The BBC posted a surprising story this past weekend that has skeptics cheering and alarmists hopping mad.
Here’s the opener:
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
The headline?
What happened to global warming?
By Paul Hudson
Climate correspondent, BBC News
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.
They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?
During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.
Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the Sun.
But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.
The scientists’ main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.
And the results were clear. “Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity,” said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.
He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.
He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.
If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.
Read the complete story here at the BBC
It’s a big turnaround for the BBC.
Gives one hope that the MSM may be considering actually opening the debate on the root causes of climate change, rather than simply ignoring dissent, and providing a single and politically charged “alarmist” point of view.
I sincerely hope Mr. Paul Hudson may not be forced to internal job change, or demoted, or sacked……..
Because the AGW crowd has overstated their case, they are out on a limb. Their claim is not merely that AGW is true, but that anyone who disagrees is such a “flat-earth” loony that they should be silenced.
If AGW skepticism is merely shown to be plausible, the AGW crowd may quickly regret their impolitic words. Their slanderous treatment of skeptics could be grounds for lawsuits.
Slightly OT, but I wonder why the DMI seaice extent is somewhat languid these days:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
while the JAXA sea ice extent:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
appears fairly vivacious.
“During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.”
Hockey stick?
“They argue that there are natural cycles,..”
Are there one or two ideas that stand out above all the other competing ideas; and are any close to being accepted?
“Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to (sic) the energy from the Sun increasing.”
Skeptics? Really? Which ones? How? How does this statement relate to the “natural cycles” mentioned above.
“…compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.”
I wonder who choose the “global average” and how was it derived?
“Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity,”
And so on.
Anyone reading this has got to be confused and or irritated and this will not cause anyone anywhere to change from one position to the other.
It seems like the BBC is just hedging/trying to cover themselves in case the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Narrative they’ve helped propagate comes unhinged. The BBC is still reporting garbage scare stories:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299426.stm
The BBC has become a sloppy propaganda machine and the British public should demand the revocation of its public funding.
When I see this story on the main news then I will believe that the BBC are intersted in debating the issue.
My suspicion is that they posted this story to cover themselves against the charge of bias, and as something to appeal to when the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. Some day.
Pete
Did someone hack their web site?
If the ABC in Australia said something like this, I’d just about die of shock.
The article has been up for 2 days on the BBC web site. It hasn’t been pulled. It has the names Piers Corbyn and Don Easterbrook in it. And it has questions that allow doubts that man is the cause of global warming.
The article has been up all weekend on BBC news online. I’ll wait until tomorrow, Monday, to see if the BBC shows any regrets before I decide what to think of them leaving it up for so long.
correction :
I should have said “And it makes points that allow doubts…” not “And it has questions that allow doubts…”
—–
I like that the article opens with this and it is in bolds : …the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
Paul Hudson is described as a “Climate correspondent”. The usual misleading alarmist and biased global warming reporters for the BBC are described as “Environment correspondents”. Maybe this is the first person the BBC has employed who has a bit of knowledge about the climate. Or maybe he’s the only member of this new department and so can easily be disposed of by closing the department. He seems to be out on a limb without a safety net. The BBC is full of people with chain-saws.
I am sure that the BBC allowed this report to show how unbiased they were.
I am equally sure they were surprised if not horrified by how much attention it got. Which suggests word is spreading fast.
I am equally sure that the Sunday Times, sister to the London Times, which published a rather snide but more or less well informed article today did so to test public reaction.
This may all be straws in the wind or it maybe that they sense the British public is tired of this hobgoblin and wants a new one.
I may be wrong mind, it may be wishful thinking, but I think something strange happened this weekend. I don’t know how, why or what.
You cannot see beyond the bundobust. You can only sense: and may well be wrong. But it has my whiskers twitching.
indeed if it is so be sure the AGW story will be dead as mutton in months and the BBC and Grub St., not that it physically exists anymore, will have found some new apocalyptic scare to frighten the public.
No idea what it would be mind. Any guesses? A glass of champagne in my London club to the best suggestion offered by some worthy winner.
Kindest Regards
Re my previous post at 22:51:09:
“‘Scary’ climate message from past” was written by Richard Black, an “Environment correspondent”, not a “Climate correspondent”.
Just The Facts (22:34:57) :
It seems like the BBC is just hedging/trying to cover themselves…
I can see what you are saying. And you may be right. But it seems this article is a bit more than hedging.
“…we have not observed any increase in global temperatures…our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.”
Manmade co2, climate models, and warming—this is this is the essence of global warming. And this article puts doubt in to the heart of it.
And “Four degrees of warming ‘likely'” was by David Shukman, “Environment correspondent”. I need not go on. It is obvious that “Environment correspondents” are warmist alarmists and biased, whereas “Climate correspondents” are ……?
Meanwhile back at the funny farm. We have an animation designed by a simpleton to illustrate what a firm grasp of the sciences the intellectual dwarfs at the BBC have.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/sci_nat/04/climate_change/html/greenhouse.stm
I suspect some have looked outside the window, and have not seen the warming or the sea level rises predicted. They are seeing the opposite, and it has to be unnerving.
The second thing that has happened is several notables have been caught meddling with the data.
The 3rd thing is here comes what looks to be a brutal winter what with that early Arctic freeze-up.
Wake ’em up. Time to look outside.
MartinGAtkins: Yes the beeb has the usual garbage: “The greenhouse effect is the natural process by which the atmosphere traps some of the Sun’s energy, warming the Earth enough to support life.” The famous energy trap. All we need do is spring the trap and we’ll all be frozen to death.
RE BBC
In the UK right now 7:22 UK time, Radio 4 Today is giving the full monty to the latest report on the UK CC Act – the only legally binding legislation to reduce CO2 emissions – and how we are failing and must do more to transfer us to a low-carbon economy and reduce emissions by 80% (yes 80%) by 2050.
For complete tosh, just listen to the stuff – everyone can through the Internet and the listen again feature.
Cheers
Paul
Paul Hudson used to be the meteorologist on my local news and used to come across to me as a staunch AGW believer.. and now we read this, so maybe he’s changed his mind. Or maybe….
I think there are some games being played here though. As a newcomer to the BBC “climate department” I think one of his bosses asked him to pen an article called “What happened to global warming?”, and make it genuine. His boss would know full well the hullabaloo that would follow, and that this would stymie Paul’s chances of advancing any further. Boss’s job safe.
His boss isn’t SHukman or Richard Black is it?
Nice “quote of the week”.
I like it…
tokyoboy (22:31:25) :
Instead of ‘vivacious’, perhaps ‘rampant’ is a better word to describe the ‘erect’, ‘thrusting’ climb of sea ice extent ;-P…
tokyoboy (22:23:46) :
I sincerely hope Mr. Paul Hudson may not be forced to internal job change, or demoted, or sacked……..
Nah, he’ll just have to spend some time in room 101.
These people have no time for a debate
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8301586.stm
Just as the nights are getting colder
If you have registered at the BBC to comment on their messageboards then you can comment on Paul Hudson’s blog here http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/10/whatever-happened-to-global-wa.shtml Keep an eye on it as I believe that the knives may be out for him from people like Jo Abbess. She was the bully who threatened the BBC’s Roger Harrabin for poking his head above the parapet, and actually got him to change his report! http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/08/bbc_blog_bully/
Phillip Bratby (23:19:25) :
“The greenhouse effect is the natural process by which the atmosphere traps some of the Sun’s energy, warming the Earth enough to support life.”
Yes but they forgot the H2O feed back. Man made CO2 traps more heat and that makes bunny rabbits cry leading to more humidity and big spiky toothed monsters appear in the sky.
I don’t know if it is the same guy but Paul Hudson is the weather man on BBC Look North (which covers Yorkshire, Humberside & North Lincolnshire). He comes across as an amiable and pretty level headed sort of bloke although with a penchant for brightly coloured jackets!
But for the BBC to come out with an article like this is amazing. Like the Vatican saying that contraception is a pretty good idea and they are thinking about appointing some women as cardinals.
OK, the article is easy to criticise and obviously sits firmly on the fence. But as the BBC takes care to broadcast at least one global warming scare story every day and almost NEVER refers to the fact that there even ARE some sceptical scientists, this certainly raised my eyebrows! What’s going on behind the scenes?
As other comment writers have suggested, this has to be a bit of insurance against the possibility that the wheels come off the AGW waggon.
Phillip Bratby (22:51:09) :
Paul Hudson is described as a “Climate correspondent”. The usual misleading alarmist and biased global warming reporters for the BBC are described as “Environment correspondents”. Maybe this is the first person the BBC has employed who has a bit of knowledge about the climate. Or maybe he’s the only member of this new department and so can easily be disposed of by closing the department. He seems to be out on a limb without a safety net. The BBC is full of people with chain-saws.
Paul Hudson is known as “Paul the weatherman” in Yorkshire, where for some time he has been the popular and humourous forecast presenter on the BBC regional channel ‘Look North’. It would seem he has been given the opportunity by the BBC to write about longer term climate and if this is a policy shift it is to be welcomed.
The ‘Enviromental Journalists’ belong to a clique called the SEJ (Society of Env Journos) and they are well connected to early copies of press releases from the Team, which they rush to print before each other. The rush to print bypasses their critical faculties (assuming they have any).
I sincerely hope Paul isn’t soon to be known as “Paul the roadsweeper”.
The BBC’s Richard Black’s blog can be found here, with comments a plenty on a number of subjects. Its usually taken over by three or four regular posters, for and against, back and forth etc between each other.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/
The Daily Telegraph has picked up the story this morning.
Re A Jones wanting a new scare, I made this one up a few months ago;
As the AGW scare is leading to increased taxation, it seems we need a tax-reducing scheme. How about an anti-scare?
A cursory look at the Global Warming fuss reveals the IPCC claim that mankind is putting up about +4 ppm/year of CO2 into the atmosphere; and this will increase the temperature at the earth’s surface by +1 degree C over the coming century.. causing untold havoc, melting icecaps, floods, & co., etc. So, we need to tax this nasty pyrotic habit.
Now this seems to be metascience of a most entertaining kind, and so I thought I’d produce some of my own, that would produce exactly the opposite prediction, but based on the same premises, and with simple conversion factors available to everybody ‘off the web’ as it were .
In this way, my junk-science unlike the IPCC stuff would be repeatable and reproducible by everyone and everyone at home … even by Gran and the Kids… to ‘prove’ that we are in mortal danger of Global Cooling. So here are the steps for my ‘end-of-the-world.alt’ scenario:
a) Man-made CO2 = + 4 parts-per-million(ppm) per year. Over 100 years this will amount to + 400 ppm
b) Henry’s Law indicates that the oceans absorb co2 from the air at a ratio of about 50:1. So for the additional 400ppm in the air, there wil be 50 x this amount absorbed in the oceans. So, the actual extra Co2 produced would be 400 x 50 = 20,000 ppm over the 100 years
c) Now of this 20,000 PPM, roughly 15,000 ppm was oxygen taken from the atmosphere, so we can say that the atrmosphere must have been depleted by 15,000 ppm ….. or 1.5% over the 100 years
d) A 1.5% reduction of the atmosphere equates to a 15 millibar drop in atmospheric pressure at the surface of the earth … or an equivalent 500 ft increase in pressure altitude at the surface.
e) This average pressure drop/increase in baro height will cause adiabatic heat-loss, and so GLOBAL COOLING at the surface, of around -1 degree centigrade …. which will lead to global cooling, untold havoc, freezing icecaps, sea-level dropping, desertification, & co., etc. …
“Really Scary!”, I hear you cry… “But Lo! we NEED to carry on burning stuff to keep warm to counterbalance the IPCC’s +1 degree warming over same the period!.”
Great stuff! Just think of the tax-saving!
I would not hold my breath. They will not give up so easily.
Until new scare is found, AGW will not be abandoned. Hopefully, people will be much more skeptical to “science”, funded by governments hoping for more power and new taxes.
Some editor’s head is gonna roll I suspect.
That’ll never happen again I bet.
a jones
999 alarmist articles to 1 sceptic article does not make unbiased.
There’s one person getting little or no mention here, and that’s Piers Corbyn. That may be because this renegade seems to be treading on everybody’s toes, by doing the unforgivable – long-term weather predictions. Whichever side of the AGW fence you are on (and he’s very firmly on the sceptical side), this is not “allowed”. Pro AGW people don’t like him because he’s showing up the dismal record of the models and one of the key sceptical arguments I keep seeing is that weather in the long term is unpredictable.
Funny nobody here has brought this up.
