From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in Copenhagen
In the Grand Ceremonial Hall of the University of Copenhagen, a splendid Nordic classical space overlooking the Church of our Lady in the heart of the old city, rows of repellent, blue plastic chairs surrounded the podium from which no less a personage than Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, was to speak.
I had arrived in good time to take my seat among the dignitaries in the front row. Rapidly, the room filled with enthusiastic Greenies and enviro-zombs waiting to hear the latest from ye Holy Bookes of Ipecac, yea verily.
The official party shambled in and perched on the blue plastic chairs next to me. Pachauri was just a couple of seats away, so I gave him a letter from me and Senator Fielding of Australia, pointing out that the headline graph in the IPCC’s 2007 report, purporting to show that the rate of warming over the past 150 years had itself accelerated, was fraudulent.
Would he use the bogus graph in his lecture? I had seen him do so when he received an honorary doctorate from the University of New South Wales. I watched and waited.
Sure enough, he used the bogus graph. I decided to wait until he had finished, and ask a question then.
Pachauri then produced the now wearisome list of lies, fibs, fabrications and exaggerations that comprise the entire case for alarm about “global warming”. He delivered it in a tired, unenthusiastic voice, knowing that a growing majority of the world’s peoples – particularly in those countries where comment is free – no longer believe a word the IPCC says.
They are right not to believe. Science is not a belief system. But here is what Pachauri invited the audience in Copenhagen to believe.
1. Pachauri asked us to believe that the IPCC’s documents were “peer-reviewed”. Then he revealed the truth by saying that it was the authors of the IPCC’s climate assessments who decided whether the reviewers’ comments were acceptable. That – whatever else it is – is not peer review.
2. Pachauri said that greenhouse gases had increased by 70% between 1970 and 2004. This figure was simply nonsense. I have seen this technique used time and again by climate liars. They insert an outrageous statement early in their presentations, see whether anyone reacts and, if no one reacts, they know they will get away with the rest of the lies. I did my best not to react. I wanted to hear, and write down, the rest of the lies.
3. Next came the bogus graph, which is featured three times, large and in full color, in the IPCC’s 2007 climate assessment report. The graph is bogus not only because it relies on the made-up data from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia but also because it is overlain by four separate trend-lines, each with a start-date carefully selected to give the entirely false impression that the rate of warming over the past 150 years has itself been accelerating, especially between 1975 and 1998. The truth, however – neatly obscured by an ingenious rescaling of the graph and the superimposition of the four bogus trend lines on it – is that from 1860-1880 and again from 1910-1940 the warming rate was exactly the same as the warming rate from 1975-1998.
4. Pachauri said that there had been an “acceleration” in sea-level rise from 1993. He did not say, however, that in 1993 the method of measuring sea-level rise had switched from tide-gages to satellite altimetry against a reference geoid. The apparent increase in the rate of sea-level rise is purely an artefact of this change in the method of measurement.
5. Pachauri said that Arctic temperatures would rise twice as fast as global temperatures over the next 100 years. However, he failed to point out that the Arctic was actually 1-2 Celsius degrees warmer than the present in the 1930s and early 1940s. It has become substantially cooler than it was then.
6. Pachauri said the frequency of heavy rainfall had increased. The evidence for this proposition is largely anecdotal. Since there has been no statistically-significant “global warming” for 15 years, there is no reason to suppose that any increased rainfall in recent years is attributable to “global warming”.
7. Pachauri said that the proportion of tropical cyclones that are high-intensity storms has increased in the past three decades. However, he was very careful not to point out that the total number of intense tropical cyclones has actually fallen sharply throughout the period.
8. Pachauri said that the activity of intense Atlantic hurricanes had increased since 1970. This is simply not true, but it appears to be true if – as one very bad scientific paper in 2006 did – one takes the data back only as far as that year. Take the data over the whole century, as one should, and no trend whatsoever is evident. Here, Pachauri is again using the same statistical dodge he used with the UN’s bogus “warming-is-getting-worse” graph: he is choosing a short run of data and picking his start-date with care so as falsely to show a trend that, over a longer period, is not significant.
9. Pachauri said small islands like the Maldives were vulnerable to sea-level rise. Not if they’re made of coral, which is more than capable of outgrowing any sea-level rise. Besides, as Professor Morner has established, sea level in the Maldives is no higher now than it was 1250 years ago, and has not risen for half a century.
10. Pachauri said that if the ice-sheets of Greenland or West Antarctica were to melt there would be “meters of sea-level rise”. Yes, but his own climate panel has said that that could not happen for thousands of years, and only then if global mean surface temperatures stayed at least 2 C (3.5 F) warmer than today’s.
11. Pachauri said that if temperatures rose 2 C (3.5 F) 20-30% of all species would become extinct. This, too, is simply nonsense. For most of the past 600 million years, global temperatures have been 7 C (13.5 F) warmer than today, and yet here we all are. One has only to look at the number of species living in the tropics and the number living at the Poles to work out that warmer weather will if anything increase the number and diversity of species on the planet. There is no scientific basis whatsoever for Pachauri’s assertion about mass extinctions. It is simply made up.
12. Pachauri said that “global warming” would mean “lower quantities of water”. Not so. It would mean larger quantities of water vapor in the atmosphere, hence more rain. This is long-settled science – but, then, Pachauri is a railroad engineer.
13. Pachauri said that by 2100 100 million people would be displaced by rising sea levels. Now, where did we hear that figure before? Ah, yes, from the ludicrous Al Gore and his sidekick Bob Corell. There is no truth in it at all. Pachauri said he was presenting the results of the IPCC’s fourth assessment report. It is quite plain: the maximum possible rate of sea-level rise is put at just 2 ft, with a best estimate of 1 ft 5 in. Sea level is actually rising at around 1 ft/century. That is all.
14. Pachauri said that he had seen for himself the damage done in Bangladesh by sea-level rise. Just one problem with that. There has been no sea-level rise in Bangladesh. At all. In fact, according to Professor Moerner, who visited it recently and was the only scientist on the trip to calibrate his GPS altimeter properly by taking readings at two elevations at least 10 meters apart, sea level in Bangladesh has actually fallen a little, which is why satellite images show 70,000 sq. km more land area there than 30 years ago. Pachauri may well have seen some coastal erosion: but that was caused by the imprudent removal of nine-tenths of the mangroves in the Sunderban archipelago to make way for shrimp-farms.
15. Pachauri said we could not afford to delay reducing carbon emissions even by a year, or disaster would result. So here’s the math. There are 388 ppmv of CO2 in the air today, rising at 2 ppmv/year over the past decade. So an extra year with no action at all would warm the world by just 4.7 ln(390/388) = 0.024 C, or less than a twentieth of a Fahrenheit degree. And only that much on the assumption that the UN’s sixfold exaggeration of CO2’s true warming potential is accurate, which it is not. Either way, we can afford to wait a couple of decades to see whether anything like the rate of warming predicted by the UN’s climate panel actually occurs.
16. Pachauri said that the cost of mitigating carbon emissions would be less than 3% of gross domestic product by 2030. The only economist who thinks that is Lord Stern, whose laughable report on the economics of climate change, produced for the British Government, used a near-zero discount rate so as artificially to depress the true cost of trying to mitigate “global warming”. To reduce “global warming” to nothing, one must close down the entire global economy. Any lesser reduction is a simple fraction of the entire economy. So cutting back, say, 50% of carbon emissions by 2030, which is what various extremist groups here are advocating, would cost around 50% of GDP, not 3%.
17. Pachauri said that solar and wind power provided more jobs per $1 million invested than coal. Maybe they do, but that is a measure of their relative inefficiency. The correct policy would be to raise the standard of living of the poorest by letting them burn as much fossil fuels as they need to lift them from poverty. Anything else is organized cruelty.
18. Pachauri said we could all demonstrate our commitment to Saving The Planet by eating less meat. The Catholic Church has long extolled the virtues of mortification of the flesh: we generally ate fish on Fridays in the UK, until the European Common Fisheries Policy meant there were no more fish. But the notion that going vegan will make any measurable impact on global temperatures is simply fatuous.
It is time for Railroad Engineer Pachauri to get back to his signal-box. About the climate, as they say in New York’s Jewish quarter, he knows from nothing.
Much appreciated, Lord Monckton.
Well written!
Lord Monckton…..The Devil Slayer!
Lord Monckton and Senator Steve Fielding (Australia) have written an open letter to Dr. Rajendra Pachauri asking him to correct the defective diagram and saying that he should be stripped of his office.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/pachauri_letter.pdf
in a few years the whole climate propaganda will seem like a bad dream. i guess we’re about to wake up soon or sooner ;]
While entertaining for the right audience, perhaps his tone is a little OTT for more neutral audiences (and I am a big fan of his). Also, a 50% reduction in emissions = 50% drop in GDP is a bit simplistic (maybe a model would help). I disliked the reference to a railroad engineer – this disqualifies any of us who are not climate scientists from looking at the facts and making up our own minds.
Don’t hold back m’Lord, tell it like it really is.
“Stop worrying about the lousy science, and how me the money already.” – Rajendra K. Pachauri
An excelent, factual report – but why is it not splashed accross the worlds media? Surely there is someone with enough influence with a large media organisation out there to ‘dare’ them to publish it?
The ‘net is buzzing with the story yet the lunatics are still in charge of the asylum (and our country!).
It is interesting.
Even with the fall-out from ClimateGate, and even with the MSM starting to realize that their readers are now better informed through the web than their journalists are through the press briefings, the people at the center of all this still cling to their mantras.
They look like, as they say in Australasia, “possums in the headlights”.
Pity we never found out if Lord Monckton got to ask his question or not.
Magnificent stuff. Only sad that it won’t be this comprehensive demolition job that gets reported in the MSM.
“…the latest from ye Holy Bookes of Ipecac, yea verily…
“Hurl ye, hurl ye, let the fleecing of the World commence.”
Perhaps he missed this climate gate e-mail [1255550975.txt]:
SCHNEIDER: “As we enter an El Nino year and as soon, as the sunspots get over their temporary–presumed–vacation … there will likely be another dramatic upward spike like 1992-2000.”
Note also the word “likely” betraying they actually have no idea what drives climate up, and their best guess is that it is the sun.
But then again MANN said it best [1256735067.txt]:
As we all know, this isn’t about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations.
And MANN again [926010576.txt]:
I trust that history will give us all proper credit for what we’re doing here.
The Viscount didn’t say whether he got to ask his question.
I think Monckton is working far too hard to get the message across. All that he needs to say is that human activity produced (if it is even human, we actually do not know), C02 IS NOT CORRELATED with rising temperature (vice versa, yes it is). A simple equation C02 out = C02 in, it has not increased or decreased, its always been here (unless its radiated into space.. I don’t think so). As Spencer and Christy have shown excess heat is radiated/lost into space. It is actually a beautiful self regulating system.
Your second paragraph is needlesly offensive. Remove it or tone it down and I’ll be able to share it with my friends.
Thanks for the whole post!
i remembered the science classes in school. i dont recall getting good grades just by guessing, being almost right, or telling a good story. what happened to that kind of science?
oh, it might be that now we have peer-review…
Don’t these AGW alarmist realise they are digging a deeper and deeper hole for themselves the longer they peddle such nonsense? However, I don’t mind. Let them do it for some more time. Eventually they will look even more stupid than they already do. More please!
It’s like a bad dream…….maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow morning, switch on the radio, and the whole world will have woken up and come to it’s senses……
Well said, Lord Monckton. Pachauri is the worst kind of demagogues. He does not try to hide his lies with subterfuge. He’s as loud and as brazen as can be and he gets away with it. This tells me that the skeptics have their work cut out for them.
Thanks for posting this Anthony, I just read Lord Monckton’s excellent letter to Pachauri, which is available at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/pachauri_letter.pdf
And Pauchari is well-known to be a vegetarian himself, so no surprise he jumps on the eat-no-meat bandwagon.
Fine piece by Monckton and there is a good video link as well on the next WUWT thread “China declares Copenhagen Climate Conference hopeless”.
Whilst the Copenhagen circus will no doubt fail in the eyes of everyone except the self serving political ‘leaders’ who will fudge some famous rhetorical ‘victory’ at the 11th hour (as Monckton predicts), he is also right to point out that, behind the scenes, the framework for a World Government will have been strengthened.
But remember, this AGW thing is way too big to fail.
Richard North’s latest posting:-
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/climate-justice.html
should be absolutely required reading for everyone on here.
Make no mistake, the clowns that have hyped up this scam and inflated it to its present grotesque extent have created a monster which will cause untold damage to the developed world on the one hand and perpetuate the misery and life without hope for the third world poor.
Thank you, Viscount Monckton for your work at Copenhagen, I’ve watched videos of your presentations there and was especially entertained by your on the street debate with that clueless Greenpeace drone woman.
Based on the latest information I think it is safe to say that skeptics etc… do not need to say anymore that there has been any significant warming at all. Even skeptics say/admit that “there has been warming” this no longer holds (based on current evidence). ALL the raw data needs to be re-analysed before such statements are made
Thank you Christopher.
The lies just pile up, the main issue for me is that the more layers we peel back on the AGW gravy train the more corruption is uncovered. It’s unbelievable just the extent of how corrupt this is, for a long time I used to ask myself what do these people have to gain by claiming AGW is real? I could see the looming taxes but in the back of my mind I would think surly there must be something in this as the public face of the pro AGW debate was of impartial scientists and appointed officials with no bias and nothing to gain financially.
How wrong could I have been?
James Cameron just released a £500mil movie the most expensive ever made, how much has this AGW fiction cost so far? I’d get my popcorn to watch the wheels come off this but for the fact that I believe people have lost their lives through this fraud.
Here in the UK we have little choice in forming opinion in the political sphere both main parties have extreme climatitus, I didn’t vote at the last election UKIP are going to get my vote this time and I suspect both leading parties are in for a bit of a shock come election time.
Front-page story on the Daily express:
CLIMATE CHANGE ‘LIES’ BY BRITAIN
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/146517
Brilliant review !
There are several points Monckton makes that don’t quite add up to me, but the one I find most intriguing is the suggestion that the masses of dead coral that coral Islands are composed of will grow as sea levels rise. Now, obviously the live coral reefs that surround these islands are growing, but the islands themselves aren’t live coral.
Is there any legal redress one can take if an officer of the United Nations ie Pachauri as chair of the IPCC knowingly gives false statements in support of a political agenda.
He may claim his advisors prepare his presentations based on “peer reviewed ” papers. But his failure to reference the conflicting data or levels of uncertainty in his claims on behalf of the IPCC, shows a level of bias that should undercut the credibility him, the IPCC & the UN itself.
Perhaps not my favourite blog, but it shows up what Monckton still misses re. Pachauri: huge conflicts of interest due to the fact he is rolling in the money accruing from alarmism – like Al Gore.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/vast-nexus-of-influence.html
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron;
Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
Your Lordship,
Please don’t be coy, did you get an opportunity to ask a question(s)?
If you did was it answered?
If it was not, did you make an intimate acquaintance with UN security personnel?
Regards
Nov. 23, 2009
It isn’t necessary to list all the changes I have identified between what the scientists actually said and what the policy makers who wrote the Summary for Policy Makers said they said. The process is so flawed that the result is tantamount to fraud. As an authority, the IPCC should be consigned to the scrapheap without delay.
Dr Philip Lloyd Pr Eng – former Coordinating Lead Author, UN IPCC
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=87726
You can see the 1861-2005 temperature graph with two additional trend lines that have comparable slope and duration as the yellow trend line here:
http://agbjarn.blog.is/users/fa/agbjarn/img/ipcc1850-2005.jpg
The lines that have been added are dotted and pink.
ye Holy Bookes of Ipecac
Priceless…
O/T I know but I have just watched a recording of last night’s BBC Newsnight program in which their “ethical man” Justin Rowlatt demonstrated the “science of global warming” in his kitchen with an audience of members of the public.
The reason for my mentioning this programme is because Sir David King, who used to be the UK chief scientist, was there and when challenged by one of the observers of the experiment about the behaviour of the scientists at the UEA, he made the claim that the “hack” was highly sophisticated and that it took place over many years and included “interception of mobile phone messages”. I think he was trying to imply that it was the russians or some state power that had done it.
This is the first time I have heard such an outrageous claim and the mobile phone issue is completely new to me. Can anyone shed any light on this.
Here is the link. It only works for UK residents. Would be good if someone could upload it to youtube. I can’t as I am in France.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/newsnight
Andrew W,
It may have something to do with the masses of the stuff that washes up on the beaches….Last time I checked (my wedding a few months ago) coral islands are surrounded by coral beaches made up of broken off bits of coral, slowly grinding it’s way to the top of the beach…..and I reckon it would be safe to say that the angle of the beach (high top low tide) never really changes….but there is always a pile of larger coral pieces building up above the high tide mark……
I’d be pretty interested in this as well…maybe someone that frequents this blog may be able to explain….
