects of our lives, from lessons taught in primary schools to the vast and rising ‘green’ energy subsidies on household fuel bills.
To be sure, Bengtsson’s treatment is not encouraging. As a former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, he is one of the world’s most eminent experts.
Yet last week, he was accused of having joined the equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan and the Flat Earth Society, and of peddling ‘junk science’ – all because he accepted a place on the council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation…
Nevertheless, there are grounds for optimism. Perhaps it was simply that a man of Bengtsson’s stature who is still producing research at the age of 79 deserves respect, but the story was reported – not favourably, from the enforcers’ point of view – around the world. It even made the front page of The Times.
Some of those who deplored the ‘climate McCarthyism’ that Bengtsson experienced, such as Prof Judith Curry of Georgia Tech in Atlanta, have received similar treatment for saying global warming may not pose the imminent threat so many want us to fear.
Others, however, were from the very centre of the climate science mainstream, such as Prof Mike Hulme of King’s College, London.
He condemned scientists who ‘harassed’ those with whom they disagreed until they ‘fall into line’.
But if this really was a tipping point, it will be because the areas of uncertainty in climate science are simply too big to be ignored: claiming the debate is over does not make this true.
As former Nasa scientist Roy Spencer put it: ‘We might be seeing the death throes of alarmist climate science.
They know they are on the ropes, and are pulling out all the stops in a last-ditch effort to shore up their crumbling storyline.’
So here’s a question. Like Bengtsson, this newspaper believes global warming is real, and caused by CO2.
It’s also clear that, thus far, the computer models have exaggerated its speed.
So what exactly are we and others who hold such views denying?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2631477/Revealed-How-green-zealots-gagged-professor-dared-question-global-warming.html
a fair piece in the Independent:
18 May: UK Independent: Tom Payne: Climate change skeptic issues warning over political bias in global warming debate
But Nicola Gulley, editorial director at IOP publishing, insisted that the paper was rejected for solely editorial, rather than political, reasons.
She told The Times: “The referees selected to review this paper were of the highest calibre and are respected members of the international science community”.
Last night Mike Hulme, professor of climate and culture at King’s College London, defended Professor Bengtsson and criticised climate scientists for “harassing” him.
And he heaped criticism on climate researchers who “believe it’s their role to pass judgement on whether a scientific colleague should offer advice to political, public or campaigning organisations and to harass that scientist until they ‘fall into line’”.
In a statement issued last night via the University of Reading Professor Bengtsson said: “I am worried by a wider trend that science is gradually being influenced by political views. Policy decisions need to be based solely on facts”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/climate-change-skeptic-issues-warning-over-political-bias-in-global-warming-debate-9389549.html
Thanks Pat. The MMS are turning perhaps?
Good Lord!
Has not at least one of these surreal scientists ever joined the dots from C.T.R.Wilson’s cloud chamber to Svensmark to CERN and thought…Hmmmm, there just might be something to this?
Bruce:
Your post at May 17, 2014 at 9:05 pm demonstrates your self-proclaimed ignorance, and others have replied by pointing out the facts (with evidence) concerning Svensmark’s mistreatment and subsequent heart attack.
But you conclude your post by attempting to demean the Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley when you write
Huh!?
Membership of the House of Lords is provided by the monarch who awards Letters Patent. Hereditary Peers pass their Letters Patent to their heirs, but the Letters Patent of Life Peers become defunct upon the demise of their owners.
Lord Monckton is a hereditary Peer who inherited his Letters Patent from his father and – having been issued by the monarch – they can only be rescinded by the monarch. HRH Elizabeth11 has not rescinded the Letters Patent of Lord Monckton and, therefore, he is a Member of the House of Lords (although he does not have a Seat with Voting Rights).
Importantly, Lord Monckton had no need to apply to obtain what he had inherited, and there has been no denial of his inheritance.
So, Bruce, everything in your post was untrue. Perhaps you may care to check your assertions before making another post especially – as in this case – when commenting on an article which reviles use of the “red-herring fallacy”.
Richard
FOR THE RECORD: to date, NYT, WaPo, BBC & “our” ABC in Australia have NOT REPORTED on the Lennart Bengtsson matter. such media houses influence coverage elsewhere.
there was a BBC The Papers’ page (which changes daily), which had the Bengtsson Times’ front page graphic & a one-line caption.
in the US, the only MSM coverage has been by Fox News plus James Taranto’s 15 May Wall St Journal piece, “Scientific Authoritarians – The case for skepticism about climate scientists”.
15 May: BiasedBBC.org: Alan: Shameful Silence Of The BBC (re Lennart Bengtsson)
A scientist who joined the board of the GWPF has been intimidated and hounded out by the climate lobby…
But the BBC has remained resolutely silent about this.
This is the same BBC that is more than ready to claim scientists are silenced by climate sceptic’s ‘vitriolic attacks‘, as Evan Davis put it…
Is there a Green hush?
We looked at the BBC’s habit of attacking Sceptics whilst ignoring the violent rhetoric and intimidation from the climate lobby in Climate of Fear and Strangle The Climate Sceptics In Their Beds!!…
(Roger) Harrabin keeps saying he just can’t find any sceptical scientists…is there any wonder they are so relatively rare when it is career suicide to go against the orthodoxy?…
The BBC is utterly failing the ‘Science’, failing the scientists who want a real debate, failing the politicians who have to make decisions based upon the science and most of all failing the Public who has to pay through the nose for the resulting policies and for the BBC licence fee that funds all this failure and betrayal….and ultimately it is failing people like Lennart Bengtsson who fall victim to a witch hunt and mob rule in a febrile, extremist atmosphere generated to a great extent by the BBC itself….a trail that goes all the way back to Roger Harrabin and the CMEP.
http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2014/05/15/shameful-silence-of-the-bbc/
have just searched AP, Reuters, Press Association (UK), AAP (Australia) and have found NOTHING on the Lennart Bengtsson matter. shame on the MSM.
has GWPF (or others) sent press releases to the news agencies & MSM in general?
http://billmoyers.com/ what an excellent website. I recommend all the denialists read it and learn something rather than all the easily debunked pseudo-science drivel written on this blog.
Why would you be stupid enough to side with someone who falsely claims to be a member of the House of Lords or Margaret Thatcher’s scientific advisor? Delusions of self importance anyone?
Very good article by Rod Liddle in today’s Sunday Times (UK) entitled ‘Yes we’re all doomed – if we treat climate sceptics as Nazis’:
I am not a climate change denier, although I am a weather change denier. This means simply that when some pirouetting halfwit on the BBC tells me that tomorrow sarcomas are going to start popping up all over my body as a consequence of the relentless searing heat, I get out my wellies and my Windcheater and start placing sandbags by the door. It has worked pretty well for me so far, this “denial” stance — maybe you should try it. If the meteorologist Tomasz Schafernaker insists this evening is going to be pleasantly balmy, make sure you’ve got some candles in and masking tape for the windows. Stay away from trees.
Climate change denying is different, however, although the two “denying” concepts are of course linked. If the weather is very wet for a while and a low-lying village in the middle of a marsh floods, the Met Office will announce that this is an “extreme weather event”, which is consistent with the effects of “anthropogenic global warming” (AGW), rather than an unfortunate manifestation of that old-fashioned and discredited concept “winter”.
More than about a week’s worth of the same weather and the Met Office will tell you it’s “climate change” and all the polar bears will die and the world will come to an end. With their dire threats and warnings, the climate change lobby are rather like those people hunkered down in caves awaiting deliverance according to a calendar drawn up by some primitive pre-Columbians 5,000 or so years ago. They seem to yearn for this annihilation, which they insist is being visited upon us by our horrible affluence and wilful profligacy.
It is not surprising, when you think about it, that the idea of the end of the world as occasioned by greenhouse gases started to really pick up traction soon after that other vision of apocalypse, nuclear annihilation, receded from view, in about 1991.
I suspect there is, within the international middle-class left, a self-flagellating tendency that sort of hungers for mankind’s imminent destruction — nuclear weapons, a warming planet — and thinks it is in possession of the facts and everyone else is ignorant or complicit, and either way fundamentally evil.
Hence that phrase, capped up, “Climate Change Denier”, which equates anyone who doubts the imminent destruction of the planet with a Nazi sympathiser. It is an odious misuse of language by deranged absolutists.
But still, I’m not a denier, any more than is Professor Lennart Bengtsson, of the University of Reading. He believes man-made climate change is happening, but has some doubts as to the effect this will have on the planet. The trouble is this doubt makes him, in the view of the absolutists, a denier — even though he palpably isn’t.
He has resigned from a mildly sceptical climate change think tank because of the furious opposition from within his profession, the repugnance at the notion that he could think differently from the majority.
Furthermore, a paper he co-authored with four other climate change experts was denied publication because, Bengtsson claims, it was not helpful to the climate change cause. He reports that an eminent scientist said precisely those words — “not helpful” — when presented with the paper.
You expect science to be disinterested, to be aloof and pure? You have to be joking — we saw just how pure and aloof and disinterested with the Climategate scandal, in which pro-AGW scientists were accused of repressing dissenting views.
I suspect that partly they do this because, for an awful lot of scientists and researchers, their livelihood depends on AGW not merely existing, but being a clear and present danger, and the more dangerous to mankind the better. And partly because of the absolutist mindset, familiar to many who watch the faux left at work, that opposition simply cannot be tolerated.
@FrankK
You didn’t get all the facts. For instance, the one I mentioned. Would you have a better chance of understanding it if I elaborated emotionally on your intellectual shortcomings or if I factually elaborated on what I meant?