Well, chaps & chappesses, it’s hit the MSM in today’s papers, according to BBC Radio 2’s Sarah Kennedy. Mind you the Beeb are gradually retiring all the old guns who have that spendidly healthy “SCEPTICAL ” view of life, & all claims about it! My expectation has already bee posted!
This could be a straw man of course, putting up a “sceptical” article for it only to be shot down by “new incontravertible evidence” proving AGW! That’s the usual tactic by the AGW religeous faithfull. Comes under the heading of Climate Change Myths. Then again they could be doing as many have already said, covering their reare ends so that they can do like all losers, “we never really believed any of this stuff you know, we just reported the science as it was presented to us!”. There will be no backlash permitted, no blame apportioned, just a few “early retirements” or “moving on to pastures new”, etc.
As for those Greenpeace %$&£*ts (rude words the Prime Minister uses) sitting on the roof of the Houses of Parliament, why all the fuss, close the access door, bolt & padlock it, & leave them there for a month with no food, no water, no escape. I understand the temperatures may reduce over the coming days. They got themselves there, they have to get themselves down again, they should try using a bit of human ingenuity, none of this wasting £000’s of hard strapped taxpayers funding to remove them.
BTW, I have submitted a complaint to the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) regarding Friday evening’s little eco-nazi state advertisement, & one to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) under a charge of potential child abuse! I will let you know the outcome (if any, as one is a fake charity funded by HM Govmt).
AtB
I wonder what Mr Moonbat will have to say about this?…
Ironically, I became interested in “global warming” because of Paul Hudson. This is not some new person they have hired with a better understanding of the situation.
Paul is the local weatherman for Yorkshire TV, he attended and reported from the climate change debate held in Sheffield in 2007 which Al Gore addressed. I well remember Paul saying the most incredible things each night for months about global warming, while watching the local news, he was a real believer, at one point about 18 months ago he said “if things continue as they are we won’t see any more snow”.
Once I became better informed on the subject, I actually considered sending him some links to show him how silly some of his comments were, but as he was so far off the scale “alarmist” I didn’t bother. I’m glad to see he has finally come to some sense on the subject because he’s actually a funny and likeable guy on the TV and I felt kind of sorry for him swallowing all this nonsense.
One swallow doesn’t make a summer. The BBC’s output is soaked in global warming propaganda which won’t be undone by one or two minor reports.
More interestingly, there were two quotes from the report worth repeating:
1. Global warming is “a weapon of mass taxation”.
2. Global warming is a political tool to gain control of the Earth’s energy resources.
Says it all, really.
My guess is that this is the BBC hedging its bets, and it was triggered when all the shenanigans about the Yamal dataset came out. I’d expect that as the “climate” continues to “not warm”, and as more and more holes are punched into the AGW meme, we’ll see a higher and higher percentage of “cooling” stories from them, until we’ve turned full circle and they’re predicting the next ice age, and it will be all our fault because we’re mowing our lawn too much, or putting too many aerosols up into the atmosphere, anything that will make us feel guilty about the few luxuries we have worked hard for. It was after all the BBC that aired a program warning of an ice age in ’75 or ’76. By 2020, two generations will have passed since then.
What does surprise me is the reference to Piers Corbyn. That suggests that they are giving up on the “scientists'” ability to figure out where we are headed, and are prepared to consider the views of someone who is considered pretty controversial. I, for one, can’t wait to hear his insights.
People musing on the apocalyptic scare to follow global warming?
Suggestions:
1. The Bible – hey, it did the job for 19 centuries, it’s just had a little local difficulties. The moralising priests need more power, so they’ll do it.
2. Magnetic reversal – now this one COULD be real, but the timing is difficult. We’re all doomed unless we understand how to stop it happening, find a way to survive the flip or get off planet earth like yesterday!
3. The Chinese – they’re on the march, their military is greater than 1 million strong, they’re racist about the Japanese, so help! Slitty eyed yellow man will make you kiss his ass forever unless we invade Iran!
4. Electromagnetic waves – the dangers of mobile phones and high internet usage – you’ll all frazzle your brains if you do it and, if your kids do it, you’re a BAD, EVIL PARENT!!
5. Bill Clinton still fancies your daughter! Wherever you are, whatever you do, LOCK YOUR DAUGHTER UP SAFE!!
6. Sex – it’s immoral, it’s dangerous, it makes more people, it’s a transmission mode for HIV: STOP IT!!
7. Classical music – listening to it when young means you won’t be a mean, hard sonofabitch when you grow up. So America will be a land of wussies, mummy’s boys and generally asskissing slaves to the Vietnamese!!!!
I’m sure you can all dream up several more.
Roll over MI6 and the BBC (oh, I forgot, they developed cross shareholdings decades ago……)
Al Qaeda and Taliban Being Helped By Global Warming:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=209_1255215867
a terrorist tax…?
Regarding the Beeb’s silly animation piece at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/sci_nat/04/climate_change/html/greenhouse.stm, they say “Most mainstream scientists believe a human-driven increase in “greenhouse gases” is increasing the effect artificially.”
Surely that used to be “The vast majority of mainstream scientists etc…” Perhaps we are getting a little toe in the door at last.
Is nothing sacred?
Next thing you know the late night comedians will start making jokes about Al Gore ~~~ and the audience will be laughing hysterically.
Its a difficult call this one, is it just a token attempt at balance from the BBC, are they testing the water for a change in policy?
Whatever the reason behind the report Its certainly been jumped on by the global warming crowd, applauded by the side that rcongnises the debate is far from over and the science is far from settled. On the other hand the people who ignore the apparent facts and belive that the science is settled have really had there noses put out of joint as after all the bbc has been one of there best friends in promoting only one side of the debate just look at
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=109
Im sure the BBC reserchers are reading sites like this and climate audit and are perhaps realising that
1 people are no longer just looking at the MSM to see whats happening there are effectivly audited on what they publish these days through blogs and forums on the internet and there is a distrust building up in the ability of the MSM to be neutral and balanced
2 They have seen that very little of the findings of pro AGW community can actually stand up to rigourus scrutiny and are now perhaps thinking that they have shown neglect in the biased reporting they have been pushing.
3 Some people belive that the BBC is just the Propaganda machine for the goverment in the uk could they be getting us ready for the climate talks in copenhagen not securing a replacement for kyoto?
Whatever the reasoning behind the publication of this story I think this shows that a wheel has come off the AGW bandwagon I however feel the wagon still has lots of wheels hopefully we can build an momentum and get the rest of the wheels to fall off
Overall this is a victory for the truth but how big a victory only time will tell
Phew! That’s a relief. Panic over guys, situation back to normal. Clearly Paul Hudson had a bad week, & was snorting some illegal substance whilst at the wrong end of a bottle of something & popping happy pills. He is completely derranged:- Quad vide
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8299426.stm
WAGTD! Yet again.
Thank goodness, I was beginning to think the BBC was becoming rather impartial & balanced, delivering high quality reporting & factual science, just like it used to!
More Memory Hole shenanigans from the BBC?
From the amount of hype building in both the blogosphere and the mainstream media about this apparent “U turn”, this BBC story was propelled to the top of the BBC “MOST POPULAR STORIES NOW” list. This has had mainstream correspondents in the “dead tree press” salivating at the prospect of exposing the BBC’s discomfort at being exposed so widely.
However, as I checked the “MOST POPULAR STORIES NOW” to write this article, the “What happened to global warming” story has vanished from the list!
Is this credible? With the world waking this morning to the biggest BBC U-turn in decades being reported ever wider throughout the world’s mainstream media, (with accompanying links) one would logically reason that this would INCREASE the number of hits to that BBC page? But NO! Alas, the hits for that page have stopped! Apparently more people are interested in reading about a letter that the once legendary double act Morecambe and Wise showed that Ernie Wise wanted to break the act up in the early days.
More people are apparently interested in an obscure story about “Worthing’s birdman contest”
REALLY? or has the BBC succumbed to PRESSURE FROM THE ALARMIST LOBBY AGAIN???
This was never a genuine change of heart from the BBC. Now we see their back-peddling for all they are worth.
James Delingpole Of the Telegraph indulges in a little mischief. Under the main heading of his piece.
“£6 million ‘Bedtime Story’ climate change ad”
Is listed as Religion.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100013199/governments-6-million-bedtime-story-climate-change-ad-biggest-waste-of-taxpayers-money/
Anthony, you could do an article entitled: “What happened to What happened to global warming?”
It is very strange that this globally exposed story should suddenly disappear from their most popular stories list so quickly!
I even felt tempted to update my blog over this…
http://ken-hall.blogspot.com/2009/10/bbc-foul-play.html
feel free to visit and comment.
Video of Paul Hudson.
Weather foils Isles of Scilly energy experiment
A world-first experiment to try and reduce energy use for the day on the Isles of Scilly was foiled after a turn in the weather caused participants to use more electricity.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6269718/Weather-foils-Isles-of-Scilly-energy-experiment.html
So many BBC weather presenters have highly relevant qualifications in subjects such as Drama and Commerce does anyone know if this Paul Hudson is similarly qualified?
I don’t put any faith in the BBC’s story. It’s business as usual at the Beeb at that means keeping the government happy so that the taxpayer keeps ponying up the TV licence fee. Just take a look at the shift that is occuring at Channel 4 after they were pushed into accepting they will have to be taxpayer funded too. When their “journalists” criticise bail outs you have to laugh.
Britain is quickly moving towards INGSOC and we need a British Tea Party that will throw the elites, the socialists and the greens out of power forever.
A bit of back-story.
In the UK the BBC is coming under huge pressure on many fronts. The accusation that the corporation has a left-wing bias is now widely experienced as true and many people are growing increasingly frustrated at having to pay a substantial amount of money each year (the ‘licence fee’) to finance an organisation which has a legal obligation to be unbiased. If they refuse to pay the BBC, they cannot legally own and use a television set – even though there are many other advert or subscription-financed TV stations a viewer can choose to watch.
The BBC has always done most of its recruiting through job-ads in the Guardian newspaper (the publication has a huge ‘Media’ section each week) – further validating accusations of left-wing bias at the corporation.
Clearly, a growing number of the UK population who have their needs met largely, or exclusively, by these non-BBC commercial stations are beginning to demand an end to the out-dated licence fee.
In the Spring of next year the UK will hold a general election. The ruling left-wing Labour party is at an all-time low in the opinion polls and widely expected to be obliterated after 12 years in power. The party – who won power back in 1997 with a campaign heavily featuring the song ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ – are issuing a series of desperate ‘straw-clutching’ alarmist stories (including, of course, the ‘CO2 Terrorises Your Infants’ ad mentioned on WUWT).
The Conservatives are expected to win the election, and the right-of-centre party has ‘made noises’ about its dissatisfaction with the BBC and the need to reign in the corporation. This will possibly include strengthening a legal requirement for the BBC to be politically unbiased, a requirement for it to broadcast far more intelligent programming (as it once did), and a severe cut-back in its size (possibly losing one or two digital channels and some of its burgeoning internet empire). There is also a growing demand for the hated licence fee to be shared across several UK broadcasters to rebalance competition as commercial stations struggle with a loss of adverting revenue to the internet.
In the run-up to the general election, the BBC will begin to see the writing on the wall. We can expect to see more articles like this AGW one published (or broadcast) as the corporation attempts to disguise its left-wing bias and save its skin under a Conservative government. The corporation is likely to be delighted that this article has attracted a lot of attention, and that may well have been its sole purpose. Of course, the BBC will continue spewing out its heavily alarmist (and dumbed-down) propaganda – but we shouldn’t be surprised (or too heartened) by the odd sensible article either.
“New” scares:
1. Choose any chemical, that is not healthy in major concentrations. Today’s analytical instruments are so good, that you can measure smallest concentrations of it in water/food/air etc.
“3 ppt of xy-Dioxyd found in the xx-river! Are our children safe?”
2. electromagnetic waves
“Scientists found out, that the signals emitted by our local radio-stations are evil electromagnetic waves! They are EVERYWHERE!
“Scientists found out, that the electromagnetic waves emitted by you train/trolley bus/tram are 10’000 stronger than those of you mobile! Is commuting still safe??”
3. Internet
“Experts found out, that governement can’t manipulate citizens so easily like before. Is anarchy impending?”
… genetic engineering…nano-particles…….radioactivity….etc. etc.
Sample the AGW-MSM agit-prop here*: Child abuse. AGW debauchs youth.
…-
*”Bronwyn wrote an essay that pointed out it’s worth saving the Earth, because it’s the only planet with chocolate.”
“Bronwyn, who was flown to Toronto last week for a ceremony to mark the start of the panel’s work.”
