I’m off this weekend and part of next week– talk quietly and politely amongst yourselves. Don’t make me come back here.
If you have something worth posting on the front page, flag a moderator. Those that want to do guest posts are welcome to do so also. Again, flag a moderator for attention. I’ll update when I can but I have quite a busy schedule in the next week that will keep me offline for extended periods.
– Anthony
Phil Clarke (07:10:14) :
“Clearly such a debate would not advance our understanding one jot, the reason the Viscount is so keen is that he wants to be seen sharing a platform with a real scientist … I am reminded of Richard Dawkins explanation of why he will not debate creationists …”
Phil so you know the Viscount well enough to understand how he thinks – do you?
Point being Phil you do need to advance your understanding many amounts of jots. Any debate with the skeptical community about the SCIENCE behind determining what really causes climate change should broaden your view point. Sadly you appear to come here to denigrate and that is not a substitute for healthy debate.
Oh and thanks for your Dawkins reference – highly relevant to the ongoing problem skeptics have debating science with alarmists.
Speaking of religion can you enlighten the Skeptics visiting this blog with any empirical proof showing causation between CO2 and global temperature increases. And also a source list of any computer based climate simulations that have made correct predictions during the last 20 years.
Regards
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (11:17:54) :
Well done Carsten!
It looks like one speaker is rewriting his talk:
14.40 Dr Hans Labohm, independent economist and expert reviewer IPCC
Economical, political and social consequences of a COP15 agreement
Phil Clarke (13:01:50) :
“I’d be very interested in seeing a citation for the quote since it is highly unlikely that Lord Monckton would use that phraseology himself.”
Thank you for the reference. I apparently stand corrected… he did use that terminology. Gotta keep things simple for us colonials, I guess.
“So we see the master debater misrepresenting his credentials, fabricating graphs and failing to address over a hundred scientific errors. I am afraid the relevance of the large wiki discussion page copy-and-paste escapes me.”
I’m sure it did. I learned something new, even if it was from Wiki. Lord Monckton is in fact a member of the House of Lords (if we can believe the wiki discussion, which by the way, I suspect was submitted by Lord Monckton himself…. but that’s just a surmise… the UK spellings and the impeccable grammar are my clues…) albeit without voting rights, but, if true, then he has every right to what he has claimed. It may seem obfuscatory to Americans, to whom everything is black and white, but the UK system is very decidely grey.
I notice, too, that you continue to impugn the messenger without addressing the message.
Getting mighty cold in Southern California. Freeze warnings tonight in Palmdale (high desert north of Los Angeles, where the shuttle lands).
Colder than usual at the beach in Marina del Rey, too.
Meanwhile, CO2 keeps climbing.
It looks like JAXA Arctic ice is back on an expected track :
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
I’m wondering if new ice was not recognized by satellite until it was thicker.
Does anyone have the explanation for the jump today?
From the “worse than we expected” press comes this article on Lake Superior. Can these numbers be right?
http://www.physorg.com/news177515344.html
Oh, by the way, the funding arrives in the last paragraph.
@Phil Clarke: “flitch, I find (in .06 seconds on Google), is a word commonly used by geologists (Plimer is a geologist and you are not) to describe layers in various deposits. Really, you should avail yourself of the wonderful research opportunities on the web and stop wasting our time on this blog.
Richard,
Lord Monckton is in fact a member of the House of Lords (if we can believe the wiki discussion, which by the way, I suspect was submitted by Lord Monckton)
No. when I wrote that Christopher Monckton is not, and never has been, a member of the House of Lords I was being 100% accurate. When he wrote that he was a member of that legislature, in a letter to Senators, he told an untruth. There really is no grey area; when he inherited his title in 2006 he acquired the right to be addressed as Lord Monckton, however since the House of Lords Act 1999, hereditary peers do not automatically became members of the House of Lords. As a transition to a democratic House, aristocrats with inherited titles are entitled to stand for election to a reduced number of seats, when one becomes free, which Christopher Monckton did in 2007, however managed to persuade none of his fellow Lords to vote for him.
As for focussing on the messenger, well if by the message you mean his ‘scientific’ output, then as Lucia and Arthur Smith found, this is largely either made up or else full of errors. If the messenger cannot be relied on to be honest about such basics as the actual IPCC projections, or his membership of Government, then the message becomes largely incredible. If you remember, the context was Smokey’s assertion that the professional climate scientists who run the Realclimate blog were scared of debating the Viscount. Seems to me that it is more the case that anyone who agreed to waste time debating with a figure so prone to fabrication, error and delusion would be guilty of a severe error of judgement.
