I’m waiting for actual photos of the event from the official photographer, but for now I’ll make do with what can be found on the Internet. For those who don’t know, the Oxford Union is the top of the food chain for scholarly debate. This is a significant win.
Founded in 1823 at the University of Oxford, but maintaining a separate charter from the University, The Oxford Union is host to some of the most skillful debates in the world. Many eminent scholars and personalities have come and either debated or delivered speeches in the chamber. Monckton was invited as part of the formal Thursday debate.
It is described as follows:
The Union is the world’s most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. It has been established for 182 years, aiming to promote debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe.
Here is a view inside from a previous debate:
From the SPPI Blog, an account of the debate:
Oxford Union Debate on Climate Catastrophe
Source: SPPI
Army of Light and Truth 135, Forces of Darkness 110
For what is believed to be the first time ever in England, an audience of university undergraduates has decisively rejected the notion that “global warming” is or could become a global crisis. The only previous defeat for climate extremism among an undergraduate audience was at St. Andrew’s University, Scotland, in the spring of 2009, when the climate extremists were defeated by three votes.
Last week, members of the historic Oxford Union Society, the world’s premier debating society, carried the motion “That this House would put economic growth before combating climate change” by 135 votes to 110. The debate was sponsored by the Science and Public Policy Institute, Washington DC.
Serious observers are interpreting this shock result as a sign that students are now impatiently rejecting the relentless extremist propaganda taught under the guise of compulsory environmental-studies classes in British schools, confirming opinion-poll findings that the voters are no longer frightened by “global warming” scare stories, if they ever were.
When the Union’s president, Laura Winwood, announced the result in the Victorian-Gothich Gladstone Room, three peers cheered with the undergraduates, and one peer drowned his sorrows in beer.
Lord Lawson of Blaby, Margaret Thatcher’s former finance minister, opened the case for the proposition by saying that the economic proposals put forward by the UN’s climate panel and its supporters did not add up. It would be better to wait and see whether the scientists had gotten it right. It was not sensible to make expensive spending commitments, particularly at a time of great economic hardship, when the effectiveness of the spending was gravely in doubt and when it might do more harm than good.
At one point, Lord Lawson was interrupted by a US student, who demanded to know what was his connection with the Science and Public Policy Institute, and what were the Institute’s sources of funding. Lord Lawson was cheered when he said he neither knew nor cared who funded the Institute.
Ms. Zara McGlone, Secretary of the Oxford Union, opposed the motion, saying that greenhouse gases had an effect [they do, but it is very small]; that the precautionary principle required immediate action, just in case and regardless of expense [but one must also bear in mind the cost of the precautions themselves, which can and often do easily exceed the cost of inaction]; that Bangladesh was sinking beneath the waves [a recent study by Prof. Niklas Moerner shows that sea level in Bangladesh has actually fallen]; that the majority of scientists believed “global warming” was a problem [she offered no evidence for this]; and that “irreversible natural destruction” would occur if we did nothing [but she did not offer any evidence].
Mr. James Delingpole, a blogger for the leading British conservative national newspaper The Daily Telegraph, seconded the proposition, saying that – politically speaking – the climate extremists had long since lost the argument. The general public simply did not buy the scare stories any more. The endless tales of Biblical disasters peddled by the alarmist faction were an unwelcome and now fortunately failed recrudescence of dull, gray Puritanism. Instead of hand-wringing and bed-wetting, we should celebrate the considerable achievements of the human race and start having fun.
Lord Whitty, a Labor peer from the trades union movement and, until recently, Labor’s Environment Minister in the Upper House, said that the world’s oil supplies were rapidly running out [in fact, record new finds have been made in the past five years]; that we needed to change our definition of economic growth to take into account the value lost when we damaged the environment [it is artificial accounting of this kind that has left Britain as bankrupt as Greece after 13 years of Labor government]; that green jobs created by governments would help to end unemployment [but Milton Friedman won his Nobel Prize for economics by demonstrating that every artificial job created at taxpayers’ expense destroys two real jobs in the wealth-producing private sector]; that humans were the cause of most of the past century’s warming [there is no evidence for that: the case is built on speculation by programmers of computer models]; that temperature today was at its highest in at least 40 million years [in fact, it was higher than today by at least 12.5 F° for most of the past 550 million years]; and that 95% of scientists believed our influence on the climate was catastrophic [no one has asked them].
Lord Monckton repeatedly interrupted Lord Whitty to ask him to give a reference in the scientific literature for his suggestion that 95% of scientists believed our influence on the climate was catastrophic. Lord Whitty was unable to provide the source for his figure, but said that everyone knew it was true. Under further pressure from Lord Monckton, Lord Whitty conceded that the figure should perhaps be 92%. Lord Monckton asked: “And your reference is?” Lord Whitty was unable to reply. Hon. Members began to join in, jeering “Your reference? Your reference?” Lord Whitty sat down looking baffled.
Lord Leach of Fairford, whom Margaret Thatcher appointed a Life Peer for his educational work, spoke third for the proposition. He said that we no longer knew whether or not there had been much “global warming” over the 20th century, because the Climategate emails had exposed the terrestrial temperature records as defective. In any event, he said, throwing good money after bad on various alternative-energy boondoggles was unlikely to prove profitable in the long term and would ultimately do harm.