“Chocolate makes Earth worth saving
So says Bronwyn Heighton, Green Kid
Bronwyn Heighton’s fingernails match the way she lives: green.
And not in a subtle way.
The Grade 5 Beaverbank Monarch Drive Elementary School student is one of 10 children between eight and 13 selected to be on the Sunlight Green Clean Kids panel, and she’s the only one in Atlantic Canada.
Bronwyn learned recycling from her parents and said her father is so vigilant he only produces one bag of garbage a month.
“I want to save the environment a lot, because we don’t want to be living in a dump,” the 10-year-old said Saturday.
She recently added a couple of more household items to her list of what not to put in the garbage.
“Tin foil and Saran wrap are recyclable. The weirdest thing I know that you can compost is hair. I don’t know why, but you can.”
Bronwyn wrote an essay that pointed out it’s worth saving the Earth, because it’s the only planet with chocolate.
She also included the rhyme she taught her mother to help her keep straight on what goes in the garbage and what can be recycled.
“One and two go in the blue,” she said, pointing out the number two embossed on the bottom of a milk jug.”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1147013.html
“After all, 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the sun?”
Where does the other 2% come from? Any ideas?
The stage set for a US Time magazine cover with the headline “Is Global Warming Dead?” What would go on the cover? The blank Sun? the recent unpleasantness in the plains and northwest?
What a great use of the idiomatic and cliche’ phrase – “What on earth is going on”
Temperatures records mean nothing . How much TIME, how many hours, with a given temperature and insolation is what counts.
As it has been shown, here in WUWT, during the LIA there were high temperature summers however of short duration, and long winters. This is what counts.
A summer with standard length and with many cloudy days it is also quite different as a cloudless summer.
It is instructive to note that they talk about sceptics, but never once mention the giant Steve McIntyre. He shall never be named!
They do, however, mention Piers Corbyn, who has some of his own controversial ideas. if these prove to be wrong, they can tar the whole movement with one brush.
Note that they carefully avoid mentioning that:
– the BBC did not report that global warming had stopped for 10 years
– there is anything wrong with any of the science behind global warming
– the ‘sceptics’ have provided ANY input into the science. To read the BBC, you would think the sceptics just say ‘we don’t believe it..’
This story is setting Piers Corbyn up to be the hero if global warming is proven wrong!!
Here in lies the problem. While CO2 does not appear to be the cause of warming over the last 150 years we have very little in the way of evidence as to what has caused the warming in the last 150 years.
It is this vacuum of evidence that has allowed the green movement to grab a hold of something that should only be a scientific discussion and turn it into a propaganda piece.
They had been unchallenged for almost 20 years and now finally when real scientists are asking the question as to what is causing the increase in temperature they get sacked because the propagandists have taken over and been elected.
Yet while there are theories as to the temperature change the system is so complex that it is hard to show that global warming is not caused by CO2 because nothing else fits as elegantly in the minds of the masses.
Not only that but next year may be indeed a warmer year for the northern hemisphere because of the La Nina developing… which is going to bite because even though it will only be a natural variation lots of people are going to grab hold and say “see we told you so” For skeptics of CO2 induced warming we need a couple of decades of cooling to say that for alarmists they only need one warm year in that time to prove everything that we have said is wrong.
Sad but true…
I just heard from BBC Radio 2 that the BBC story has had 1 million hits since it was posted.
Impressive.
Suppose that, as I strongly suspect, the CO2 theory is rubbish. Suppose further that a new theory is offered that seems more plausible. With what climate record should its predictions be compared? Antony and his army have shown that ground station measurements are probably riddled with bias. The sea surface temperature record is a joke. Chunks of the raw records have apparently been discarded. The satellite record is short. The proxy records are, at least in part, silly and, some of them, dishonest. After a couple of decades of Global Warming ballyhoo, there’s not even a “robust” temperature record available for comparison with models. What a pathetically inadequate outcome for such a large expenditure.
The debauchment/corruption of youth by the Red-Greens.
The message is bannered there; the message will not be repeated here.
Courtesy of Lizzy May (background here*).
Get a screenshot now.
http://youth.greenparty.ca/en/
Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_May
Warning: May has been caught editing wiki.
In the Sunday Times Ecosse supplement yesterday 11 Oct. “Why everything you think you know about Global Warming is WRONG” by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Piece over three pages and basically debunks the AGW and CO2 claims. Can’t find the piece on http://www.timesonline.co.uk but they quote a Nathan Myhrvold who debunks “An inconvenient truth” and states “The climate models are crude in space and they’re crude in time” “So there is an enormous amount of natural phenomena the can’t model” etc. Another chap quoted Ken Caldeira: “his research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight. For starters, as greenhouse gases go it’s not particularly efficient. ‘A doubling of CO2 traps less than 2% of the outgoing radiation emitted by the Earth’ he says”.
I think the important thing is that a prestige UK broadsheet such as The Sunday Times owned by News International is prepared to devote so much space to anti AGW views. The question is whether this is restricted to Scotland or other UK editions feature the same large article. I do think there are signs that perhaps anti AGW views may begin to shine through here and there. Hopefully it is only the beginning.
John Wright (01:49:28) :
There’s been plenty of talk about Piers Corbyn at this blog. There’s one name here in particular that seems to hate him. I’ll leave him unnamed. But he is a common commenter and some times poster here. Maybe some commenters here don’t like to bring up Piers Corbyn because this certain person will jump all over them relentlessly.
But, I agree with you. Piers Corbyn’s record of success speaks louder than his detractors. That is why I am glad to see his name in this article. Anyone can look in to the background of the names mentioned in the article and decide for themselves what to think of manmade global warming.
Ronaldo (01:09:57) :
The Daily Telegraph has picked up the story this morning.
Could you provide the link? 🙂
This story is still at the top of the front page at Drudge.
http://www.drudgereport.com/
Also the record cold right under it.
It is possible the BBC is reading the handwriting on the wall of the earth :
The winds are expected to blow up to 25 miles per hour, creating wind chill of up to 20 below for the Flathead and Mission valleys…
The winds are expected to blow up to 25 miles per hour, creating wind chill of up to 20 below for the Flathead and Mission valleys…
link :
http://www.montanasnewsstation.com/Global/story.asp?S=11295113
supercritical (01:29:26) :
How about an anti-scare?
Will this do :
America is not going to bleed its wealth importing fuel….Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically….natural gas reserves around the world have risen to 1.2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent, enough for 60 years’ supply….Britain’s shale reserves could replace declining North Sea output….reserves are much greater than supposed just three years ago and may meet global gas needs for generations….The breakthrough has been to combine 3-D seismic imaging with new technologies to free “tight gas” by smashing rocks, known as hydro-fracturing or “fracking” in the trade….
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/6299291/Energy-crisis-is-postponed-as-new-gas-rescues-the-world.html
I think more sane minds in the UK will start to speak up as they digest the latest Met Office climate forecast of 4C during the next 50 years or by 2060 [ or an average rate 0 .08 C/year
Using least square trend line slopes and HADCRUT 3 temperature data: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/last:120/plot/hadcrut3gl/last:120/trend
OBSERVED RATE OF CLIMATE CHANGE 1850- 2008 was 0.004 C/year [over158 years]
OBSERVED RATE OF CLIMATE CHANGE 1908-2008 was O.0075C/year [over 100 years
OBSERVED RATE OF CLIMATE CHANGE 1999-2009 was 0.0052C/year [over last 10 years]
The latest Met Office projected rate of temperature rise is
20 times faster than the trend of the last 158 years
10 times faster than the trend of the last 100 years
15 times faster than the trend of the last 10 years
Already the Telegraph ,Spectator and BBC are seeing through smoke and mirrors of global warming science.
Sorry, just listened to some wonk [UK definition] with an eco-PhD in head self-insertion from the Tyndall centre on a mainstream BBC Radio 2 talk show present his pre-prepared prattle. Two pre-arranged phone-in sceptics then gave their opinion on pre-selected sceptic views, to which the wonk was allowed to answer with the usual pat replies unchallenged. The two sceptics will now be spending a day with the wonk who is to show them the error of their ways. A future show will report their miraculous change in attitude, no doubt.
Desperate, pass the sick bag please. Monbiot at the Guardian seems to have retreated to the Welsh hills for a break too. He now seems more concerned with ruining the livelihoods of local fisherman in his own back yard. Steve M’s depth charge and Copenhagen disinterest must have holed the good-ship climate change below the waterline, there’s a lot of remedial caulking and regrouping going on it seems. The subversion opinion polls must be showing a shift in the ‘wrong’ direction I guess.
Still, this BBC headline is encouraging. Despite all the usual hyperbole, the BBC is a state broadcaster and knows on which side its bread is buttered. A big slimming axe is likely to come down on the BBC soon and it knows it. The current government lost the plot long ago, there’s an election around the corner and its New Labour apparatchiks are perhaps beginning to find themselves ignored or are already in retreat if not taking flight.
Reality may be setting in again after a decade in the third way dreamscape, a good sign for much else besides climate change. Early days yet though.
Pete (02:07:53) :
Very interesting Pete! Thanks for filling us in on who Paul Hudson is.
Ric Werme (05:17:01) :
“The stage set for a US Time magazine cover with the headline “Is Global Warming Dead?” What would go on the cover? The blank Sun? the recent unpleasantness in the plains and northwest?”
I don’t know about Time Magazine but Real Climate uses on its homepage a picture of the earth from space along with a raging sun at or near solar maximum. Pretty ironic for the AGW crowd who’s first commandment says that the sun has nothing to do with global warming (sorry – climate change).
Gene Nemetz (06:37:39) :
Ronaldo (01:09:57) :
The Daily Telegraph has picked up the story this morning.
Could you provide the link? 🙂
You will find it here.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/search/?queryText=Climate+change+&Search=Search
Dodgy Geezer (05:43:01) :
This story is setting Piers Corbyn up to be the hero if global warming is proven wrong!!
The cream rises to the top.
I’m confused.
The BBC is saying that the science is not settled? But the BBC climate pages are full of articles stating that the science is definitely settled, and that anyone who doubts this is a crackpot.
Both these positions cannot be right. And, whichever is wrong, as a public service broadcaster the BBC will have to explain why it was/is distributing untruths….
If the BBC are correct now, someone should be complaining to the BBC governors about the last 10 years of their output.
It´s all about Copenhaguen. After Copenhaguen all global warmers will surely meet in an island of the southern seas, where they will fly in their private jets, to celebrate their victory, and rest.
The title of this post should be…
BBC: “What happened to global warming?”
Without direct titles people will not always read them.
Stoic (07:03:00) :
This is the direct link :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6300329/Sceptics-welcome-BBC-report-on-global-cooling.html
Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, said: “It is interesting the BBC is prepared to tolerate him (Hudson) writing these things.
“It is a surprise – a welcome one – that the BBC has put it as bluntly as they have. More often than not they (the BBC) put forward the brainwashing views of CO2-driven, man-made climate change.
“Possibly some people in the BBC have worked out that the whole shooting match will collapse and they had better be ahead of the game.”
The BBC’s amazing U-turn on climate change :
I think the BBC wanted to slip this one out quietly, but a Matt Drudge link put paid to that.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100013173/the-bbcs-amazing-u-turn-on-climate-change/
BBC’s surreptitious U-turn on global warming is most popular item on its website
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100013179/bbcs-surreptitious-u-turn-on-global-warming-is-most-viewed-item-on-its-website/
Why is the BBC consistently confused with Paul Hudson?
I eagerly await Piers Corbyn’s press release on the 28th of this month, when he will as I understand it be enlightening everyone who wants to listen with aspects of his Solar Weather Technique. After all did his early September forecast not indicate a severe storm in the Pacific in or around the Philipines?
Personally, I actually believe in global warming, & climate change, & global cooling, you cannot have one without the other following it! It’s sort of what the Earth does really, rotten old planet.
Vincent (04:48:07) :
“After all, 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the sun?”
Where does the other 2% come from? Any ideas?
I suspect this remaining 2% is generated internally from a considerable amount of extremely warm air arising out of the UN, the IPCC, the WMO, the EU, the EPA, GISS, The Royal Society, the Met Office, government ministers, & assorted half-baked scientifically illiterate overpaid slimeball grubby politicians with their fingers in the pie feathering their own nests at taxpayers expense! I could be mistaken though. However if we were to capture this wonderful heat source we could perhaps generate electricity from it, & if we kept them all in a locked room in Copenhagen (although what the Danes have done to deserve such a travesty I know not) the CO2 would be sequestered automatically!
Serious question, do we know how much the IPCC has actually cost us all over the last 15 years?
Gene Nemetz (06:37:39)
Stoic (07:03:00)
Thanks to Stoic for the link to Telegraph article.