I like Monckton, what he says and how he says it. But, in the large picture, he shoots himself in the foot expressing himself the way he does.
RACookPE1978 says:
May 17, 2014 at 10:07 pm
‘How can I get this as a PDF?’
I’ve installed the Kindle app on my Chrome browser. It allows me to (one-click) download a web page directly to my Kindle and it arrives as a PDF. Could that help you?
Rud Istvan says: “But let me point out, as Bob Tisdale has, we are at war.”
Did I say that?
Jim G says: “This is all about control and the leftist often used game plan to cause turmoil, out of which they then take tighter control.”
That’s why I coined the phrase ‘Khmer Vert’ for these people – the military wing of Greenpiss.
That is the headcount fallacy.
Indeed it is for rather simply maths reasons , to know what percentage of a whole group a sub-group is . You must first know what the size of the whole group is.
Well we have no idea at all about the number of scientists working in any field , that research has never been done. Add to that that there is definitive definition of what a scientists actual is . And you can see why those trying to makes these claims are offering evidenced equal to saying ‘nine out of ten cats prefer..’
As a side note , not one of the organisation that come out in support of ‘the cause , such as the RS , have ever actual polled their members on their views. While some of the reports pushed out by these organisation have been criticised for offer offering over politicised simplistic views on the subject by their own members. So even accepting these organisation do support ‘the cause’ is far from clear that the majority of the members of these organisation support the views a few within the organisation have made public.
The entry 97% is rubbish from top to bottom is not just poor research, it defies good maths too.
I think writing like this contributes to the problem – it might please a few but overall it is moving the game away from science and into us against them – don’t get me wrong I can see you understand the science.
For me it appears that you’re more interested puffing yourself up than keeping science clean and more interested in deriding other views than getting across the important message that man-made climate change is a very small player in the climate as a whole.
I would have to say please don’t encourage such writing, encourage the scientific understanding but leave out all the playground politics.
This website may become more entertaining to the few who will remain but as a place for getting simple good science its slowly going down the pan if it ignores the fact that writing like this plays right into the hands of those who want any excuse to blur the science…..
Tanya Aardman says:
May 17, 2014 at 6:33 pm
Pope Gore and Cardinal Mann will have the inquisition round for you Monckton! Just don’t expect it! 😉
All too common a mis-conception that the Catholic Church opposed the development of science. No other institution played so instrumental a role in its early development. Why did modern science develop only in the West when other parts of the world had equal scientific understanding and development by around 1500? The role the Catholic Church played in that subsequent scientific success in the West cannot be gainsay-ed even though many try to do so.
Siberian_Husky says:
May 18, 2014 at 1:33 am
Indeed you will wish you were one when the global cooling sets in. What is it with Warmista, its always attack attack the person. Don’t they have ANY science AT ALL to offer the average thinking person? In response to the attacks made in your post I believe the current Google ranking of http://billmoyers.com/ tells me everything I need to know about that site. Oh and I wish you all the luck because it appears thats all you have left.
Whuskey.. the fact that the first thing you see in the moyer site is the ultra hypocrite , D, Suzuki, tells you all you need to know about the NON scientific BS that the site is going to offer.
WHAT A JOKE you are to even bother linking to it. !!!
Do you wear clown shoes or a dunces hat.. either would suit you.
Given we know, and it is accepted scientific fact, that changes in CO2 follow changes in temperatures by some 800 years completely disporves all (Modelled) claims that CO2 is the driver of climate and change.
“Siberian_Husky says:
May 18, 2014 at 1:33 am
…or Margaret Thatcher’s scientific advisor?”
Not at the time she gave her speach to the UN in 1989.
Re: Siberian Husky
Why are you changing the subject to who you or I “side” with?
If you disagree with a point, bring up the point you disagree with.
In the end Truth will triumph.
If you change the subject to whether of not Moncton is a “lord” or not, it makes you look like you are scared of facing the facts, and unable to debate the points he brings up.
Unfortunately we do need to get our presentations up a notch or two.
I feel that Lord Monckton’s writings have contributed greatly to the incredibly slow turn round in the absolute belief of the warmers.
However, to get stupid politicians (only requirement is to be voted in) to understand the scientific concept, and to get slightly less stupid main stream media people (only requirement seems to be – enter the interview room with a copy of the Guardian under your arm) to have their ‘moment of sudden realisation’ or epiphany if you like.
Their ‘Arghh’ I understand now – moment.
We need not just the truth as currently define by todays facts, but a solid presentation of these facts, so overwhelming, so understandable the even a hard bitten Guardian (or NYT) reader could understand and ‘click’.
Selling a true story is just as hard as selling a false one.
A very common mistake is to assume the because you are telling the truth, everyone will believe you!
Many people get caught by this aspect of human nature.
The true story of climate change, as currently understood, needs to be told in a very powerful and overwhelming way.
So good Lord, keep your razor sharp intellect intact and add (via those who know how) an unmistakable message, perhaps a ‘repeatable theme’ to each post.
These posts need to be understandable and moving, effecting the ‘stupids’ (politicians and MSM) in our society.
Its not as easy as we think.
Good luck to all.
Siberian_Husky says:
May 18, 2014 at 1:33 am
“http://billmoyers.com/ what an excellent website. I recommend all the denialists read it and learn something rather than all the easily debunked pseudo-science drivel written on this blog.”
ROFLAO are your comment. Pseudo-science drivel, that’s how i would describe billmoyers.com.
By as already mentioned, your response is typical you name call and attack the person. But don’t make any valid points regarding the article. If you don’t have anything constructive to say then shut up.
To
RACookPE1978 says:
May 17, 2014 at 10:07 pm
‘How can I get this as a PDF?’
You can use something like http://www.primopdf.com/. You can then print to pdf. It will save the output as a pdf and you can the edit it to suit yourself.
Thanks Chris. Your charts illustrating the expanding gap between the consensus prophecies and the measured reality seem to be fulfilling their purpose. Please keep it coming.
The misanthropic thermophobia partisans seem to be busy clutching at straws while their wards are assassinating the deserting moderates. Some more cumulonimbus clouds may well be brewing over the thermageddon plateaus.
Clearly observations are now defined as “cherries”. Pick any observation and call it out, and you are indeed “cherry picking”
I agree. I don’t think it’s enough to say, “Well, yes, we agree mankind is warming the Earth—the only question is by how much?” Even a tiny bit of AGW is theoretical. As far as I can see, there is no empirical evidence that human-produced CO2 has any effect whatsoever on the Earth’s climate. So why not say so?
In point of fact, even increasing atmospheric CO2 by an order of magnitude would be nothing but beneficial to the Earth and its inhabitants. CO2 is good for plants, good for the Earth, and good for you!
That should be the message. Let the Warmists dispute it, if they can. Show us the evidence, not hypotheticals.
/Mr Lynn
PS Anyone have an idea why NASA’s satellites say the mass of Antarctica is decreasing, when it cannot be melting? I don’t think they’re talking about sea ice (which is growing, anyway), and most of the continent is too cold for any melting.
It’s fascinating that each claim in the original article is attributed to a person who is then labelled in some negative way. When the rebuttal is given, the scientist is presented with their job title only. Such a simple technique.
So my contribution would read something like this…Travis from Texas, which gave us the Bush family and two wars for oil and who is not a climate scientist, makes the following claim. The Earth has warmed .6 C since 1900. An amount so small that it leads one to wonder what all the fuss is about.
I whole heartedly agree with the GRISS above re trend lines. It a really bad habit the skeptic climate scientists of renown and respect have of drawiing straight lines through temp data.Its obviously not a straight line and only helps to feed the warmist trolls AGW theory that its actually warming 0.14C etc per decade etc. Absolute nonsense please stop it! Even Dr Spencer does this..its incomprehensible!, at least they could put BOTH the best fit curves AND the straight line if they want. The curves are showing a very slight cooling trend… thats why its very important to show the true picture. The rural CET and Armagh set probably the only really reliable surface data shows 0 change since 1700’s This is probably the real true picture of surface temperatures. If satellite data went that far back I bet it would be the same.
In an entirely rational world, “Txomin” and others who complain that my language is too colorful might have a point. As it is, subjecting the climate communists’ arguments to relentless ridicule is wiser than simply ignoring them. In the Germany of the early 20th century, and in the Soviet Union of the mid-20th century the consensus in favor of eugenics or of Lysenkoism were not opposed when they could and should have been. I need not remind anyone of the genocidal result of those two culpable silences.
Now, totalitarianism is on the march again. As with the eugenicists and later the Lysenkoists, so with the Thermageddonites [and, in answer to Bob Tisdale, yes, I coined the term], the correct approach is to point out, in clear scientific terms, just how laughable their pseudo-scientific arguments are, and then to laugh at what is laughable. Nonsense does not deserve to be taken seriously.
The adherents of this poisonous cult had hoped that, when it becomes blindingly obvious to all that they had vastly exaggerated, they would be able to say no one could have known at the time that they were wrong. Now they cannot say that – not because a handful of honest scientists have written a handful of earnest but almost entirely read papers pointing out their errors but because a handful of loud-mouths like me have spoken out much more publicly and much more colorfully, so that the world already knows there is a respectable viewpoint that differs from that of the monopsonistic scientific establishment.
The US, unlike Britain, is still in some respects a free country. So, if the whingers don’t like what I write, they don’t have to read it. Instead, they might like to try their hand at writing themselves, and see how much – or rather how little – coverage they will get if they write as boringly as they wish me to write.
Most know that the “consensus” is formed thus:
Select “party-line” papers, or papers with “this doesn’t preclude man-made global warming” tags included for funding expediency; reject all others;
Test the papers selected in this manner for some statement that conforms to the party line;
Publish the result as demonstrating that “scientists” have formed a “consensus”.