The warming is coming! It’s scary! It’s bad!
The ice-caps are melting! The bears are so sad!
Soon they will drown and it’s ALL YOUR DARN FAULT!
So pay double for everything, now, at WalMart!
When energy doubles and triples and more,
It’s just the beginning – all prices will soar!
The warming is coming! It’s scary! It’s bad!
The ice-caps are melting! The bears are so sad!
So pay more for food – c’mon – go and see!
The corn tastes much better in my SUV!
Tax ’em says Waxman – and Markey agrees –
By spending our wages on these fantasies,
In ten years we might cool .01 degrees!
The warming is coming! It’s scary! It’s bad!
The ice-caps are melting! The bears are so sad!
Let’s go! Get aboard! This train’s out the station,
Don’t breathe out Co2 – that’s so out of fashion!
Carbon’s connected to all human efforts,
Taxed and controlled, it’s like a collective,
Oh, poor broken earth – your fever’s infected!
The warming is coming! It’s scary! It’s bad!
The ice-caps are melting! The bears are so sad!
Throw money, throw jobs, throw whatever you’ve got,
To cool every nation on earth, and, if not,
Then throw out science and all rational thinking –
Hey – it’s not like we’ll miss it – our brains have gone missing –
Sold like our souls for Gore’s fat commission…
The warming is coming! It’s already here!
Now gimme your wallet -You’ll pay for that fear…
©2009 Dave Stephens
http://www.caricaturesbydave.com
Well, Andrew, a good question. How DO those coral islands form?
As there are a lot of them, and they are well-known, presumably the question has been studied before, and there is likely to be an answer that is readily discoverable. When you have found it, could you post it here?
And , if you post the other points that you can’t get to ‘add up’, perhaps you would post them to see if anyone here can answer them.
Just in case anyone is in doubt about how nasty things could get, just consider what will be going through the minds of the people at Copenhagen as they return home.
The eco-warriors will be absolutely furious that the ‘fat cats and the Western governments have put their profits before saving the planet’. Just as the vegetarians and anti-vivisectionists morphed into the terrorist ‘Animal Rights’ movement, there will be a eco-fascist hard core who will now go from silly civil disobedience campaigns down the terror route. Think Baader Meinhoff.
The big finance men will be disappointed that cap and trade looks more doubtful and will also blame the skeptics, certainly but also the politicians (and perhaps the Greenies for diverting their attention). But hey! Big money men make big money whether markets go up or down! So they’ll be annoyed but not too concerned.
It will give yet another headache to Brown, Rudd & Obama. But they will know that they will be at the front of the queue, when they are forced out of office, for a cushy sinecure with the new World Government. They will blame those pesky ‘flat-earth’ skeptics.
And what of all the tin pot dictators from the third world? (OK, they are not ALL tin pot dictators…) Obviously they aren’t all entirely stupid. As the ‘scientists’, the media and the Western ‘leaders’ have hyped this thing up so much, the tin pot dictators will know absolutely that there has got to be some good handouts in the offing. Sure, not as much as they hoped, but still…
But that is far from being all the benefit. They have been given a superb propaganda tool to use when they get home. “Look, I went all the way to Copenhagen to get some ‘Climate Justice’ for you all! I busted a gut but all they would give me is the lousy few hundred million (I’ve put in my Swiss Bank Account for that rainy day!) They wouldn’t pay their ‘Climate Debts’!”
“OK, I understand you haven’t any clean water. I understand your kids don’t get educated. I know there isn’t any health care or electricity in your village and you couldn’t afford it if there was. But all that’s because we have to save the world and the Yanks and Brits won’t pay their debts! ….What’s that? Bad governance and corruption? What are you talking about? Police… arrest that yankee spy!”
Just remember 9/11. In vast areas of the world today, the majority of the population have been told that 9/11 was a conspiracy by the CIA and Israel. They believe it. There is no reasoning with them. They will now be told that the reason their life is so miserable is because of the West’s ‘Climate Change’. Do you think that reasoned debate about climate science will change their minds?
You and your kids and grandkids will have all this to pay for, one way or another.
Those who have blown up this hoax MUST be held accountable.
Would you forward this to all warmist journalists who display their emails at their organ’s websites?
Please ask them to try and refute your arguments, point by point, line by line, and if they can’t, for them to leave journalism and enter either politics, the Masons or the Moonies.
Well written and thank you, my Lord.
It’s necessary to just keep pushing this out on the Internet. Some in the MSM are starting to listen, too few however.
Russian TV ( RT) in English
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=33
even if it is Russian TV it has got the message, in a interview with Michael MacCracken ( Climate Institute, IPCC Obama adviser etc ) was call a liar, mentally deficient, by Piers Corbyn as they debated climate in Copenhagen,
Thank you Lord Monckton.
Your letter (and that of SENATOR STEVE FIELDING) as posted by Iren is outstanding stuff. Everyone should read it , make a PDF copy and email to their politicians. The link repeated here.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/pachauri_letter.pdf
Lord Monckton’s letter to Pachauri is excellent.
The part that makes me angry is Pachauri’s conflict of interest.
These are the people saying that sceptics are paid by big oil and tobacco???
I’ll distribute at least this part.
Maybe MSM and politicians understand that better than the science behind.
Have a look at the UKs daily express, a national daily, the only national daily so far to cover the AAM fraud in detail.
Perhaps readers would like to pop over and offer words of gratitude for the newspapers courage in covering the scandal where many others are ignoring or covering it up?
Mr. Monckton,
Thank you so much for that report.
Our children (ages – 13 & 15), think you’re great! They have been watching your You Tube videos re: Nazie Youth, and they agree with you – without any prompting from their parents!
There is still hope….
Chris
Did anyone else watch Newsnight last night?
It’s the BBC’s latest attempt to polarize the global warming debate into ‘scientists’ versus ‘sceptics’, by suggesting that anyone with any degree of scepticism towards the ‘proven Science’ behind AGW is some kind of a ‘Flat Earther’.
To prove that AGW is a real threat to civilisation they conducted an experiment that showed the relationship between CO2 and temperature in front of a very compliant audience made up of members of the public.
In the experiment two large bottles were used, one of which had CO2 added. Two ultraviolet lamps were then shone into the bottles and SHAZAM!… the bottle with the CO2 added warmed up more quickly.
I am now going to state the obvious:
to the BBC.
WE UNDERSTAND BASIC PHYSICS! We’re not as stupid as you think we are.
I don’t suppose the BBCs Newsnight would invite Lord Monckton on for a debate?
Noooo, silly idea. That would give balance to any arguments.
.
I wish there was a warning that there is a new thread.
Now the only question that remains is;
Will Obama read the Red Teleprompter or will he read the Blue Teleprompter?
This is freaking great.
BREAKING: MUST SEE: A LIVELY DEBATE! CrossTalk on Climate: Dopenhagen? with Piers Corbyn & Bjorn Lomborg
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4678
If you want to know why:
‘He delivered it in a tired, unenthusiastic voice’, look at this:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/busy-man.html
Lack of sleep!
Mike Atkins (00:20:25) :
I disliked the reference to a railroad engineer – this disqualifies any of us who are not climate scientists from looking at the facts and making up our own minds.
Not at all. That reference merely highlights the absurdity of someone with no background in the physical sciences proclaiming himself a “climate expert” strictly by virtue of having been appointed to his position — and *nothing* and *no one* should discourage someone from examining the facts and forming his own conclusions.
Pachauri’s conflicts of interest are eye-watering and yet no one apart from James Delingpole has covered it in the MSM from what I’ve seen.
He mentioned on BBC R5 that he gets paid £150 a week for his blog – incredible given the coverage it gets.
Someone asked in the comments why the main paper wasn’t picking it up – he said ‘ask others who comment here, more than my ‘job’ is worth.
Big money seems to want this to go through as much as Al Gore’s bank manager.
Oh yeah, now the New York Times weights in . Too Late! Barrage of curse words for the NYT, use your imagination.
As Climate Talks Near End, China Is Doubtful of Deal
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/science/earth/18climate.html
KeithGuy (01:57:46)
Was it the same stunt the Senator Boxer pulled in the Senate hearing last week?
David King wants a climate scientist to sit on the Bank of England’s Monitory Policy Committee so they can take AGW into account when setting our interest rates.
Barking – completely barking.
Its ok guys, Africa is scaling back its demands for compensation to a mere £100million a year by 2020!
Thank god for small mercies!
You know what really bothers me about this? The UK is leading the charge with an offer of at least £1.5billion YET where the hell is that money coming from as this country is BANKRUPT!
Not forgetting the fetid carcass that calls itself Labour cant find the £100million required to keep our boys alive in Afghanistan…BUT can somehow find £1.5BILLION!
Makes my blood boil and the sad fact is Brown and Milliband are devoted to signing something…anything at Copenhagen!
At least you Americans have the Senate and Congress to block the damage Barry will attempt to do…us here in the UK have nothing to stop such wonton destruction of our economy!
Mailman
Now Barroso, of the eu commission, can add Lord M to the list of people for Pachauri to sue. Apparently Barroso thinks it’s a grave offense to raise questions or just pointing out the obvious.
An engineer ought to know better then to become a hawker of doomsdays and peddler of universal ointment.
ralph (01:58:24) :
I don’t suppose the BBCs Newsnight would invite Lord Monckton on for a debate?
Noooo, silly idea. That would give balance to any arguments.
I did hear a debate on Richard Bacon’s Radio 5 programme a couple of weeks ago, where Lord Monckton was confronted with an AGW advocate. Lord Monckton put his views across in his normal calm and assured way, and the AGW guy got more and more frustrated. So much so, that at the end of the discussion he had to apologise for his bad language.
Empty cans eh?
Like Jesse Ventura said in his show last night, If you want to know who is behind all this, Follow The Money.
Snow in Copenhagen: http://politiken.dk/services/webcam/
The “Man-Made Global Warming Bubble” is about to burst.
Stock markets worldwide dropping like a rock. Sell everything.
The credentials of Monckton? His tongue-in-cheek challenging of Pachauri’s credentials is hilarious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Monckton,_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Brenchley
I don’t know why this man is being taken so seriously. Look at his solution to preventing AIDS. Obnoxious.
He goes birther at the beginning of this video: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/18/video-of-moncktons-speech-on-obama-poised-to-cede-us-sovereignty-in-copenhagen/
Seriously, it baffles me why this guy is seen as an authority on climate science. All he is, is a conservative politician. He is to [snip] what Gore is to “believers”. Both showmen and ideology based. And scientific discussions should exclude such people.
The four trend lines are really a laugh. Take a simple sinusoidal graph (which has no trend at all), end the graph on the maximum Y-value, and draw four trend-lines from the four previous valleys: you get the same result.
The UK press seems to have latched on to Climategate. The press in the rest of the world is still shockingly silent. Depressing. One can only hope that Copenhagen deadlocks.
Bill Tuttle (02:02:59)
Not sure how you can claim that an engineer, railway or otherwise, has no background in the physical sciences. What do you think engineers do? How do you think one gets awarded an engineering degree?
Yup, you guessed it, I are wun.
I am starting to worry about our environment.
Because, if everyone should get used to the idea that every word coming from environmentalists is a damn lie, who would protect the environment where and when it would really need protection?
Besides, perverse Pachauri-like social experimenters always are the worst enemies of Mother Nature.
Remember, how the Soviets were endlessly lecturing the world about evil capitalists destroying the environment? But the first thing any Russian notices coming to any Western country is a relative lack of pollution.
Agust Bjarnason;
It took a moment to figure out the graph. The plots show difference from the mean, but the mean is derived from 1961 to 90.
Surely the mean should be plotted from the extent of the series ie from 1850. I suspect the graph would be slightly different if this were done.
I like Lord Monckton a lot – smart, eccentric and fearless. I do though find it slightly odd when he rails against unsubstantiated claims and lack of scientific method, and then quotes from the bible in the next sentence. He hasn’t done so here, but this habit seems incongruous, given that environmentalism is a quasi-religion to many of its adherents. Similarly Pachauri is a Hindu. Perhaps Pachauri and Monkton could debate the science supporting creationism and reincarnation, each using their own graphs and trendlines.
Hillary Clintongate is speaking at COP15 on MSNBC.
Here is the link to the Gordon Brown interview. The man just came straight out and brazenly said Copenhagen is about carbon trading and tax revenue.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pbq6r
I’m sorry, Hillary on CNBC.
Martin Brumby is right – the west is setting itself up to be the fall guy for all evils in the world. All future weather disaster will be the West’s fault, since you can’t tell apart AGW-caused and naturally-caused ones. Every hail storm, every mud slide, every hurricane will attract compensation claims. And how much climate debt payment will be enough? As Martin says, West will be the excuse for every dictator’s failure – just like Mugabi. Are there no adults in Copenhagen to have thought this through?
And, yes, get this out of the blogosphere and write to your friend, colleagues and MSM. I am working on my Australian Medical Association, which also ‘predicts’ medical catastrophe – their defense was – but all other medical associations have the same policy. Infantilism rules the world.
“Plato Says (02:07:57) :
KeithGuy (01:57:46)
Was it the same stunt the Senator Boxer pulled in the Senate hearing last week?
David King wants a climate scientist to sit on the Bank of England’s Monitory Policy Committee so they can take AGW into account when setting our interest rates.
Barking – completely barking”
Funny you should mention David King because he appeared on the Newsnight programme last night. Introducing himself by knocking on the presenters front door. I would have told him to go sing carols somewhere else, but he was invited in.
On the ClimateGate issue he main two interesting comments:
1) He stated that he was certain that the e-mails were hacked by a sophisticated organisation. (maybe it’s the Mafia or Al Qaeda Lord King?)
2) He conceded that the activities at the CRU were unacceptable. (now that is suprising coming from him.)
“Gubbi (02:31:37) :
I don’t know why this man is being taken so seriously. Look at his solution to preventing AIDS. Obnoxious.”
Well, based on the scare tactics played by the media, scientists and politicians at the time, it was not a too unreasonable stance. How would you “control” such viral infections that were (Laugh) “predicted” to obliterate mankind by 2000? Before that was the ice age, then global warming, then came Y2K, then SARS, the bird ‘flu, then swine ‘flu. And given your position on Monckton’s views about how to control the spread of such the AIDS virus, what are your views on “authorities” control procedures to control the spread of the H1N1 virus?
Pot, kettle, black.
Any of you out there still holding Carbon Credits should sell them off before they have zero value.
Well done Monckton , you really are saving the world.
I would urge the writer to desist from denigrating somebody because of their profession – you reduce your credibility and lower yourself to the level of those who use phrases like ‘flat-earther’ etc.
Wow! Look at all the news articles poopig up today about the solar minimum.
NASA Shows Quiet Sun Means Cooling of Earth’s Upper Atmosphere
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasa-shows-quiet-sun-means-cooling-of-earths-upper-atmosphere-79432252.html
http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&um=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=solar+minimum
Lord Monckton, keep up the good work.
You wish. It isn’t Pachauri’s political agenda I would look at . Try his financial interests. As somebody (Plato says) pointed out earlier they will make your eyes water.
I felt a little sorry (not too much though) for the protesters freezing away on the streets while Raj and his chums carve up the Turkey and toast their good fortune.
Look up Barbados. IIRC it is a big terraced mound of Coral (three terraces?). Didn’t look to hard (kept running into ppv science) but there looks to be plenty of literature.
Lord Monckton is terrific and makes a powerful case. I just wish he would tone it down just a wee a bit. When you have truth on your side, you don’t need to over emphasise. But well done M’lord. Keep up the good work. Your letter to Pacauri is first rate. We await with baited breath for the reply.
We were subjected to utter drivel on last night’s BBC Newsnight programme, with a couple of buffons, the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt and ‘Sir’ David King, trying to prove global warming with two plastic bottles and a Blue Peter type experiment with some CO2 in Rowlatt’s kitchen. Jaw droppingly pathetic. Its time to have a mass refusal to pay the licence fee. The BBC was clearly in breach of its charter by not having any sceptical view represneted. I will be lodging a formal complaint to the BBC Trustees.
Brevity, as well as sober understatement, can help in making a case. Let them use the rhetoric and ad hominem stuff. Ultimately folk see thorugh that. But thank God for his Lordship. The sceptical voice is hardly heard in the Mainstream as everyone on WUWT knows all to well.
Greenies think most people are too stupid or selfish to care. To some extent that is true, but you have to use a scale of 0 to 10, not a scale of 0 to 1.
On a scale of 0 to 1, you have the average person at 0 and the environmentalists putting themselves at 1. ie. average person doesn’t care (0), greenies care (1).
But on a scale of 0 to 10, you could find that most Westerners are actually, thanks to living a comfortable life, somewhere at 5 on the care scale, and environmentalists are somewhere at 6, but some might even be at 4 or 3 (think the sort who turn up to protests just to smash stuff, or who advocate draconian controls).