I read the brief article on page 2 of the paper copy this morning.
I love the smell of BBC u-turns in the morning…..
A new ‘Old’ Idea;
OR
The other limit of the ‘Hysterical Absurdian Syndrome’.
Lets tax everyone to reduce global cooling caused by oxidising fossile fuels.
(Science to be determined).
Ban the recycling of natural organic substances from carbonacious solid form, to gassified form.
(Environmental impact studys Pending).
Rely primarily upon solar (it varies so infinitely little), thermal energy to provide human habitability requirements between the equator and north/south of 45 degrees latitudes.
(Technology in developement stage)
Ban human habitation north/south of 45 degrees latitudes due to potential environmental life threatening risks.
(UN Resolution #xxxxx__ mandating population redistribution still in debate).
* * * *
Thought I might as well explore the potential for the BBC’s next big thing!
I will claim there will not be a U-turn in opinion. The next crisis will be ramped up and this one will get ignored. It had so many features attached like punitive social justice for people that actually earn money. How can we punish big corporations for sending plastic water bottles to the trash. we can of course attack wealthy and big corporations as a cause of dirty rivers and streams. There has to be a target of hate. There has to be a problem Then they can save the planet by “promissing” a solution.
Building up a scare generates a lot of viewers. Now, debunking the scare will also generate a lot of viewers. The higher the viewership, the more money is made from advertisements. Follow the money.
For those who doubted BBC bias on Climate Change matters see
“The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus [on anthropogenic climate change].”
From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel, Page 40
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=109
Now would be a very good time to remember Julian Simon, of blessed memory.
The last scare we had, in the 80s, was that the Earth’s resources would all be used up. You remember ‘Peak Oil’?
It was Julian Simon who claimed that resources, far from being used up, would actually become more abundent with improved technology. He believed that humanity would progress and improve living standards generally as time went by. The lead doomsayer (read Hansen or Gore) at the time was one Paul Eherlich, who claimed that the world would collapse in riots as prices soared. Simon bet him that, instead of soaring, they would actually come down, and, famously won his bet.
Being proven right, however, didn’t seem to have much effect on humanity. A WIRED commentary http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffsimon_pr.html notes:
“All of [Ehrlich’s] grim predictions had been decisively overturned by events. Ehrlich was wrong about higher natural resource prices, about “famines of unbelievable proportions” occurring by 1975, about “hundreds of millions of people starving to death” in the 1970s and ’80s, about the world “entering a genuine age of scarcity.” In 1990, for his having promoted “greater public understanding of environmental problems,” Ehrlich received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award.” [Simon] always found it somewhat peculiar that neither the Science piece nor his public wager with Ehrlich nor anything else that he did, said, or wrote seemed to make much of a dent on the world at large. For some reason he could never comprehend, people were inclined to believe the very worst about anything and everything; they were immune to contrary evidence just as if they’d been medically vaccinated against the force of fact. Furthermore, there seemed to be a bizarre reverse-Cassandra effect operating in the universe: whereas the mythical Cassandra spoke the awful truth and was not believed, these days “experts” spoke awful falsehoods, and they were believed. Repeatedly being wrong actually seemed to be an advantage, conferring some sort of puzzling magic glow upon the speaker…”
So I predict that, when the Global Warming scare is over, Gore and Hansen will still receive prizes for being environmental activists, while Steve McIntyre will go to his grave unrecognised….
BBC of course lives on license fees. The above still applies as there is a strong movement afoot to take a lot of that license fee and distribute it to stations who don’t get any of it now. Why? Because these other stations are being viewed more, and the BBC less. If BBC can get the viewership to move back in a good sized way, then less money will be taken from them and given to others.
What happened to 1934?
“The warmest year on record is now 1934, as opposed to 1998. This according to corrected records released by NASA.”
I did some digging into the background of Paul Hudson. He has a first class science degree in geophysics from Newcastle University. That’s an improvement on the dreaded Harrabin, who has no scientific training at all. But now the less good part – he’s definite;ly another warmist. He recently wrote a book called That’s the Forecast, published by Great Northern in the UK, which the blurb states:
“At the other extreme the book ends on a serious note, Paul explaining in succinct and readable way the likely consequences of the present climate change. He makes a personal plea: ” We will reach a point in the not to distant future when we have no control over our ever warming climate with its enormous implications for mankind. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want to take that sort of risk with our future. This is why we must try and curb carbon dioxide emissions as a matter of urgency”.”
This comes as music to my ears.
For the last 3 years I have been trying to get answers out of BBC DG Mark Thompson about the blatant BBC bias in reporting climate change.
For the last 3 years I got no-where…that is until I engaged the assistance of my MP, Nick Harvey.
This resulted in my coming by a BBC document in which the amazing statement was made that the BBC Trust and Board of Management had commissioned a report entitled ; “From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel-Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century”, published in June 2007……’
I quote from this report: ‘There may be now a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening and that it is at least predominantly man-made… the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus’.
So, if you weren’t singing from the BBC hymn sheet, you weren’t singing at all!
Until now, that is…. hung by their own petard?…..light at the end of the tunnel?
Vincent (04:48:07) :
“After all, 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the sun?”
Where does the other 2% come from? Any ideas?
Earth’s molten core?
LarryOldtimer (08:28:28) :
Building up a scare generates a lot of viewers. Now, debunking the scare will also generate a lot of viewers. The higher the viewership, the more money is made from advertisements. Follow the money.
Larry, the BBC does not carry advertisements. We pay an annual licence fee.
At the time of this comment’s posting the “What happened to global warming?” story is number 1 as “Most Shared”, number 6 as “Most Read” since the story was published on FRIDAY, 9 October 2009.
I meant to add on the BBC website.
” SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance ” by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, will be published Oct 20 — Now on Amazon for pre-order. In case you don’t know, Steven Levitt was quoted approvingly by liberals two years ago when he published a best seller — Freakonomics. Given the review Sunday in the Times on line he is going to knock the science and empirical evidence behind AGW. He comes from a verg rigorous theoretical and empirical economics background and isclosely allied with the Chicago School of economics. This will create a huge stir in the AGW group as many of them are fans of Levitt. I expect that this will cause Kerry and Boxer hearburns.
Can someone please enlighten me as to why RealClimate is showing an upward trend for the last 10 years? I’m sure this has been addressed here but I’ve missed it apparently. Is the GISS data flawed?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/a-warming-pause/
Even the highly “cherry-picked” 11-year period starting with the warm 1998 and ending with the cold 2008 still shows a warming trend of 0.11 ºC per decade (which may surprise some lay people who tend to connect the end points, rather than include all ten data points into a proper trend calculation)
@ Gene Nemetz (06:36:43) :
Gene wrote:
“There’s been plenty of talk about Piers Corbyn at this blog. There’s one name here in particular that seems to hate him. I’ll leave him unnamed. But he is a common commenter and some times poster here. Maybe some commenters here don’t like to bring up Piers Corbyn because this certain person will jump all over them relentlessly.”
Let’s not beat around the bush, shall we.
I suspect you are referring to Dr. Leif Svalgaard (I could be wrong, but the profile fits the suspect).
Why?
Because of statements like this (as quoted from the instant BBC article):
He [Piers Corbyn] claims that solar charged particles [electrons and ions] impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.”
Yes, Dr. Leif Svaalgaard has been relentless in attacking the idea that solar maximums and minimums (the sunspot cycle) has an impact on climate change.
Dr. Svalgaard is in denial along with the rest of “modern” astronomy about the role of electromagnetism in space processes and structures, both small and large, near and far.
So-called “modern” astronomy has been clinging to an antiquated gravity “only” cosmology inspite of consistent reports of scientific observations & measurements that demomstrate the significant, if not dominate role of electromagnetism in space.
In other words, Dr Svalgaard is the public face of authority for that particluar group-think on this website.
The story was top of the list for most shared and most read up to today. Fallen back a bit but its still near the top.
The last paragraph in my last post was a quote from the article on RealClimate – not mine. I’m a newbie here and haven’t figured out how to italicize quotes.
[To italicize: <i> To end italicized sentence: </i> ~dbstealey, moderator]
Hey everyone,
Like the the site.
Here’s an article that might be of some interest to you:
“50 reasons Obama should NOT have won the Nobel”
http://joshfulton.blogspot.com/2009/10/obama-wins-nobel-peace-prize-hell_10.html
Everything is very well-hyperlinked.
Thanks.
Josh
Daniel Cressey on ‘The Great Beyond’ blog (Nature Magazine) seems to be somewhat upset about the BBC article and Damien Thompson of the Daily Telegraph daring to report on it.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100013303/nature-attacks-the-bbc-for-its-u-turn-over-climate-change/
Daniels Blog is here and as he holds up RC as an honest broker as to why AGW has not stopped perhaps some WUWT readers may wish to add their pennies worth!
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/10/climate_sceptics_celebrate_bbc.html
Exellent article on cherry picking temperature trends on Dr. Pielke jr site: listed in sidebar. It made me laugh out loud.
Kindest Regards
@Mike Lewis (10:42:07)…
see http://masterresource.org/?p=5240 , to see how to create your desired trends. It’s pretty interesting. (or Pielke jrs site works too)
I thought the warmest year on record was 1934
Thanks everyone. Found the report about GISS data coming from airports – mostly. Not surprising that the numbers are skewed.
I suppose climate scientists have some fancy algorithms to perfectly filter out the UHI component?
Aaron W. (11:53:24):
“I thought the warmest year on record was 1934”
It was, in the United States. The global temp record is what they’re referring to.
Alan the Brit (01:56:54) : As for those Greenpeace %$&£*ts …sitting on the roof of the Houses of Parliament
Funny thing is, it was one of that kind who turned me round from warmist to skeptic. Peter Taylor. He climbed Big Ben for Greenpeace.
Pete (02:07:53) : Ironically, I became interested in “global warming” because of Paul Hudson.
From the Daily Telegraph: Some reader comments on the BBC’s website said the broadcaster had made a “U-turn” over its readiness to acknowledge the views of scientists who believe cooling is here to stay. However the BBC said: “We have always reported a range of views and this article is no different.
From the BBC report “From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel – Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century”… ‘There may be now a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening and that it is at least predominantly man-made… the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus’.
From the DT Blogs man Damian Thompson Hudson’s piece must have been a nightmare to write: talk about an inconvenient truth. All the caveats are in place, distancing him from hardline sceptics and giving plenty of space to the climate change orthodoxy. But, in fact, his scrupulous approach only makes matters worse for BBC executives who have swung the might of the corporation behind that orthodoxy, often producing what amounts to propaganda. The BBC now has serious questions to answer. It has used millions of pounds of licence-payers’ money to advance a simplistic point of view that is beginning to fall apart under scrutiny…
LarryOldtimer (08:28:28) : Building up a scare generates a lot of viewers. Now, debunking the scare will also generate a lot of viewers.
You never know how things will turn out in the end.
The BBC only allowed that article to be printed so that they could increase their audience. Always follow the money! If the BBC wasn’t losing money hand over fist, they would never have run that story. It is their deparate attempt to increase their earnings.
Orthodoxy has nothing to do with true science. When do I get my tax money back from the BBC.
With so many newpapers in financial difficulty, it is unbelievable that more of them do not print more articles that question the AGW religion. It would surely increase their circulation and improve their finances. I guess their political leanings are more important to them than continuing their existance.
ajones, does the silencing of dissent not frighten you in any way? Same question for RRKampen. You both seem reasonably intelligent and are aware of the result of the elimination of freedom of speech throughout history. Please do not deny that dissenters have been muzzled. I will shout from the rooftops that no one, and I mean no one is able to show that we are outside natural variations in the climate. What is it that is hoped to be achieved by the silencing of dissent, other than control of the people? History shows what comes next. Again, does the silencing of dissent not set off alarm bells with you?
The lunchtime Vine program on BBC Radio 2 has held a debate between two listeners and Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre. I guess he wasn’t brave enough to debate any experts. Even so the listeners who rang in after the debate all thought AGW was a con.
My attention was drawn to this BBC piece… literally as I was preparing a talk on “An Alternative View to Climate Change”.
Talk about gift from the gods. Made me feel like Darwin’s bulldog Huxley…
“Soapy Sam” Bishop Wilberforce is supposed to have asked Huxley sarcastically whether “it was through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed descent from a monkey.” Huxley supposedly whispered an aside to Sir Benjamin Brodie, “the Lord hath delivered him into my hand,” and then responded, “If then the question is put to me whether I would rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence and yet employs these faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion, I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.”