The real question is this: are the “warmists” so dim-witted as to believe this is a valid approach, or is their ignorance willful because, in their minds (such as they may be) the end justifies the means?
richardscourtney says:
May 18, 2014 at 12:52 am
Took the words right out of my mouth. (And said ’em better.)
Lord Monckton, just out of curiousity: I notice that you do not mention carbon dioxide, yet carbon dioxide has increased by about 10% during the current lull in warming. Since carbon dioxide has always been touted as the key greenhouse gas to drive warming, shouldn’t this have been mentioned as an anomaly? Of course, there are also the vast amounts of money that have already been spent (as well as various power plants shut down) simply to prevent the rise of carbon dioxide, which keeps rising inexorably and steadily, despite these frantic efforts. Just wondering if this was an oversight on your part, or a deliberate act, to ignore carbon dioxide?
Monckton of Brenchley says: May 18, 2014 at 7:00 am
Thermageddon out of there if they have any sense. The sight of them clinging to the wreckage should be entertaining.
Christopher, It would be most helpful and most enlightening if the identities of the ‘Real Scientists’ were disclosed. Every one on ‘our’ side has a name, rather than a smokescreen to hide behind. What I have discovered over many decades is that when you make some identified individual accountable for their views, then they either go very quiet in shame and horror, or they step up and put their head on the block.
John K. Sutherland.
Thank you Lord Monckton of Brenchley for your grace and wit!
“…They have made the mistake of subscribing not to a true religion but to a mere shamanistic superstition – a pseudo-religious belief system dressed up as science that can be, as it has here been, demonstrated to be obviously false in just about every material particular.”
They are the new Cargo Culters! They think that by going through the motions that actual (factual) scientists make while doing actual (factual) science, that science will spontaneously (magically) happen. How sad and deluded they have become.
“They also say I cherry-pick 1998 as the start date for my graphs”
The charge of cherry picking dates is pure projection from their own inexcusably shoddy work. Long before Climate-gate, Steve McIntyre was all over the failure of the published work to use up to date proxies. Most of them ended around 1980 and ignored the last 20 years of possible proxy data. The excuse was, gathering recent data was hard and expensive. This resulted in Steve’s Starbucks hypothesis, that he could have coffee in the morning, gather tree ring samples and be home for dinner.
http://climateaudit.org/2005/02/20/bring-the-proxies-up-to-date/
http://climateaudit.org/2007/10/12/a-little-secret/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/11/new-isotope-based-temperature-reconstruction-using-mcintyres-starbucks-hypothesis-tree-core-samples/
And then we found out about “Mike’s little Nature trick.”
I especially like when they report glacier melting with their graphs starting around 1950 and deliberately do not show the rate of melting has been the same since the end of the little ice age.
A good article from Lord Monckton, and I for one enjoy your colourful language. You are quite correct to point out that boring prose would never garner any exposure. That’s why Delingpole had huge numbers of comments when he blogged for the Telegraph.
Of course, laying into the establishment will attract opprobrium. But if you’re willing to take some flack, I salute you sir!
As a post script, being anti establishment used to be cool.
thegriss says:
Statements make this make parodies like this (http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk264/davidflick2/skeptical01ab.jpg) superfluous!
Monckton of Brenchley says:
May 18, 2014 at 7:00 am
Yes. Against the megaphones, mockingbirds, mudslingers, and mighty wurlitzers of the MSM, we skeptics have but a few true weapons to counter their relentless volleys.
Quibbles about style should not cloud appreciation of results, as we enjoy the elegant thrusts of Monckton of Brenchley’s rapier wit and razor-sharp logic, carving up the alarmist’s hype, and stacking it in neat little slices.
Yes, that’s the key to falsifying the models: increasing CO2, flat (or cooling) temperatures. And we have to stop the demonizing of CO2 as ‘pollution’, which is the modus operandi of the Climatists as they attempt to take control of the economies of the Western world. We have to demonstrate that the opposite is true.
In the USA the federal courts have been persuaded by the Climatists that CO2 is a ‘pollutant’ that can be regulated by the government, particularly the EPA. We have to get those decisions reversed, both in the courts, and by legislation. To do so requires making the science crystal clear: There is no such thing as ‘carbon pollution’. There are nothing but benefits from increasing CO2.
That will completely undercut the Alarmist agenda. Without the devil CO2, they will be left floundering without a villain, and without any way of explaining why we should turn over the world to the fear mongers.
Here’s the bumper sticker: CO2 is good for plants, good for the Earth, and good for you!
/Mr Lynn
joeldshore:
I read your post at May 18, 2014 at 8:50 am and checked its links.
I provide this link to help and encourage others to do the same because
1
your first link confirms the point made by ‘thegriss’, and
2
your second link demonstrates that Monckton’s article (above) is right to say warmunists utilise the ‘red-herring fallacy’ because no AGW skeptic would agree that fallacious presentation which was constructed by warmunists.
Richard
It’s no wonder that Lord Monckton did not link to the original article on Moyers’ website: http://billmoyers.com/2014/05/16/eight-pseudo-scientific-climate-claims-debunked-by-real-scientists/
If he did, readers would be able to see how he claims “the red-herring fallacy” in the writings of others but fails to recognize it in his own writing. For example, he says:
He then proceeds to cite evidence that the sun might be entering a quiet period. However, the actual sixth assertion reads: “Climate change deniers seized on an op-ed Henrik Svensmark wrote in 2009 for a conservative Danish newspaper claiming that the sun had entered a cooling cycle, and therefore the Earth would begin to cool as well.” Somehow, Monckton ignored the very important last phrase.
Another example is when Monckton says:
This would lead readers to believe that the article just switched the topic to land ice and did not discuss sea ice at all. However, the actual facts are quite the opposite. They spent less than 7 lines discussing land ice before spending 3 lines explaining the distinction between land and sea ice and another close to 10 lines discussing the sea ice situation before switching back and discussing land ice in the last 3 lines. Readers can go the link above and see how the subject was actually discussed.
Mind you, I am not saying that these are the ONLY two places in his piece where Monckton distorts his opponents’ arguments. They are simply the only two that I have looked at in any detail so far.
Lord Monckton, thank you for that colourful image of the state of modern shamanism, the CAGW cult. The evidence you gave, with your cuspids right down in the flesh of the flawed arguments of Them is obvious for a nonbiased reader. I hope it hurts Them. Nevertheless, the economical aspects of climate change deserve more attention than they get nowadays. I know that you delivered very fine lectures on that issue, they both impressed and pleased me quite a lot.
I assume that the down-to-earth folks like tradesmen etc. will understand arguments that concern their income, undue taxation, carbon-trade-certificates etc. better than numbercrunching on warming which not even highly expensive thermometers can display adequately. And, of course, the matter of adaptation of mankind to changing circumstances is yet another argument for the good old ‚wait-and-see‘ method. Mankind has proven sind 200.000 years that it can and will adapt. That ought to be rubbed in to the minds of the common people as well and I suppose you are the man to do it. Will you dashingly accept those challenges?
Once again
Your obedient servant
Non Nomen
I’m confused, and maybe it’s because I’m lacking in technical sophistication. Is there an error or typo in this post?
In the Envisat graph, the words “Sea level rising at 1.3 inches per century” appear, yet below that, in the text of the post, the words “Sea level rose by about 7-8 inches in the 20th century, according to the tide-gauges. After adjusting for calibration errors and a bewildering variety of tamperings with the satellite sea-level data, that rate has not changed much.” appear.
Aren’t these two statements contradictory? If the rate of 7-8 inches per [century] hasn’t changed much, then how can we now be at a rate of 1.3 inches per century? Could someone help me out here?
Sorry, I myself have a typo in my third paragraph. The second sentence should read “…7-8 inches per CENTURY hasn’t changed much,…” not “per year.” I guess it’s pretty easy for these things to happen ; )
Very well done. Applause! Applause!
I look forward to reading your responses to the resopnses that you elicit.
or “responses” that you elicit, as the case may be.
Rud Istvan: So I suggest more radical prose,
Very droll. I think he’s “preaching to the choir” as it is. But I would not want him to alter his natural style.
Richard:
Keep gripping your forelock. All of what I said is true, if you read carefully what I said.
But of course you can believe what you want, I am sure the bombastic Monckton will appreciate your support.
“All the more amusing because neither the melt water nor the missing heat can possibly get there.” Bingo. Now say that where it will do the most good : sounds like a post.
richardscourtney says:
It is kind of hopeless if you are truly incapable of seeing the similarity between the parody of skeptics and what “thegriss” said and you have now defended.
By the way, just out of curiosity, did you notice that the data “thegriss” plotted after 2000 was offset by -0.25 degC?
gymnosperm says:
May 17, 2014 at 9:27 pm
“perhaps it is sulking at the bottom of the ocean with the missing heat”
Still chuckling. All the more amusing because neither the melt water nor the missing heat can possibly get there.
( Agreed. But it seems somebody needs to outline the obvious. )
Bob Tisdale says:
May 18, 2014 at 2:09 am
Rud Istvan says: “But let me point out, as Bob Tisdale has, we are at war.”
Did I say that?
( I don’t recall you acknowledging it. The basics of propaganda : unceasingly repeat the drivel.)
Monckton
subjecting the climate communists’ arguments to relentless ridicule is wiser than simply ignoring them ( the very recipe : but any tag representing partisan bias is at risk of misrepresenting the bipartisan tyranny )
James Allison
“Don’t they have ANY science AT ALL to offer the average thinking person?”