The interesting thing is that, on the care scale, there are people at 7 who care more than most people, and because they care more, they are more careful about truth, and they just disagree with what the average environmentalist at 6 would think.
See, caring about the environment is also caring about other things, like human health, and social health, and so on. The big criticism against many environmentalists is that they don’t care enough about humans. This is partly a problem of perspectives. Ecologists take a view on the whole planet and as they gaze upon the whole planet, we humans look like we are just another species, and where other species kill with their teeth, we kill with nukes and radiation, so as a species, we’re like a cancer, in the eyes of ecologists. But ecologists know as much about humanity as does a dentist. It is just another scientist taking a particular perspective, looking using a particular method, and missing the depth of understanding that can come from other viewpoints.
If you take the ecologist’s perspective, that we are just a species with numbers and resources, then you miss the profound depth that humanity has psychologically. (You wouldn’t ask your dentist about poetry or psychology or religious guidance, so why do we expect ecologists to guide our human development?) We write poetry to try to express our depth. Lions and tigers don’t. Of course we should care for nature, but that begins with care for ourselves, and that begins with recognising our own depth for caring.
But ecologists just think humans are selfish, scientists just look at humans “objectively” and come up with ideas like “the selfish gene” and argue that all human behavior is reducible to self interest. That’s like your dentist planning your entire life around the priority of having healthy gums. When you reduce humans that far, to mere selfish machines, it is as if greenies believe that we are all, at heart, no better than nazis.
It is a terribly narrow and limited view of humanity. It completely negates the thousands of years of progress towards ever greater levels of social integration that humans have been making. But greenies are stuck in their notion that humans are “the worst species”. Funny how the greenies themselves seem to have risen above humanity’s base morality, and somehow do actually care…
I’ve just offered RC a way out LOL. But no seriously there are may scientists there who probably believed in it and got carried away.. there is a future for long term forecasting as most meteorologists would agree? Posted on RC see if it stays there…
17 December 2009 at 4:19 AM
If you guys would just give up on the C02 story
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/BOMBSHELL.pdf
You could have a wonderful career future in long term forecasting and “climate change”. This will come back to haunt you and it is not going to go away.. so adapt. Its becoming very obvious that there has been manipulating of data to show the agenda (and I as a scientist do understand this as I was “forced” to comply with the “agenda” at that time). The truth will out and the fact that this site appears to be accepting dissent augurs well for your future. Good luck.
Now the only question that remains is;
Will Obama read the Red Teleprompter or will he read the Blue Teleprompter?
I hope James Delingpole of the Telegraph.co.uk uses this as a headline in his next article.
Martin Brumby (01:26:43) :
“The eco-warriors will be absolutely furious that the ‘fat cats and the Western governments have put their profits before saving the planet’.”
Don’t forget that the “eco-warriors” are also in it for money and power. They merely parasitize the idealism of others by creating a false persona in order to trick elicit support.
Nope they did not post it (RC) so they are digging their own grave LOL. That’s it they are finito…
one answer, one question.
if you’re ever lucky enough to dive on a corl reef, you’ll hear a constant but quiet crunching noise. check out the fish and you’ll see them eating the coral at one end …. and depositing perfect coral sand out the other. it quite takes the romance out of a moonlit stroll on a perfect coral beach, to know you’re strolling through hundreds of years of fish poo…..
question. in Lord M’s enumeration above, how can items 9 and 13 both be true at the same time? I feel another climatalogical Schroedinger’s cat coming on…..
Reply: I believe that generally applies only to Parrot Fish. Here’s a clip of them eating coral and excreting coral sand. ~ ctm
Russian weather data cherry picked by UK climatologists – report
http://rt.com/Top_News/2009-12-17/data-cherry-picked-climatologists.html
Formation of coral atolls
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoll
I still cant figure when this farago of lies will bring this anthropogenic global warming nonsense to its knees. Politicians of most persuasians are wedded to the concept. How long before they realise that it’s Y2K all over again.
Dominic (01:20:07) :
Cheers for the link. Missed it last night as watching the football.
Very informative how – not for the first time, the BBC was falling over itself to ‘prove’ AGW. The reporter, the scientist and Sir David King made for quite a holy trinity of unopposed AGW bias, without so much as an ounce of balance from a sceptic to even things a little. Nothing changes there. then.
The kitchen table experiment ‘proved’ nothing beyond the facts that applying some heat to 100% concentrations of Co2 in a closed jar causes some warming within that closed jar, and that coffee-drinking laymen in a BBC reporters kitchen can be easily duped.
The clearest signal from that show was the Alarmist brigade are fully aware that they’re losing momentum – and the backing of the people, over the entire debate.
PS. The worried frowns from Miliband and Susan Watts were a splendid sight. Copenhagen is collapsing into an abject farce. Next up; the Fallout. Should be interesting…
It doesn’t matter what the Big Media prints any more.
They are not the sole voice or the Mainstream Media.
This Internet is, and it confirms to most what they now suspect: The world is no longer warming.
Monckton and others have suceeded in alerting enough people in the right places to the Scam of AGW. It’s base of support is crumbling, and even should it’s Agenda succeed, it will have rebellion pre-sown into the hearts of those it seeks to subjugate.
You are assuming that they don’t. Let me ask which seems more plausible to you.
a) Politicians (and their thousands of advisors) are are all idiots who haven’t recognised the “conflicts of interest”, the bad science and the complete conflict inherent in much of the science.
b) Politicians know exactly what the game is – they created it, set the rules and are there to ensure that they, and their clients, get their cut.
Think Robber Barons meeting to carve up next years harvest and deciding who to invade come the Spring. They have been at this game for centuries. Only the faces change.
You wouldn’t be the first to ask that question. Environmentalist, to me, is now synonymous with directionless wild eyed ranting, the hard left and scamming the public out of vast sums of money with pictures of cute furry animals. I think the days of them acting on real problems are long gone. Seem’s that some of the “founding fathers” of organisations such as Greenfleece believe that too and promptly jumped ship.
He can probably do it in Latin if required, the Koran too, I suspect. No harm in a broad education.
I’ve just watched a Bloomberg TV report on the Jokenhagen summit and to illustrate ‘climate chenge’ they were showing footage of the 2004 tsunami.
Gordon Bennett!
Well said Lord Monckton. Re point 18, a world population feasting on beans, pulses and cabbage will have an impact on methane levels in the troposphere I think!
18. Pachauri said we could all demonstrate our commitment to Saving The Planet by eating less meat. The Catholic Church has long extolled the virtues of mortification of the flesh: we generally ate fish on Fridays in the UK, until the European Common Fisheries Policy meant there were no more fish. But the notion that going vegan will make any measurable impact on global temperatures is simply fatuous.
I can’t believe the IPCC guy has the audacity to argue for eating less meat in the hope to prevent ‘imminent, irreversible and catastrophic AGW’. A dazzling example of absurdity. It just shows the AGW can be used to advance any petty cause imaginable.
Lord Monckton pointing out depleted fisheries as a null alternative to meat sources is also what I first thought about. My second thought was whether we could do away with milk products even if we ate less meat. It is a pity that no one has calculated how many hundreds of millions of lives would be at risk with less cattle roaming over the planet.
But a commenter in the rival Real Climate blog, Joseph Sobry, has written perhaps the most devastating argument I have read about the absurdity of the fewer greenhouse gas emitting cattles argument. Note that the commenter is of pro-AGW theory persuasion. But his ‘defence’ of moderate amounts of nice juicy beef for all is worth reading. For example, did you know that mainly Hindu India has the biggest percentage of cattle in the world? Or what ‘animal husbandry’ mean for some people? 😉
Excerpts:
Here is the rest:
http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=2351#comment-149635
@ Mohib (00:28:12) :
[/quote]And MANN again [926010576.txt]:
I trust that history will give us all proper credit for what we’re doing here.[/quote]
Turns out Mann actually made a statement that I agree with. We can only hope that history will truly give them all the proper credit that they are due.
Charlie K
[Note: BB code doesn’t work here. Use HTML arrow brackets around commands. ~dbstealey, moderator]
Mr Pachauri has been fisked.
An Engineer (02:54:07) :
I would urge the writer to desist from denigrating somebody because of their profession – you reduce your credibility and lower yourself to the level of those who use phrases like ‘flat-earther’ etc.
Ordinarily, I’d second the sentiment. But here, it serves to draw out a point of hypocrisy in the alarmist camp where claim that is that the IPCC is reaching a “scientific” conclusion, and where they routinely dismiss the word of anybody who (a) isn’t a “climate scientist” or (b) hasn’t published in journals they control. Well, Pachauri is neither a climate scientist, nor is he author of scientific papers in climate science (excluding here anything derivative of his role as Chairman of the IPCC). His academic background is industrial engineering and economics. I assume that Monckton knows this, and the “railroad” reference is a mocking reference to his engineering background. As someone else said, Monckton, can be a bit OTT, but that’s intentional, I think. It probably comes off differently, a bit like British humour, or the ragging on the Prime Minister by the House of Commons, to those not used to British ways.
That was excellent. Now a video of statements and responses would be perfect.
To Anthony and all the great scientist out here (commenter s too!) Thanks for all you do!
Jimmy Haigh (03:50:58)
They’ve nothing else to highlight but naturally occurring events, in the quest to prove Anthropogenic Climate change, and heating up 1,000,000 ppm c02 in a jar (Boyles law) They become more fraudulent by the day.
Earthquakes in China next. It would come as no surprise
Who remembers the 6oties of the last century? When socalled scientists wrote one article after the other warning us ,that on the moon since millions of years have accumulated heaps of dust. How much? Well, here the” meassurements” went astray. From 3 meters to 6oo(!!!) meters they guessed.When they finally landed on the moon July 1969 people sucked in their breath. Was the “spaceship” disappearing under the dust? We all know that it did not and there were only about one inch and a half dustlayer found. The same with climate change. Scientists are guessers just like the rest of us. This hysteria amongst climatephobies would actually be funny if it would not be so costly for us taxpayers.What a wonderful world all messed up by lunatics!
It’s slightly off topic, but The Times has a breaking story:
Dramatic American intervention brings climate deal closer
The United States today pledged support for a $100 billion annual climate protection fund in a move that could clinch a global deal, and which came just as the Copenhagen summit appeared to be heading for failure.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6960211.ece
And I thought our politicians are reckless spendthrifts. I’m sure Hilary feels very good about herself right now.
“So cutting back, say, 50% of carbon emissions by 2030, which is what various extremist groups here are advocating, would cost around 50% of GDP, not 3%.”
Now that is more ludicruous than anything the IPCC have come up with. 3% is certainly overly optimistic, but 5%-10% as estimated by CATO institute if I recall correctly, sounds more believeable. No one can know really, and while it is clear that the alarmists want to downplay the impact, exaggerations like those by Lord Monckton aren’t very helpful. An outsider will immediately questions everything a person says if you utter something so ridiculous.
Apologies for dumb question.. I can’t understand this sea level rise thing. If the ice sheets melt , why would that raise the sea level so much? A block of ice when melted in a glass of water makes no apparent change to the level,trapped gasses I assume?.
Can someone briefly explain this please or point to the very well hidden web page that explains it to a layman?
Lord M even says that levels are riseing now , how can that be? where is the water comeing from? I am going to look a fool here as I have obviously missed the obvious , but you live and learn.
To the AGW crowd, Lord Monckton is one of the four horsemen of their Apocalypse—Messers Watt, McIntyre and McKitrick are his fellow riders. Press on!
Mailman (02:13:16) :
In theory yes, our senate can fail to ratify any treaty that Obama might sign, and congress as a whole needs to write any legislation before Obama can sign it into law. Unfortunately the house is run by California which feels the need to cram their version of communism down the throats of the rest of the USA, and they’ve already passed cap & trade. I’ll stop knocking California though, as I’m from Michigan and if anyone finds that out they’ll be able to point out that Michigan’s economy might actually be worse than California’s. Thankfully cap & trade has stalled in the Senate, at least for now.
Besides that, Obama has done an end run around our separation of powers by giving the power to the EPA to regulate CO2, which means he has effectively bypassed the checks and balances created by our separation of powers. Excellent commentary on that by Gerald Warner http://tinyurl.com/Gerald-Warner.
At the moment we’ve got Obama & the democrats saying that if they don’t pass cap & trade, the EPA will impose harsh regulation. On the other side, we’ve got the EPA saying they are going to impose regulations no matter what happens in congress. Either way its going to be a long cold three more years at the rate we’re going.
Charlie K
Lord Monckton is a bright light in the fight for scientific integrity. Clear, concise, and to the point issue for issue. It is clear that he knows his subject.
One small note to Mike Atkin: “I disliked the reference to a railroad engineer – this disqualifies any of us who are not climate scientists from looking at the facts and making up our own minds.”
That my friend is a logical foot fault. The facts are there for all to use and reason with according to our abilities. The logical conclusion is that those of us who are not climate scientists likely shouldn’t be chosen to Chair the IPCC.
Liar Goreacle Report: Xma$ Emi$$ion$.
Canadian Environment Minister Prentice said*.
Mayon volcano said**.
“*Canada’s position is that we will reduce our emissions by 20 per cent by 2020,” Prentice said. “That position by Canada is not the issue that is a barrier at this point in time.”
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/12/16/climate-conference-protest.html
…-
“**50,000 flee volcano, fear major eruption
LEGASPI, Philippines – Thousands more villagers were evacuated from their homes yesterday as more lava poured out of the Mayon volcano and experts warned the crisis could last for months.
As many as 50,000 people living in the foothills of the one of the Philippines’ most active volcanoes risk spending Christmas away from their homes, with 30,761 evacuated since Monday night.”
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/story.html?id=2349706
Even if one is to believe in the man-made global warming threats, a 5-10% cut in emissions would amount to no impact on the climate. The reason is obvious. Even 1 10% cut will reduce the temperature effect by less than 0.01C. Big deal! If one trully believes in all this nonsense, then we need to cut emissions by at least 80%. Of course this will NEVER happen. So what’s all the fuss about? Either we are doomed, or it’s all a fraud. I tend to believe the latter.
Presumably the BBC “experiment” used a CO2 concentration of say 0.038% in the one bottle ( today ) and say 0.05% in the other ( tomorrow ) . Anything else may be considered a “trick”.
Tony (04:36:54) :
They’re referring to land based ice; Icelandic ice sheets and so on. If they were to melt then the water would have to go somewhere – nto the sea, which would then increase sea levels accordingly.
However It ain’t gonna happen any time this side of 2,000 years though, so relax, put your feet up and copy Al by acquiring your very own beach-front pad.
“Tony (04:36:54) :
Apologies for dumb question.. I can’t understand this sea level rise thing. If the ice sheets melt , why would that raise the sea level so much? A block of ice when melted in a glass of water makes no apparent change to the level,trapped gasses I assume?.
Can someone briefly explain this please or point to the very well hidden web page that explains it to a layman?”
Nothing dumb about your question. You are right that if sea ice melts it does not affect sea level since sea ice already displaces its own weight.
However, when ice is deposited into the sea from things like glacier calving (That’s when ice breaks off of glaciers) it can effect sea level. You also have something called thermal expansion, which means that the sea expands when it heats up.
Tony (04:36:54) :
Not all existing ice is floating on water, some is located on land.
Nigel S (02:33:42) :
Bill Tuttle (02:02:59)
Not sure how you can claim that an engineer, railway or otherwise, has no background in the physical sciences. What do you think engineers do? How do you think one gets awarded an engineering degree?
Yup, you guessed it, I are wun.
Good point, Nigel. I used “physical sciences” when a better choice would probably have been “natural sciences” — although physics is smack in the center of the Venn diagram.
Most of the world’s small islands are gradually sinking–at least all those positioned on the crustal plates involved in seafloor spreading. Mid-oceanic spreading centers are ridges of uplift and as the seafloor spreads apart and away from these ridges of uplift, it gradually sinks, finally ending up as seamounts that are completely under water because coral buildup can’t keep up to the rate of submergence. Eventually they get sucked under other plates as they encounter subduction zones.
Submerged seamounts with coral reefs were problematic when they were first discovered, which was before plate tectonics was recognized back in the 60’s and 70’s (some of my first classes in geology back in the 60’s didn’t mention plate tectonics at all). Some thinking scientist recognized what was happening to islands/seamounts with the advent of plate tectonics, a process that continues to this day and as long as spreading centers operate, driven by convective processes in the mantle.
Gubbi (02:31:37) :
Seriously, it baffles me why this guy is seen as an authority on climate science. All he is, is a conservative politician. He is to [snip] what Gore is to “believers”. Both showmen and ideology based. And scientific discussions should exclude such people.