Mr. Rajesh Makwana, executive director of “Share The World’s Resources”, speaking third for the opposition, said that climate change was manmade [but he did not produce any evidence for that assertion]; that CO2 emissions were growing at 3% a year [but it is concentrations, not emissions, that may in theory affect climate, and concentrations are rising at a harmless 0.5% a year]; that the UN’s climate panel had forecast a 7 F° “global warming” for the 21st century [it’s gotten off to a bad start, with a cooling of 0.2 F° so far]; and that the consequences of “global warming” would be dire [yet, in the audience, sat Mr. Klaus-Martin Schulte, whose landmark paper of 2008 had established that not one of 539 scientific papers on “global climate change” provided any evidence whatsoever that “global warming” would be catastrophic].
Lord Monckton, a former science advisor to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the UK, concluded the case for the proposition. He drew immediate laughter and cheers when he described himself as “Christopher Walter, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, scholar, philanthropist, wit, man about town, and former chairman of the Wines and Spirits Committee of this honourable Society”. At that point his cummerbund came undone. He held it up to the audience and said, “If I asked this House how long this cummerbund is, you might telephone around all the manufacturers and ask them how many cummerbunds they made, and how long each type of cummerbund was, and put the data into a computer model run by a zitty teenager eating too many doughnuts, and the computer would make an expensive guess. Or you could take a tape-measure and” – glaring at the opposition across the despatch-box – “measure it!” [cheers].
Lord Monckton said that real-world measurements, as opposed to models, showed that the warming effect of CO2 was a tiny fraction of the estimates peddled by the UN’s climate panel. He said that he would take his lead from Lord Lawson, however, in concentrating on the economics rather than the science. He glared at the opposition again and demanded whether, since they had declared themselves to be so worried about “global warming”, they would care to tell him – to two places of decimals and one standard deviation – the UN’s central estimate of the “global warming” that might result from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration. The opposition were unable to reply. Lord Monckton told them the answer was 3.26 plus or minus 0.69 Kelvin or Celsius degrees. An Hon. Member interrupted: “And your reference is?” Lord Monckton replied: “IPCC, 2007, chapter 10, box 10.2.” [cheers]. He concluded that shutting down the entire global economy for a whole year, with all the death, destruction, disaster, disease and distress that that would cause, would forestall just 4.7 ln(390/388) = 0.024 Kelvin or Celsius degrees of “global warming”, so that total economic shutdown for 41 years would prevent just 1 K of warming. Adaptation as and if necessary would be orders of magnitude cheaper and more cost-effective.
Mr. Mike Mason, founder and managing director of “Climate Care”, concluded for the opposition. He said that the proposition were peculiar people, and that Lord Monckton was more peculiar than most, in that he was not a real Lord. Lord Monckton, on a point of order, told Mr. Mason that the proposition had avoided personalities and that if Mr. Mason were unable to argue other than ad hominem he should “get out”. [cheers] Mr. Mason then said that we had to prepare for climate risks [yes, in both directions, towards cooler as well as warmer]; and that there was a “scientific consensus” [but he offered no evidence for the existence of any such consensus, still less for the notion that science is done by consensus].
The President thanked the speakers and expressed the Society’s gratitude to the Science and Public Policy Institute for sponsoring the debate. Hon. Members filed out of the Debating Chamber, built to resemble the interior of the House of Commons, and passed either side of the brass division-pole at the main door – Ayes to the right 135, Noes to the left 110. Motion carried.
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A tea party activist has introduced a bill to the Grand Junction School Board to try to ban global warming proselytizing in public schools.
Push to teach “other side” of global warming heats up in Colorado’s Mesa County
By Nancy Lofholm
The Denver Post
I won’t link – the site is riddled with cookies. But there are quite a number of opinionated commenters on both sides on the Post’s forum.
Interesting how all the people to whom you refer have actual names, now including, thankfully, the embarrassed e-mailers.
“Interesting how all the people to whom you refer have actual names, now including, thankfully, the embarrassed e-mailers.”
Yes, and it should be kept in mind that public funds – including U.S. taxes – paid for those CRU emails.
Brendan H:
“As for the Oxford Union debate, these sorts of occasions are primarily contests of rhetorical skill rather than content.”
Read the article. The Viscount destroyed the opposition with facts.
Good grief; Don’t they teach simple things like perturbation theory, or the principle of virtual work anymore. Seems like you PhDs learn more and more about less and less.
Well having 20 years experience as an apprentice through Master Mechanic working at the Ford Mustang Assembly line ; Bolt 39 will not land you a job as an auto repair mechanic at the local agrage; where they might expect you to be able to do the brakes on a Volkswagen or change out the four Oxygen Sensors on a Ford Taurus as well.
So let’s work through this again; for the benefit of Mike and cba ; and now it seems like Epistemic Closure and jbar also want to join in too.
First the legal disclaimer; in keeping with the finest traditions of the Intergovernmental Propaganda on Climatic Concensus; and in the interests of Scientific Robustness; everything that follows is presumed to have error guardbands of +/- 50 % leading to the obligatory 3:1 fudge factor such as is found in things like the SI Unit of “Climate Sensitivity”; which is 3 +/- 50 % .
Also for these purposes pi = sqrt(10) = 3
So first of all, Earth does not have 88 atmospheres of atmosphere; or even of CO2; so whatever jbar was talking about is not on message.