Simple answer to simple question : No. But that is not really the basis of contention : which is missed routinely and religiously. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
The existence of the greenhouse effect is definitively established both in theory and in experiment and needs no “consensus” to prop it up. CO2 concentration is rising, chiefly owing to our activities (unless Professor Salby is right). Therefore, it is established that our activities may cause warming.
====================
This admits far too much. Granting the bare fact that the greenhouse effect exists, it cannot cause warming unless the magnitude of the effect itself increases over the period in question, to a degree consistent with the warming.
Bruce:
I suppose your post at May 18, 2014 at 12:54 pm is addressed at me because I refuted untrue assertions in your first post with factual information.
Your post I am answering says in total
I don’t grip my forelock.
I read what you said. Others refuted your falsehoods about Svensmark but they did not address your falsehood about the Third Viscount Monckton. You asserted that the Viscount is not a Member of the House of Lords: he is, and I explained the Constitutional reason for how and why he is. My explanation to you is here.
Everything you said in your first post was untrue and has been shown to be false. This is a matter of fact and nobody needs to “believe” anything because the reality is documented.
Bombast is the least that is deserved as a response to anonymous trolls who provide untrue personal assertions as red-herrings to divert threads.
Richard
Siberian_Huskey
To repeat myself, I notice at the end of the post on Moyers that is is just a repackaging of skeptical science material and then it refers the reader back to that website. Seems like the CAGW group rehashes the sks “most used climate myths” every three months and disguises it as something new in some other venue. Based on that, the Moyers website is just another PR shill for a coordinated message by the CAGW group. If he took the article in question down and apologized for presenting it, he might gain a little shred of credibility.
joeldshore:
I write as a courtesy to say that I read your post at May 18, 2014 at 1:00 pm .
While writing, I take the opportunity to thank you for the laughter your post gave to me.
What is “hopeless” is your attempts to justify your presenting a graph which purports to present how skeptics see warming but – in fact – is a fabrication which was constructed by warmunists and represents no views of any skeptics known to me.
And I will bother to answer your question which was
Yes, of course I did!
As I quoted in my post you think you are answering, ‘thegriss’ included that information as part of his link title, he stated it in his text, and he explained it saying this (n.b. which I quoted)
By the way, just out of curiosity, do you notice you are making a fool of yourself when you provide such nonsense as your post I am, answering?
Richard
RACookPE1978 says: May 17, 2014 at 10:07 pm
Does this help?
> Scroll over and highlight the article in your Internet Browser.
> Cut (Control C) the highlighted text and pictures from the Browser onto the clipboard.
> Create a new MS Word document.
> Paste (Control V) the text and pictures from the clipboard into the empty Word document.
> Edit the new Word document at will.
> Use the Word “Save As” command to output your final document as a PDF file for printing and distribution.
With respect, as much as I can Muster, Lord Monckton,
GET TO THE BLOODY POINT!
You have been an icon and I am a fan of truth but this analysis is fubar — lacks insight (are you stalking IPCC tail?)!
Loved it when you rubbed our idiot California Dem noses in their AB32 poop!
Less sugar and more heat in the Tea Sir for my taste!!!
Or, a new Tea Party will win the day in India?
This is all so fubar, GET TO THE BLOODY POINT!
When was the last time you read Dune Lord Monckton?
Do you not understand the “Spice” is “Freedom”?
If Freedom, let’s deconstruct All that apposes IT and salute or fail?
… the specimen was apposed to IPCC science and thus … died for lack of ethics.
So according to The Good Lord, the Royal Society is
“the world’s oldest whining taxpayer-funded pressure-group”.
Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley, Gilbert White, William Herschel, Charles Babbage, Charles Darwin, William Ramsay, Lord Rayleigh, Albert Einstein ….
all dismissed in a throw away line in one of the longest unscientific “whining” rants from Monckton – and that is one of many.
[NOTE: I had originally thought I would snip this ugly, hateful, and juvenile comment from Richard Rowe, then I though better of it. I’ll leave it stand as an example of how not to address anyone or to win an argument. I am however deleting the link in his submission to his hate-speech site, that smears decent hard working Americans, because his particular brand of hate isn’t worthy of any traffic from us. I’m also putting Mr. Rowe in the permanent troll bin, since he’s violated so much of our commenting policy on his very first comment here. Since he wants people he disagrees with to die (see last line, emphasis mine) While he is certainly entitled to his opinion he’s not entitled to a response. Therefore I recommend that he not be engaged on any level – Anthony]
“Lord” Monckton…you are so far up your own rear you’re choking on the excrement of your own lies. Here’s a glaring reality you, with all your charts and graphs, have absolutely failed to address: If man isn’t contributing to global warming through the burning of fossil fuels, then why not go back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to prove your point? They accuse you of cherrypicking data to support your position…fine. Then let’s start at about 1800 and compare the temperature rise since then, shall we? You’re obviously an amazing researcher…I’ll let you collect that data yourself and explain away the results.
Trying to disprove global warming with results from the last two decades is like trying to disprove you have a cold because you haven’t sneezed in the last 15 minutes. It’s utterly ridiculous. Quite frankly, the world will be a better place when corporate loyalists like yourself die of old age, and are replaced by people who have a sense of reason that doesn’t rely on ignoring relevant data. Which all of your assertions do. Your generation has long been bought and paid for…we look forward to the day that we’re rid of you all.
“Trying to disprove global warming with results from the last two decades ”
Absolutely off topic. First there needs to be some proof of man affecting global temperatures that one can disprove. There is none – nor any quantification of said assertion by anyone either !
But I do not look forward to the day when paid trolls quit their efforts to deny and disrupt rational conversation. It isn’t happening…but validates the rude perversity of character assassination being used in lieu of real argument.
Chris, Your fig4 GRACE plot doesn’t look anything like the NASA version:
http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/OceanEvents/GRACE_2010-11_GMSL_ENSO_Oct2012
… and neither look much like this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/28/sea-water-level-fresh-water-tilted/
What’s up with that?
OK.
So, since (contrary to your obscene cursing above) mankind has contributed virtually NOTHING to the atmosphere CO2 concentration prior to 1945, let us consider just what “evidence” you think you have for your hatred of life and envy of those providing energy to billions. Rather, you wish to enrich your democrat elite cronies with the trillion you demand from the working poor and middle class, kill millions of innocents worldwide, and harm billions more now mired in poverty and waste BECAUSE of your politics and greed.
Prior to 1945, CO2 concentration was steady.
Global temperatures rose over a 25 year period
remained steady for 10 year period,
and fell for 20 year period,
and rose sharply for a 20 year period.
and then they were steady for 10 years.
After 1945 CO2 levels rose steadily for 70 years.
Temperatures fell for 20 years – 1945 – 1965.
Temperatures were steady for 10 years – 1965 – 1975.
Temperatures have now been steady for 17 more years – 1996 – 2014.
Both global temperatures and global CO2 levels rose ONLY over the one single short 23 year period of 1975 – 1998.
Out of your self-selected 214 year history, why should I believe your religious faith in claims that CO2 changes between 1945 and 2014 caused any of the 1800 – 2014 global temperature changes?
James Abbott says:
May 18, 2014 at 4:28 pm (criticizing the author for criticizing the Royal Society)
So according to The Good Lord, the Royal Society is
“the world’s oldest whining taxpayer-funded pressure-group”.
Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley, Gilbert White, William Herschel, Charles Babbage, Charles Darwin, William Ramsay, Lord Rayleigh, Albert Einstein ….
all dismissed in a throw away line in one of the longest unscientific “whining” rants from Monckton – and that is one of many.
Please.
Name 3 instances when the Royal Society’s “consensus” of his most highly current members were RIGHT about ANY aspect of science BEFORE opponents and enemies within and without the Royal Society dragged them kicking screaming and complaining with all the esteemed Royal Society sponsors and money into the truth. If the Royal Society EVER promoted the truth and correct science BEFORE they were corrected and admonished by contrary evidence from the “outside” scientists, then you might have a case.
but the consensus of the “Royal Society” – most especially the pronouncements and arguments from its “head” or its “leading experts” or its “committee of experts” has NEVER been “right” …..
As for Richard Rowe’s comment:
“#$%@>>>#$@>>%$#>>>…?//#”
Lucy wants you to take another kick at the football, Charley Brown
Human activity does contribute to pollution. But that can be solved. SMOGs in London were stopped by making it a smoke free zone, burning coal in domestic fires, Industrial discharges into the Thames, etc. It did clear the lower atmosphere. I remember when they sold smog masks in London in the late 1950s as I worked in the Bank of England. SMOGs killed thousands of people. They are grabbing at this and some large cities around the world still have SMOG especially Bangkok.
Many thanks to all who have commented. Some answers to specific points:
“Thegriss” grumbles that I should not use linear trends on non-linear data. Well, the whole point of determining trends is to represent stochastic data in some ordered fashion. Besides, the IPCC uses linear trends, so I remove one ground of argument from that quarter by doing the same. And I recently wrote a detailed posting about the Singer Event – the sudden increase in global temperature from 1993-1998, which on its own accounts for a substantial fraction of all warming since 1950.
“Chuck” says the temperature graph in Fig. 5 shows no units on the y axis. The original graph, from IPCC (1990), had no units on the y axis. And a data reconstruction going back 1000 years does not lose its usefulness merely because it was made 25 years ago. It is clear from the Grinsted sea-level graph, dating back only five years, that the IPCC’s original 1000-year temperature reconstruction (from Hubert Lamb, I think) is likely to be closer to the mark than the more recent and more nonsensical graphs based on the “hokey-stick”.