Your “arguments” are all of the ad hominem variety, which are logical fallacies, and thus are meaningless. Lord Monckton made mincemeat out of Pachauri’s pathetic “presentation”, and you know it. Your comparison of Monckton to Gore is completely ludicrous. To put it bluntly, Gore tells nothing but deliberate lies, which are easily refuted, in addition to his idiotic goofs and gaffes. Gore has already gained a great deal financially from the AGW fraud, and certainly has a financial interest in keeping the fraud alive for as long as possible. Monckton, on the other hand, tells the truth, and yes, rages against the lies because the lies have been allowed to become ingrained, and are in effect a cancerous tumor on humanity that needs to be excised so that the truth can actually be heard again.
About Monckton’s final comment:
“It is time for Railroad Engineer Pachauri to get back to his signal-box. About the climate, as they say in New York’s Jewish quarter, he knows from nothing.”
Yes, this was an ad hominem jab at Pachauri, after completely thrashing his arguments. Clearly, Pachauri doesn’t know anything about climate whatsoever, but simply mouths the lies he is given, without bothering to check their truthfulness. So yes, rather than being this incompetent, lying mouthpiece, he would be doing himself and humanity a huge favor in going back to doing something useful, and that presumably he is competent at – railway engineering. So, once again, Monckton is correct.
Patrick Davis (02:49:39):
I am questioning the objectivity and credentials of Monckton to be taken seriously in scientific discussions.
And his solution to AIDS was obnoxious even then as it is now. It’s obnoxiousness isn’t diminished by the lack of action by governmental agencies. And there is no way anyone can claim his approach would have been more efficient and enforceable solution.
Tony (04:36:54),
There are several reasons for changes in the sea level. First, the planet is still recovering from the last great Ice Age, during which Chicago was buried under a mile of ice and glaciers covered much of the northern and southern temperate latitudes: [click]. The planet is also still recovering from the Little Ice Age. Some glaciers [but by no means all] add a very small amount of water to the oceans. As the Earth has warmed, expansion of ocean volume has added a little volume [although this has apparently stopped for the last few years: click.
There are a few other causes, but by far the biggest [and false] claim of sea level rise – human emitted CO2 – was invented to frighten the public by using an entirely fabricated scare over a rapidly rising sea level. This claim of a huge sea level rise is used by climate alarmists as a tactic to separate Westerners from $Trillions in additional new taxes. But there is zero empirical [real world] evidence to verify that the few millimeters of sea level rise per decade is caused by human activity. Changes in the sea level are entirely natural.
As a long time reader and poster of all manner of gibberish on this site I would like to point out that Alan M (02:35:51) : is not me. This could be confusing!
My dear Lord, you are GREAT, but, I would suggest you to use, instead, some sharp wooden sticks, threads of male garlic, and last but not least, our sacrosant crucifix…
It seems that we have been invaded by hordes of devils in these “interesting times”. We do not know, really, who is the boss among them, Lucifer himself, though it may seem that all these are by common devils who act in representation of their hidden and hideous master. 🙂
However we must rest assured that no one of these dark entities will in the end succeed. Their power is ficticious, only possible through ours. If we do not pay attention to them they will just disappear…nobility of heart will champion over them.
I give his speech a full 10 Harrops.
Stefan (03:13:32) :
A nice passage, well written that I agree with then you ruined it all with the nazi comparison
Re: Tony’s question regarding ice sheet melting/sea level increases:
The analogy of an ice block in a bucket of water: If the ice is floating in the water and eventually melts, the water level in the bucket will not increase. Why? The displacement of the ice is a function of the expansion of solid water, which is about 10%, hence the part of the ice above the water level represents that amount of expansion. When all the ice melts, it forms water that is about 10% less in volume than it was when it was ice, hence a perfect balance in the water level of the bucket.
However, if that block of ice were on a table next to the bucket and the water from the melting ice flowed into the bucket, obviously the water level of the bucket would increase. This is what happens when any ice NOT floating in seawater (it is positioned on land) melts and the water from it flows into the ocean.
Now we get a bit complicated:
Of course, stacking a couple of miles of ice on a continent would weigh a significant amount, and would depress the elevation of that continent proportional to the weight of the ice. Some other place on the earth would have to rise to account for this decline–if it were applied to the ocean basins, they would actually rise and cmopensate somewhat for the missing water that now comprises the ice weighing on the continent. Once the ice sheet on the continent melts, isostatic rebound happens–the continent rises proportional to the weight removed, much like a block of wood floating in water rises when a small weight it has been carrying is removed.
Continents are relatively light-weight masses of rock that weigh less than mantle material. They literally float on the mantle with little chance of ever sinking out of sight (thank goodness).
Can I urge you people to wake up to the reality of climate change? http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10445-climate-change-special-state-of-denial.html
e.g. GDP of the Netherlands is $900 billion
16 GW of Nuclear power costs $32 billion (@$2000 per kW)
so 3.5% of GDP
16 GW Nuclear leads to a reduction of 38.4 Mt Co2 or 23% of the Dutch emissions of 168 Mt.
50% reduction would therefore cost approx 7% of dutch GDP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
Typo: “all these are BUT” (instead of “by”)
And a more updated article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18279-deniergate-turning-the-tables-on-climate-sceptics.html
Tony (04:36:54)
If Artic ice melts, it is as you understand. The Antartic and Greenland ice that cover land are what have to melt to raise sea levels.
Basil (04:15:46)
Seems to me Pachauri has the classic devious criminal mind.
re: $100 Billion climate fund. That’s been floating around for a while. Let’s see who kicks in the cash. Notice the US wouldn’t agree to higher reductions? It will buy them off, since that’s what this is all about, but I doubt it will support having the UN in charge of the cookie jar.
Tony, the sea ice floats and to float you have to displace its volume in water, when the ice melts the there is no increase in water volume, it’s Archimedes principle if you want a better explanation.
The earth is warming, we can’t say by how much because there seems to have been, shall we say, massive incompetence in finding the right data. A warming earth will cause the oceans to expand. To keep it honest the measured rise is 1.8mm/annum, which if it continues will give just under a metre rise in 500 years.
Now if the land ice melts which the alarmists are postulating in their scenarios there will be a massive increase in sea levels. But it is difficult to see the Antarctic which has 90% of the ice melting to that extent.
Gubbi (02:31:37) :
(On Monckton)
“Seriously, it baffles me why this guy is seen as an authority on climate science. All he is, is a conservative politician. He is to [snip] what Gore is to “believers”. Both showmen and ideology based. And scientific discussions should exclude such people.”
BUT, it is largely NOT a scientific discussion, it’s a political discussion. In political debate, advocacy skills trounce technical knowledge. Advocacy skills and knowledge are an extremely powerful combination. I would say that Monckton is much more clued up on this than any politician I can think of easily, and a good advocate.
Anyway, this business about being ‘an authority on climate science’ needs careful thought. Are Jones, Mann etc authorities? If so, how much is their authority worth?
FWIW, I think Monckton’s points could have been more cautiously put, without losing any impact..
Whew my president Comandante Chavez is received by the IPCC crowd as their next saviour, you know heir goose is cooked. So the Copenhagen event is going down as farce? Good! Time to go back to some serious science research.
Maria K (05:12:35) :
Can I urge you people to wake up to the reality of climate change? http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10445-climate-change-special-state-of-denial.html
Urge all you like. We do our homework!
Maria K (05:12:35)
like the IPCC, the New Scientist is an activist political magazine. They have helped to turn science into a propaganda machine in the style of Stalin. For them, science is just a tool that forces scientists to submit to a bureaucratic consensus. Like politicians, scientists can be made to sell their integrity to the highest bidder.
Some of us find this galling
If the ice sheets melt , why would that raise the sea level so much? A block of ice when melted in a glass of water makes no apparent change to the level,trapped gasses I assume?.
The ice sheets, or glaciers are over land, not water, thus your confusion. Sea ice such as in the North Polar region is a different story, since it is in fact over water. When that melts there is no effect on sea level. The other cause of the gradual sea level rise there has been since the last ice age is the slightly warmer ocean waters, since water expands when it warms. The ice sheets that remains now, after some 11,500 years of the current interglacial is in areas of the world where it is very difficult to melt, so are very stable. The earth would have to get a lot warmer for many years for any significant melting of the ice sheets to occur, so that scenario is just another scare tactic Warmists use.
Good effort but the snide and mocking tone of your reporting does not make the sceptical case look good or sane. Yea, verily, tone it down and stick to the facts if you want to get a fair hearing from the warmists. This sneering attitude is not going to help your case, makes you look well flaky.
Maria K (05:12:35)
New Scientist used to be a good, low brow round up of current science.
With respect to AGW, it’s totally incapable of considering there could even be an alternative view. It’s become a propaganda sheet.
Look at its reaction to Climategate. It simply became part of the wagon circling, with no pause for thought.
Veronica (05:52:12):
Specific examples, please.
Maria K (05:12:35) :
“Can I urge you people to wake up to the reality of climate change?”
Maria, can I urge you to wake up to the reality that the climate always changes naturally, and that human activity is not the cause?
“enviro-zombs” LOL! I have to remember that one! Perfect description.
nigel jones (05:29:01) :
Gubbi (02:31:37) :
(On Monckton)
‘Seriously, it baffles me why this guy is seen as an authority on climate science. All he is, is a conservative politician.’
No, he was a technical advisor to politicians (including Mrs. T) not the same thing at all.
Maria K (05:12:35) :
“Can I urge you people to wake up to the reality of climate change?”
Maria, I assume you are new to this website, or you wouldn’t be offering New Scientist as any kind of authority. Many readers of WUWT have been coming here for years and for years have read about and deliberated on the question “Is manmade CO2 dangerously warming the planet?”
Leaving aside the propagandistic nature of that newpaper, I will state that the answer to this question cannot be found packaged in newspaper articles or television shows. It is an arduous journey of discovery, reading the works of many scientists – both for and against the motion. It comes from years of discussing points of climate science with other informed readers, recognising our errors and picking up new knowledge. Bit by bit, our understanding improves to the point where we can recognise that those arguments that form catastrophic anthropogenic global warming are built on sand.
So, thank you for your link to New Scientist, but I have seen all these tired old arguments trotted out ad nauseaum. I could give half a dozen scientific arguments as to why I do not believe in that hypothesis, but I won’t waste my time with someone who has already, sadly, closed their mind.
Gubbi (02:31:37):
“Seriously, it baffles me why this guy [Viscount Monckton] is seen as an authority on climate science.”
It’s obvious that you’re baffled.
Please post your own climate science credentials.
*crickets*
P Wilson
It’s really this paragraph that makes me wince.
“I had arrived in good time to take my seat among the dignitaries in the front row. Rapidly, the room filled with enthusiastic Greenies and enviro-zombs waiting to hear the latest from ye Holy Bookes of Ipecac, yea verily.”
It spoils his case (which I do agree with BTW).
Gordon Brown and Gore come out of the closet. (BBC content can only be viewed by UK nationals,I think).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8417520.stm
@Maria K (05:12:35)
Maria hopes this makes you feel better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF5F6eYho8U&feature=PlayList&p=575F9A32B2D92105&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=27
Maria K (05:12:35) :
“Can I urge you people to wake up to the reality of climate change?”
Maria. Can I urge you to wake up to the reality of the weather? Because that is all it is.
Iren (00:18:54) :
Lord Monckton and Senator Steve Fielding (Australia) have written an open letter to Dr. Rajendra Pachauri asking him to correct the defective diagram…
Pachauri won’t understand what they are asking.
Nigel S (05:56:19)
“UKIP Leader Malcolm Pearson said, “I am delighted that Lord Monckton has accepted my invitation to join UKIP as our chief spokesman on Climate Change.”
http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-news/1363-monckton-joins-ukip
Now you can argue whether or not being a member of a party and furthermore, its spokesman on something, makes one a politician.
Pachauri then produced the now wearisome list of lies, fibs, fabrications and exaggerations…
He acts on cue. The perfect man for the job.
The BBC’s “Newsnight” program is a joke when it comes to any sort of reporting of “global warming”. Their policy is to avoid talking to anyone who actually knows anything about climate science and who might disagree with their agenda.
Last night’s experiment was an exact replica of the one removed from an AGW website last month because it was so misleading, and provoked a storm of complaints from members of the public and scientists alike. That’s what Newsnight represents; feed a gullible public with an idiotic experiment to “prove” a non-existent problem can be solved using made-up fraudulent data published by corrupt scientists using worthless software.
OT, but Bloomberg has an amazing story from Copenhagen: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601130&sid=a5wStc0K6jhY
Today they’ve experienced -6°c/21F at midday, probably the lowest daily maximum in December in the last 20-25 years. The actual snow depth is about 10cm and Denmark is just looking forward to experience its first white Christmas in the last 15 years.
See the hourly reports from the local weather station here.
Maria K (05:14:28) :
The New Scientis?
Umm, I think you are new here.
So Picahuri is refering to his religion by reason of a vegetarian agenda?
This is Christmas My religion.
Egg nog 50 cents a pound
Gasolene $2.42 per gallon
Fruit cake, $15.00 a pound
Carbon credits CCX 10 cents for a ton.
If i generously share carbon credits with friends, we all win.
Carbon credits were $7.00 a ton.
Gold is $1,000 an ounce.
Let us put a lump of coal in Pachauri’s stocking.
Coal at 54 dollars a ton means a lump is 5 cents.
Maria K (05:12:35) :
Can I urge you people to wake up to the reality of climate change?
Maria, please relax. We already know climate changes. We are wide awake in that regard. Climate has always changed since the beginning of the earth.
But thanks for the concern.
E.M.Smith (01:16:13) : ye Holy Bookes of Ipecac
Priceless… I agree
Great piece.
Yet, below is part of what we are up against in California. Even the state Attorney General’s office has a webpage with alarmist content.
http://ag.ca.gov/globalwarming/
I wonder how the AG’s office feels about the very cold start to December that is occurring in California – see link below for a color map. (taken from http://www.calclim.dri.edu)
http://i45.tinypic.com/rgwcrd.gif
Veronica (05:52:12) :
“Good effort but the snide and mocking tone of your reporting does not make the sceptical case look good or sane. Yea, verily, tone it down and stick to the facts if you want to get a fair hearing from the warmists. This sneering attitude is not going to help your case, makes you look well flaky.”
Personally I doubt that the part of the quote I bolded is likely in the near future. Those who may have the most open minds for science will not be put off nor encouraged by the public face of either side of the nominal debating line. Those at the further ends as alreay well committed to their path.
I an suddenly reminded of a situation that developed in a childhood game I was playing many years ago. There were two ‘sides’ defenders and attackers, to the game. On that occassion I was leading the attackers.
I devised a superb strategy to encircle and surprise the defenders for a certain victory. I even managed to persuade my ‘team’ to follow it, which they did perfectly. It was a walkover, no question. But mostly because the ‘defenders’ had got bored waiting for us and moved on, still doing whatever they wanted to do.
Sometimes you just have to go with directness and immediacy in order to move anything at all. If words are involved it is best to use a language ‘the other side’ relates to.
Maria, do you study weather and climate? I manage a ranch so I have to. Do you follow jet stream position, pressure gradients, air inversions, ocean conditions, wind patterns, humidity, dew point, and water vapor load? Daily? Do you check these items before your morning coffee as I do? Do you read the weekly ENSO update that comes out every Monday? Do you check predictions with actual observations so you know how to “calibrate” future predictions? If we farmers don’t do this, we loose produce, animals, and sometimes our shirts.
I am not a climate scientist but I do my homework, which entails much more than reading articles in a general science magazine meant for middle to high school school reading ability.
“lose”. One thing I can’t do before my morning Joe is tpye and speell at the saem time!
Either my proof reading skills have vanished or my eyesight is fading fast.
“Those at the further ends as alreay well committed to their path.”
Should have read ;
Those at the further ends are already well committed to their path.”
And;
“I an suddenly reminded of a situation that developed in a childhood game I was playing many years ago.”
should have read;
“I am suddenly reminded of a situation that developed in a childhood game I was playing many years ago.”
Oh dear – Gordon Brown leads Al Gore into a box cupboard 😀
GP
That’s just ridiculous. You are losing the moral high ground and turning this into – oh, wait… a playground game. “Language the other side relates to” ? You are in danger of underestimating the warmists. Never underestimate your opponent, never give them grounds to poke fun at you, stick to the FACTS. Isn’t that what we want THEM to do?
The childish and triumphalist tone of Monckton, and of many sceptics commenting on this blog, does the sceptical cause a great disservice. It switches off those “don’t knows” who might rally to your cause if you didn’t look like a bunch of adolescent point-scorers.
Hans Erren (05:13:42) :
The cost of new nuclear plants is far more than $2000 per kW, much more on the order of $10,000. see
http://www.yachtchartersmagazine.com/node/1223362
Gubbi (02:31:37) :
Would you fill us in on Al Gore’s scientific credentials?
And you directed us to Wikipedia? Please.
Fantastic. Thank you, sir.