So we start where I started before; with Trenberth’s model of an isothermal planet having a black body surface at a Temperature of 288 K (15 deg C, 59 deg F) which uniformly emits 390 W/m^2 of (presumably) BB radiation according to the Stefan Boltzmann Law, along with the Planck Radiation Law, and the Wien Displacement Law. So the emitted LWIR has a spectral peak at 10.1 microns wavelength; so 25 % of 390 W/m^2 is emitted below 10.1 microns, and 75% above. 99% is emitted above 5.05 microns, and only 1% is emitted above 80.8 microns. This is in Robust agreement with the Trenberth Cartoon of Earth’s radiation budget; as promoted by NASA/NOAA/whoever.
And we have a starting assumption that TSI is 1366 W/m^2 at AM-0; and take the standard assumption of solar energy engineering texts that the ground level AM-1 is 1000 W/m^2. CO2 is at 0.04 % by molecular abundance (I don’t do volumetric analysis in a volume that is the entire known universe minus the volume occupied by planet earth’s land and seas).
Since I’m a generous person, I’m going to allow you in your runaway scenario to have up to 100 times the present level of CO2 or 4 % maximum Which is 7 doublings of the preferred earth CO2 abundance that the greens will accept as having served for the entire duration of the existence of the genus Homo; up until the Bush administration fouled that up.
So the predicted; excuse me, projected increase in earth mean surface temperature is 7 x 3 = 21 deg C taking us to 36 deg C or 309 K ; well according to Climatologer extraordinaire Dr Steven Schneider.
But now I want to perturb that system (radiatively). And no; I am not going to forget about conduction and convection or evaporation or whatever; I’m quite aware and up on all of those things. They just aren’t germane to this stick in the sand exercise; nor is the Internet, or Google or Wikipedia; and we don’t need any Cray Comouters or even the Playstation that Peter Humbug uses; well maybe he uses an X-box.
So now starting from that origin; I want to make one very slight almost negligible perturbation; nothing like suddenly importing 88 atmospheres worth of CO2 and oodles of Sulphur Dioxide or whatever to make opaque reflective sulphurous clouds.
I’m simply going to raise the surface insolation (solar spectrum) to 1000 W/m^2 everywhere on that uniform Black Body surface; that produces 390 W/m^2 at 288 K Temperature.
Unless Leif has something sunlike in the works that he hasn’t toled us about, this can’t actually happen (without help) but we’ll do it anyway.
Since 1000/390 = 2.56 and the 4th root of 2.56 is 1.25 =5/4 this is going to raise the steady state Temperature of the surface (due only to radiation increase) by 25% or 72 deg C up to 360 K at which point the surface (BB) will be emitting a Black Body LWIR thermal spectrum having a total emittance of 1000 W/m^2 and also a spectral peak wavelength of 8.08 microns per Wien’s Displacement Law. The peak spectral emittance will be increased by a factor 1.25 ^5 which is also about 5/4 x 2.56 or 3.2 times what it is now, in W/m^2/micron. The present value as I recall is 25 W/m^2/micron; so the reader can multiply that by 3.2 to get 80 W/m^2/micron.
So now where are we ? The surface is emitting 1000 W/m^2 peaking at 8.08 microns (probably 8 if you use robust mathematics), so 250 W/m^2 is emitted below 8 microns and 750 W/m^2 above 8 microns. Only 2.5 W/m^2 is emitted below 4.04 microns ; and also above 64.64 microns.
At the 15 micron CO2 molecular bending modes, we have gone from 1.5 times the spectral peak where the spectral emittance is 70% of the peak value (17.5 W/m^2/micron) up to 1.875 times the peak wavelength where the Spectral Emittance is now only 40% of the peak or 0.4 x 80 = 32 W/m^2/micron.
So the total surface emittance has increased by a factor of 2.56 but the spectral emittance at the CO2 15 micron band is only 1.83 times its present value. So the effectiveness of the CO2 15 micron band has been substantially reduced by the Wien Displacement shift in the LWIR spectrum.
Now we must be fair to the Warmistas and point out that if the atmosphere is in contact with this hotter earth, that the atmosphereic Temperature has likely increased as well due to radiation /conduction/convection/evaporation/precipitation/whatever ; no I haven’t forgotten anybody, so I’ll take it that the atmospheric Temperature (including the CO2) also went up by 25%; adn since the molecules have a Maxwellian distribution of mean particle velocities, then we can assume that the Doppler broadening of the CO2 15 micron band (or individual lines) has increased by the square root of the Temperature and sqrt of 1.25 is about 1.125 so the spectrum energy that might be captured by CO@ur momisugly is about double what it was before; maybe 2.05 or so.
So by increasing the solar “Forcing” to 1000 W/m^2 we increased the total surface emittance by 2.56 but the amount captured by CO2 is only doubled; so the amount of surface LWIR escaping past the CO2 hole goes ub substantially.
Actually the situation is even more dramatic than that.
The Spectral peak emittance increased from 25 W/m^2/micron up to 80 W/m^2/micron; 3.2 times but it also moved from 10.1 microns down to 8.08 microns; and there is that Atmospheric Window going from around 7 microns up to that CO2/H2O 15 micron region; and since 3/4 of the energy lies above the peak wavelength; we find ourselves with a 3.2 x peak spectral emittance that is spectrally moved even further into the atmospheric window and away from the CO2 15 micron band.