“Tarco” says I was wrong to say 0.75 Cº global warming has occurred since 1950, for it was only half that much. And a moderator asks whether the rise since 1890 was 0.75 Cº. In fact, the warming since 1890, taken as the mean of the HadCRUT4, GISS and NCDC monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies, is 0.90 Cº. Since 1950, on the same basis, it is 0.75 Cº, as stated in the head posting.
Mr Stoval asks whether there are any real scientists working in the “horrifically unscientific” field of climatology. Pope Paul VI was once asked how many people worked at the Vatican. “About half,” he replied. There are in fact many good scientists doing diligent and careful work, but thanks to the mainstream media we only hear from a small cabal of extremists who tend to put totalitarian politics before true science.
Mr Hanley points out that the global warming since 1950 has not been uniform, and that the weather has only warmed for about half the time. Well, that is what one would expect in a chaotic object.
“Bruce” incautiously assumes that when I say Professor Svensmark had a heart attack not long after he was howled down in the most disgraceful fashion at a Royal Society meeting I have no source for the story. My source is Professor Svensmark himself. He showed me a video of the shrieking and baying of the rent-seekers as they realized that his theory, if true, would bring to an end the most profitable scam in the history science. The Royal Society has become a painful, expensive, and superfluous joke.
Mr Skannen lists various items that he considers to be scientific impossibilities. He begins with “a particle traveling faster than light”. Recently CERN thought that neutrinos transmitted from Switzerland to the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy were traveling faster than light. Then they found a loose wire somewhere in the system. He also lists “an even number that was not the sum of two primes”. Well, under the condition that the two primes must be positive, 2 is an even number that is not the sum of two primes. Mr Skannen may like my formulation of the strong Goldbach conjecture: “Any composite is the mean of two primes”. Elegant, no?
Mr Sutherland asks who the “Real Scientists” were. However, I decided not to mention the names of any of them, to see whether the usual suspects would nevertheless whine that I had written ad hominem remarks. The usual suspects did indeed whine much as usual, not appreciating that if the homines are not immediately identifiable it is the arguments and not the homines who are being subjected to scrutiny.
Mr Shore, grumpy as ever (how sad it must be to be a true-believer when the beliefs and the evidence are now so manifestly at variance), says I was wrong to point out that many solar physicists have pointed out that the Sun is entering a cooling phase, and that consequently some cooling on Earth may be expected. There are several solar physicists who now consider we are likely to see global cooling because the Sun is becoming less active than it was in the second half of the 20th century. Willie Soon at the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute for Astrophysics is one. Sallie Baliunas is another. Habibullo Abdussamatov is another. Dennis Ray Wingo is another. Dr Sebastian Luning is another. Professor Fritz Vahrenholt is another. Let us hope they are wrong. Cooling would be a lot worse for life on Earth than warming.
Mr Shore also says I ought not to have cited the “Real Scientists” on the question of Antarctic ice, because he considers that I might have left readers with the impression that the “Real Scientists” had not talked about sea ice. No, I merely quoted, accurately, a remark by them to the effect that the retreat of six glaciers indicated that Antarctic ice was not increasing. They went on to say that assertion was strange given the shrinking of six glaciers in West Antarctica. I pointed out, validly, that skeptics say Antarctic sea ice is increasing, for the good and sufficient reason that it is.
The anonymously anonymous “Non Nomen” asks for an update of my researches into climate economics, and is kind enough to say he enjoys my lectures on this topic. He should keep an eye on the Non-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is producing its latest volume – on climate economics – chapter by chapter. In due course it will publish an entire chapter substantially by me on the climatological inputs that are relevant for any proper climate-mitigation cost-benefit appraisal. It’s heavyish stuff, but the results are fascinating, confirming that nearly all measures to make global warming go away are 10-100 times more expensive than letting it happen and paying the cost of adapting to its adverse consequences. One mitigation method, and only one, has a mitigation cost of the same order of magnitude as the do-nothing-today option. Read my chapter in the NIPCC to find out which.
Mr deSabla asks whether sea-level rise of 7-8 inches observed by tide gauges over the 20th century and of 1.3 inches/century equivalent observed by the Envisat satellite from 2004-2012 are consistent with one another. The answer is Yes. Eight years is a short period, but it is the full period of the Envisat satellite, and it is a recent period, and it coincides with zero global warming. If warming and cooling are the main reasons for sea-level rise, then one would have expected the warming of the 20th century to cause some warming, and one would also expect the sea level in the 21st century to be small because there has been no warming.
Mr Beale says I make too much of a concession by saying it is established that our activities may cause warming. No: it is established, for the reasons outlined in the head posting, so I am not conceding anything. An analogy: it is established, via the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, that increasing global temperature may near-exponentially increase the partial pressure of water vapor in the atmosphere. But that is not the same thing as to say that it must.
Mr Abbott does not like me calling the Royal Society the world’s oldest whining taxpayer-funded pressure group. I call the Royal Society the world’s oldest whining taxpayer-funded pressure group because it is the world’s oldest taxpayer-funded pressure group. In the days of Newton, Babbage and Darwin it did more science than whining. Now it does too much whining and too little science. One should not be deferential towards an institution that has long outlived its usefulness. It is time to abolish the Royal Society.
It has also been suggested that I have been “trying to disprove global warming with results from the last two decades”. No, I have merely pointed out that a quarter of a century ago the IPCC made an interval of near-term (i.e. decadal-scale) global-warming predictions with great confidence in its First Assessment Report, and that those predictions have turned out to be a 100% exaggeration. The near-term predictions were wrong. Naturally the magnitude and persistence of the error leads one to ask questions about whether the longer-term predictions may prove wrong also. And, as I pointed out in the head posting, the IPCC has itself greatly reduced its near-term projections. Those who think the IPCC should pay no attention to real-world data when attempting to evaluate and then to adjust its own predictions should not whine to me but to the IPCC, which will pay no attention.
I see the sneering trolls are back in force in this thread. What a shame that their science is so poor and their arguments, so ad-hominem and in so many other ways contrary to reason, logic and truth. Why is it that feeble-mindedness and sheer nastiness so often go together? It was the unattractiveness of the true-believers’ behavior that first alerted me to the need to re-examine rather carefully whether what they were saying was true.
Txomin says:
May 18, 2014 at 1:52 am
@FrankK
You didn’t get all the facts. For instance, the one I mentioned. Would you have a better chance of understanding it if I elaborated emotionally on your intellectual shortcomings or if I factually elaborated on what I meant? etc etc etc…..
————————————————————
You must be a ball of fun to live with !!
@knr
I have just conducted a survey of ten cats. Not one of them expressed any belief in the AGW hypothesis*. I think that sinks the hypothesis completely.
(*Though they all thought it would be a good thing if it were true)
REPLY: You need an increased sample size. Observe.
However, even with an increased sample size of cats, you still can’t determine the state of AGW. – Anthony
richardscourtney said:
“Membership of the House of Lords is provided by the monarch who awards Letters Patent. Hereditary Peers pass their Letters Patent to their heirs, but the Letters Patent of Life Peers become defunct upon the demise of their owners.
Lord Monckton is a hereditary Peer who inherited his Letters Patent from his father and – having been issued by the monarch – they can only be rescinded by the monarch. HRH Elizabeth11 has not rescinded the Letters Patent of Lord Monckton and, therefore, he is a Member of the House of Lords (although he does not have a Seat with Voting Rights).
Importantly, Lord Monckton had no need to apply to obtain what he had inherited, and there has been no denial of his inheritance.
So, Bruce, everything in your post was untrue. Perhaps you may care to check your assertions before making another post especially – as in this case – when commenting on an article which reviles use of the “red-herring fallacy”.
Richard”
“After the Committee’s first and second reports were considered,[34][35] the Lords passed the bill 221 to 81 on 26 October 1999.[36] Once the Lords settled the differences between their version of the bill and the Commons version thereof, the Bill received Royal Assent on 11 November 1999 and became an Act of parliament.[3] The Act then came into force the same day.”
“The House of Lords Act 1999 provides firstly that “No-one shall be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage.”
“In May 2011, Mereworth went to court to attempt to force the House of Lords to issue him a Writ of Summons allowing him to sit and vote in the House by virtue of the Letters Patent issued in the creation of the barony. The case (Baron Mereworth v Ministry of Justice) was dismissed on the grounds that the High Court did not have jurisdiction on how the House of Lords conducted its business. Furthermore, even if the court did have jurisdiction, the House of Lords act of 1999 clearly withdrew the right of holders of Letters Patent to be issued a Writ of Summons purely “by virtue” of those Letters.[1] Mereworth was also ordered to pay £8,800 in costs.”
Of course Monckton could challenge these things in court, but he wont, because he knows he will loose, and his position would be even less tenable with a direct decision against him.
richardscourtney said:
“Membership of the House of Lords is provided by the monarch who awards Letters Patent. Hereditary Peers pass their Letters Patent to their heirs, but the Letters Patent of Life Peers become defunct upon the demise of their owners.
Lord Monckton is a hereditary Peer who inherited his Letters Patent from his father and – having been issued by the monarch – they can only be rescinded by the monarch. HRH Elizabeth11 has not rescinded the Letters Patent of Lord Monckton and, therefore, he is a Member of the House of Lords (although he does not have a Seat with Voting Rights).
Importantly, Lord Monckton had no need to apply to obtain what he had inherited, and there has been no denial of his inheritance.
So, Bruce, everything in your post was untrue. Perhaps you may care to check your assertions before making another post especially – as in this case – when commenting on an article which reviles use of the “red-herring fallacy”.