People can say what they want against the now-largely superficial English class system and I jsut don’t give a damn what they think. As a Scott with an English wife, I am grateful that there is an element of our great society who can dedicate their time to great causes without the worry of how to pay for the mortgage or to be otherwise concerned about the other “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”
Yes, there have been the Smiths and the Murchisons in England over the centuries, but we can thank that society for freeing the time and minds of men like Darwin, Lyell, Kelvin, and now Lord Monckton, so they can devote themselves to thought and action on behalf of the rest of us who must devote more of our time to mundane affairs.
Thank you Lord Monckton, and please, soldier on.
Plato Says (06:48:19) :
Perfect!
May be it is a good thing that the Brits outlawed fox hinting, after all. Let their aristocrats go back to being gentlemen scientists. They sure accomplished a lot in the past wiith that. Politicizing science is a disaster.
One thing I wonder about…accepting the warmist argument, what exactly do they think the CO2 molecule does when excited by IR radiation? It gets warmer, sure, but warmth is a mechanical (motion) phenomenon and the rarified CO2 is very much mechanically coupled to the rest of the atmosphere. In addition, the mechanical link is bidirectional, so warm nitrogen will couple to warm the CO2. Has anyone an idea what the warmists are thinking in this regard? It seems to me that any amount of warming caused by excited CO2 molecules would be teeny-tiny compared to the sun radiation–>sea water–>atmosphere linkage which creates our average temperature and controls radiation to space.
I’m not sure that lord Monckton has ever claimed to be an expert climate scientist but he is certainly an expert on climate science, if you see the difference. Certainly, I have no doubt he could demolish the “climate experts” who get paid good money to spout absolute nonsense on the BBC or write in the MSM. As another poster has pointed out, he is articulate and a good science presenter.
But this whole argument is similar to the one made frequently by trolls here and on CA who pour scorn on Anthony and Steve McIntyre because they aren’t “Climate Scientists”. Certainly you can criticise the majority of those who leave comments here on similar grounds. There are certainly climate scientists here but I’m a Civil Engineer. Others here might play the piano in a cat house for all I care. If they make a sensible point I’m happy to treat it seriously. I might not give it as much weight as something by Dick Lindzen or Roy Spencer but if it is worth considering then I’ll not apologise for considering it.
The underlying point is that no one here is being stuffed full of tax dollars in order to make their point (c.f. Real Climate!). More to the point, no one here is advocating that we change the entire economic basis of the developed world. Now. As a matter of great urgency.
If Pauchari was only a railway engineer who sold a bit of snake oil in his spare time, who would care? But he’s sold to us as a great (Nobel Prize winning) Climate Expert whose prognoses for the future are so good we can’t even be left to choose what type of light bulbs we can use. And he’s got as many fingers in a myriad of financial pies as Goldman Sachs.
The alarmist / skeptic debate is so asymetrical in terms of funding, publicity – but most of all in terms of the likely consequences – that I for one am not going to criticise Monckton for some trivial shortcoming. And if a garbage man posting on here points out the the Emperor is naked, then he’s good enough for me as well!
The annoying thing about the railway engineer is that a typical dodge of AGW promoters is to dismiss people with is level of credientails out of hand if that person is skeptical of AGW.
Plato says,
Why is there Laurel & Hardy theme playing over the footage of Brown & Gore? Anyone who didn’t know any better would make think someone was trying to make an unwarranted association of those comical, accident prone, out-of-their-depth, bumbling buffoons who for years have made our sides ache with laughter. This is unfair on Stan & Ollie.
Dominic (01:20:07) :
I agree its a poor experiment: since c02 is denser than normal air it exerts more pressure in the same volume and the ideal gas law explains the temperature increase. The experiment should have been air with the normal ratios of constituent gases in one vessel, and an increase of c02 to 600ppm in the other (not1Million ppm). If 1 million ppm obtains a 4C increase in a closed system at constant temperature to produce 38C, then this experiment could be replicated with 100% oxygen which, heavier than normal air, would increase in temperature in a closed system according it its density, or else Whether its Charles law or Boyles or the ideal Gas Law, during a closed chamber experiment, gases can’t expand so the pressure increases with heat. In the atmosphere, gases can expand so as not to affect their pressure. Supposedly, for a constant volume of gas in a sealed container the temperature of the gas is directly proportional to its pressure.
Had they conducted the experiment in an open system then the ideal gas law wouldn’t be invoked.
i’m actually appalled that a million ppm of any gas only produces a 4C temperature increase in a closed system
nigel jones (06:17:01)
Are all the members of all the other parties politicians? Are all the Prime Minister’s spokespeople politicians? Damien McBride (to mention but one) was meant to be a civil servant I think you will find although he did exceed his brief I will admit.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/5142144/Damian-McBride-Gordon-Browns-enforcer-who-left-a-trail-of-poison.html
No to both I think.
P Wilson (05:18:31) :
Basil (04:15:46)
Seems to me Pachauri has the classic devious criminal mind.
I’m more inclined to see him simply as a politician, but that may be a distinction without a difference these days.
Veronica (06:48:42) :
i’m not sure that honest scientists have a cause, unless it be said that the discovery of the truth in a matter is a cause unto itself. If the protagonists of disproven theory still maintain it, and even have conferences in its honour, then there is surely something wrong and unaccountable with the process that gave rise to it.
Nigel S (02:33:42) :
Bill Tuttle (02:02:59)
Not sure how you can claim that an engineer, railway or otherwise, has no background in the physical sciences. What do you think engineers do? How do you think one gets awarded an engineering degree?
Yup, you guessed it, I are wun.
Nigel – Railroad engineers do not receive any instruction on the physical sciences. They are trained to operate large rolling electric generators at the proper speeds for various loads and track conditions. They do not study, physics, thermodynamics, heat transfer, statics, dynamics, etc, all the foundational education required of any one graduating with a BS in engineering. and yes I too am one.
MAtt
Maria K (05:12:35) :
“Can I urge you people to wake up to the reality of climate change?”
With a BS and MS in geology, I can certify that climate change has been the norm since the earth formed billions of years ago. What it has done in all that time can be a good indication of what will happen in the future. And I can state uncategorically: The earth has seen many climate periods that were much warmer, and many climate periods that were much colder, than we have today. This is why geologists are never welcome in a debate on AGW.
It is the AGWers with their Hokey Stick (“Hokey” on purpose) that have not awakened to the reality of climate change, my dear. They choose to ignore the past. Indeed, they choose to HIDE the past. And that is a crime when falsehoods are used to drive global policy.
So if some of us are a bit overbearing in our response, it is typical of how many people react when they see a crime committed: Call out the cops; arrest that scoundrel!
Facts aren’t going to change the beliefs many of those in the Climate Changetology religion, but maybe some of their leaders going to jail will. Believers in Climate Changetology don’t look at facts, or believe lies presented as facts.
One more thing: The “Global Warming” movement has hijacked a fact of nature, namely “Climate Change”, which is the status quo. We all agree in the status quo (duh!). But I find their use of the term to marginalize anybody that doesn’t believe in 100% anthropogenic global warming to be devious to the extreme. You never see the acronym ACC (anthropogenic climate change) since that’s completely ridiculous, but that’s what “Global Warming” advocates should really have renamed themselves instead of “Climate Change”, since that is what they really believe. See the distortion? See the subterfuge?
Climate Change is billions of years old and didn’t need mankind.
Correction:
“Believers in Climate Changetology don’t look at facts, or believe lies presented as facts.”
should be:
“Believers in Climate Changetology don’t look at facts, or recognize lies presented as facts.”
Remember HE is a railway engineer, remember also those “trains” of his buddy J.Hansen…..a functional couple!
Emilis (00:38:05) :
“Your second paragraph is needlesly offensive. Remove it or tone it down and I’ll be able to share it with my friends.”
I laughed at that.
I wonder how your sensitivity to offense works.
Pachauri’s entire presentation was offensive to the nth degree on every level. Yet you’re offended by the relatively meaningless paragraph above?
And you’re worried about it turning off your freinds?
Good greif, you and your freinds need to reassess your application of reason and figure out what is really offensive and important. Apparently you’re willing to dismiss great offense if any miniscule bother gets in your way.
Veronica is absolutely right in my opinion. The political polarisation plays into the hands of the alarmists. It distracts from the scientific discussion. And it is the science that eventually has the capacity to bring down the edifice of climate alarmism. Which I do agree poses a monstrous threat to mankind.
It is CAGW that is the naked emperor. Not environmentalism generally, as most evidently there are many genuine concerns and threats from habitat loss to species extinction.
Over-fishing is one of the genuine concerns. So I do not see a reason for Monckton to attack those supporting fishing quotas, and tie it to CAGW by association. These are completely separate issues.
Growing world meat consumption is threatening natural environments due to ever larger areas of forests being cleared to make way for pastures or crops to feed livestock.
Pachauri’s veganism has got nothing to do with CAGW. Personally I do not eat meat, and consider it not just environmentally damaging but also unethical.
And the list could go on and on about political and ideological baggage that is being added onto the debate from third world aid to UN to free-markets. True, many of the alarmists have been doing it from the start, the latest editorial of the NewScientist being a prime example of the type of meta discussion; an anti-intellectual swamp of ad hominems, intellectually dishonest evasions, unsupported assertions, postures of authority and the underlying relativity of truth. Exactly the playing field the post-modernists or ‘post-normal scientists’ (as per Mike Hulme) want to take this debate to.
Therefore; The less ammo the critics give the alarmists to further politicize the discussion the more difficult it will eventually be for them to avoid the scientific debate.
One Stephen McIntyre has already hurt them more than a hundred “Moncktons”.
I subscribed to the blog intending to tune in on scientific discussion by real scientists. Perhaps this is not a place for that.
photon without a Higgs (06:49:38) :
Would you fill us in on Al Gore’s scientific credentials?
And you directed us to Wikipedia? Please.
I called Al Gore a joke as is Monckton.
I don’t get why wikipedia linking is bad. After all it contains citations and includes all view points. And the process is open. Supposing wikipedia is absurd, I would appreciate if you can point out inaccuracies in the linked info. Dismissing it away just because it is wikipedia is absurd and not at all objective.
I don’t need to prove my credentials when I’m not making any claims.
Bruce Cobb (05:02:49) :
Your “arguments” are all of the ad hominem variety, which are logical fallacies, and thus are meaningless.
I am not making any arguments regarding the topic. Not one word about it. So no point analyzing it’s validity in relationship to the topic.
All I’m saying is this is not a man who is credible and objective when it comes to this discussion. And that is what I’m seeking, objective discussion from people who are scientists. Not showmen.
nigel jones (05:29:01) :
BUT, it is largely NOT a scientific discussion, it’s a political discussion.
This has to be a scientific discussion and not political. Thats my whole point. And any source of information that intends to be objective, must keep ideologies and politics separated.
Nigel S (05:56:19) :
No, he was a technical advisor to politicians (including Mrs. T) not the same thing at all.
He was not a technical advisor, but an economic and policy advisor. He has a diploma in journalism.
Smokey (06:08:18):
It’s obvious that you’re baffled.
Please post your own climate science credentials.
*crickets*
I don’t see the relevancy of my climate science credentials when I’m not making any claims about it.
And I request people to not assume that I’m a AGW “believer”, just because I am criticizing Monckton.
Adam Soereg (06:22:46)
On a lighter note:
http://www.brutallyhonest.org/brutally_honest/images/2007/03/15/051206winterblunderx.gif
Thank you very much, Lord Monckton, for showing us how deparate the IPCC is to distort the science to resurrect the now defunct CAGW hypothesis.
This whole debacle will also bring down the UN, as without cooperation from member nations based on trust, the organisation has no purpose. This is a good thing in my opinion and it is only free trade and competition that humanity will continue to develop.
Please keep up the good work.
I like the points made, except #14 seems off. 70,000 km of increase in land in Bangladesh would be half of the country. Maybe this is a typo that should be 7,000 or 700 km?
It turns out that GDP tends to increase at a faster rate than increase in energy use. Productivity increases are a result of using raw materials and labor more efficiently. We can guess that if the global economy increases by a factor of 2.5 by mid century, the energy demand will increase by maybe 1.5. Or, the global economy goes up from about 72 trillion in 2009 US dollars, to 180 trillion dollars in 2050, energy use might increase by about 50 percent. Which is why China can commit to decreased use in energy intensity – it is the expected and natural result of an economy adding a range of consumer services on top of a manufacturing base.
The good part of all this, is the general public has an opportunity to become far better educated about the climate, in our global internet data and blog environment, that narrative crafting scientists need to engage and compete with in order to be funded in the future.
As a Canadian and a diehard lover of ice hockey, can we please change the terminology of the “hockey stick graph”? I hate having the sport I love associated with such made up nonsense. How about the “getting a boner graph” or something else thats not meant to be taken seriously?
Maria K (05:12:35) :
Can I urge you people to wake up to the reality of climate change?
Actually, you are the one that needs to wake up; to the reality of naturally-induced climate change, which has always been and continues to be the case today. You, like many others, have been hoodwinked by fraudulent AGW/CC pseudo-science and Alarmist propaganda. But, polls show many people are indeed waking up to that fact, and you would do well to do likewise. Waking up isn’t really all that hard to do.
Gubbi go try and put up any work by sceptics on wikipedia and see what happens. It will be edited out within 5 minutes. You see William Connelly who runs the Stoat Pro AGW blog is one of the editors for Wikipedia and edits out any dissenting opinion.
Small point. Why does his Cambridge-educated Lordship, the Viscount Monckton, a title bestowed by Her Majesty the Queen on her loyal British subjects, talk about ‘railroad engineers’ instead of ‘railway engineers’ and ‘math’ instead of ‘maths’? I can take Americans using these terms – it’s the way they speak. But why does Lord Monckton have to Americanise his terms? Does he spend more time in the USA than in the UK? Or is his script written by an American?
And this is just rubbish:
“we (Catholics) generally ate fish on Fridays in the UK, until the European Common Fisheries Policy meant there were no more fish.
Firstly, there are still lots of fish being caught in the seas round the UK. If his Lorship thinks otherwise then he should visit Peterhead, Buckie and Fraserburgh. Yes, UK fishing has declined but part of the problem is that other EU nations are allowed to catch fish in the seas around the UK.
Secondly, the decision to stop making abstinence from meat on Fridays (note, that’s not the same as a compulsion to eat fish) compulsory had nothing to do with EU fishing policy, whatsoever. This is just an example of the Lord’s anti-EUism getting the better of him. But if he exaggerates EU matters because he does not like the EU what does that say about his comments on AGW?
As somebody else has commented, once you are discovered making exaggerated claims in one thing people start doubting other things you say. Which would be a pity because most of the time Lord Monckton seems to talk a lot of sense. I say ‘seems’ simply because I’m not in a position to judge his science.
Hurrah! The BBC let an item slip through the net finally!
http://blackswhitewash.com/2009/12/17/bbc-allows-through-story-hinting-that-climate-change-has-always-happened/
Re: The BBC experiment.
Can this be re-done, in the following manner. I think it would strike home.
Take 3 bottles. 1 is control and has 0.038% CO2 in it. 2 has no CO2 in it. 3 has 0.75% CO2 in it.
Use the heat source and measure the temperature increase. I believe there will be no difference between the reactions.
Then adjust the temperature of the heat source. Make it hotter and see the temperatures rise. Make it colder and watch the temperature fall.
And that will show that the vital trace gas without which we would not be here is not a pollutant.
If Lord M is lurking here, I hope he accepts as constructive criticism what has been said by those who’ve opined that his pronouncements sometimes go over the top. Although I cannot begin to express how grateful I am for his tireless efforts, I also believe he would be even more effective if he routinely had his work vetted before publication by an equally strong-personality devil’s advocate.
In addition to being put off by the 50%-of-GDP argument, I have to question part of his criticism of Pachauri’s graph. True, Pachauri’s graph is misleading. But my analysis of the GISS Global data is that the 1911-1940 30-year trend to which Lord M refers was just over 1.1 deg./century, whereas the 1974-1998 25-year trend was a whisker under 2.0 deg./century. Looking further, I observed that, although the 25-year trend that ended in 2001 was indeed as low as the one that ended in 1941, the trends for all 25-year periods ending after 1986 otherwise seem to be higher than those for all previous 25-year periods. (But the GISS data I found go only back to 1881, not 1860.)
So, unless my arithmetic is wrong (and I hope someone out there shows me it is), I’m afraid Lord M has led with his chin. I wish he would restrict himself to the arguments–of which he has advanced many–that are bullet-proof.
Re: #11 on mass extinctions. While I believe AGW is hyped up, when people trying to disprove it use the same tactics, it doesn’t help the cause. To say that we are here today even though temperatures have been 7 degrees higher in the past 600 million years does not mean that 20-30% of all species today could become extinct. An estimated 99.9% of all species that have ever lived (http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dinosaurs/extinction/mass.php American Museum of Natural History).