Aaron W. (11:53:24) :
As has been stated, that was the US lower 48…
However, since further corrections http://i44.tinypic.com/29dwsj7.gif
Judge for yourself why we distrust GISS
For those unsure about the HTML, make a comment & subscribe to a thread, (by checking the [Notify me of follow-up comments by email] box). HTML code appears as typed, (at least on my googlemail account).
DaveE.
DougS (10:25:33) :
” SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance ” by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, will be published Oct 20
Brilliant. Economics has long been called the “Dismal Science” for fairly obvious reasons. Perhaps the time has come to dub Climate Science, with its notorious concealment of data, the “Other Dismal Science”.
Regards
S
???? “…the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.” ???
Wasn’t 1998 bumped to “second warmest year on record” by 1934, due to NASA’s incompetence?
Gene Nemetz (22:46:49) :
I like that the article opens with this and it is in bolds : …the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
Craig W (13:40:58) :
Wasn’t 1998 bumped to “second warmest year on record” by 1934, due to NASA’s incompetence?
1934 was the warmest, “before” adjustments.
Houses should be built on stilts to avoid flooding, scientists recommend
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6308141/Houses-should-be-built-on-stilts-to-avoid-flooding-scientists-recommend.html
a jones (22:52:34) :
I am sure that the BBC allowed this report to show how unbiased they were.
I am equally sure they were surprised if not horrified by how much attention it got. Which suggests word is spreading fast.
I am equally sure that the Sunday Times, sister to the London Times, which published a rather snide but more or less well informed article today did so to test public reaction.
This may all be straws in the wind or it maybe that they sense the British public is tired of this hobgoblin and wants a new one.
I may be wrong mind, it may be wishful thinking, but I think something strange happened this weekend. I don’t know how, why or what.
You cannot see beyond the bundobust. You can only sense: and may well be wrong. But it has my whiskers twitching.
indeed if it is so be sure the AGW story will be dead as mutton in months and the BBC and Grub St., not that it physically exists anymore, will have found some new apocalyptic scare to frighten the public.
No idea what it would be mind. Any guesses? A glass of champagne in my London club to the best suggestion offered by some worthy winner.
Kindest Regards
How’s this for a new Hobgoblin…
…. Repeated lack of investment in reliable and cost effective baseload electricity generation will result in UK economic and social collapse…
…. industry and jobs will be sent over seas ….
…. Tens of thousands of britons will freeze in unheated homes in winter ….
…. Angry mobs of hungry, cold, unemployed britons will storm their parliament ….
Scary enough.
Pleasant news for a change. Here in Australia our dear old Aunty ABC (BBC equiv) persists in allowing warmists open blather while sceptics use the web and a few opinion writers who are invariably considered dinosaurs,deniers, you know the rest. The latest opinion poll here shows that the sample have reduced AGW/CC from #1 to #7 on their worry list since the 2007 election with percentages down from 70% to 56% believing it to be important. Callers to radio talkback among the older population at least are very sceptical about both the science and politicians agendas. Ego seems the driving force with our PM. The govt are trying desperately to introduce an Emissions Trading Scheme before Kevin (PM) goes to Copenhagen. They call it the Carbon POLLUTION Reduction Scheme. Strange that carbon is now officially declared a pollutant. And this from a bunch of tree huggers. Do they know all living things contain carbon? Oh. Even worse our pre-eminent science body, the govt funded CSIRO, lists RealClimate as a research source for their decision to back AGW. Now that is a worry.
Jerry Haney12:22:51
Bravo! Well put.
This story is still top of the page at Drudge.
http://www.drudgereport.com/
He has added this to the list at the top :
Austria: Earliest snowfall in history set to break records…
at the link :
Austria’s provincial capitals are expected to see their earliest snowfalls in history today (Mon) as Arctic air sweeps the country….Arctic air would probably result in the first snow cover in provincial capitals before 20 October in history…
As ‘Bulldust’ mentioned above, the ABC in Australia is never going to behave in this sort of heretical fashion.
Indeed, the chief science (?) presenter is still running around like a headless chook proclaiming that a 100 metre sea rise is possible by the end of the century, he he. He is a narrative man, and his ‘status’ seems highly dependent on him name-dropping a few of his AGW scientist friends.
One thinks it may not be too long before such associations are rather less fashionable!
BBC is getting kicked from both sides now (Joni Mitchell.) They’re being investigated for misrepresenting skeptics including Lord Monckton in a documentary. Previously they were cited for unfairly fingering alarmists. Could they be struggling to regain a semblance of balance??
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3358634/BBC-investigated-over-climate-change-documentary.html
The media Dam breaks……..
Indiana Bones (18:08:43) :
Thanks for the link.
“I have no doubt Ofcom will act. The BBC very gravely misrepresented me and several others, as well as the science behind our argument. It is a breach of its code of conduct,” he (Lord Monckton) said.
It is starting to perk up in the land of Oz too, what with the imminent legislation deadline (November, before Copenhagen love-in).
Lowy institute shows support for climate change policy dropped to 7 out of 10:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/national/6209974/coalition-takes-heart-from-climate-poll/
Find the poll here:
http://www.lowyinstitute.org/
Plus the Aussies are starting to take interest in the ole hip-pocket issues:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26202241-11949,00.html
I just hope that somehow we can delay the legislation till the love in, because I don’t want to be the laughing stock of the world if the rest of yuze end up seeing the light before we do.
“The UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre […] incorporates [natural] cycles into its climate models […] nothing new […] all of which are accounted for by its models.”
2 words: B.S.
Show me the ENSO tables that work like tide tables.
I contend that the only thing “incorporated” at this stage is B.S.
I gather that the BBC article is currently the most visited page on the BBC website.
The public’s thirst for real knowledge, or the WUWT effect?
Time will tell.
Re: Bulldust (22:48:51) :
It is starting to perk up in the land of Oz too, what with the imminent legislation deadline (November, before Copenhagen love-in).
Lowy institute shows support for climate change policy dropped to 7 out of 10:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/national/6209974/coalition-takes-heart-from-climate-poll/
No worries, that’ll go up again coming summer as reality gets felt again. The hottest winter on record would’nt have made to much impression yet as the heat in that season could not yet be smiting.
Monbiot is back from the Welsh hills this morning:
“Britain has the world’s best climate policy: that’s good news, and bad news”
Fairly weak incoherent stuff. More noticeable is the almost withdrawn tone of comments from the usual suspects. Turning a shot of cooling towers into an alarmist’s view of the world, as one commentator has remarked, is about the only thing worthy of note.
Focus seems to have shifted to politics: “Electoral reform could save the climate”
Comments worth a read. Illustrates what Greenpeace et al are really all about. They’re still on the roof this morning, more at the Telegraph here.
Perched high on the roof of Westminster Hall, full-time Greenpeace activist Anna Jones, 28, from Headingley in Leeds, said on Monday morning: ”We can’t stress enough how important this is. The clock is ticking – scientists are telling us we have just a few years left to act to save the planet.
It would appear rent-a-mob has now moved up in the world and found permanent employment! If you want to change a political system you do it by legitimate means through the ballot box – not by performing circus stunts, causing hassle and breaking the law. Stand for election and see how many votes you get … then please shut up!
Having had free reign in New Labour’s third way la-la land for a decade, eco minority interest groups like Greenpeace are now out of control and must be put back in their box. The sensible first step would be to remove their charitable status, cutting off the cash they draw from the tax system via pledge kick-backs. They are effectively being subsidised by a majority that disagrees with them. Greenpeace isn’t a legitimate charity, it’s a political movement pure and simple.
Unfortunately party political think-tanks are the same, realistically we are unlikely to get politicians to do anything along these lines. Does anyone know their way around the Charity Commission and legal side of all this? On what basis are such organisations able to register themselves as charities?
A decade or so ago I used to commute by train and occasionally struck up a conversation with a Greenpeace accountant. The numbers were big then, I dread to think what they’re like now. What a scam!
Re: David Ball (12:26:14) :
ajones, does the silencing of dissent not frighten you in any way? Same question for RRKampen. You both seem reasonably intelligent and are aware of the result of the elimination of freedom of speech throughout history. Please do not deny that dissenters have been muzzled. I will shout from the rooftops that no one, and I mean no one is able to show that we are outside natural variations in the climate. What is it that is hoped to be achieved by the silencing of dissent, other than control of the people? History shows what comes next. Again, does the silencing of dissent not set off alarm bells with you?
Much dissent against AGW has not been muzzled, but dismissed because the arguments are bad. For an example look at the discussion as to the globally warmest years, either 1998/2005 or 1934. Some people tend to forget that 1934 was only in the States the warmest year, and that the USA encompasses only a tiny fraction of the globe. Those who keep calling 1934 as warmest year won’t be silenced, but won’t be listened to either.
The climate discussion has become thoroughly politicized. The sharper edges of this has been introduced by the so-called ‘skeptics’, or let us say e.g. ExxonMobile. On the other hand there is a kind of AGW-alarmism around that is just as bad, in fact so bad it sabotages any serious message AGW-proponents could make.
My stance in this is to keep to realism and forget the bicker about persons, institutions or subsidies. We have to try to look and evaluate for ourselves. Given the freedom of global travel we have nowadays, we can e.g. check for ourselves what is happening with glaciers over the world. On the other hand, we can gain some sound physics knowledge with which we can think on the basis of sound assumptions about e.g. the radiation-absorbtion behaviour of GHG’s.
This sort of neutral perspective will attract FLAK from all directions, of course. Nice, hit me, ooo 🙂
Since autumn 2004 I believe the AGW-hypothesis is true (until then: ‘it has to be the sun’). My presence on this forum should gain me some respect, I’m throwing myself to the lions here. What I am trying to do is sift the real arguments that may still remain against AGW from all the BS here. Because if there is any place where such arguments may be found, it is on WUWT. For instance I learnt here about the AMO and temperature of the Barentzsea (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/08/new-paper-barents-sea-temperature-correlated-to-the-amo-as-much-as-4%C2%B0c/), which has had considerable consequences for my thinking about the decline of Arctic sea ice.
Warming in Holland is outside of natural variation and that is statistically provable. I mean by this an even stronger situation than ‘statistically significant’. We’ve had a couple of months (like July 2006 or April 2007) that were simply impossible until say 1988. We have this situation for the distribution of daily temperature records: http://benlanka.tweakdsl.nl/climate/datumrecords.png .
But let us discuss this another time as this post mainly wishes to adress the ad hominem way the climate discussion is done.
Gene Nemetz (21:56:38) :
the story is a year old—DOH!
Paul Vaughan
The UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre […] incorporates [natural] cycles into its climate models […] nothing new […] all of which are accounted for by its models.”
2 words: B.S.
I tend to agree with your comments . I have asked the Met Office to tell me what natural cycles are included in their model and there is total silence . They state that” We found about one in every eight decade has near zero or negative global temperature trends….”. That tells me that cycles like AMO, PDO /ENSO , NAO, have been excluded or given minor weight so that the Co2 effects dominate . The latest temperature prediction curve[straight lines nearly] shows no cooling whatsoever right up to 2100.The approximate 30 year cycles were present in all past global temperature records
RRKAMPEN
You said ” Warming in Holland isoutside of natural variation…”. Just wait a few years. You may think differently then.
While North America’s winters have been getting colder since 2006 already, Europe has had its two warmest winters ever during 2007 and 2008. First significant cooling was evident during this past 2009 winter as both the winter NAO and AMO went briefly negative. All this may be changing soon and for the next 2-3 decades. Europe‘s winter climate seems to be affected more by AMO and the winter NAO. Both the winter NAO and AMO are heading negative in their cycle and this is associated with cooler Atlantic Ocean surface temperatures and cooler weather in Europe and eastern North America, like the 1960-1970’s. See the charts below showing the declining winter NAO since the 1980’s and the AMO which peaked in 1998 and has been declining ever since and is headed into the cool mode. The numbers below illustrate how the number of negative WINTER NOA years has affected our climate. The bracketed figure is number of negative NAO years
1920-1940 [ 9] negative or cool Winter NAO years [WARM PERIOD]
1950 -1970 [14] negative or cool Winter NAO years [COLD PERIOD]
1980- 2009 [ 8] negative or cool Winter NAO years[ WARM PERIOD]
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Winter-NAO-Index.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amo_timeseries_1856-present.svg
. Thus the next several decades could be headed for cooler temperatures again in Europe like the 1960-1970’s].
RE: Monbiot is back from the Welsh hills this morning
Has now gone into mod delete mode per realclimate again. Usual suspects rapidly returning to type too. Guess the tranquilisers are wearing off 🙂
That didn’t take long! Go here if anyone fancies firing a few more darts!