Richard”
“After the Committee’s first and second reports were considered,[34][35] the Lords passed the bill 221 to 81 on 26 October 1999.[36] Once the Lords settled the differences between their version of the bill and the Commons version thereof, the Bill received Royal Assent on 11 November 1999 and became an Act of parliament.[3] The Act then came into force the same day.”
“The House of Lords Act 1999 provides firstly that “No-one shall be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage.”
“In May 2011, Mereworth went to court to attempt to force the House of Lords to issue him a Writ of Summons allowing him to sit and vote in the House by virtue of the Letters Patent issued in the creation of the barony. The case (Baron Mereworth v Ministry of Justice) was dismissed on the grounds that the High Court did not have jurisdiction on how the House of Lords conducted its business. Furthermore, even if the court did have jurisdiction, the House of Lords act of 1999 clearly withdrew the right of holders of Letters Patent to be issued a Writ of Summons purely “by virtue” of those Letters.[1] Mereworth was also ordered to pay £8,800 in costs.”
Of course Monckton could challenge these things in court, but he wont, because he knows he will loose, and his position would be even less tenable with a direct decision against him.
[Note: Using different screen names is a form of sockpuppetry, and it is against the rules here. ~ mod.]
To Richard and the Good Lord:
Richard:
Note the following report which has also just been presented by thecaptaingoesforth;
The letter, sent by David Beamish, clerk of the parliaments, to Monckton last Friday and now published on the Lords’ website, states: “You are not and have never been a member of the House of Lords. Your assertion that you are a member, but without the right to sit or vote, is a contradiction in terms. No one denies that you are, by virtue of your letters patent, a peer. That is an entirely separate issue to membership of the House. This is borne out by the recent judgement in Baron Mereworth v Ministry of Justice (Crown Office).”
Your Lordship:
Why not share this video with us? I have checked your story out and I have not had any confirmation that Professor Svensmark was howled down at the RS. (Aside from a Fellow leaving to go to the washroom. Not surprising given the age of Fellows!)
Svensmark did, indeed, have a heart seizure some time after his RS appearance but making a connection between the two exceeds even your medical expertise. He was carrying an implanted pacemaker at the time of his attack.
May I say that, whereas you may be on the side of the angels, your rambunctious presentations may be amusing to some but they can diminish the impact of the facts you marshal.
this has been noted by others here.
A follow on to Bruce’s comments about Svensmark. Here is a link to Svensmarks’ paper, which is up on the Royal Society’s web site: http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/219-news-2012/2117-did-exploding-stars-help-life-on-earth-to-thrive
I cannot find any articles or stories about him being shouted down, so welcome any supporting evidence of that. However, the introductory paragraph of the RAS story seems fairly even handed and in fact calls the research novel:
Research by a Danish physicist suggests that the explosion of massive stars – supernovae – near the Solar System has strongly influenced the development of life. Prof. Henrik Svensmark of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) sets out his novel work in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Finally, the unfortunate heart attack occurred while Svensmark was in the middle of a climate change debate being broadcast live on Danish TV – a debate which he presumably volunteered for. To assign blame to the RAS due to his prior experience there is employing the same kind of unproven causality you decry in others.
In Figure 1 & 2 the r^2 are low. This indicates the data do not fit the linear model. Temperature variation is non-linear maybe cyclical. We should stop using linear models to forecast temperature.
I apologise if this is a resend. I have been obtaining much difficulty sending posts since the WUWT format change, Richard
Drumphil, thecaptaingoesforth, and Bruce:
Thankyou for your replies to me at May 18, 2014 at 6:59 pm, May 18, 2014 at 7:12 pm and May 18, 2014 at 8:12 pm, respectively.
I notice that the posts of Drumphil and thecaptaingoesforth are not merely similar: they are word-for-word the same!
Such identical posts on a matter which is a side-issue are highly indicative of co-ordinated trolling. The same quotations could be expected to be used, but verbatim comment on such quotations is ‘a comment too far’. Drumphil and thecaptaingoesforth each writes
This statement is identical in their posts (even the mistaken use of the word “loose” for “lose” is the same).
Therefore, it is clear that the three of you are trolling by presenting your red-herring as a method to deflect the thread from its subject and onto the side-issue.
I refuse to assist your trolling so I am withdrawing from discussion of your fallacious and irrelevant argument. And I commend everybody to do the same.
Richard
…compared with little more than nine years ago the IPCC predicts that the weather should now be a sixth of a Celsius degree warmer than it is… If its predictions had been correct, there should have been two-thirds of a degree of global warming since then, but in the real world where the rest of us live there has only been one-third of a degree of warming…
No alarmist prediction has ever turned out to be correct, whether it is disappearing Arctic ice, ocean ‘acidification’, runaway global warming, heat hiding in the deep ocean, accelerating sea level rise, polar bear decimation, etc. They were all wrong.
When every prediction made by one side is wrong, rational people will understand that their original premise was wrong. Therefore, the alarmist crowd is ipso facto irrational. We are dealing with mental derangement.
Monckton of Brenchley:Mr Hanley points out that the global warming since 1950 has not been uniform, and that the weather has only warmed for about half the time. Well, that is what one would expect in a chaotic object.
Pretty good. About the only thing you can really expect from a high dimensional chaotic system is that common sense expectations are not likely to be relevant.
I also liked (paraphrasing): establishing that it may be so is not the same thing as establishing that it is so. You used the case for CO2 warming the surface and atmosphere, and the Clausius-Clapayron law as examples. Just so.
[rant – too idiot-like to publish -mod]
Shucks. It’s only how I see it from here, Mod 🙂
Richard:
Your clock is cleaned.
@bobl
“Most supporters think like this, reducing CO2 pollution couldn’t hurt, all my friends will love me because I’m a friend of the planet, and I’d be able to self-agrandise…so OK I’ll be pro CAGW”
I’ve never heard it put quite so succinctly!
” Therefore, it is clear that the three of you are trolling by presenting your red-herring as a method to deflect the thread from its subject and onto the side-issue.
I refuse to assist your trolling so I am withdrawing from discussion of your fallacious and irrelevant argument. And I commend everybody to do the same.
Richard”
You’d know exactly what happened if the mods didn’t hide it from everyone. 😉
They like using an invisible hand so it is not clear to everyone exactly what is blocked, and what isn’t, or why.
As it stands now I have no idea if you will even see this message. Transparency isn’t this sites strongest feature.
I’ll leave it up to your imagination to decide why the choose to do things this way.
What is the big deal about Lord Monkton’s status as an English viscount or membership in the House of Lords? Most of his esteem comes from the excellent information and analysis he presents about climate change. Prince Charles is about as royal as it gets, but in the arena of climate change he’s pretty vacant.
Earth surface temps stopped falling in 1907, very broadly averaged. Thru the balance of Century 20, warmth accumulated @ 1.5 hundredths F. per year (Hadley global, five year average). Why, with the secular signal so small, would one want to exacerbate the noisy data, by narrowing down to MONTHLY values? ! In thirteen years since the third of all observed warming to date emerged from one El Nino, (0.55 F. from 9/97 thru 8/98), the five year average has advanced 2.2 hundredths F. per year, or 45% faster than the rate established in the prior 90 years.
The dominant thermal mass has a shorter record. The means of adapting the longer surface records to best capture the history of ocean warming, is by BROADENING the sampling interval. The easiest way to distort and dissemble, or fool the gullible, is to embellish the noise by selectively narrowing the sampling interval. Mr. Monckton uses a method one avails oneself, when one wishes to deceive. Broadly averaged, the pause becomes an acceleration.
The Berkeley value for September 1996 is: 0.121. For last Sept., 0.558. Thus, across Monckton’s 17 years, observed heating of 0.437 C., averages 4.6 hundredths F. per year. This is fully triple the warm-rate prevailing across the Twentieth Century! Seriously folks, how can you take the value this analyst selects, step forward a single month, and see his argument for a “pause” turn into a TRIPLING of the long term warm rate? How is he credible? I don’t get it.
Dave Peters:
I read your post at May 19, 2014 at 11:06 pm and the only thing I understood was that you don’t like Lord Monckton.
Please try to write a more clear statement of whatever it is you were trying to say so I and others can understand it.
Richard
drumphil:
I am replying to your post at May 19, 2014 at 10:55 pm which is addressed to me and says
I DO NOT BELIEVE YOU!
Before explaining why I reject your assertions, I need to point out that I have repeatedly been given temporary bans from posting on WUWT and I consider that each of those bans was unjust. However, Anth0ny Watts is the host of this blog and, therefore, only he has a right to decide what and who can appear on WUWT. In the last week Anth0ny Watts provided an article about a ‘climategate’ email which quoted me and he banned me from continuing to comment on that thread because I objected to personal attacks of me. I have twice withdrawn from posting on WUWT because of other (as I perceived them) injustices, and I only returned in response to requests from people other than Anth0ny Watts. Clearly, if I had a bias then it would be towards believing your assertions, but I do not believe them.
The Mods do NOT “hide” anything. I know because they have ALWAYS posted a note to show when and why a post from me has been “trimmed”. I can see no reason for you to have been treated differently.
There was clear evidence (which I cited in my post at May 19, 2014 at 1:39 am) that at least three of you were involved in co-ordinated trolling intended to divert this thread from its subject. If the Mods did want to “hide” any of your posts then they could – and would – have stated why.
WordPress has been losing posts I have made to WUWT since the recent introduction of changes to the format of WUWT. And I note that others have said they have also had difficulties. I do not know if you use WordPress but I suspect you may be accusing the Mods of nefarious activity because you are using WordPress and are misunderstanding WordPress problems.