Some notable mass extinctions include the K-T (end of the dinosaurs) where about 80% of species died, end the End-Triassic where an estimated 76% of all species died, within a span of ~10,000 years. What’s interesting about these extinctions is there is evidence that points to the theory that rapid climate change was the cause. (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/198987/extinction Encyclopedia Britannica).
I have a B.S. in Physics – Earth Science, looking into grad schools for Paleontology.
The problems all along have been of political genesis. “Affinity”, Personification, ad hominem, group “reward”, ad nauseum. We must be far more careful in future identifying those in the public eye who deserve our trust. It is not new, sadly, that people of suspicious character will arrogate unto themselves ownership of reason and science. That anyone believed Al Gore ever, cetainly from the outset, is discouraging. The United Nations sullied itself with anticipation of major funding, not inappropriate, for they do meaningful and compassionate work. Not in this case, I fear.
The major wound is to science itself, having (through charlatans who had credibility in prior work) promulgated a myth. I take offense to Monckton as well as to Gore; it is time to completely release all who would use this unfortunate circumstance for self aggrandizement. Shall we return to honest and informed scepticism?
“Suspension of Disbelief” works at the Cinema, not in Science. Shame.
Have to take issue with Moncktons “70,000 square kilometer” increase in Bangladesh’s landmass comment. Every item online I can find says its around 1000 sq km in the past 30 years. 70k would mean it had gained a third of its size – it has not.
Lord Christopher Monckton with are very good speech. (sorry if doublepost)
-> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTrp2m3gC2Q&feature=player_embedded
Dirk
Gubbi (07:58:30) :
“This has to be a scientific discussion and not political. Thats my whole point. And any source of information that intends to be objective, must keep ideologies and politics separated.”
Well it isn’t simply a scientific debate. It’s taking place on several levels and even what should be a purely scientific debate has been infected by politics, as can be seen from the Climategate emails. Furthermore, these levels are hard to tease apart, for instance the BBC scientific demonstration that C02 is causing Global Warming using plastic bottles full of air and CO2.
The politics should be informed by the science, but politicians’ views of what science is, and what science actually is (that is something self critical and capable of changing its view) don’t mesh.
The politics is fairly important considering the amount of money at stake. For money read “efforts that could be directed to useful things”.
Monckton fits in the picture between clueless politicians and squabbling scientists, the MSM repeating polar bear scare stories and a public which can’t very well be expected to check the scientific probity of these things for themselves, but who are being asked to fork out a fortune on the basis of what may be bogey man stories.
I don’t find it odd in the least to hear American English used in addressing Americans. I certainly didn’t order Fish and French Fries on my time in the UK nor flinch about asking to be knocked up tomorrow morning.
When in Rome….
Point 14 was about reported sea level rise in Bangladesh.
This week the BBC reported that there are more cases of tigers attacking people in Bangladesh – because of global warming. Their reality is that rising sea levels are flooding the mangrove swamps and forcing the tigers north into more populated areas – more human contact means more man-eating tigers.
My sense of humour is getting close to exhaustion, although the Greenpeace story helped replenish it.
Edward (08:51:15) :
“What’s interesting about these extinctions is there is evidence that points to the theory that rapid climate change was the cause. ”
Yes – but it wasn’t man made climate change. We didn’t cause it then and we are not causing it now.
In point #15 above, 0.024 degrees C is not just “less than a twentieth of a Fahrenheit degree”, it’s only about one seventy-fifth of a Fahrenheit degree. Please don’t exaggerate.
Super job my lord!
I really wish you’d drop the Lord and Viscount stuff, you dont need it and if anything it detracts from your well presented arguments.
If you want to see why Mockton is so obsessed with the period of measurement, I have put up a post on how to create global warming 101
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11919
To the Gub-man: ad hominem ad nauseum. Pepto up, please.
“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.”
Mark Twain
I’ve got a pretty good grasp of how they did this, now. Thanks for a great read.
OT but I see Maurice Strong’s name has appeared on the blogger’s radar.
Clinton promises $100 billion dollars a year, will this still be forthcoming if the data is proven to be false, will the senate have to agree this amount.
Jimmy,
“Yes – but it wasn’t man made climate change. We didn’t cause it then and we are not causing it now.”
That’s rather beside the point. What I was trying to show was that mass extinctions can and do happen and can be caused by climatic shifts. Monckton was arguing that the idea that it could happen in the future is preposterous. Regardless of it’s cause, climate change as a catalyst of mass extinction isn’t preposterous and saying that is only weakens the overall argument.
Bob,
.024 Celsius is .0432 Fahrenheit (Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion factor is 9/5, i.e. a degree C is just under 2 degrees F). As such it slightly under a twentieth. It is 1/23.1481481… to be exact.
I stumbled on to climategate through an Indian blog. Our media is joined together in a conspiracy of silence. So I have some unanswered questions:
1. Why did it take so long for the truth to come out?
2. Why is IPCC headed by an Indian politician (yes he is) instead of a scientist?
3. Why is the mainstream media in India silent about climategate?
4. Why aren’t the fraudsters afraid? They appear bold and indifferent.
5. Why shouldn’t Nobel Committee revoke the prizes of Pachouri and Al Gore?
6. When will westerners learn to see through smooth-talking gurus and experts from our “exotic” country?
The last question was rhetorical but yes, these fakers make us look bad.
(From Delhi, India)
Update: Murkowski plans ‘resolution of disapproval’ to block EPA emissions rules
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) plans to seek a rarely used congressional “resolution of disapproval” to block EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under its current Clean Air Act powers.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/72077-update-murkowski-plans-resolution-of-disapproval-to-block-epa-emissions-rules
Zeke the Sneak (10:37:18) : I would prefer Sarah Palin’s recipe: Just add’em some mashed potatoes…☺
Any regulation, policy, expenditure, grant, study, or presentation based on a lie should be stopped and exposed for what it is. Then, if possible, it must be reversed and the guilty prosecuted where criminal conduct can be proven.
The catalog of lies pile up and I am with you till the last paragraph, but then you spoil it with an ad hominem attack on this “railroad engineer”, is this not one of the main tactics that the IPCC and their followers use?
Ed Zuiderwijk (00:43:34) :
“And Pauchari is well-known to be a vegetarian himself, so no surprise he jumps on the eat-no-meat bandwagon.”
If Pauchari was adamantly anti-alcohol, he would most likely state that the fermentation and distillation processes to make beer, wine, and liquor contributes substantially to rising CO2 levels, thus we should all avoid or at least reduce consumption of said libations.
It’s easy to be a warmist! Just attach any personal bias you have to the issue and make false statements promoting your own viewpoint. Repeat it enough times, without any empirical evidence, and voila!
Prashant (10:34:54) :
I stumbled on to climategate through an Indian blog. Our media is joined together in a conspiracy of silence. So I have some unanswered questions:
1. Why did it take so long for the truth to come out?
Ans: Actually, there have been a number of concerned scientists that realized something was amiss years ago. It was forcefully brought to our attention by actions of the whistleblower at the Hadley CRU and the urgency of stopping the insanity going on at Copenhagen and the UN. Now we’re seeing a strong resurgence of research contrary to AGW because the science was cooked.
2. Why is IPCC headed by an Indian politician (yes he is) instead of a scientist?
Ans: A lot of politicians consider themselves to be experts in things they know nothing about. But the pay is good and the glory irresistible.
3. Why is the mainstream media in India silent about climategate?
Ans: As a corollary, why is the mainstream media in the US, Spain, Canada, (the list goes on and on) also silent about climategate?
4. Why aren’t the fraudsters afraid? They appear bold and indifferent.
Ans: I’m not so sure about that anymore–from the videos I’ve seen, those culpable and willing to speak don’t sound terribly reassured anymore. Many others seem to be in hiding. Few are willing to withstand the rigors of a scientific inquiry.
5. Why shouldn’t Nobel Committee revoke the prizes of Pachouri and Al Gore?
Ans: There is no reason under the sun except the prize is merely a political recognition completely opposite of it’s original intent.
6. When will westerners learn to see through smooth-talking gurus and experts from our “exotic” country?
Ans: Probably never, which is simply a recognition of the frailities of human beings, regardless of race, creed, or nationality.
The last question was rhetorical but yes, these fakers make us look bad.
Ans: Yes, this whole charade has made every scientist look bad along with a lot of politicians, hence the need for a thorough independent investigation. Since lives have been lost because of this (foodstuff prices have doubled because of wreckless forays into biofuels, thereby exacerbating starvation in many countries), there really should be charges of crimes against humanity for what’s happened. And it wasn’t just institutions–it was certain people that had an agenda.
(From Delhi, India)
I do not recommend Lord Monckton as a source of credible information. His complaint about Pachauri’s use of a misleading graph is the height of hypocrisy, when Monckton himself continues to use (and defend) his own fraudulent graph of CO2 levels. Decide for yourself:
See my analysis of Pachauri’s graph here: http://tinyurl.com/ydeojpz
See my analysis of Monckton’s graph here: http://tinyurl.com/yzrvr73
See Monckton’s response here: http://tinyurl.com/yeqb9xl
REPLY: Thanks for that. John Nielsen-Gammon’s analysis is worth a read.
I will point out that in your Chron article you say “The graph, based on the HadCRU temperature data set, shows four trend lines for four different time periods.”
No dispute with that statement, but as you recommend with Monckton, and given recent revelations, I do not recommend HadCRU data as a source of credible information until such time they release all data and procedures and independent replication can determine its validity.
– Anthony Watts
RoyJ
“This week the BBC reported that there are more cases of tigers attacking people in Bangladesh – because of global warming. Their reality is that rising sea levels are flooding the mangrove swamps and forcing the tigers north into more populated areas – more human contact means more man-eating tigers”
erm…. didn’t I read further up this thread that the mangrove swamps were deliberately cut down, so that coast could be cleared for shrimp farming, not flooded out by rising sea levels. Either way those tigers will be Really Angry.
Which one of those is the truth? Typical of Auntie Beeb these days to get confused.
RoyJ (09:39:55) :
“Point 14 was about reported sea level rise in Bangladesh.
This week the BBC reported that there are more cases of tigers attacking people in Bangladesh – because of global warming. Their reality is that rising sea levels are flooding the mangrove swamps and forcing the tigers north into more populated areas – more human contact means more man-eating tigers.
My sense of humour is getting close to exhaustion, although the Greenpeace story helped replenish it.”
That’s rich!
Good catch!
– In other news today, local student James Gullifoilf has discovered a link between his room mate Bob Thorn’s inability to pay him back the $200 he owes him and Global Warming. Said Gulifoil of the situation, “Bob’s been unemployed ever since September, and his parents have been cutting back on the money they give him every month because they’re saving up for a sailboat or something. Or is it a trip to Greece? Anyhow, I could really use that 200 beans right now but since Mr. “lazy-ass” doesn’t want to go outside and fix his car so he can drive to his sister’s and borrow some cha-ching…because it’s “too damn cold”….yeah well, it wouldn’t be this cold if it weren’t for Global Warming right, so there ya go.”
Guilifoil then went on to explain that all Thorn requires to enable operation of his 2002 Volkswagen Jetta is a belt but added “Hell if I’m gonna pay for that”.
The nearest definition for “pachauri” is the hebrew word “Qliphoth”.
Some of the criticisms of Monckton here are a bit nit-picking. He makes no secret of being a fan of the USA and speaks to US audiences a lot, and obviously uses American terminology so as to be clearly understood by them; he would probably regard this as just good manners.
His comments on EU and fisheries were not unreasonable. It is due to the EU that EU members can now fish in UK waters and it is partly this that has impacted on UK fish stocks (not the only thing of course).
I was brought up as a Catholic and while of course there was no compulsion to eat fish on Friday, in practice this is what tended to be served up in institutional settings (e.g. school) and what many people would eat at home. I can even remember a time when non-Catholic Christians would abstain from meat on Good Friday (the Friday before Easter), and eat fish instead.
Having said all that, the comments were mainly irrelevant to his point. He might have been better to point out the paradox that vegetarian hindus in India regard cows as sacred and will not kill them, and there are millions of them all putting out methane.
Similarly, vegetarians in other countries who are not vegans still depend on cows for their dairy produce and on chickens for their eggs.
And if you don’t use animal hides for leather then presumably you are likely to depend at least partly on fossil fuels for the raw materials for your shoes.
Barry Groves, has some interesting things to say on methane
Barry Groves on methane
It amazes me that a railroad engineer doesn’t know when the train has jumped the tracks.
Gubbi,
“nigel jones (05:29:01) :
BUT, it is largely NOT a scientific discussion, it’s a political discussion.
This has to be a scientific discussion and not political”
The “story” of our age is that humans are causing catastrophic climate change by burning fossil fuels. That is a political statement. The science behind the politics is becoming irrelevant. I can almost guarantee that if scientists falsified the hypothesis, nothing would change, because underpinning all of this theatre is a “feeling” that changing the composition of that atmosphere is bad. So if it wasn’t warming, it would be acidification or something else.
Therefore it is entirely appropriate to discuss the political machinations, and Monckton does that admirably. That doesn’t mean politics should exclude science either, just that we need both. Earlier there was a thread by Spencer and another by Dressel. The politics helps understand why the science has been abused and the science reinforces the politics.
Gubbi (07:58:30) :
I am not making any arguments regarding the topic. Not one word about it. So no point analyzing it’s validity in relationship to the topic.
All I’m saying is this is not a man who is credible and objective when it comes to this discussion. And that is what I’m seeking, objective discussion from people who are scientists. Not showmen.
You have simply re-stated my point, which was that your comments were entirely ad hominem, i.e. illogical. If you don’t know what ad hominem means, look it up – Wikipedia is good for some things (not climate science, though, as anything remotely skeptical of AGW are routinely and promptly edited out).
Monckton himself would (and does) say, “don’t simply believe what I, or anyone else says – check for yourself”. If Monckton isn’t your cup of tea, that’s fine, there are plenty of others who post here who are scientists. It’s been pointed out though, that this became politicized long ago, by the Warmists, since that was the only way they could keep this fraud going for as long as they have. The battle has to be fought on both fronts, the political and scientific in order for the truth finally to be heard.
Prashant @10:34: Galen Haugh has already provided you with some good answers, but here’s one more. IPCC stands for Inter-GOVERNMENTAL Panel on Climate Change. It is and always has been a government organization, which is thinly disguised by never including the G in IPCC. Hence, it is always headed by a politician, even if it’s disguised as a scientist like Bob Watson.
Remember, Pachauri may seem to be perpetrating bad science, but it’s very much in the interest of the Indian government. An international global warming treaty means lots of money getting shoveled to India and China through the Kyoto Mechanisms, particularly CDM.
Pachauri said that solar and wind power provided more jobs per $1 million invested than coal. Maybe they do, but that is a measure of their relative inefficiency.
You could raise employment even more if you generated electricity through human-powered treadmills. (And the employees would get lots of healthy exercise, too!)
3×2:
“‘and then quotes from the bible in the next sentence.’
He can probably do it in Latin if required”
Actually he has, as in his wonderful address in St Paul. The whole Christ-Pilate dialogue in lingua Romanorum.
Fair Enough.
Alexander Feht (02:33:47) :
Couldn’t agree more, these people are damaging the real environmentalists but perhaps that’s the point!
To: Maria K (05:14:28)
Re: your NuLiarist link (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18279-deniergate-turning-the-tables-on-climate-sceptics.html)
YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS! (You’d make a bad line judge.)
Anyway, I read it yesterday —just to gloat. And indeed what a pile of demented marxoid cr#p it was too.
Now I urge YOU to read the comments attached to it.
Lo and behold they are overwhelmingly negative. Ha ha. Moreover, the number of comments that have been deleted by the moderators is astounding. Clearly they’re getting it shoved up ’em. N i c e.
I cancelled my subscription some time ago, as I hope many will do now. It is no longer fit for purpose — loo literature, that is. Yes, that is indeed where I kept my copies. In the end I couldn’t stand the smell of them.
Enjoy!
P.S. For some unfathomable reason I have enjoyed very little success getting my comments posted here. So count yourself very fortunate if you get to read this one.
P.P.S.
Lord Monckton,
Ace! Now that’s the way a true Peer of The Realm should act. Well done, Sire. 🙂
Socratease,
“You could raise employment even more if you generated electricity through human-powered treadmills. (And the employees would get lots of healthy exercise, too!)”
Quite true. As Peter Schiff pointed out in one of his blogs, people don’t WANT jobs, what they want is to consume. They need the former so they can acheive the latter. Therefore, he said, if I work for an employer, I want my job to be as productive as possible, so that my employer can pay me a lot of money. What I don’t want is for the government to make my job unproductive, because then my standard of living will go down.
As a corrolary, I note that Europe had nearly full employment during the middle ages, but they had a lot less wealth than even the poorest in today’s Europe.
So cut the spin Obama, Brown and all the rest. People want productive jobs, not unproductive ones. Don’t legislate away our productivity.