Usual suspects seem to work 9 to 5 UK time, not around much outside these hours. Full time employees somewhere perhaps?
RRKampen, you did not answer my question, and I would like you to prove we are outside natural variation. Use the entire time scale and not just a scale of 100 years, as this is a cherry-pick. I do not deny warming, what I deny is the scale of reference. I also admit the predictions of a looming ice age by some here are alarmist, but as you stated, both sides have this. Many debates are held here on past threads, so do not use that as a dodge. My arguments are as salient( as many who post here are) as yours, so tell me that I am not being muzzled if I can not post on RC or climateprogress, but you can post on this site. I think you are in denial yourself and cannot answer my questions directly. I think you are also aware of the historic significance of silencing of free speech and are in denial of this. The foundation of your arguments have taken a severe bashing of late. You need to acknowledge that your assumptions have to be re-assessed. Skepticism is growing and it is because of evasive answers like the one you gave me. And by the way, it was the AGW side that made this a political discussion. I would prefer it was not.
David, I use the Dutch temperature record going back to 1706 plus what is known about climate in this country as witnessed and written by people back to 1200 mainly (we have a number of catalogs for that).
That is of course as much ‘cherry picking’ as is taking a timespan of ten years or 4.5 billion years.
The record for Holland is simply hockeystick-like. Can’t be helped, can’t be denied.
‘Natural variation’ is a statistic based on a record of a certain length of time and an arbitrary choice of what will be natural variation. Based on ordinary analyses of distributions and trends my statement is pretty straightforward to prove, given a reasonable interpretation of natural variation (e.g. if we expect natural variation to mean annual average temperature to lie between -300° C and +6000° C then there is no climate change at all, you know).
We on the better Dutch-language fora for weather/climate also ban some people, especially those who trouble us continuously with the same disproved arguments and show nil intent to learn.
Free speech is no issue in this, because fora – including this one (where I found one or two posts of my own snipped, probably because I used a generalization like ‘denialists’) – are moderated according to intent of fora and taste. Fora are NOT democratic institutions. Being kicked off one does not hamper you on other fora and it does not stop you from setting up a forum of your own. Yet I do know free speech in the west IS suffering from increasing pressure and this worries me considerably (as some Dutch fora bear witness!). But I don’t see how this affects the climate discussion; what I mean is more about geopolitics (e.g. Middle East).
The foundation of my arguments has received no bashing at all. Yet. There is a lot of noise but no substance. RC-articles show this clearly. Unlike ‘skeptics’ (here, I don’t mean real skeptics) they tend to keep themselves to analysis of subject instead of politics, institutions or the issue of free speech.
A direct answer to your question (I can see only one) would be: I see no silencing of dissenters. You are posting on a site that has won an award, see? Even if I get banned from this forum, I would see no silencing of me in general. I would just shout ‘stupid forum’ 🙂
matt v.,
the waiting is over.
2008 was just number six in the record of warmest, thus a rather ordinary 21st century winter.
It is great the winters of recent years in the US have become somewhat less milder than normal than some earlier ones, but who would expect warming to be something of an exact straight upslope? Trends cannot be derived from incidents; the cold winter of 1996 Holland does absolutely nothing to the fact temperature generally is rising very fast. Actually the question should be whether that winter wouldn’t have been even much colder were it fifty years ago.
There may be some cooling according to the oscillations you mention, but I submit the general warming superposes on this to never make a sixties/seventies decennium possible – unless Yellowstone blows up. Just as a combination of very strong Niña and very deep solar cycle dip could not keep 2007 or 2008 out of the top ten warmest years in the global record.
RR Kampen says:
Ah. I see. The “better” alarmist blogs censor the comments of skeptics, because you, in your wisdumb, decree them to be “disproved.”
And because they show no attempt to learn?? Have you looked in the mirror lately? It is the alarmist contingent that refuses to learn. Skeptics have always asked the same thing: please show us verifiable, testable evidence supporting CAGW. Not computer models; show us empirical, real world evidence that CO2 controls the climate. Show us, with experiments that are testable and falsifiable, that CO2 causes measurable AGW. We want to measure it too. Try to explain convincingly why the planet is cooling as CO2 rises. [And if you claim a hypothetical “heat in the pipeline”, show us exactly where that putative heat is lurking.]
Why don’t alarmist blogs allow all points of view, like WUWT does? Answer: because the skeptics would tear the alarmist conjectures apart. So alarmist blogs censor — not because anything is ‘disproved’ [remember that skeptics need prove nothing; the burden is on the alarmists] — but because the truth has always destroyed the CO2=AGW conjecture in honest debates. Censorship protects alarmist propaganda from being debunked. And they need that protection to keep them from becoming a laughingstock.
It is the CO2=AGW defenders who must answer skeptics’ questions, not vice-versa. But they cannot. And it is the alarmist crowd that must show that the climate is outside of its historical natural variability parameters. But it is not. The MWP was significantly warmer than today’s climate, and those were pre-SUV, pre-coal power plant days with low CO2. Now with CO2 rising, the global temperature is falling. Time to find another conjecture. The claim that CO2 causes anything but the most minor warming is being falsified by the planet.
Finally, it has been repeatedly explained to you that even though the planet is now cooling, it has come off of a recent natural warm cycle. When going over a hill and heading down, you are still up on a hill. The valley floor is far below. So the claims of being the X warmest year are meaningless. What matters is that the planet’s temperature is heading down.
Smokey, if you don’t know what Pi is, I wouldn’t be able to prove to you that it is an irrational number.
You cannot do ‘experiments’ re AGW just like you cannot experiment with Darwin’s hypothesis for the simple reason we can’t create earths like God could.
So what kind of experiments do you envisage?
If the earth is cooling, please explain to me why 2009 is rising in the ranks of warm years as per July, and how come September already made second place notwithstanding a shortage of sunspots… Explain to me how 2007 and 2008 were top ten warmest years while they were labouring under a big Niño and the solar dip of the century. Actually those two years evidenced GW far more convincingly than did 1998.
“it has come off of a recent natural warm cycle.” – Natural, so: unanalyzable? I always found allusions to Mother Nature somewhat religous… Apparently some undescribable phenomen leads you to believe the earth is going to cool substantially whereas ordinary physics of over a century old are just fantasies… Tell you what: if you were an insurance company having to accustom differently to either warmer or cooler future conditions I am very certain where you would put your money. Even if you would remain silent about it…
The MWP’s amplitude was about a third of warming since 1900. Apart from this, there are more drivers of global temperature than only CO2. The change in the latter has merely become the most dominant driver. That’s why 2007 and 2008 still got so warm.
O and by the way, I learnt in 2004. Before that I believed it had to be the sun, but I learnt, see, from evidence.
RR KAMPEN
I am a patient man and I do my homework. Like I say , come back in the future and lets see what your weather really was like. Your statement “Natural variation’ is a statistic based on a record of a certain length of time and an arbitrary choice of what will be natural variation”, shows that you do not understand natural cycles.
RR Kampen:
“…I wouldn’t be able to prove to you that it is an irrational number.”
I defer to you on all things irrational. You’re the expert. [BTW, I see that you dodged the question of censoring by the “better” alarmist blogs.]
matt v., enlighten me. Explain to me the dynamics of the relevant natural cycle(s). As long as you cannot, I will have to remain in my interpretation of ‘natural cycle’ as being a somewhat religious concept!
Smokey, I didn’t dodge, I’m just waiting for a rephrase. I wasn’t speaking about ‘alarmist blogs’ but about ordinary weather/climate fora where professionals and amateurs discuss weather, climate and climate change. There is a couple of real skeptics there too and they remain very welcome, because they enlighten the discussion with real arguments and insights and point out real problems with the AGW-hypothesis. They are not the kind that tells us ‘the earth is cooling down’ over and over again without being able to corroborate that statement with anything.
[snip] skepticism is dissent where discussion and science starts. Dissent is not an end, it is a beginning. This is the one great way to distinguish between real skeptics and flat (un-)believers (you know, the people who still try to quadrature the circle), who I suspect are not really interested in climate mechanics at all.
RR Kampen (04:23:51) :
Re: David Ball (12:26:14) :
Much dissent against AGW has not been muzzled, but dismissed because the arguments are bad.
How then to explain the near total silence on subject of Antarctic ice growth across the satellite record? Here we have the accumulation of 80% of Earth’s fresh water and 90% of Earth’s ice – and the satellite record showing ice growth of about 5% since measurement began. Surely this is a reasonable (not bad) argument to question how AGW can be the main cause of global ice melt. Even NASA experts are perplexed:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/antarctic_melting.html
Yet no discussion from “climate scientists” in the main stream media. No videos balancing the drowning polar bear scenarios. No open debate with skeptics and alarmists in the public forum. Is it not obvious why? Because the news of Antarctic ice expansion does not fit the global warming message. Thus suppression of knowledge in the interest of a political agenda. In the coming months as more is revealed of these tactics – the alarmist will be asked to explain their actions.
And it will not be a pretty sight.
RR KAMPEN
Austria’s provincial capitals are expected to see their earliest snowfalls in history this week as Arctic air sweeps the country and Germany. Sooner or later similar events will take place in your neck of the woods. When AMO, NAO,ENSO/La Nina all turn cool, they will enlighten you about their nature . You were probably too young when they all were last cool together.
RR Kampen
“I will have to remain in my interpretation of ‘natural cycle’ as being a somewhat religious concept”
So you would categorise the Atlantic Multidecadal osscillation, the ENSO, the PDO, the Interdecadal Pacific osscillation, the Arctic osscillation, the north Atlantic and North Pacific osscillations, the sunspot cycles, the Milankovich cycles (does the earth in fact orbit the sun at all?) the ice ages and interglacials, all as religious concepts?
How do you react to the exposure of the selective use of Yamal tree ring data by Briffa et al. to not only flip up the hockey stick in the last 2-3 decades largely thanks to a single tree, but also a curious editing out of datapoints during the MWP. The aim that is clear to all is to force the climate record to become like your own dear homeland – flat.
In referring to your own conversion from sun-worship to AGW you are putting
up a straw man – not many scientists on this site advocate a dominating role for the sun any more than for CO2 – both are similar errors in fact. See the posts by Lief Svalgaard for instance. In this respect your use of the term “climate mechanics” is instructive. Simple mechanical systems can be simply controlled by one or a few factors. The consensus developing on this site is that non-linear non-equilibrium dynamics are dominant in climate cycling, so that internally generated cycling from complex systems (complex in a fundamental sense, not just meaning “there’s lots of things in it”) does not have to appeal to some dominant driving factor in order to be accepted from evidence as real.
The confusion of others on this site on this point is quite amusing – “we cant really believe in changes because we cant find a single hero factor obviously driving the change”.
It seems to me bizzare to propose that the climate timeline of a planet like earth or any other should be assumed by default to be Netherlands-like flat. On the contrary, understanding of dynamically chaotic oscillating systems would lead to the opposite assumption – even in the (hypothetical) absence of evidence – to expect cycling over all timescales as normal. (How can you be Dutch and against cycling 🙂 ?? )
The colder it gets, the more of this we will see.
Good on the BBC for starting to ask sane questions.
And it is getting colder, and accelerating as we have the time lags from the PDO flip wear down.
As I type this I’m watching it rain out back. Not the occasional sprinkles we get this time of year, a full on gully washer. Frog strangler. Fish drowner. This is the full on winter storm that usually comes about a month from now.
And this is not just local weather. It is part of a shift of the PDO back to the “cold phase” and all that it brings with it. The whole northern plains are getting cold. We won’t even talk about Denver and the game…
I have a very vague memory of about 1/2 century ago when I was a wee lad and sitting in the car as Dad drove us up to see the “big snow” at Tahoe. It was a record snow year (something like 18 feet of snow where we stopped, and has been more like 4 to 7 feet since). I remember looking out the car windows UP to the top of the channel plowed through the snow. Every year since that I’ve driven up that road, I remember that visage and wonder if it would ever return.
There is something about the weather this year that reminds me of then.
I can’t quite place it, but I remember a something that feels similar. An edginess. The early rains. The “something is coming” and you ought to be going feeling.
Now I have no idea if we will get record setting snow in the Sierra this particular year or if it will take a couple; but I can say that ‘the something’ feels like it did a very long time ago and like I’ve not felt it since.
RR Kampen (04:23:51) “Warming in Holland is outside of natural variation and that is statistically provable. I mean by this an even stronger situation than ’statistically significant’.”
This claim is based on untenable assumptions.
–
RR Kampen (04:23:51) “[…] simply impossible until say 1988.”