Besides, live debates, even when between people of integrity, are a lousy way of establishing scientific principles. The place for this is in the academic literature where proposals can be scrutinised and the balance of supporting evidence weighted up, a processs that takes weeks, not hours. The scientists who run RC have published several hundred studies between them, Monckton claims that his piece on climate sensitivity, published on the APS Physics and Society Forum web page, and the subject of Arthur Smith’s dissection, counts as a peer-reviewed study. The APS president editor disagrees …. ‘The newsletter of the Forum on Physics & Society is not, and never has been, peer-reviewed.’.
More delusion.
Phil Clarke,
” As a transition to a democratic House,”
Democratic house? You’ve got to be kidding right? In my book, a democratic house is one in which the members are voted into their seats by the public. The UK upper house is nothing of the kind. When Blair removed the rights of the hereditory peers to sit, he simply replaced them with his hand picked cronies. We now have the utterly undemocratic spectacle of individuals being enobled into government in order to avoid the inconvenience of an election. I refer most lately to Lord Mandlesson of Hoy, or whatever he calls himself, a government minister who has not even been elected into office.
Okay, apologies for the blog-shorthand, howabout “marginally more democratic” House. This is not really germane to my main point.
Phil Clarke (11:04:32) :
“No. when I wrote that Christopher Monckton is not, and never has been, a member of the House of Lords I was being 100% accurate. When he wrote that he was a member of that legislature, in a letter to Senators, he told an untruth. ” …
Well, I’m not above deferring to those who may be more knowledgeable…. so I sent the following e-mail to the Lord Speaker of the House if Lords:
Madam:
There has been some controversy here in the United States over a letter written in 2006 by Lord Monckton of Brenchley in which he described himself as “…a member of the Upper House of the United Kingdom legislature…”.
The justification for such usage appears to have been on the grounds
“….Lord Monckton has never said he is a sitting member of the House of Lords: he is, however, a member of the Upper House by succession (hence his title), is registered as such on the list of Peers entitled to be elected by his fellow hereditary peers, and, as a member of the House in good standing, is entitled to use its facilities, though not to speak or vote in the Chamber, for it is in this sense alone that the House of Lords Act 1999 removes the right of membership from hereditary Peers….” (from a Wikipedia discussion page).
I’ve done a limited amount of research but can come to no firm conclusion other than the rules and structures of UK governance are a bit more convoluted than I thought. I thought that the Lord Speaker would probably be in an authoritative position to answer the question. I am actually something of an admirer of Lord Monckton and intend no mischief against him, but I also dislike arguing from a false position (which I may be guilty of having been doing!).
If you can shed some light on the question I will be grateful and look forward to your reply.
Phil Clarke (11:04:32) :
Richard:
Lord Monckton is in fact a member of the House of Lords (if we can believe the wiki discussion, which by the way, I suspect was submitted by Lord Monckton)
“No. when I wrote that Christopher Monckton is not, and never has been, a member of the House of Lords I was being 100% accurate. When he wrote that he was a member of that legislature, in a letter to Senators, he told an untruth. There really is no grey area; when he inherited his title in 2006 he acquired the right to be addressed as Lord Monckton, however since the House of Lords Act 1999, hereditary peers do not automatically became members of the House of Lords.”
It seems you want to picture Monckton as lying, yet your evidence is superficial. Monckton *claims* to be a member, and provides the argument in favor. This is different from an “untruth”, and there does appear to be a grey area of whether the 1999 Bill and treatment of Lord’s after that with respect to non-voting membership is constitutionally legal.
Many of the British Lords have taken exception to this Bill, still holding paper that provides them with membership in the House which have not been revoked by the authority under which they were given. There is at least one challenge currently underway:
http://www.u.tv/NEWS/Peers-legal-challenge-against-House-of-Lords-could-cause-constitutional-crisis/d7638e6c-038b-4cba-831d-1b521b650f5d
The list of House of Lords members is at the UK Parliamentary site:
http://www.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/mps_and_lords/alphabetical_list_of_members.cfm#M
Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley certainly does not appear in that list. The appointment process can be found here:
http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/members/lords_appointment.cfm
He should have just said, “a member of the peerage,” or “not a commoner.”
I agree that Monckton’s demonstrable falsehood is a minor issue, I am more interested in the errors and fabrications in his ‘science’ [ see links above – more here. ]. His defenders seem not to want to discuss these ….
Many of the British Lords have taken exception to this Bill, still holding paper that provides them with membership in the House which have not been revoked by the authority under which they were given
Monckton was never made a member, so his membership cannot have been revoked.
Asia’s getting an early start to winter — look at the huge area of snowcover all the way south to the Himalayans:
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_asiaeurope.gif
The graphic changes every day.