M’Lord, while we may not agree on every nit and detail, we are broadly aligned. I thank you heartily for your courage and excellent leadership. Bravo!
Joe Born (08:44:30) :
“If Lord M is lurking……?
Joe,
Is that Lord May, immediate past president of the Royal Society and trenchant man-made global warming believer?
A previous very distinguished president of the Royal Society, the great Lord Kelvin, who was I believe president from 1890 to 1895 said:
“It seems as if we may also be forced to conclude that the supposed
connexion between magnetic storms and sun-spots is unreal, and that the
seeming agreement between periods has been a mere coincidence.”
“X-rays will prove to be a hoax.”
“Radio has no future.”
“Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.”
We are all fallible, even presidents of the Royal Society!
Buddenbrook (04:34:46) :
Except that in the UK it’s probably accurate.
By then, most of our nuclear capacity will be gone with little prospect of replacement, new coal fired being blocked at every turn!
No-one will sanction cutting off domestic supplies if they want to be elected again.
Talk about a rock & a hard place.
DaveE.
Thank you, Viscount Monckton.
Your’re indefatigable in the pursuit of these bums, and they seem to be tiring, getting worn down. Any contest is a measaure of will, stamina and morale. Losing, as well as winning, effects morale, which effects will, which effects stamina. You do need to be mindful of your health at your age (sorry), and you’re too important to lose, but keep up the good fight, sir. My children will know your name.
15. Pachauri said we could not afford to delay reducing carbon emissions even by a year, or disaster would result. So here’s the math. There are 388 ppmv of CO2 in the air today, rising at 2 ppmv/year over the past decade. So an extra year with no action at all would warm the world by just 4.7 ln(390/388) = 0.024 C, or less than a twentieth of a Fahrenheit degree. And only that much on the assumption that the UN’s sixfold exaggeration of CO2’s true warming potential is accurate, which it is not. Either way, we can afford to wait a couple of decades to see whether anything like the rate of warming predicted by the UN’s climate panel actually occurs.
——————————————————————————–
Climate chief dismisses e-mail outrage
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/12/08/ipcc.climategate.emails/index.html?iref=allsearch
———————————————————————————-
Please note that Veggie Pachauri admits there is no definitive evidence that man-made emissions of Carbon Dioxide is causing global warming’climate change, but then says we have evidence of climate change due to human activity. What evidence?
Why is it allowed that the 2 ppmv per year increase in CO2 is due only to anthropogenic reasons. Is it true that the IPCC Report says that natural emissions of CO2 are 30 times greater than man-made emissions, but that the natural emissions of CO2 are in balance with Nature and the man-made emissions are causing an imbalance. In other words, Nature is static and man is disrupting Nature’s balance.
The original theory was that anthropogenic CO2 emissions was causing global warming/climate change.
The discussion now is about whether there is global warming/climate change, not the cause.
I submit that that is an argument against Nature, a Nature in which temperatures and climate are always in a state of dynamic change.
Pachuri is an Indian Railway engineer.That’s no great recommendation in light of all the tragic rail accidents India seems to suffer.
I feel so vindicated, I am so glad those emails came to light in the nick of time. They almost had us. By the way I am not sponsored by big oil, just a belief that science is based on facts and truth.
Dignified people do NOT use Dr when the doctorate is honorary, that is the accepted custom. Mr Pachauri is obviously not concerned that he uses a title is an undeserved manner.
Nigel S (02:33:42) :
Bill Tuttle (02:02:59)
Not sure how you can claim that an engineer, railway or otherwise, has no background in the physical sciences. What do you think engineers do? How do you think one gets awarded an engineering degree?
Yup, you guessed it, I are wun.
Hi Guys – the number one qualification to have when dealing with Climate Science is – too be honest. The 2nd is to do the hard yards (work) of digging through all the mess…
The actual available science is not that difficult to understand.
I would suggest that the intellectually challenging aspects of the AGW phenomenen rest in questions such as (1) How does political power operate? (2) How can crowds be manipulated? (3) Why do some (many) people believe authority without question? (4) Why do people seek conformity of views, even when those views can be shown to be personally harmful? (5) How do corporates manipulate public and political opinion for financial gain? etc…
John N-G (11:24:46) :
I do not recommend Lord Monckton as a source of credible information. His complaint about Pachauri’s use of a misleading graph is the height of hypocrisy, when Monckton himself continues to use (and defend) his own fraudulent graph of CO2 levels. Decide for yourself:
See my analysis of Pachauri’s graph here: http://tinyurl.com/ydeojpz
See my analysis of Monckton’s graph here: http://tinyurl.com/yzrvr73
See Monckton’s response here: http://tinyurl.com/yeqb9xl
REPLY: Thanks for that. John Nielsen-Gammon’s analysis is worth a read.
I will point out that in your Chron article you say “The graph, based on the HadCRU temperature data set, shows four trend lines for four different time periods.”
No dispute with that statement, but as you recommend with Monckton, and given recent revelations, I do not recommend HadCRU data as a source of credible information until such time they release all data and procedures and independent replication can determine its validity.
– Anthony Watts
All research that has used the HadCRU data is “fruit from a poisoned tree” and needs to be re-done after the HadCRU data has been independently and openly validated.
Possible the most serious impact of the apparent HadCRU malfeaseance is that all derived science is now suspect, which is much of the AGW structure.
“”” Emilis (00:38:05) :
Your second paragraph is needlesly offensive. Remove it or tone it down and I’ll be able to share it with my friends.
Thanks for the whole post! “””
So your friends delicate ears can’t stand to hear what real people actually say; so we should “homgenize” the Viscount’s speech to make it PC for your benefit.
Maybe you shouldn’t be reading his speeches.
The last movies I ever saw about Indian railroads, had the passengers riding on top of the carriages; evidently they liked the smell of burning coal; or maybe the inside of Dr Pachauri’s carriages wasn’t so comfortable.
Another Indian Chap writing in the San Jose Mercury news this week asserted that the USA (he lives here) should cut its carbon emissions, because it emits five times the CO2 per capita that China does, so we are the big polluters and should pay our climate debts.
Well not so fast; the USA emits zero cO2 per capita; we are the earth’s only large populated area that is a net CARBON SINK.
So get off our backs; and I invite that SJ MN chap to go back to his country where the emissions per capita are more to his liking.
It’s not nice for the pot to call the kettle black.
fantastic article and congratulations on the great work you are doing.
pls help me with this quick quiz….
“Sea level is actually rising at around 1 ft/century. ” and ” There has been no sea-level rise in Bangladesh. ”
how do you get sea level rise in one spot and not the other? where can i read info on this?
why is the mainstream media so hollow on this subject? surely splashing arguments and conroversy on front pages sells papers.
stay cool
j
Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) seems to have a hand in this.
(I was searching my extensive library and came across this ditty.)
☺ ☺
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/2/d/8/63987/calvin-0.jpg
Pachauri isn’t so much a railway engineer, more a runaway train that expects the passengers to be delighted with the prospect of head-on collision.
“bill from the bush (14:41:07) :
Pachuri is an Indian Railway engineer.That’s no great recommendation in light of all the tragic rail accidents India seems to suffer.”
Most are due to the fact that people ignore warnings issued by the Railway company, laws (It is illegal to cross a rail line unless at an authorised crossing) issued by Govn’t and rail staff, gauds etc, advising people that the railway is a dangerous places to be in unauthorised places such as along rail lines outside stations and pedestrian crossings and the like. Some 8000+ people die in collisions with trains in Mumbia each year alone.
PS. I’d like to add to that last post, alot of those who die in collisions with trains in Mumbia actually are comitting suicide. It’s hardly surprising given the abject poverty *MOST* Indians live in.
Y2K!!Y2K!! The sky is falling!!! DOOM!!!!DOOM!!!!
Pass the buck!!!
Yabut, what about the confrontation after the speech?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Paul (14:52:33) :
“Dignified people do NOT use Dr when the doctorate is honorary, that is the accepted custom. Mr Pachauri is obviously not concerned that he uses a title is an undeserved manner.”
As far as I can see Dr Pachauri really has a PhD. I have checked multiple sources and his PhD looks genuine to me.
“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_K._Pachauri was awarded an MS degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, in 1972, as well as a joint Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Economics in 1974.[5]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_K._Pachauri
“Commencing his career with the Diesel Locomotive Works, Varanasi, where he held several managerial positions, Dr Pachauri joined the North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA, where he obtained an MS in Industrial Engineering in 1972, a PhD in Industrial Engineering and a PhD in Economics, and also served as Assistant Professor (August 1974 — May 1975) and Visiting Faculty Member (Summer 1976 and 1977) in the Department of Economics…”
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/bios/pachauri.htm
Paul maybe you have better information; if so perhaps you could post it. If in fact you are wrong perhaps you could post an apology. Fairly abject would seem to be suitable to me.
Yes Veronica you are right(but there is still no Santa, although there is a Santer who deserves gaol time in my opinion).
Maybe it’s Victoria not Veronica. That’s what comes from not checking. No excuses nowadays.
Maria K (05:12:35) :
I’m afraid most people here know “New Scientist” is purely old propaganda. Like so many AGW proponents – they have lost credibility. This is born out by the unlawful, anti-scientific and grossly unethical behavior of the AGW community, typified by Prof. Jones at Climatic Research Unit East Anglia.
You are a brave and wise man Christopher! please continue on with the “Good Fight” and know that an ever increasing number of people are hearing you, and listening to reason. Bravo Christopher!!
Scotty B
I’m taking a shine to this Lord Monckton chap. Keep it up!
Well Christiopher and those applauding your dribble here. I will say no more but to point you to the latest column of Monbiot who very accurately describes you and your fellowship:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/dec/14/climate-change-battle-redefine-humanity
BTW the graphs trend lines are the 25, 50, 100 and 150 year trend lines taken from the last point on the graph. I do not think you can make an honest point about somebody cherry picking here, not like the deniers who draw trends from 1998 to 2008…
And as far as the suns influence goes: NOBODY has ever said the sun had no influence!!! The suns 11 year sunspot cycle – we are today at the bottom of that cycle – changing the suns output at about the same amount of climate forcing as 7 years of CO2 increase at the current rate!!!
So if you add the trend of CO2 induced warming to the 11 year oscillations of the sun cyle, guess what you get? Some years of the temperature trend going sideways followed by some years of steep rise followed by some years of sideways etc….
This Unconvenient Truth has all along demolished the deniers mantra that GW has stopped. It has not, not at all.
Get a grip you dinosaurs!
Nice try Samoht but you obviously need to work on your knowledge of the Sunspot cycle. 22 years not 11!
You are either ignorant of the subject or deliberately deceptive and this is yet another busted “trick” of the warmers.
“The main periodical solar activity effect – the largest observed periodicity present in world temperature data – is the 22 year cycle (driven by sun-earth magnetic connectivity). Hence for about half the time, the 11 year cycle of solar activity of particles, sunspots and radiation will move with temperature and half the time move against it.”
As an Aussie I thought Steve Fielding, Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce were nitwits……….now I eat humble pie.
The only Aussie politicians who are in the ball park while the rest have their heads in the sand……….or are overseas!!
Read the full article then read another essay at the same website and some pennies may drop……..
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/manufacturing_money_and_global_warming.html
Samoht,
The Guardian is a rabid supporter of global warming and Monbiot’s column is an extreme example of its bias. He has no scientific back ground but he does have books to sell, a column to sell and an ego the size of that very large iceberg . He’s painted himself into a corner with green paint. Is it any wonder he is pursuing the ghost of christmas future?
Another ‘reporter’ on the Guardian talks about a leaked UN document saying that the temperature will rise 3 degrees unless everyone makes a bigger sacrifice in reducing our carbon output – maybe we should all stop breathing?
And who leaked the UN document? I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.
🙂 Check out what really happened @ the copenhagen climate-summit 2009!! 🙂
http://cvs26.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/the-copenhagen-summit/
Well done M’laud, is there any new’s from that scoundrel Gore with regards the duel you have challenged him too yet ?
As an agnostic on this matter – I have no consistent opionion and no firm idea of who to believe – it is interesting to note that for many people on this thread, scepticism only seems to apply to claims made by ‘the other side’.
So much for free thinking.
Greetings, new to posting here, but have been following with interest, anyway I posted a short summary and an invitation for readers over at (BBC – world have your say) blog to have a look at the letter submitted by Lord Monckton. I did not post a link but invited people to do a search and make their own conclusion. This was at about 20H00 GMT on 17 Dec. As of today 19 Dec 12H00 GMT the summary is “still pending moderation” and the invitation has disappeared. They obviously do not like something, as they seem to be quite balanced normally, albeit somewhat “left”
This is the moment at which we turn and face ourselves. Here, in the plastic corridors and crowded stalls, among impenetrable texts and withering procedures, humankind decides what it is and what it will become. It chooses whether to continue living as it has done, until it must make a wasteland of its home, or to stop and redefine itself. This is about much more than climate change. This is about us.
The meeting at Copenhagen confronts us with our primal tragedy. We are the universal ape…blah blah woof woof
Samoht , are you serious? Can you say Messiah complex. What is going on here? George reads MLK and Gandhi for a few hours and figures “Oh.. why don’t I have a go?” If there were ever a single piece that demonstrates how far removed from science and into new age religion AGW has gone it is this one.
All that is missing is the Cathedral ceiling painting of George being guided to Heaven by the Angels.
I’m glad you posted that, I was beginning to forget why I fight.
Correction – should read as of today 18 Dec.
Denier! Shill for big oil and coal! How dare he disagree with the consensus of every single scientist on earth and on several other planets! Billions of scientists say that carbon emissions will cause every natural disaster to increase in frequency… some of them even probably even say that it will increase the frequency of asteroid strikes. We are all doomed to cook and freeze and drown and starve and dehydrate to death (if the new warming-enhanced “tropical” diseases don’t kill us all first), and here’s Monckton trying to use junk science funded by trillions of dollars from big oil and coal and probably Satan himself to spread the horrible lie that we have nothing to fear from climate change. How dare he!
Seriously though, this is a great article, and it is amazing how he can tear apart everything that these alarmists say. I want to see real debate. These things that happen on the news are not a real debate… the typical setup is to have a “moderator” with an agenda who has a AGW scientist in the studio that gets to talk as much as they want and then they have a “skeptic” on remote who is allowed to get a few words in edgewise. I don’t like Fox News in general, but they are the only news network that even comes close to giving some balance on this issue… and unlike CNN they did not have wall-to-wall Tiger Woods distraction coverage last weekend.
Give me Monckton vs. Big Al (or “Big Oil” vs. Big Al) in a real debate and see who comes out on top… then put it on national television and youtube and see what happens. No wonder these fear-mongers want a controlled “debate” environment or none at all.
Samoht, thanks for the link to the Marxist screed by the Moonbat. It is the sort of drivel typical of the AGW/CC mindset. We already know that you and your ilk are opposed to economic progress, which raises peoples living standards, reduces poverty and all of the resultant ills associated with it including high mortality rates, particularly of children. Another result is that it allows people to actually pollute less, burning cleaner fuels more efficiently, and to clean up the environment, as shown by what has happened in the U.S. in the past 40 years.
We “dinosaurs” choose to live in the real world, while you choose a fantasy land, which is falling apart by the way. Good luck with that.
ipcc liar liar pants on fire
If we cannot afford to wait even a year, then we are past the so called “tipping point” and, if we are past that, why spend billions on a problem that cannot be reversed? This is so rediculous.
samoht,
You seem to have missed the point Monckton was making about Pachauri’s graph. Pachauri made the statement that global warming is accelerating and uses the graph to justify it by comparing the gradient of the most recent line with the earliest line.
Did you not notice 2 strange things? The earliest line – the one with the smallest gradient – is 150 years long, while the most recent is only 20 years long. Secondly, the graph ends in 2000, completely ignoring the recent decade of cooling?
How does that support the statement that warming is accelerating? You tell me.
I have an issue with point 18.
“But the notion that going vegan will make any measurable impact on global temperatures is simply fatuous.”
Even if it is, we are soon going to have more people on this planet than we can possibly feed if people choose to eat meat. If we all went vegetarian we wouldn’t reach this point for a lot longer because of the change in trophic levels.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this article made it around the internet in a few days. It really helps to have someone in a position of power posting it (thank you kindly Monckton). Of course, we should all understand they are really pushing this through our unacknowledged understanding that pollution is destroying the planet – which they’ve highjacked into this CO2 fraud. In that case, the only thing you should take seriously is that the horrendous torture imposed upon innocent beings through the extreme over-consumption of animal flesh is dumping millions of tons of maneur, urine, blood, antibiotics, and other wonderful animal byproducts (like cow brains, think mad cow) into the water systems, which flow down with the pesticides used to create their massive amounts of feed, into the oceans where it is creating dead zones.