See here:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumAO70.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumDJFM_NAM.png [NAM = Northern Annular Mode]
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumDJFMwinterNAO.png
Annular Modes Website:
http://ao.atmos.colostate.edu/
particularly:
http://ao.atmos.colostate.edu/introduction.html
I encourage you to dig into the (short-list) of references (at the bottom) here:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/DRAFT_VaughanPL2009CO_TPM_SSD_LNC.htm
–
RR Kampen “I learnt here about the AMO and temperature of the Barentzsea (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/08/new-paper-barents-sea-temperature-correlated-to-the-amo-as-much-as-4%C2%B0c/), which has had considerable consequences for my thinking about the decline of Arctic sea ice.”
We had a healthy exchange here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/17/nsidc-still-pushing-ice-free-arctic-summers/
[For example, see where the comment of Dave Wendt (23:22:02) led the discussion.]
The following provides many interesting leads:
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Arctic.htm
Also, see here …
Tisdale, B. (2009). A Closer Look At The ERSST.v3b Southern Ocean Data. http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/04/closer-look-at-ersstv3b-southern-ocean.html
… in conjunction with …
Sidorenkov, N.S. (2005). Physics of the Earth’s rotation instabilities. Astronomical and Astrophysical Transactions 24(5), 425-439.
http://images.astronet.ru/pubd/2008/09/28/0001230882/425-439.pdf
… and with the works of Yu.V. Barkin.
RR Kampen, you showed me a graph dating back 100 years. The records you claim show “hockey-stick” show nothing of the kind. The warming started long before the industrial revolution, and this is the inconvenient truth you choose to ignore. You have consistently been slaughtered over and over in your arguments and yet maintain the same position. Scott Mandia, Joel Shore, ajones, have all been handed their hat and yet refuse to accept that their theory of Co2 driven climate is hollow. Who are the real deniers here? Very sad.
David Ball
I do not know why you imply I support the theory that CO2 has any significant effect on climate. I suggest your read my postings here and elsewhere more carefully.
Kindest Regards
It’s true, a jones doesn’t belong with those alarmists.
Thank you Smokey
Kindest Regards
Apologies to a jones, sorry mate !!
RR Kampen never did answer my question anyway.
I mistook your post regarding cherry picking on Pielke Jr’s site as a criticism. If you reread it , you might see how I misinterpreted.
David Ball.
No problem. I know a great deal about statistical analysis and am constantly amazed at how the AGW crowd abuse it, sometimes perhaps from mere ignorance, many seem to lack basic mathematical education, but again sometimes through what can only be called deceit or even malice.
Lies, damned lies and statistics.
But the article referred to, which Lucia has also examined, see her board which takes these things more seriously than I do, is such a delightful expose of the stupidity of trying to get some great long term import out of essentially meaningless short term data that it had me rolling in the aisles.
Kindest Regards
Thank you for accepting my apology. I followed the battle between Lucia and Tamino. It was amazing. The resultant banning from Tamino’s site reinforces the question I posed to RRKampen regarding the need for proponents of AGW to silence those who raise cogent questions regarding all aspects of the science. I truly wish I could spend a lot more time following all the great skeptic sites and postings. I joke that I have cut back and I am only working half days now. 12 hours instead of 24!!! 8^] All the best to you , …. Dave
Re: David Ball (17:56:56) :
RR Kampen, you showed me a graph dating back 100 years.
You can find some more records yourself. I am not doing it for you because I will be accused of ‘cherry picking’ no matter what. Do you understand and accept this?
The records you claim show “hockey-stick” show nothing of the kind.
Of course they do. That’s actually why there is so much talk about climate change.
Here’s another graph: http://nlweer.com/png/DeBiltJaarJDTgraf.png . 2007 is ex aequo 2006, 2008 was top ten at +10.6 and this year is running a little warmer again. The top nineteen of warmest years are all 1988 or after. That’s hockeystick. If you go back in our record until 1706, the stick just gets longer.
The warming started long before the industrial revolution, and this is the inconvenient truth you choose to ignore.
Of course I don’t. And the other inconvenient truth I quit ignoring (remember I’d have preferred ice age if any change) is the fact that by far most of the warming happened since 1900, and most of that after 1980. See the graph. See the physical effects on Dutch nature and agriculture if you wish to think that warming cannot be measured by the one thing it can be measured with: thermometers.
You have consistently been slaughtered over and over in your arguments and yet maintain the same position.
If you find a contradiction, check your hypotheses. You will invariably find at least one of them to be false. Some people here have slaughtered frantically with knives made of wet toiletpaper. Shout but no substance at all.
: E.M.Smith (12:31:27) :
The colder it gets, the more of this we will see.
Quite so!
And it is getting colder, and accelerating as we have the time lags from the PDO flip wear down.
So how do you explain the fact it’s getting warmer as of July, with September already second place again? Are you holding graphs upside down??
Re: Phlogiston (11:12:10) :
How do you react to the exposure of the selective use of Yamal tree ring data by Briffa et al. to not only flip up the hockey stick in the last 2-3 decades largely thanks to a single tree, but also a curious editing out of datapoints during the MWP. The aim that is clear to all is to force the climate record to become like your own dear homeland – flat.
—
Hoax.
References:
1. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/
2. http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/10/read-effing-editorial-guidelines.html
Politics: Bush dumped this EPA-report, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/13/AR2009101303897.html .
Author: matt v.
Comment:
RR KAMPEN
Austria’s provincial capitals are expected to see their earliest snowfalls in history this week as Arctic air sweeps the country and Germany.
Let’s check.
First, Austria had an incredibly hot summer and autumn (again), so some snow would be nice again… E.g. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/global_monitoring/temperature/tn11147_90.gif .
Second, I can find no reference to ‘record early snow’ in Austria. I can find some places reporting more early oktober snow than in 25 years, Seefeld 37 years – but those are not records, of course. Look at Septembers for them.
Records are more like this: http://www.zamg.ac.at/aktuell/index.php?seite=1&artikel=ZAMG_2009-10-09GMT05:32
Or better still: http://www.abendblatt.de/vermischtes/article1221353/Oktoberrekord-mit-fast-31-Grad.html#reqRSS .
I understand and accept that you cannot back up your claims that all the warming has been recent. We are currently at the tail end of a warming cycle, do you understand and accept this. Rabbet and realclimate are not good reference sources at all. Have read anything on this site?
“Rabbet and realclimate are not good reference sources at all.” – In fact, they are quite excellent. Good arguments, very well documented and referenced. Perhaps the problem is that they do see the reality?
There may be cycles; superimposed on them is the increased ‘greenhouse’-effect by increasing [CO2]. This has become the dominant driver of global temperature. That is why 2007 and 2008 did not end up in the ten percent coolest years since 1900, but in the top ten warmest. Downward turn of cycle will not keep 2010 out of medal position, mark my words.
Of course, even if the years 2010-2020 become succesively hotter starting at a temperature over that of 1998, some of you have already found a safety measure for that duration. Saw a citation of an article sporting a ten year lag between solar variability and global temperature response, that will do…
2007 and 2008 are much better evidence for GW than the unique year 1998. That year cannot be used to establish a change for the past decade or so, it is a cherry pick year! Use 1999 for a starting point and find 2005 to be the warmest: without a strong Niño.
Looks like a real life debate has broken out on a BBC (Hudson’s)Blog.
Judging from some of the comments it looks like Real Climate wacko’s are wading in – maybe time for a bit of evening up the numbers?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/10/a-few-points-about-my-article.shtml#comments
“Good arguments, very well documented and referenced. ”
Because all comments pointing out the holes in their arguments and showing that their data is faked are scrupulously censored. As this cooling trend continues it won’t be possible to cherry-pick a rising trend up to today’s data. Looking forward to the skating this winter?
Remko, I acknowledge your De Bilt hockey stick blade, but I don’t make the assumption you make about its causes.
As I’ve shown (via links to graphs) upthread, NAM flipped tendency in 1988. I’ll share a little more.
Note the time on the following graph when LNC/3 slid into anti-phase with |Pr’|:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/Phase_Pr._LNC.png
Note the corresponding breakdown in co-trending here:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/-LOD_aa_Pr._r.._LNC.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/-LOD_aa_Pr._r.._LNC_Env_MorletPi.png
(This is a sign that other harmonics need to be considered.)
You may also be aware that we are currently very close to the extremum of a 205 year cycle. (graph available here: http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/DRAFT_VaughanPL2009CO_TPM_SSD_LNC.htm )
1998 was not some ‘fluke’ year. According to Barkin, it was a year in which Earth’s shells “galloped” relative to one another. I think you need to reconsider the following:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumGLAAM.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumPDO(76,88,98).png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSum(-SOI).png
I also think you will benefit from extending your view to other regions and thinking about inter-hemispheric oscillations:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/04/closer-look-at-ersstv3b-southern-ocean.html
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumSAM.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumAO1899.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumJFM_AO1850.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/PWP&LOD2.png
Please clarify: On your graph I see “J-D”; does that mean “January-December”?
http://nlweer.com/png/DeBiltJaarJDTgraf.png
Regards,
Paul.
Correct Sandy, and this brings me back to my original question to RRKampen who never answered it. They are not good sites to reference because they do not allow anyone to question. Apparently this is ok with RR Kampen. Thank you Paul Vaughan, but I am afraid RRKampen will likely not read your posts, or, if he does, he will dismiss them out of hand. The planet is cooling, yet Co2 continues to rise.
Re: David Ball (12:56:31) :
but I am afraid RRKampen will likely not read your posts, or, if he does, he will dismiss them out of hand. The planet is cooling, yet Co2 continues to rise.
Do not fear.
I guess by the end of 1998 you believed in the runaway greenhouse warming effect?
Regards, Remko.
Remko, I acknowledge your De Bilt hockey stick blade, but I don’t make the assumption you make about its causes.
Fair enough!
If I really were 100% confident of the ‘A’ in AGW (instead of say 90%) I wouldn’t even be here. I wouldn’t partake in the discussion, much as I don’t partake in discussions where people try to prove Pi is a rational number. I have no material or political interest in the rationality of Pi as I have none in the AGW-hypothesis, that’s why.
Re: Sandy (08:30:10) :
Looking forward to the skating this winter?
A bit. Until a couple of years ago my year started on the first of September, winter being my favourite season. Repeated dissapointments have dulled my excitement. Since 2006 I’ll just let the winter surprise me (as did 2009).
Paul, I’m digesting your material. Will take some time to sift through the harmonics and how they relate to global temperature 🙂 Thanks for those.
Forgot to clarify your last question, ‘JD’ does allude to the year January (januari) – December (december) (Dutch names of the months in brackets).
RR Kampen (02:06:53) “Paul, I’m digesting your material. Will take some time to sift through the harmonics and how they relate to global temperature :)”
The effect seems to be largely through the hydrologic cycle (through sustained pressure patterns). It is necessary to look at higher derivatives & integrals. Any constructive comments you can offer will be appreciated. There is an opportunity here for cross-paradigm collaboration. We share an interest in understanding natural cycles, in analyzing data, and in protecting nature. I’m not presenting some wild tangent here; rather, I’m following the lead of the Russian scientists who seem to be decades ahead of us in appreciating ACI. Landscheidt & Charvatova were on the right track about timing-elements, but perhaps not about the role of the solar cycle (although Barkin’s theories do not rule out multi-channel influence-pathways ….but one (manageable) step at a time here…)
Here are some notes from …
Sidorenkov, N.S. (2003). Changes in the Antarctic ice sheet mass and the instability of the Earth’s rotation over the last 110 years. International Association of Geodesy Symposia 127, 339-346.
“The purpose of this paper is to call attention to a close correlation of the decade variations in the Earth rotation with the mass changes in the Antarctic ice sheets.”
“The redistribution of water masses on the Earth entails changes in the components of the Earth’s inertia tensor and causes the motion of poles and changes of the Earth’s rotation speed.”
“Apart from all other reasons, the parameters of the geoid depend on the distribution of water over the planetary surface.”
I suggest you compare the following …
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/-LOD_aa_Pr._r.._LNC.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/-LOD_aa_Pr._r.._LNC_Env_MorletPi.png
[from http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/DRAFT_VaughanPL2009CO_TPM_SSD_LNC.htm ]
… with the overview and 3 figures here:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y2787E/Y2787E03.HTM
You may also note how many figures in the following show the same pattern:
Klyashtorin, L.B.; & Lyubushin, A.A. (2007). Cyclic Climate Changes and Fish Productivity. Government of The Russian Federation, State Committee For Fisheries of The Russian Federation, Federal State Unitary Enterprise (FSUE), Russian Federal Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO). Moscow, VNIRO Publishing.
http://alexeylyubushin.narod.ru/Climate_Changes_and_Fish_Productivity.pdf
[Reminder: When you look at curves, imagine their derivatives & integrals – and watch for phase-relations across a variety of timescales.]