Phil Clarke (00:10:34) :
Many of the British Lords have taken exception to this Bill, still holding paper that provides them with membership in the House which have not been revoked by the authority under which they were given
“Monckton was never made a member, so his membership cannot have been revoked.”
As I understand it, he inherited membership, was “made a member” at that time. From a distance, one would expect that Lords are members of the House of Lords, by definition and purpose. Commoners never “made” Lords, or members of the House.
Gene Nemetz (20:49:08) : “It looks like JAXA Arctic ice is back on an expected track:
“http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
“I’m wondering if new ice was not recognized by satellite until it was thicker. Does anyone have the explanation for the jump today?”
It’s not a new ice/old ice issue. Apparently, air has been exchanged between the Arctic and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, bringing snow and low temperatures to Canada, the US, and some parts of Europe and China. Conversely, warm air displaced from those areas has delayed freeze-up at the pole. A change in wind patterns has stopped this process. Look for higher freeze rates as the Arctic night descends.
Interesting: A cruise ship has “encountered a large ice mass” in the Antarctic during “semi-circumnavigation” of the South Pole.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091117/ap_on_bi_ge/aa_antarctic_cruise_ship
The ship, a Finnish-made Russian craft, is the Kapitan Khlebnikov, apparently on her last voyage. Delay of up to a week is expected. No major scientific or political importance, just a reminder that Antarctica can rise up and bite you. “Russian news agencies said a BBC camera crew filming a documentary about the Antarctic was also on board.” How jolly.
jorgekafkazar (11:01:57) :
“Interesting: A cruise ship has “encountered a large ice mass” in the Antarctic during “semi-circumnavigation” of the South Pole.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091117/ap_on_bi_ge/aa_antarctic_cruise_ship”
Thanks for the link. After reading the article I’m getting a bad vibe – old ship – thick floating ice – what happens when the wind starts to blow???
I hope all get back safely.
Rereke Whakaaro (17:03:49) :
Kia Ora Richard,
Richard (18:40:08) :
Kia Ora Rereke
“Kia Ora”? I gather that is not Maori for “hands up, sucker!”? A blessing for a greeting. Whodathunkit?
Phil Clarke (00:09:35) :
I agree that Monckton’s demonstrable falsehood is a minor issue, I am more interested in the errors and fabrications in his ’science’ [ see links above – more here. ]. His defenders seem not to want to discuss these ….
Phil, you were the one who made a big deal out of what may NOT be a “demonstrable falsehood”. I have no idea what Madame Lord Speaker’s reply might be… but what I see from you is “… slowly I turn, step by step, inch by inch…” then you refer us to an NSFC satire as evidence?
Phil, sorry, you are just a dishonest troll.
Well if my first article didn’t impress you…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/17/millions-hungry-households-us-report
11-17-2009: Record Numbers Go Hungry In The U.S. Says Report
More than a million children regularly go to bed hungry in the US, according to a government report that shows a startling increase in the number of families struggling to put food on the table.
President Barack Obama, who pledged to eradicate childhood hunger, has described as “unsettling” the agriculture department survey, which says 50 million people in the US – one in six of the population – were unable to afford to buy sufficient food to stay healthy at some point last year, in large part because of escalating unemployment or poorly paid jobs. That is a rise of more than one-third on the year before and the highest number since the survey began in 1995.
The number of children living in households where there were shortages of food at times rose by nearly one-third to 17 million. The report says that most parents who did not get enough to eat ensured their offspring received sufficient food but that more than 1 million children still suffered outright hunger.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/12/un-investigator-us-neglect-homeless
11-12-2009: UN investigator accuses US of shameful neglect of homeless
A United Nations special investigator who was blocked from visiting the US by the Bush administration has accused the American government of pouring billions of dollars into rescuing banks and big business while treating as “invisible” a deepening homeless crisis.
Eddie Murphy:
If people don’t have enough to eat, it is not the fault of other people’s neglect. It is entirely due to their own bad choices in life: click
Click on the graphs for some interesting information. You will see that there are no truly “poor” people in America [poor meaning destitute, with no adequate source of nourishment]. Every person in this country is entitled to medical care, without any requirement for their ability to pay. The despicable canard that the “poor” [by which in America is meant only those less affluent than others [click on the charts in the link above] are denied food is Leftist propaganda.
And the UN should butt out. Due specifically to UN corruption, food shipped for the poor in other parts of the world never reached its intended recipients, but was instead sold by — you guessed it — UN personnel. The Oil-For-Food program filled the pockets of UN bureaucrats with $Billions. Kofi Annan was personally involved. And his successor, Ban Ki Moon, continues the same nepotism-based corruption. So please don’t tell us that the UN’s investigator cares a whit about the poor. He was attempting to engage in anti-U.S. propaganda, and was rightly refused entry.