So the radiative cooling situation has improved substantially; while the Green house blocking by CO2 has been diminished as a fraction of the Total energy captured. Yes there’s an ozone hole in that window.
Now let us not forget that only 1% of the available LWIR spectrum has reached the 4.0 micron band of CO2.
So the 15 micron band has been significantly turned off; while the 4.0 micron band hasn’t even started to become a factor.
Well my arms are getting tired holding this blow torch that is irradiating the entire earth at 1000 W/m^2; to produce all this radiative mayhem; so I’m going to turn the job over to your CO2.
So crank your CO2 up by a factor of 100 to 4 % mole abundance and now let us see how you do at holding that position so I can let go.
Well you still have all that conduction/convection/evaporation/precipitation to put to work; and we have plenty of ocean water left to absorb whatever thermal radiation is emitted from your warmer atmosphere. Wow thinkg of all that evaporation that is going to transport tons of water up into the upper atmosphere along with all that latent heat. Some swamp cooler you have operating there. Don’t forget all the water clouds that are going to form; well unless you don’t like having clouds with your precipitation. So what will the cloud albedo go up to; we don’t have any ice and snow albedo; I already melted all of that and flooded Florida and Banglasdesh.
Those clouds are also going to block a lot of sunshine from the ground; so the sun is going to return to something more in line with Trenberth’s average of 168 W/m^2 absorbed by the surface.
Well there you have it; why don’t you all get together and tell us how your CO2 is going to maintain the hot house condition I set up for you; and then in the event that you actually can’t figure out how to do that with 4 % mole fraction of CO2 and pretty much ordinary atmospheric pressure on earth (forget about Venus); Explain how it would be possible for CO2 by itself; well I’ll be generous and toss in water feedback as a gift; to get the earth to that condition; or anything even approximating that.
Isn’t it annoying that H2O insists on making clouds that cool the surface; do let us know if you have a cloud pass between you and the sun and you find it suddenly warms up in that shadow zone.
But please don’t come back and tell me I am foregetting something; I probably am; but I’ll let you use whatever I forgot, to help you warm up the earth in a CO2 thermal runaway catastrophe.
Quick Question for Jbar; what is the value of the largest dimension where the Heisenberg principle of “Unbestimmheit” (mit ein umlaut) suddenly ceases to apply ? Don’t forget some non-wikpedler reference for where you found that.
I know for sure that Heisenberg’s principle makes some yellow LEDs work; well at least with acceptible efficiency.
Does anyone have a link to the video of the debate?
Thanks
And for Mike,
I have to say that if you get your science information from the sort of literature references that you cited for me to “do some serious reading” and silly you-tube videos such as that from some history biddy, with her husband sitting beside her telling us that global warming was discovered in 2004; then I am truly sorry for you. More importantly I’m very sorry for your students; since you offered the information that you have tenure somewhere. How nice to be formally protected from ones own foibles so that the measure of success no longer needs to apply.
I got out of Academia 50 years ago; to go to work to try and do some actual good for all of the peoples on this planet; by working for profit making private enterprises; whose only measure of performance is that their customers willingly; and of their own free will, take their own personal money out of their pocket, and put it down in exchange for some useful product that, may contain the fruits of my labors for the last 50 years.
I’m judged only by the extent to which my stuff and my ideas actually work in practice to achieve useful results. When you get to your first billion successful students graduating out of your classes; and start on your second billion; then tell us how nice it is to be fireproof. At least that many people have willingly exchanged their own money for the fruits of my efforts; and I am sure lots of institutions like your have also. And that is just for the most recent decade.
The teachers who had the most positive effects on my education didn’t have to take refuge behind any institutional immunity to failure. They kept their jobs because of the measure of success they ahieved through their successful students.
Don’t take this as a slam at you personally Mike; I take the high road; and I assume (without proof) that you actually are a good teacher at whatever you do teach (hope so anyway). But no teacher ever got fired for having successfully taught good students; so don’t get soft, and depend on your tenure for job protection; do the job that has been entrusted to you.
“””” Epistemic Closure says:
May 25, 2010 at 9:12 pm
George M. Smith needs to do his integrals- he has woefully underestimated how absorption shifts can alter upward welling irradiance as GHG line and band spectra move relative to the blackbody peak with temperature changes- an order of magnitude separates the flux from +50 to -50 C
He also seems oblivious to ground, sea surface and cloud albedo interactions with evaporation rates and levels of cloud cover and aerosol IR activity. “”””
Well Epistemic, I don’t need to do any integrals; and I haven’t woefully underestimated anything. Yes I have omitted some things from my simple (stick in the sand) mental exercise. You won’t find any String Theory; or General Relativity; no Organic, or inorganic Chemistry; there’s a whole raft of things I didn’t include. What qualifies you to attribute lack of inclusion to forgetfullness ?
You are welcome to unforget those items you mentioned and add them to my simplified analysis yourself; that way you can show us your prowess with the integrals.