Richard
Mods:
Yet again I have made a post that has gone AWAL.
I again ask you to let me know if this one is not in the ‘bin’.
And I strongly suspect I am not alone in having these problems with WordPress since adoption of the new WUWT format.
Richard
It seems like someone is getting hot under the collar … first they defame you and then they delete the posting of your rebuttal … Stalin would be proud of them, https://www.facebook.com/SkepticalScience/posts/10152188627463335
The global GDP thru the balance of the century might exceed thirty quadrillion dollars. A trillion of that ought readily purchase the capacity to barge-mount ~20 contemporary nuclear pumping stations, moored along the Antarctic coast. Lifting a dozen times the Colorado River over ~300 feet mountains and distributing salt water into basins for re-freezing might restrain adaptation costs to pennies on the dollar in comparison to a city-by-city campaign of barrier construction.
Reply to “Richard”, re: Monckton
Richard – At issue is the cost posed by decarbonization vs. the quality of the world we bequeath posterity. The signal we desire to discern is tiny, and great care ought be directed at lengthy extrapolations from available measurements. Nevertheless, tens of millions of measurements are super-condensed and archived as annual two or three-digit anomalies by, say, GISS.
59 83 112 74 74
108 121 99 104 110
These two strings represent such annual anomalies for two five-year intervals, in hundredths of Fahrenheit degrees. Note that the first datum, for 1996 is less than half of 2010’s value of 121. On average, since the modern world was first measured to warm (via a broad, 35 year, crawling average) in 1907, it has only warmed by a hundredth and a half (0.015 F.) degree each year. I claim that any rational soul can quickly scan those two strings and correctly assess that the world has warmed in the 13 years between 1998 and 2011. Mr. Monckton in one fashion or another, wants to fasten upon that “112” value, to incorrectly assert that we needn’t worry about posterity. It is not that I do not “like” Monckton, but rather that the two strings tell me, as a self-evident obviousness, that warming continues. Indeed, we easily sum the strings, divide by 5, and divide the resultant difference by 13 to assess that the RATE of warmth between 1998 and last December 31 has INCREASED by 45%, from 1.5 hundredths F., to 2.2 hundredths F. per annum. The “pause” is a hoax.
Dave Peters:
Thank you for providing clarification for me in your post at May 20, 2014 at 1:16 pm.
Unfortunately, I still fail to clearly understand what you are trying to say. I think it is summarised by your concluding sentence; i.e.
I apologise if I have misunderstood your true meaning, but my interpretation is enhanced by your saying
Assuming my interpretation is correct then you are plain wrong, and your error arises from your failure to consider confidence limits (climastrology uses a convention of 95% confidence).
Global warming discernible at 95% confidence has not existed for at least 17 years according to all available data sets of global temperature. Global warming discernible at 95% confidence did exist for the previous 17 years.
In other words, discernible global warming has stopped. Whether this is a “pause” in the warming cannot be known because the period of lack of discernible global temperature change may end with warming or cooling.
Richard
Guest Essay By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
They maintain that if the Sun were the cause of recent warming all altitudes would warm, but that “the upper atmosphere is actually cooling”. Er, no. The stratosphere cooled in the 1990s but its temperature has shown little trend this millennium.
Not true, the upper stratosphere still shows a decline, don’t confuse it with the lower stratosphere where the effect of ozone counteracts the effect of CO2.
Guest Essay By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
They are upset that I have pointed out that this record centennial warming rate occurred between 1663 and 1762. This, They think, is “cherry-picking”.
Well you did pick the period when the measurements were mostly made indoors!
richardscourtney said:
“The Mods do NOT “hide” anything. I know because they have ALWAYS posted a note to show when and why a post from me has been “trimmed”. I can see no reason for you to have been treated differently.”
Why don’t you ask them. There are posts I made in this thread that are not visible at all. Not there with a [snip] notice, instead just not there at all. Ask them if I’m lying. And, the explanation to what happened with the double post was in one of the posts that did get a [snip mod] thing on it. They could have left the bit that explained what happened, but they nuked the whole post.
[see note in other comment – commenting here is not a right, it is a privilege, see the policy page -mod]
And, of course, having made that post, I now have to wait and see if it goes up at all! My posts go to moderation, and then it is decided if they are let through at all. Sometimes they might go through, sometimes they might be displayed with just the mods comment, and sometimes they just disappear! No joke, ask them if you don’t believe me.
Hey, there we go. My last two posts just above this one have now showed up as “your comment is awaiting moderation.”
“The Mods do NOT “hide” anything. I know because they have ALWAYS posted a note to show when and why a post from me has been “trimmed”. I can see no reason for you to have been treated differently.”
Anything to add now Richard? If this process was truly transparent there would be no confusion as to exactly what happened would there?
[note – “mods” always leave a note when the SEE and snip a comment for policy. Comments not seen that get thrown out with the hundreds to thousands of SPAM comments received each day at WUWT don’t fall into that category. clean up your commenting style and you might very find yourself back in a good position to comment without being pre-moderated. whining won’t improve your situation, and right now you are taking up a lot of moderator time -mod
p.s Courtney has been on the moderation list too, but he learned how to get along. will you?]
This is one of my posts that disappeared.
“”What is the big deal about Lord Monkton’s status as an English viscount or membership in the House of Lords?”
I think the big deal is that if you are going to throw rocks at other peoples houses, you should make sure your own house isn’t made of glass first. Monckton does attack other peoples credibility, and so his own personal credibility is indeed a fair topic.
“Prince Charles is about as royal as it gets, but in the arena of climate change he’s pretty vacant.”
Yeah, but he isn’t making false claims about his status.”
There was also another post which I didn’t think to make a copy of where I responded to this statement by Monckton:
“I see the sneering trolls are back in force in this thread. What a shame that their science is so poor and their arguments, so ad-hominem and in so many other ways contrary to reason, logic and truth. Why is it that feeble-mindedness and sheer nastiness so often go together?”
I find this a bit rich coming from someone who showed Ross Garnaut’s name on a Swastika. That isn’t nasty? Monckton is not above such behavior. He did apologize for this when it made the headlines, but it was a calculated deliberate act. He wasn’t just walking around with a picture of a swastika in one hand, Ross Garnaut’s name in the other, and tripped and stuck his name on the swastika accidentally.
There are many other examples that I can list of Monckton being what any reasonable person would call nasty.
“It was the unattractiveness of the true-believers’ behavior that first alerted me to the need to re-examine rather carefully whether what they were saying was true.”
People in glass houses…
Yeah, but Richard questioned my honesty when I said that some of my posts had disappeared without a trace.
drumphil says:
Monckton… did apologize
Which puts him head and shoulders above anyone else cited by “drumhill”, AKA: “thecaptaingoesforth”.
Lord Monckton signs his own name to his comments. Too bad not everyone is like him. But being anonymous is some protection against living in a glass house.
mod said:
“Comments not seen that get thrown out with the hundreds to thousands of SPAM comments received each day at WUWT don’t fall into that category. clean up your commenting style and you might very find yourself back in a good position to comment without being pre-moderated.”
Are you saying that my posting style was at fault for my message being classified as spam?
What was spammy about the post I showed two messages ago?
“Lord Monckton signs his own name to his comments.”
I put my full name and address up for everyone to see, but the mods redacted it.
My name is Philip Schaeffer.
“Monckton… did apologize”
Yeah, once caught out in the glare of negative publicity. There are also many other nasty things he has said that he has never apologized for. He has shown many times that he is not above the sort of nastiness that he judges other by.
And, the last time I made a remark that I looked back on and thought “now you’re just being a smartarse, and that doesn’t help anything”, I apologized without any prompting from anyone.
Well, props to you, Philip Schaefer, for posting your name. I don’t know who redacted it, but some moderators have apparently never read Anthony’s Rules For Moderators.
Regarding Lord Monckton, you denigrated his apology. That is unfair. Prince Charles [among other climate alarmists] labels skeptics with various pejoratives. But Charles has never apologized, and he never will. Neither has any other alarmist apologized, and many of them are extremely vicious.
You would do better pointing out what they do, rather than attacking Lord M in the same ad hominem way as those in the alarmist clique. If you want to attack, then attack his science. That is fair game. Getting personal is not.
“If you want to attack, then attack his science. That is fair game. Getting personal is not.”
Monckton breaks these rules frequently, while complaining here in this thread about the nastiness of others. But I can’t respond because that isn’t talking about science?
“Monckton also complained he had received no response from the archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, John Nienstedt, saying he was “probably so busy sorting out the problems with little boys that he hasn’t got time to deal with this one.”
How does that rate on the nasty scale?
“So unusual is this attempt actually to meet us in argument, and so venomously ad hominem are Abraham’s artful puerilities, delivered in a nasal and irritatingly matey tone (at least we are spared his face — he looks like an overcooked prawn)”
That one is truly hilarious. Working on the “two wrongs make a right” theory?
drumphil,
You are fixated on Lord Monckton. Why?
As I wrote: Regarding Lord Monckton, you denigrated his apology. That is unfair.
And it is unfair! Once again: attack LM’s science. If you can. Anything else is ad hominem.
You are getting way too personal. Why? What has Lord Monckton ever done to you?
If Monckton just stuck to the science I wouldn’t have anything to say about him.
And, I must make a correction. Monckton didn’t put Ros Garnaut’s name next to the swastika, but he did have a quote from him next to the swastika, and made statements such as “Heil Hitler, on we go,” and likened Garnaut to a Nazi.,
So, sorry about that. The point still stands, but that doesn’t diminish my responsibility to be accurate in my statements about what Monckton said and did.
drumphil:
Your post at May 20, 2014 at 7:35 pm says in total
THAT IS A FALSEHOOD!