Barkin argues that it is the north-south motion of the Earth’s core that is driving the relative pressure waves in Earth’s shells [but I am convinced that there are more layers of assumptions to break through in the models he is pioneering – (sure makes the math challenging)].
You will note on the plots to which I linked that the pattern shows up in both the acceleration of Earth’s rotation (which relates to pressure & wind patterns, which affect temperature [but we should not necessarily assume linearly, as there could be thresholds in interactions with geographically-stationary waves, for example]) and geomagnetic aa index. This is consistent with Barkin’s notes. I am beginning to suspect that now that LNC/3 is drifting out-of-phase with JN/2, other LNC harmonics may be playing a more important role; I have to give this matter some more thought. (The polar motion record is too short to see what happens over a series of 205 year cycles.)
I don’t have all the answers today, but I am certain that we should be paying attention to the Russian school of thought.
There’s something odd happening with the server at one of the links I posted, so here’s an alternate:
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/y2787e01.pdf
Chapter 2 from:
Klyashtorin, L.B. (2001). Climate change and long term fluctuations of commercial catches: the possibility of forecasting. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper No. 410, 98p., FAO (Food Agriculture Organization) of the United Nations, Rome.
RR Kampen (02:17:45, 14 Oct)
“Hoax”
Do not mistake a lot of text including expletives for an effective rebuttal.
I looked at the two links that you claim to have demonstrated that Steve Macintyre’s criticism of the Briffa data was a “hoax”. It turns out that they do not touch at all on the substantive content of the objections to Briffa’s hockey stick. For instance it has been abundantly demonstrated by contributions to this site from people experienced in forestry that there can be many reasons for variation in ring width other than warmer or cooler seasons – such as the number & proximity of other trees, water tables, types of nearby trees etc. This contributes background variation that necessitates large group numbers for the statistics to be robust. Neither of the articles defended the use of only 12 trees in the last 20 years, when data from two decades and further previously used 40 or more trees per data point.
Another much larger nearby group of 34 Bristlecone pines at Schweingruber show no hockey stick. When this group is combined with the “Briffa’s 12” (n=46) there is still no clear hockey stick (possibly only a rather twisted golf club). The absence of the upturn in this larger group is also not addressed by either of your referenced links.
Elsewhere others have attacked the addition of the Schweingruber pines on the basis that they were young and the Yamal pines were old – old was apparently better than young. However in a separate response Steve MacIntyre has shown clearly that, up to 1970, the old and young pine proxies were in close agreement. But the small Yamal group of older trees diverge upwards from the younger trees after this date. Suspicious indeed.
If you want the full picture (at least from his side) please read the MacIntyre detailed response at: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7278
Its ironic that the AGW critics of MacIntyre accuse him of being “randomly” selective. One side uses a small group. Another side uses a much larger group. Generally one would consider the choice of the smaller group to be selective, not of the larger. And MacIntyre’s argument holds even if the combined set of all the trees are used.
Anyway – what did these links, from realclimate and rabbet run, say – what points did they make?
First, the real climate offering:
They open by making a personal attack on MacIntyre using strong language – that is true to form for the AGW camp.
Then the article refers to a “categorical refutation” of the criticism by Keith Briffa himself. But if you go to the provided Briffa refutation link, it is nothing of the sort. It is short, and starts with the question of the choice of 12 trees, hiding behind some statistical terminology about methods. (But it does not take a PhD statistician to tell you that 12 is a small number, smaller than 34 or 46). Then he reciprocally criticises MacIntyre for his random and selective choice of the larger group. He ends by saying he will respond in more detail later (but I’m not aware that he has). So this brief opening response does not engage at all with the detailed findings by Steve MacIntyre and does not claim to. Hardly a “categorical refutation”.
After that, the RC article sets forth a series of data sources that they claim show the same sacrosanct hockey stick, excluding the Yamal series. What are they?
(1) Other tree ring based proxy temperature data, the original MBH hockey stick and its replication by Wahl and Ammann. However any reconstructed temperature curve of the last 1000 odd years that is ironed flat before the mid 20th century is completely at odds with an abundance of other proxies that show such blasphemous observations as the medieval warm period and the little ice age. For instance the web site CO2 science almost every month cites new peer reviewed publications finding evidence from lake sediments and elsewhere of the MWP from all over the world (“data published by 744 individual scientists from 437 separate research institutions in 41 different countries and counting”). There are numerous objections to tree rings as climate proxies. The myopic obsession with tree ring data in the AGW camp just because some of it shows the stick is rapidly losing its wider credibility.
One comment of my own on this – increasing CO2 in the atmosphere alone, even without any associated temperature change, will increase plant (including tree) growth rate and thus ring width. A rather obvious confounder to the use of tree rings in recent climate reconstruction one would think.
(2) Oerlemans temp reconstruction derived from glacier retreat since 1600
At the present time – and at any time – glaciers worldwide are either advancing or retreating under influence of local cyclical factors (yes that “c” word, also blasphemous, now we are told the natural world is supposed to be devoid of temporal cycles). So glacier retreat is a very shaky basis for climate reconstruction, and, like tree rings, highly susceptible to subtle selection which scientists can very good at concealing.
(3) “How about Osborn and Briffa’s results which were robust even when you removed any three of the records?”
Not quite sure what they are referring to here. But 3 again seems a rather small number to be using.
(4) Borehole temperature reconstructions (Pollack et al. 1998). This uses borehole water to reconstruct temperature back to about 1860. It shows an increase of about 0.7 deg over this period.
That global temperatures have risen since the mid-late 1800s, the end of the LIA, is not controversial (even if stretched by data fiddling – all the pertinent climate series datasets in the hands of AGW activists, great situation for honest science…) What these people do next however is really astonishing and reveals the sort of mind-set we are dealing with. They extrapolate BACKWARDS the climate reconstruction all the way to 1500. In the minds of these people global temperatures must follow some simple one-term curve, exponential, power or linear. It does not even ENTER THEIR HEADS that there might be natural climate fluctuations! Sorry – shouting is bad manners of course – but I am shocked and incredulous at this. It’s hard to know what to say. Several WUWT threads have explored extensively the role of natural oscillations, from external forcings like orbital and solar variations, intrinsic non-linear system oscillations of oceans and atmosphere that characterise most or all complex natural systems. There is abundant evidence for numerous oceanic oscillations like the Atlantic and Pacific decadal (or multidecadal) oscillations and the ENSO and La Nina events that even AGWers cite (when it suits them). Now we find ourselves having to justify climate fluctuations – like Galileo in front of the Pope arguing for an earth rotating round the sun. Or arguing for evolution before 6-day creationists.
(5) Number 5 shows the CO2 concentration back to -10k yr, with stretched y axis needless to say for dramatic effect. A true hockey stick with a recent anthropogenic upturn – possibly – although I have a suspicion that the premodern flatness could also turn out to have been ironed. Anyway, the CO2 hockey stick is accompanied by a calculation of radiative forcing from the CO2 – the central physical argument in the AGW narrative. OK fair enough. But this is not observational data to offer as a supporting alternative to a corrupted Yamal. It is just the pictorial illustration of the AGW hypothesis. A hypothesis does not prove itself – you need real world data for that.
(6) Another tree-ring based (recycled, and apparently Yamal-free) hockey stick from Kaufman et al. 2009. Please refer to earlier comments on tree ring proxies in point 1.
(7) Various Hadley Centre and other reconstructions going back about 2k yrs, and with (pause for incredulous gulp..) a HAD instrumental series stitched onto the end. Yes. One category of data (several displayed together) up to the mid 1800s and then, after this, a completely different dataset stitched onto the end. The result – you guessed it – a hockey stick! This again shows the calibre and integrity (not) of the arguments from the AGWers. Noooooooo!! (adopts facial expression of “The Scream” by Munch). I’m sorry (now speaking gently) you really can’t do this.
Oh and by the way; this graph contradicts two graphs that you have already used. The combined reconstructions in (7) show – albeit with a lot of scatter – the medieval warm period and the little ice age. Didn’t you notice? These are more “correctly” ironed out in the just cited tree-ring reconstructions by MBH and Wahl and Ammann (1) and by Kaufman et al. (6). It helps not to contradict yourself so blatantly in making an evidence-based rebuttal.
(8) The HADCRUD (did I remember to spell-check this?) instrumental series just referred to, that was stitched onto the end of (7). Just repeating an argument in order to look like an additional argument.
On the subject of the Hadley CRU, there is another story here concerning a certain Dr. Jones and some apparently destroyed data. This hardly fills one with confidence about the data series being referred to.
(9) Number of babies born (capitalist pigs one and all!) and given the name Gavin from 1960. Trivial and pathetic. What is the subtext here? Humans emit the toxic pollutant CO2, too many humans (Gavins or otherwise) a cull of humans is thus the goal of the AGWers? Starting with us no doubt.
That just about wrapped up the RC article.
Then there was one from the respected and august scientific institution “Rabbet Run”, entitled “read effing editorial guidelines”.
Just the sort of language we expect as routine from AGWers.
This article is essentially a chorus of voices defending Briffa’s refusal to share his data on the basis of legal small print, journal policies, “it was the Russians’ data not ours”. Not exactly redolent of a scientific culture of openness and transparency – vociferous defence of the concealment of data.
Then this article used the phrase “capitalist imperialist pigs”, referring to an eponymous website. At this point I lost interest permanently in this rabbet-run website.
Again, what can you say?
If the AGW movement is motivated at its core by anarchistic-anticapitalistic sentiment (as it is) – it should be called the KHMER VERT – it is not clever to loudly proclaim this fact. You should try to keep it quiet.
Finally, your use of the word “hoax” – the entire content of your reply – is inappropriate. We will let you off for this since you are not a native English speaker (omdat uw moedertaal is Nederlands mar uw Engels is niet te slechts). Hoax means deliberate falsehood. Your cited refutations of Steve MacIntyre do not come close to demonstrating dishonest fabrication (i.e. hoax) nor do they even claim to. The boot fits better on the other foot methinks.
Phlogiston (11:33:19),
Excellent post. Very well done.
I’m glad you pointed out the psychological projection of alarmists when they falsely accuse people like Mr McIntyre of perpetrating a hoax, when the hoax is in fact being perpetrated by the AGW crowd.
Skeptics do not have to prove anything, thus they can not be perpetrating a hoax. They are simply asking questions. The job of skeptics is to falsify a hypothesis, and people like Steve McIntyre have done a fine job falsifying the claims propping up AGW — which is the actual hoax.
In another thread RR Kampen invoked the late Karl Popper. Popper explained that falsifiability, refutability and testability are absolutely essential to the Scientific Method.
Climate alarmists should seek the truth using Popper’s criteria. They don’t. But for those interested in Popper’s central points they are as follows:
Steve McIntyre has refuted the Yamal methodology. But rather than accept that Yamal is fatally flawed, the alarmists have circled the wagons and tried to defend the indefensible, following their similar behavior in MBH, Michael Mann’s hockey stick, and other discredited AGW props.
Popper explains: “If observation shows that the predicted effect is definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted.” Alarmists predicted that increasing CO2 would cause runaway global warming. Yet the opposite is occurring. Therefore, the theory [in this case the AGW hypothesis] is simply refuted.
Smokey
Thanks for your clear summary of Poppers criteria for scientific investigation and hypotheses; better than my previous efforts.
They should be the 7 commandments of the scientific method. But instead we find that we have to pin them to the “Wittenburg door” like Luther.
“Alarmists predicted that increasing CO2 would cause runaway global warming.” – Of course they did, but then e.g. IPCC does not consist of ‘alarmists’, but of scientists. They predict a certain warming that is not ‘runaway’.
Phlogiston, the ‘hockey stick’ was never Briffa’s. Neither was it the exclusive result of that one tree. The figure emanates more or less (on average certainly more) from a very diverse collection of proxy data (which will all have to be refuted).
Finally, http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2000/ .
Paul re “There is an opportunity here for cross-paradigm collaboration. We share an interest in understanding natural cycles, in analyzing data, and in protecting nature.” – we are in total agreement!
I still need some time to digest the Russian material. At work now (software quality assurance mgt), likely to have time in the weekend. Thanks. Also for your tips as to interpreting graphs, even though I have a physics/mathematics background and habitually watch graphs like you describe.
Re: RR Kampen (03:48:12)
I’ve just posted some notes on Barkin here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/11/spotting-the-agw-fingerprint/
[Paul Vaughan (17:56:11)]