Oh I do have a degree in Mathematics; both Pure Mathematics and applied Mathematics actually; so I can do integrals; even without having to Google up tables of integrals. Well I also have a degree in Physics too; well actually in Radio-Physics as well; you know; all that stuff about the Atmosphere and the Ionosphere, and Electromagnetic Wave propagation; Optical properties; I can even design the circuits used to measure and observe those phenomena; and no I don’t mean by picking subsystems out of an Agilent Inc Instrumentation catalogue; I mean as in starting with a silicon wafer and figuring out how and what to dope it with; to make whatever semiconductor devices I want. I’m quite happy with the III-V semiconductors as well, so if you want to make LED chips, I can do that for you too; and design the optics for the packaging therof. Well if you ask me nicely, I’ll even grow the single crystal substrate materials for you; and also deposit the light emitting epitaxial layers for you. I can do that even if you don’t have any reactors to make those materials in; because I can build you those as well. There’s actually quite a few things besides doing integrals that I actually can do. Sometimes I do get a bit forgetful though; like I just forgot that I also majored in Mathematical Physics; so if I really need to get down to do Electron Optics or Field theory, I do have some sort of tool kit to get started.
No they don’t pay me to do most of those things; they pay me because I can if they need to.
No I do not know what makes El Nino or his frigid sister work or PDO or AMO; I do get that last one a bit confused with AM-0 for the Optical Properties of the Atmosphere. There are other people who understand those; so I don’t need to.
But please don’t assume that I forgot something; simply because I didn’t mention it.
Smokey:” “Read the article. The Viscount destroyed the opposition with facts.”
Right. A joke about measurement and the “lawyers” question. Definitely rhetoric.
George: You took some undergrad math and science courses 50 years ago. Good for you. But you have burned out. You do not understand most of what you are typing.
Karim Dhanani says:
May 26, 2010 at 7:00 am
“So, Mike.
a. Since when was science conducted by consensus?
b. how many scientists of those surveyed were climate scientists?
c. what was the sample size?
d. was the sample selection random?
e. Where was the sample taken
I am a scientist. I’m not an AGW believer but I’m a biotechnologist, so what do I know?”
Read the article on the survey and you can answer your own questions. You are not a scientist. You are a “biotechnologist.” You probably have made some nice gadgets and saved a few lives. That’s great. Society needs people like you. But you are not a scientist.
(I’m not a scientist either if you want to be picky; I am a mathematician who is trying to better understand the science behind climate change and the complex issues it presents to us, but my own research is not in this area.)
Flask says:
May 25, 2010 at 8:42 am
“I would have to agree with the 84% and the 74% that I believe human activity can be scientifically connected to warming, although I doubt that it is the only cause of climate change, and on whatever proportion of warming results from human activity.”
No one has said all observed climate change is due to AGW. The mainstream scientific view is that most – I think about 70% is the estimate – of the rise in global mean temps is due to our GHG.
Jimbo says:
May 25, 2010 at 6:37 am
… “Here is more abrupt stuff contrary to your statement.” …
Thank you so much! I will read this carefully, I may indeed need to modify my views, but give me sometime to do more reading. I have printed the 24 page Executive Summary and will read it tonight. The great thing about be proven wrong that one gets to learn something new!
http://www.nap.edu/nap-cgi/report.cgi?record_id=10136&type=pdfxsum
It also says this: “Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age
climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the
current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and
great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.” I hope others will take the time to read the whole document.
Why is it that there are no reports of this debate and its outcome in any newspapers?
Why the press silence?
The question is significant because , while I know the press is biassed, there are some people who don’t. and to get this information on lamentably influential internet websites it needs to be sourced in some printed media.
Who runs the Watts Up website? And who, by the way, is David Icke?
Several people have raised this question about Monckton’s title. He is a hereditary peer, and a few years ago the Labour government removed the right of hereditary peers to speak or vote in the House of Lords (replacing them with appointed peers like Lords Snape and Mandelson who are equally unelected and seriously corrupt). The right of a Viscount to go on calling himself a Lord has not changed.
Somebody else says there were no “scientists” in the debate. Monckton has a degree in archeology, which many people would classify as a science. Lawson is a respected economist and economics is certainly a science.
Serious doubts about AGW have been publicly raised by Britain’s top meteorogical scientists at the Met Office and the Hdley Centre. It was these British scientists who challenged the idiots at the IPCC to substantiate or withdraw their claims about the Himalayan glaciers melting, with the result that eventually the IPCC withdrew its claim earlier this year.
Climategate has not just been “ignored”. Worse than that, the Labour government paid for an “enquiry” (=a cover-up) led by people who have huge vested interests in keeping up the government subsidies of alternative energy. What a farce.
Brendan H says
May 26, 2010 at 11:58 am:
“Smokey says: Read the article. The Viscount destroyed the opposition with facts.”
Brendan answered: “Right. A joke about measurement and the ‘lawyers’ question. Definitely rhetoric.”
Brendan me boy, you are wrong again. Obviously you did not read the article, or you would have noticed the following facts:
The planet’s temperature “…was higher than today by at least 12.5 F° for most of the past 550 million years,”
And in response to the claim that Bangladesh is sinking beneath the waves: “…a recent study by Prof. Niklas Moerner shows that sea level in Bangladesh has actually fallen,”
And in response to the baseless claim that no new oil is being discovered: “…in fact, record new [oil] finds have been made in the past five years,”
As is the fact that “…every artificial job created at taxpayers’ expense destroys two real jobs in the wealth-producing private sector,”
And the fact that “…the Climategate emails had exposed the terrestrial temperature records as defective,”
And the fact that “…not one of 539 scientific papers on ‘global climate change’ provided any evidence whatsoever that ‘global warming’ would be catastrophic,”
And the fact that “…the warming effect of CO2 was a tiny fraction of the estimates peddled by the UN’s climate panel.” When challenged on that fact, Monckton promptly replied the reference is found in “IPCC, 2007, chapter 10, box 10.2.”