In truth, at May 20, 2014 at 3:08 am my post to you concluded
Clearly, I did NOT “question {your} honesty”. Your accusation is a falsehood.
Your falsehood demonstrates your lack of honesty.
Also, you have now successfully trolled this thread to discussion of irrelevance. This trolling was the original – and clear – intention of the co-ordinated effort of you and at least two other trolls. And you have the gall to mention your “honesty”!
Richard
Re: Lord Monckton et al
What goes on here about Lord Monckton, what he is, if he is and if not why etc. seems to me a vast playground for trolling and other distracting practices. I’d be glad if that could cease, the sooner the better. I can hear the warmistas choking with laughter(ok, a nice way to die…).
The posts were disappeared in a totally opaque way. The explanations given so far are very vague.
“Comments not seen that get thrown out with the hundreds to thousands of SPAM comments received each day at WUWT don’t fall into that category. clean up your commenting style and you might very find yourself back in a good position to comment without being pre-moderated.”
Given the timing of events, and the nature of the messages that disappeared, I find it hard to believe that they were mistaken for spam. I got mistaken for a spammer, despite me not having sent one damn piece of spam in the ever in my life and certainly not here, and it happened just as I was put on moderation? Anyway, they make no mention of wordpress being responsible for the messages disappearing.
They don’t even say for certain that my messages were dumped as spam. Can’t they check? Can’t they just state exactly what happened to the messages in question? Can’t be that hard to find out can it? Deciding that something is spam, and deleting it without a trace or explanation sounds like an invisible hand to me.
“There was clear evidence (which I cited in my post at May 19, 2014 at 1:39 am) that at least three of you were involved in co-ordinated trolling intended to divert this thread from its subject. If the Mods did want to “hide” any of your posts then they could – and would – have stated why.”
If it wasn’t [snipped] you’d know exactly what happened with the double post, as I explained it clearly. Not my decision to redact the information.
REPLY: You don’t understand how wordpress works. Nor to do you know how the spam appears. Sometimes we get PAGES of it in the moderation bin. Lots of it is long wordy posts with dozens of embedded links. Sometimes, rather than wade through pages and pages of this stuff volunteer moderators just delete it all because it is too time consuming. Note in our policy page, we note that “bulk moderation may be employed to save time.”. In your situation, being a person who is trolling and using sockpuppetry with a different identity, you get to share the same rules and bin as spam.
Clean up your act, and you might get elevated. Keep it up and you’ll be in the permanent troll bin.
For now, take a 48 hour time out for the sockpuppetry. There won’t be a second time out or warning. – Anthony
“Your falsehood demonstrates your lack of honesty. ”
I’ve been wrong before, and I might be now, but I am not trying to deceive anyone.
REPLY: “I am not trying to deceive anyone”. Really? Then why the need to sockpuppet as “thecaptaingoesforth” ? I’ve verified these are both your identity. Why the need for any of your fake names? At least Mr. Courtney and Mr. Monckton have the courage to put their names to their words. Take a 48 hour time out – Anthony
drumphil:
re your repetition of your falsehood which you provide at May 21, 2014 at 1:03 am.
You asserted that I had “questioned {your} honesty” when – in reality – I had stated a possible explanation of why you had been mistaken into having made a false accusation against the mods.
I said of your assertion,
“Your falsehood demonstrates your lack of honesty.”
It does, and so does your refusal to withdraw your falsehood and apologise.
Richard
Mods:
Yest again a post from me has disappeared. A return to the old system would be appreciated.
Richard
REPLY: See Richard, here’s the thing; your comments are just as much of a moderation burden as “rumphill” in this dispute. He’s not going to apologize any more than you are going to stop getting into food fights. Both of you are wasting moderation time here. So, the solution is to stop. – Anthony
Drumphil says:
If Monckton just stuck to the science I wouldn’t have anything to say about him.
There are very few commenters who “just stick to the science”. You certainly are not doing that here.
Lord Monckton is a valued contributor who writes excellent articles and uses verifiable facts to back them up. That is why he is so viciously attacked by the alarmist clique. Their attacks are all ad hominem because they cannot dispute his facts or his science.
There is plenty to attack on the climate alarmist side. Why attack one of our own?
I didn’t read that part of Lord Monckton putting a swastika next to Ross Gore-nit. Gee how appropriate, he stood up for the governments alarmist projections (ALP) and told farmers to farm kangaroos rather than sheep and cattle to cut methane. You can imagine the reaction! What would happen to our wool industry for starters? If kangaroos were suitable to domesticate the Aborigines would have tried. They are marsupials the idiot. We do sell kangaroo meat but it is shot from the wild. I don’t like it but people do as it low in fat, bit gamey, and needs herbs and garlic to give it a taste, like venison. My dogs like it though. He came to New England and was taken to a sustainable farm that rotates beef and cattle and doesn’t use vaccinations etc., (other than the mandatory ones, but no wormers) and he got a short shift from the farmer, he said he was not doing this for climatic reasons but to increase production. He was taken around by Tony Windsor friend of the Greens.
Sorry should have written beef and sheep. It seems the cattle eat the top of the grass where the worm larvae are but are not affected by this worm, then he puts his sheep in after the cattle.
“REPLY: “I am not trying to deceive anyone”. Really? Then why the need to sockpuppet as “thecaptaingoesforth” ? I’ve verified these are both your identity. Why the need for any of your fake names? At least Mr. Courtney and Mr. Monckton have the courage to put their names to their words. Take a 48 hour time out – Anthony”
So I take it you didn’t read the contents of the message you or your mods [snip]ped? Because I did explain. Why delete my explanation, and then ask what happened? If my intent was to deceive, then why would my next post explain what happened, and identify myself as the originator of the second post? Some deception eh? Everyone here would already know this if it hadn’t been snipped.
And, I have put my name up for everyone to see in this thread. It’s still there. I have done this before with my address as well, but the mods chose to redact it.
I suppose it would make more sense to just post under my own name. I didn’t think of that when I started here, and just used the tag I use everywhere. So, from now on I will post as Philip Schaeffer. I’ll make note in my posts of this change for a while so no one is confused as to who exactly is talking.
Richard:
“You asserted that I had “questioned {your} honesty” when – in reality – I had stated a possible explanation of why you had been mistaken into having made a false accusation against the mods.”
You are right. I apologize.
Anthony:
“He’s not going to apologize any more than you are going to stop getting into food fights.”
Well, that’s the second time I apologized in this thread. First time unprompted, second time because Richard rightly pointed out that I misrepresented what he said. I don’t know why you insist on claiming that I would never apologize, when I have before in this thread, and previously in other threads.
Finally: Richard, may I ask what you now think of my claims about the invisible hand of the moderators, and about stuff disappearing without a trace or a [snip] notice?
REPLY: OK post as Philip Schaeffer henceforth, but do try to get along without taking simple things like a missing “d” and responses that end up deleted with spam as some sort of “moderator conspiracy”.
This blog has volunteer moderators, live with it.
You ask people here to “grow up” I ask you look in the mirror and do the same, because these petty arguments are a complete waste of time. Move on from this stuff or move out. That goes for Courtney too. – Anthony
“I didn’t read that part of Lord Monckton putting a swastika next to Ross Gore-nit.”
Why do you think he apologized for that?
And, seriously what is the go with the 5th grade name calling?
Anthony: “rumphil”
bushbunny: “Ross Gore-nit”
Grow up.
REPLY: I’m not doing any name-calling, that was a typo, missed the d …chill. -Anthony
Ok. Thanks for pointing that out.
Anthony I was being (well I thought polite) because Ross G is one of the most unpopular men in our farming community and a twit., Paid heaps for his input regarding stemming climate change and he is an economist.
I hope that Richard does read this tread again, because I take seriously my obligation to apologize if I am in the wrong.
REPLY: I’m sure he will, and welcome to the light – Anthony
“and welcome to the light ”
Well, thanks, but this is how I’ve always lived and to the best of my ability behaved.
FWIW. I am a skeptic as a general principle. It would be quite sad if you knew how much time in my life I have spent arguing with people who don’t understand sampling theorem (Nyquist–Shannon). When I’m not working as computer/network tech, I’m either playing drums in recording studios, or working as a tech in them (or at the local radio station). The amount of time I have spent gaining the understanding necessary to be able to understand why things work the way they do, rather than having to rely on standardized procedures to get anything working still boggles my brain. Years out of my life.
I do care about understanding things, and doing my best to do the things that give me the best chance of negating the negative effects of the weakest part of my ability to perceive things accurately, namely myself.
Oh yeah, that also explains my tag “drumphil”… My name is phil, and I play drums.. drum phil… Geddit?? Huh Huh Do ya???…
Yeah, sad, I know.
Now you have introduced yourself Phillip, let’s get back to the thread. Comments here are opinions or support of the anti-AGM hypothesis. Not to attack other contributors.
About the Sagan episode, he did say that warming could herald in another ice age, and the pic of an electricity generator spewing out steam. It is a fact that the planet or Northern Hemisphere has warmed prior to another plunge into a colder period. In Europe the MIA was quite nasty as far as growing crops and particularly grapes in UK. However, they turned the grape presses into the first printing presses. Then England started growing grapes again post 1965, when before all citrus fruits and grapes were grown in glass houses or large green houses. (When I was young, my grandfather grew tomatoes in a green house during the 1940s & 50s in North England (Liverpool) We grow cold weather wines in New England. And the UNE has experimented on heating the wires to stop frost attacking the flowers. The wines are very nice too.