Emma,
“Even if it is, we are soon going to have more people on this planet than we can possibly feed if people choose to eat meat. If we all went vegetarian we wouldn’t reach this point for a lot longer because of the change in trophic levels.”
Your second point is true, but your first point is an opinion. How do you know we are soon going to have more poeple on the planet that “we can possibly feed” if people choose to eat meat?
It should be self evident that if your assertion is true then the price of meat would escalate so high that people could no longer “choose” to eat meat. They would then be rationed by price from eating meat and would be forced into turning vegetarian. And that sort of makes your second point a moot one.
Emma, we can’t feed them as it is now. And pray tell me, where is the most increase of population? In countries that already have shortage of food. Meat, vegan, doesn’t matter there. They don’t have anything to eat and they still reproduce like crazy.
Mankind is the only species that reproduces in masses, no matter the conditions.
The current overpopulation doesn’t come from meat.
It comes from stupid people.
I’m sure Pachauri is a great railroad engineer. But would I trust him on the climate? Nope. No way. It’s like needing surgery and going to your hairdresser for it.
Do I trust the UN? The very same organisation that pisses on democracy and freedom of speech? No way.
Do I trust the EU? The EU, which has been pissing on me for years now? No way.
Do I trust my government? Those people who tax me blind? Nope.
Do I trust Al Gore? Now that’s a good one. Trust Al Gore. Then I can trust Obama as well. And Hugo Chavez. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything.
No, I don’t trust any of them. Especially since they’re making claims that should alert anyone who had physics in school.
Dr. Pachauri seems to be blamed for something not actually his fault : his classification as a ‘climate scientist’.
According to the I.P.C.C. any-one that ever urinated on a copy of one of its reports can be a ‘climate scientist’ and included in the list of ‘2,500 of the world’s climate scientists’ ; the media, more than any-one else, have been the ones calling him — by virtue of his being the chairman of that panel — ‘a climate scientist’ and ‘the world’s leading climate scientist’.
There is no reason whatsoever for a railway engineer not to be able to grasp the concepts of climate science, were it a developed subject ; unfortunately even the real climate scientists — Lindzen, Singer, Clark, Michaels, Spencer &c. — admit to knowing too little about it to be able to make significant predictions, let alone the extravagant predictions, covering decades, advanced by the I.P.C.C. and the rest of the A.G.W. industry.
As others here have said, there is no excuse of ad-hominem attacks : they add nothing useful.
Martin Brumby (01:26:43) :
Just in case anyone is in doubt about how nasty things could get, just consider what will be going through the minds of the people at Copenhagen as they return home.
—-
Sobering, but realistic projection of the (future and present) hatred coming from these “people”.
From point 3 in the article :
“The truth, however – neatly obscured by an ingenious rescaling of the graph and the superimposition of the four bogus trend lines on it”
Where is this rescaling of the map that the author of this article is saying he can see? I can’t see any rescaling of the map. Maybe someone can explain what the author of the article is talking about because to me it looks like the numbering on the axis is evenly spaced.
The “four bogus trend lines” are for periods of 25, 50, 100 and 150 years. How is this bogus when the trend lines are chosen because they are multiples of 25 year periods or one generation? This does not seem bogus to me. If they had chosen periods that had no relation to one another then i would be suspicious but this is not the case. Seems to me the author of this article is a bit bogus himself.
Regarding the graph, it appears that the problem is not so much in the horizontal axis, which as Vincent pointed out is evenly spaced and spanning the area of time that is supposedly being addressed. Although I think the graph needs further explanation as to the origin of the data and how it is being used, it appears that it is the VERTICAL axis that is deceptive.
Why would they be charting the period of 1860-2010 based on its relation to the apparently cherry-picked timeframe of 1961-1990? Why should it matter how 150 years compares to an arbitrary period of 30 years within those 150 years? Because most people expect the vertical axis of a graph to represent increase (or decrease) in amount or volume, this graph becomes deceptive. It’s vertical axis represents a DIFFERENCE in temperature between these two periods, not a rising or lowering of temperatures.
If they meant for this graph to be useful, transparent and honest, they would present the temperature data as one would expect: with the rise in tend as you look toward the right of the graph representing the actual rise in temperatures over that 150 year period IN RELATION TO ITSELF (not in relation to its difference from the 30-year period from 1961-1990). Also, given that we know temperatures have been declining over the past decade (which the global warming theorists have had to concede, while now claiming that that’s just another part of warming), it is apparent that the chart DOES NOT illustrate the rise of temperature from 1860-2010. As far as I can tell, it probably actually represents the rise in temperatures between 1961-1990, which was probably the height of rising temperatures before they started falling again. What do you think?
No Lisa, I was talking about both vertical and horizontal axis when i said they were evenly spaced. I really don’t know what Lord Monckton is going on about when he claims the axis have been rescaled. They have not been rescaled in any way that i can see. The numbers for both horizontal and vertical axis are evenly spaced. He needs to explain why he wrote that because what he wrote looks to be totally wrong and misleading.
As to the question of why the graph shows only the period from around 1860-2010. Well it’s another failure of this article that this hasn’t been explained. I believe the reason is because around 1860 was when instrumental measurements of temperature started to be taken. You can use proxies instead if you want to reconstruct an earlier period.
The graph shows what the temperature was in each and every year since around the 1860s so of course it illustrates the rise in temps since 1860. I don’t know how anyone can say otherwise when you can clearly see the dots on the graph are for temperature in each and every year from around 1860 to our current decade. It clearly shows the long term trend of rising temperatures.
Surely it is entirely appropriate that a railway engineer be put in charge of a gravy train?
Oops, I was wrong on some specifics – I don’t have the time for this, really. I wasn’t concerned about the timeframe of 1860-2010; it was the vertical axis of 1961-1990 that doesn’t make sense, at least according to how graphs are generally designed. Monckton may understand the graph, but he may not be a very good teacher, and thus may not be describing it clearly (I doubt I’m a teacher of data by nature, either).
The graph cannot show a trend of rising temperatures because the increase shown in the chart represents a “difference” between specific temperatures, not the actual temperatures themselves.
Note how the vertical axis title states that it represents a “difference” from 1961-1990. A difference, in such cases, usually represents the subtraction of one item from another: the difference between the two items. It also appears that this represents the difference of a given year as it relates to the AVERAGE of the years 1961-1990 (averaged after they are added together). I don’t believe any scaling has been changed, per se; but it appears that the vertical “0” point has been altered to create a false impression. You cannot have a difference that is negative. Differences are always positive (nothing can get less different than ‘the same,’ which is represented by “0” difference).
While it appears that the timeframe between 1860-1975ish illustrates an increase in temperature, it really illustrates an increase in the DIFFERENCE between the temperatures of a specific year (between 1860-1975ish) and 1961-1990. That is probably why the numbers take a dip prior to 1960. Just prior to 1960, the difference between a given year on the horizontal axis and the average temperature of 1961-1990 would be somewhat decreased, because the timeframes are getting closer together (and thus the differences are decreasing). Chances are that a similar dip doesn’t occur after 1990 because temperatures began DECREASING at a slightly accelerated rate than they had previously risen, which indeed would be illustrated as a ‘higher’ DIFFERENCE. That difference, however, could be in EITHER HIGHER OR LOWER temperatures – it is only a difference as it relates to the period of 1961-1990 (as the vertical axis indicates).
To get an idea of this, print out the graph and draw vertical lines at 1960 and 1990. Then draw horizontal lines at 0.3 and -0.3. Note how the data inside the resulting box averages around 0 on the vertical axis. Is this because the period of 1960-1990 is used as the average from which a “difference” is to be determined (on the vertical axis)? The horizontal axis therefore represents how different the temperature was from the data in that box you just drew. It appears that something else is involved here, and that might be explained by the likelihood that the location of “0” on the vertical axis was altered. Again, you can’t have a negative difference, so there can’t be a -0.5 difference between the temperatures of, say 1920 and (the average of) 1961-1990. It would appear that these ‘scientists’ took their data and put it into as many scenarios as they could until they came up with a mathematical graph that would simply LOOK like a constant rise in temperature (when, in this case, it actually represents a difference in temperatures, not a rise in temperatures).
Also, what exactly are “estimated actual” global mean temperatures? They are clearly labeled “estimated,” so they cannot represent “actual” temperatures. Adding the word actual was either deceptive or indicative of a lack of professionalism. So, if these “actual global mean temperatures” are in reality “estimated,” what did they do to estimate these so-called-actual mean temperatures? Note also how the “Difference (C) from 1961-1990” begins at -0.8 but stops at 0.6 (not 0.8), even though there is no data below -0.6 (which in itself is a difference that is impossible). This serves to increase the false impression that the temperatures are raising ‘off the chart.’
I sincerely agree that we should all be concerned about the future of Earth, and they are using this subconsciously to encourage us to believe them (which is not scientific). It is pollution, however, of the water, animals, plants, atmosphere and even airwaves that has grown to such an extreme that it is threatening the life of the planet itself. One must ask why the international global warming theorists are suggesting nothing to address this, as it is obvious that it should be a central issue of reducing the footprint of humans on our planet.
That was all probably way too long to post.
The matters raised by Lisa & Vincent :
First, the scaling. I confess that — unless he mean simply that the bottom of the right-hand y-axis be 13.2 rather than zero — I don’t really understand Monckton’s complaint about the ‘re-scaling of the graph’ : all the scales on the axes are linear. The only adjustment to the scaling that would have been necessary for the graph to make sense is inversion of the differences (multiplication by -1) ; v.i.
Secondly, Lisa’s point about not having negative differences. Consider this : let ‘a’ be the mean temp. in the years 1961-1998 (the datum) ; ‘b’ the temp. in any given year (the variable) ; the difference is given by the formula ‘b – a’ (variable minus datum).
If therefore the temp. in any given year be greater than the mean for 1961-1998, the difference will be negative ; hence the need (v.s.) to invert this set of data before plotting it, the negative becoming positive and vice versa.
The need of inversion arises only through mathematical convention and is not one of the A.G.W. industry’s ‘tricks’ of which we have recently heard so much.
Thirdly, the superimposition of the trend lines. Although it is obvious that the start dates of these have been chosen because years of low mean temp., it actually makes no difference where a trend line starts (unless perversely you start in 1998) : warming to some extent will be disclosed.
Whether the Earth is warming is not really the point at issue, however, for the climate has always varied and always will ; what matters are (a) whether the variation in climate arise from changes in the atmospheric concentration of carbon-dioxide and, if so (and only if so), (b) the extent, if any, to which the activities of man give rise to these changes. For upon the answer to these questions depend policy and the expenditure of vast amounts of our children’s and grand-children’s income.
The presentation of this graph, by side-stepping the enormous rise in the global level of industrial activity since the War, obfuscates this — the most important — point.
Sorry ; the second paragraph of my second point was back-to-front :
“If therefore the temp. in any given year be greater than the mean for 1961-1998, the difference will be negative ; hence the need (v.s.) to invert this set of data before plotting it, the negative becoming positive and vice versa.”
That ought to have read —
“If therefore the temp. in any given year (‘b’) be _less_ than the mean for 1961-1998 (‘a’), the difference (‘b – a’) will be negative ; hence the need …”
And Homer nods …
Absolutely. The graph is not terribly important, aside from the fact that it is part of the information being used to support a controversial theory (theories are neither true nor false, only useful or not useful) that in itself is not addressing a very tangible, uncontestable problem – pollution from over-industrialization.
It is possible that the difference is being calculated as Pericles stated – but what is meant by “difference” in the graph is not unambiguous. For example, let’s say that the average temperature for 1961-1990 is 14.0c, then:
If 1920 was 13.7c, then : 14.0 – 13.7 = 0.3 (but the chart says -0.3)
If 2000 was 14.4c, then: 14.0 – 14.4 = -0.4 (but the chart says 0.4)
However, have the graph’s authors definitely specified that they are literally subtracting a given year from the average of 1961-1990? It appears that they may simply be charting how different a given year is from the average of 1961-1990, in which case:
1920 would be 0.3, because that is how much 13.7 differs from 14.0
2000 would be 0.4, because that is how much 14.4 differs from 14.0
We don’t know. It doesn’t specify. We do know, however, that temperatures have been decreasing for the past decade, so the chart could not be accurate if it were claiming temperatures were continuing to rise at present. Given that fact, which has been recently acknowledged by the global warming theorists, one must wonder how they managed to continue the upward trend into the 2000s in this very strange concept of a graph.
Aha ! What Lisa says throws up another correction I ought to have made to my text : the fact that the difference given by the formula ‘b – a’ is negative when the year’s mean temp. (‘b’) is less than the average for 1961-1998 (‘a’) obviates the need to invert these data. So the difference was not exactly being ‘calculated as Pericles stated’ : sorry again !
Where Lisa is confusing herself, I think, is in subtracting ‘b’ from ‘a’, which is opposite to the normal way in which mathematicians and statisticians effect such calculations. Normally one subtracts the datum from the measured variable to arrive at the difference for that data point.
What the graph, taking the trend line for the 150-year period (red), appears to tell us is that the mean temp. has risen over that period by about three-fifths of a Celsius degree : about two-fifths of a degree per century.
I haven’t actually made the same calculation starting in 1940 — the point at which industrial &c. output of carbon-oxides increased dramatically owing to the marked increase in industrial activity — but I’d guess, from inspection, that it would be around one-quarter of a Celsius degree, also near-enough two-fifths of a degree per century.
All nit-picking argument over whether the temp. is rising however merely diverts attention from the only important questions : whether carbon-dioxide variation be the cause of the change and, if so, whether human activity lie behind it.
I’m sorry to say this, but Lord Mockton got the math wrong in #15. Radiative forcing for one-year change in CO2-concentration is 5,35*ln(390/388) = 0,0275 W/m^2; change in surface temperature to balance the radiative forcing is ~0,007 K; and taking climate sensitivity into account as stated by IPCC, we get temperatures rise by ~0,02K.
Sir;
Thank you for your efforts. Of course a railway engineer is not an idiot, but is far from a expert in anythng to do with climate. Why are all the faces of the global warming avocates English teachers, railway engineers, failed Havard Divinity School students and failed politians? Because it is not about science. It is about power, which is money. Always follow the money if you want to determine what is what.
How long are we going to let the “liar liar pants on fire” brigade get away with giving the world a load of shit about the climate?
These tossers need to receive the BIG MESSAGE.
I am very proud of what you are doing to expose this travesty. I feel so vindicated. Please don’t give up, and keep on the media to cover this more and more. I continue to push my blog on twitter, but my blog is mostly articles from others with the same opinion as mine, I doubt anyone will mind :
http://climategatehoax.blogspot.com/
On the down side, I find myself on Sarah Palins side, and that scares me !! LOL …All the best everyone !
Mr. Vindicated
” 1. Pachauri asked us to believe that the IPCC’s documents were “peer-reviewed”. Then he revealed the truth by saying that it was the authors of the IPCC’s climate assessments who decided whether the reviewers’ comments were acceptable. …….”
As well as being vastly more entertaining, Lord Monckton’s is the only type of peer review that has any credibility left in ‘climate science’.
“Bill Tuttle (02:02:59)
Not sure how you can claim that an engineer, railway or otherwise, has no background in the physical sciences. What do you think engineers do? How do you think one gets awarded an engineering degree?
”
If they can no longer rely on Global Warming, then Eurostar could sure use some railway engineers.
I have always been a confirmed sceptic on this issue – until recently when I ceased merely being a ‘sceptic’ and became utterly convinced that the CO2/warming hypothesis has all been a monumental con with no basis in science. I follow everything Lord Monckton says on this issue (as well as many others, on both sides).
What I would suggest, is that everyone reading my comment now, finds out the name and email address of their local MP/political representitive (a little Googling will find the info very easily – just type “MP (or your country’s equivilent) for….” and your local area), opens up their Outlook/email server and sends an email voicing their concern for the political operations currently in motion in spite of the Climategate revelations, and in spite of thousands of scientists who have voiced opposition to the IPCC assessments.
Do it NOW, PLEASE. I emailed my local MP a few days ago, and have had an acknowledgent email already – although I am still awaiting a full response – understandable to be delayed at this time of year, to be fair.
So do it. Voice your concerns, quote some facts, and be heard.
Our freedom is at stake.
I would like to thank you Lord Monckton for the effort and energy that you expend to keeping us informed on these issues.
It is so obvious to me that the bold faced lies that we have fed concerning global warming are all about and control.
I live in Alberta Canada and I am painfully aware of the efforts that greenpeace to shut down our oilsands. It is astonishing to me how some would love to see the destruction of an entire industry without even entertaining the slightest debate of the facts.
Thank you Lord Monckton
Lord Monckton, who also claimed to have won the Nobel Prize while in Australia, should be in stand-up comedy. We are living in the shadow of the vanishing snows and melting glaciers, on both Indian and Chinese sides, not in some comfortable armchair.
Please get real?
Well done, Lord Monckton, and thank you.