And the fact that “…shutting down the entire global economy for a whole year, with all the death, destruction, disaster, disease and distress that that would cause, would forestall just 4.7 ln(390/388) = 0.024 Kelvin or Celsius degrees of ‘global warming’, so that total economic shutdown for 41 years would prevent just 1 K of warming.”
There are lots more facts in the article. But Brendan is right about the rhetoric. His problem is that rhetoric was used in place of facts by the losing side. And that is why they lost: those pesky facts got in the way of a good scare.
By the way; WRT the silly claims that Lord Mockton is “not a real Lord”.
Well actually there are no real Lords; well not in the British scheme of things. Maybe Liecchtenstein or Andorra have “real Lords”
For the British “Lord” is simply a title of address much as would be “Sir” or “Mister”. But it is a title of address for only certain groups of persons. And those persons have Hereditary Peerages which pass from the holder to the eldest son; and among those groups of Peerages one does in fact find “Viscounts”; preceded in rank by “Earls” and followed by “Barons”.
I believe that Life Peerages are also “Barons”; but those Titles last only for the life of the individual. Life Peers are not members of the House of Lords. Some Hereditary Peers are members but not all are; and non membership in the House of Lords does not make one not a “Lord”, as to the proper form of address.
So just as Senator Ma-am Mrs Barbara Boxer worked her A*** off (possibly literally) to earn her various titles of address; so too is Viscount Monckton thoroughly entitled to be addressed as “Lord Monckton”; for that is the proper Titular address for all Viscounts.
Of course above Earls there are Princes and possibly other peers and presumably not all of them either, are members of the House of Lords.
I have actually exchanged a very few e-mails with Lord Monckton; hey who knows they may have been hacked; and I must confess, that I am quite uncomfortable in simply calling him Christopher; but I have done so; but I much prefer to acknowledge that he has a proper Title which I prefer to use.
‘Mercans simply don’t understand the concept of historical continuity ( and I is one; but not by citizenship) and that is a shame; since the history that has been handed down to us from the Founding Fathers, is no less worthy of preserving and remembering, than what the British (and I is one of those too; of the colonial branch) have carried forwards with them from as far back as the plains of Runnymede and beyond.
For we all stand on the shoulders of the giants who preceded us on this rock; and if we reject that Heritage; what purpose is there for us in life; do we want to just pass on to our children and grandchildren the current top three “artists” du jour on American Idol; or the latest, greatest Rock band since the Head Lice !
Why go to Washington DC to stand at the Lincoln Memorial ; or to London to watch the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace ? Maybe our reasons are hidden away in that word “Civilisation.”
So mock Lord Monckton, if you must; that of course is the very first mark of the failed debater; the “ad hominem attack”; closely followed by the “straw man” as a strategy for losing debating points.
But the fact remains he is a “Lord” just as Mrs (babs) Boxer is a “Senator”; so get over it.
“”” Mike says:
May 26, 2010 at 1:47 pm
George: You took some undergrad math and science courses 50 years ago. Good for you. But you have burned out. You do not understand most of what you are typing. “””
So you are a mind reader as well as tenure protected employee. Actually it was more like 55 years ago; but who is counting; back then you were actually expected to learn something in school; other than http://www.google.com
I like your debating style; very informative presentation of researched facts. Come to think of it; I don’t actually recall any actual researched facts in any of your posts; well science facts that is; you did tell us your were tenure protected; and I’m perfectly willing to accept that as fact.
George E. Smith –
Roughly speaking, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is that you cannot precisely measure both the momentum and the position of a particle because the energy of the photon that you use to make the measurement affects the result.
The larger the mass of particle you hit with a photon to measure it, the smaller the relative or percent uncertainty in the measurement.
For macroscopic particles, the percent uncertainty is vanishingly small, essentially zero.
Prithee, which vowel in Unbestimmtheit gets an umlaut?? [Ya left out a “t” there.]
and in the objective case, I think you meant to say mit einem umlaut. Nicht wahr?
No way I’m going to read that book you wrote on radiation balance or whatever it was.
Of course nothing in the next few 100MM years will cause a runaway greenhouse on this Earth. That would require the slowly increasing temperature and radiance of the sun to raise the temperature of the oceans to 100C. The number solar physicists throw around is about a billion years for that.
“”” Epistemic Closure says:
May 25, 2010 at 9:12 pm
George M. Smith needs to do his integrals- he has woefully underestimated how absorption shifts can alter upward welling irradiance as GHG line and band spectra move relative to the blackbody peak with temperature changes- an order of magnitude separates the flux from +50 to -50 C “””
So +50 C (izzat degrees) is 323.15 K and -50 would be 223.15 K (if that is -50 deg C)
So (323.15/233.15)^4 is 4.3977 (+/- 50 %) so Epistemic, I would suggest you have a systemic problem with 8th grade arithmatic if you think that is “”” an order of magnification separation “””
You might ask Mike for some help with your arithmetic; before you tackle the Integral Calculus; he’s a mathematician he says.
Somebody else actually already did the integration; so I simply had to apply simple laws of black body radiation Physics; standard 8th grade science stuff.
Good luck with that tutoring from Mike.
By the way even the peak of the BB spectrum from +50 deg C down to -50 deg C only changes by a factor of
6.368488 (+/- 50 %); so you can’t even fall back on claiming you meant the peak of the spectrum; rather than the flux.
“”” Jbar says:
May 26, 2010 at 6:31 pm
George E. Smith –
Roughly speaking, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is that you cannot precisely measure both the momentum and the position of a particle because the energy of the photon that you use to make the measurement affects the result.
The larger the mass of particle you hit with a photon to measure it, the smaller the relative or percent uncertainty in the measurement.
For macroscopic particles, the percent uncertainty is vanishingly small, essentially zero.
Prithee, which vowel in Unbestimmtheit gets an umlaut?? [Ya left out a “t” there.]
and in the objective case, I think you meant to say mit einem umlaut. Nicht wahr? “””
Hey I won’t laugh at your English; if you don’t laugh at my German. But many thanks for the speeling lesson; and the grammar too. Since I was never any good at any language, and had but a single year at German; and that was 50 years ago; I’ve gotten burned out on it in the meantime; besides what do I care how the type it; if Sieglinde sings it properly, I don’t even care if she can spell it either.
As to Heisenberg’s Principle; there was this traffic cop who gave me a speeding ticket in a 35 mile per hour zone. He told the judge that I took off like a scared rabbit from a traffic light that turned green and reached 40 mph before slowing to turn into a parking lot after going half a block. The judge told him to get lost, and said he couldn’t possibly have measured my speed in half a block. So the cop set up shop inside that parking lot; from where he could see all the way from that light to where the road made a bend , a quarter mile down the road, so he got himself a nice speed trap. A couple of months after that court appearance; he came barrelling after me again as I rounded that bend in the road; and he showed me his stop watch which he had stopped at 22.5 seconds; so he gave me another ticket for doing 40 in a 35 zone. (This was before hand held radars were in common use)
So I showed the judge a photo taken a bit more than halfway to the bend pointing out that the speed limit changed to 45 mph there.
So the judge asked the cop just where exactly I was when he measured my speed to be 40 mph as he had written on the ticket.
Cop said he did’t know for sure but it was somewhere in that 1/4 mile. Judge told him to get lost again; and also told him to stop using a stop watch speed trap; since he couldn’t prove that he had actually started the watch at the moment I started out from the light.
He never did ticket me again but he followed me several times afterwards; discovered I always remained below the posted limit by his speedo; and also below what would be considered a safe speed when conditions weren’t primo. Just doing his job of course; and we never had any subsequent reason to meet. I really think it was my silver painted (yuck) Jaguar XK-140 hard top coupe (1956) that got him following me.
But Heisenberg’s principle doesn’t apply to speed traps of course since they are macro objects.
So
Please pay me money, and my company will wave a magic wand and make the climate “stable”.
Smokey: “There are lots more facts in the article.”
And how many members of the audience had sufficient knowledge about the climate to verify or challenge Monckton’s claims?
As I say, these sorts of occasions are primarily contests of rhetorical skill.
Brendan H.: Your comment that this is simply a competition of ones ability to utilize rhetoric within the confines of a debate is simply not giving credence to the way the debate is established. This particular debate was to be argued by people who were to have ‘facts’ to support their claims in defense of their argument.
Clearly, and definetively, Monckton, had the facts, and with solid rhetoric, defended the facts. Clearly, the opposing side, had a lack of facts to support their argument, and thus could not win even with good rhetoric.
Mark says:
May 25, 2010 at 12:28 am
“I’m sorry to say that the Oxford Union debate is an irrelevancy. Nobody cares about it any more. It is less significant than the boat race.”
Unless of course the AGW proponents had won the debate, in which case it would be cited as more proof of the AGW consensus. You can’t have it both ways, if you accept the challenge of a debate you win or lose – you lost ! So accept it and admit that it is the AGW camp that is in denial.
Brendan H said:
“And how many members of the audience had sufficient knowledge about the climate to verify or challenge Monckton’s claims?”
That was the job of Lord Monckton’s opponents, but by lacking any convincing facts, they lost the debate.
Every fact stated by Viscount Monckton has been thoroughly discussed right here and repeatedly verified. The opposing side lacked the basic knowledge to respond, even if they had convincing facts, which they did not.
The claim that “climate change” is primarily the result of a rise in a minor trace gas has been thoroughly debunked time and again. In fact, natural variability completely explains the climate, with no need for any extraneous entities such as CO2.
Monckton won the debate fair and square — based on verifiable facts, not rhetoric. CAGW is a fraudulent, pseudo-scientific scam, based on the craving for increased tax revenues and fed by money and misplaced belief.
These young students have been beat over the head 24/7/365 with alarming visions of “climate change,” the evil “carbon,” and the endless drivel about fast rising sea levels, disappearing ice, oceans acidifying, toad exterminations, and the thousand other scare stories told and re-told by the media, by their professors, and by their chattering, Greenpeace-worshipping girlfriends.
But after hearing the facts, they came to the proper conclusion: that Lord Monckton was right, and his ignorant opponents were wrong. The students understood which side had the facts, and which side were the bovine fecal purveyance specialists — the very same things that we understand here.
So it is somewhat surprising, considering the unceasing, ubiquitous CAGW propaganda, that Lord Monckton did as well as he did in the post-debate voting. That’s what happens when people are exposed to the actual facts, versus bogus climate alarmism based on the emotion of fear.
To followup on Jimbo interesting find:
http://www.nap.edu/nap-cgi/report.cgi?record_id=10136&type=pdfxsum
The report makes clear that the possibility of abrupt climate change makes AGW even more dangerous.
The IPCC report does address this issue.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-5-1-6.html#6-5-2
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-6-2.html
”Climate has changed on all time scales throughout Earth’s history. Some aspects of the current climate change are not unusual, but others are. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has reached a record high relative to more than the past half-million years, and has done so at an exceptionally fast rate. Current global temperatures are warmer than they have ever been during at least the past five centuries, probably even for more than a millennium. If warming continues unabated, the resulting climate change within this century would be extremely unusual in geological terms. Another unusual aspect of recent climate change is its cause: past climate changes were natural in origin (see FAQ 6.1), whereas most of the warming of the past 50 years is attributable to human activities. ”
George: I am not debating you. I am dismissing you. You had a question about Venus. I answered as best I could. Then you came back with some OT insults. Good bye George.
“”” Epistemic Closure says:
May 25, 2010 at 9:12 pm
George M. Smith needs to do his integrals- he has woefully underestimated how absorption shifts can alter upward welling irradiance as GHG line and band spectra move relative to the blackbody peak with temperature changes- an order of magnitude separates the flux from +50 to -50 C “””
Well Epistemic; in your very first phrase, you reveal that you don’t know anything about Black Body radiation. Unless one was trying to do an accurate calculation of the expected absorption of BB radiation by some very specific known absorption spectrum (of some molecule); there isn’t any need to do any integration; that was already done 100 years ago.
As I told Mike; when you go to school you are actually supposed to learn something; and if you happen to be studying BB radiation then you are supposed to remember the BB radiation curve. And given that for climatologers you don’t need better than +/- 50 % accuracy; you don’t need to remember much to store the whole thing in your head; and then you can do any calculations you need in your head since it is only 5th grade arithmetic.
So it doesn’t matter whether you want to know the BB radiation from a solar corona at maybe a million K; or the spectrum of the radiation from a cryostat at one micro- Kelvin; you can do it all in your head with no integrals needed.
And if you were lucky enough to go to the high school that I went to; well you would know it all before you ever went near any University. Unfortunately you won’t find such a school in the USA.
So forget the integral tables; just get yourself a stick that you can scratch some numbers down in the sand; that makes it even easie, so you can think about fishing or something else while you are doing the arithmetic.
But then Mike thinks that I don’t understand anything I am typing; it’s clear that he doesn’t understand anything I’m typing; or he would understand that he is not going to learn anything about how climate works using mathematics; well almost any branch of mathematics besides high school arithmetic.
There’s no magic statistical operation Mike; that will suddenly reveal how climate works; well all you can observe directly is weather anyway; and you are observing a totally chaotic system; so don’t expect any closed form formula for climate change.
But with a little bit of Physics; and/or physical Chemistry; you can probably figure a lot of it out. What they apparently teach today in Physical Chemistry was simply part of the Physics curriculum when I was in school. Well perhaps they teach some aspects of it in a bit more detail today, since it is somewhat more important to a lot of chemistry understanding. I never did any chemistry past high school; so I’ve had to pick what little I know up since. And I lost all my school and Uni text books 49 years ago; so I pretty much have to survive on what I remember since a lot of it isn’t in any modern texts that I have been able to find.
And Mike says I’m burned out so that would probably get me to make some goofs now and then.
Fortunately; here at WUWT, I know I can pretty much take anything that Phil posts at face value; so I’m not worried about falling off any big cliffs.
Frankly I would be more inclined to guess that Phil could be some sort of teacher; than Mike. All the real teachers I have ever known are only too happy to help others to understand.
But Epistemic; I think you could use some remedial arithmetic; and you should hit the Physics books again and learn about BB radiation; sans integrals.
And I guess the good news of the day is that BP has pretty much stopped their oil leak. Of course Obama and his minions have leaped at the challenge and closed down all new offshore oil exploration. That’s a good move Mr President; now just try to tell the Communist Red Chinese to come and clean up their mess in Louisiana; when they have their next energy disaster drilling in that same gulf.
So he comes to California to visist one of our bay area clean green free renewable energy companies that makes non-silicon solar cell collectors; a company that already got something ove half a billion dollars off the taxpayers. So he picks the one company that is most unlikely (IMHO) to succeed in the soalr energy arena; they don’t seem to understand that area is king in solar; and their conversion efficiency is hardly spectacular. Meanwhile the most likely winner of the locals seems to get along fine without the taxpayer’s money; well except for their customers getting half the purchase price from taxpayers.
But good show BP; get a permanent lid put on that thing; and then help with the mess cleanup before the hurricane season stirs things up.
I’ve read that Stalin was preparing an invasion of Europe at the time of his death. (And also ramping up an anti-Semitic purge with his “doctors’ plot,” another indication of his madness.) Logistical concerns wouldn’t have stopped him. Apparently we had some inkling of his intentions. All it takes to start a war is a nut like that (or Mao, or Dear Leader) in charge.
If Stalin hadn’t been given Central Europe at Yalta, he’d have taken it anyway–and gone after the western part as well–and we knew it. (FDR and Truman just couldn’t say so publicly to the hard-liners who criticized them for their acquiescence.)