This is a week of extremes in quotes about climate. On one end of the scale we have professor Steven Schneider with a set of quotes so beyond the absurd, that he now has his own “jumping the shark” TV sitcom moment.
On the other end, we have the New Scientist, shocking warmists and skeptics alike with some hardcore doubt about the outcome of the Muir-Russell and other Climategate inquiries. They write:
But what happened to intellectual candour – especially in conceding the shortcomings of these inquiries and discussing the way that science is done. Without candour, public trust in climate science cannot be restored, nor should it be.
and…
Russell’s team left other stones unturned. They decided against detailed analysis of all the emails in the public domain. They examined just three instances of possible abuse of peer review, and just two cases when CRU researchers may have abused their roles as authors of IPCC reports. There were others. They have not studied hundreds of thousands more unpublished emails from the CRU. Surely openness would require their release.
All this, plus the failure to investigate whether emails were deleted to prevent their release under freedom of information laws, makes it harder to accept Russell’s conclusion that the “rigour and honesty” of the scientists concerned “are not in doubt”.
Full article here at The New Scientist
Distancing themselves from the train wreck
There are some interesting observations on this article on Bishop Hill
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/7/18/new-scientist-on-russell.html
Quite a few avowedly Warmist publications (and journalists) have begun the process of negotiation with reality in the past few weeks and begun to recant their absolute faith in AGW. Probably because they have seen the appalling train wreck which awaits ‘global warming’ theory not very far down the line, and are trying to re-invent themselves as even-handed observers.
We should not allow these ‘journalists’ and ‘publications’ off the train……seal the doors!
I’ve read NS for many, many years but I’ve now stopped buying it for the obvious reason.
Several years ago I did send several letters. Not surprisingly, they didn’t print any, but I was fairly impressed by the fact that one of their editors did write a proper reply, and then entered into a small amount of discussion, e.g. about the hockey stick. At least they were willing to talk to someone who was clearly leaning toward the sceptical side.
And now this editorial. There’s hardly a thing in it I could disagree with. In fact, it’s quite extraordinary. But just one criticism. It’s a little late in the day for them to realise that the honesty and oppenness of science needs defending. To pursue such a one-sided and biased policy over some years is nothing short of disgraceful.
It’s probably never going to happen, but it would be great if, some time i the coming years, they print an apology to their readers. Then I’ll start to buy NS again….
Chris
For sure, a proper inquiry would look at more than just the released emails. If one doubts that more emails would unveil more scandal, then one must have great faith in the Miracle Worker to have found all that was there.
===============
This is wow, just wow. A New Sci unsigned editorial right? Ed not Op-Ed. Similar to Fred Peirce, but much punchier. If this is one of Schneider’s tipping points then its not one many of us are gonna miss – lets watch out for the trend.
Friends:
I posted a comment on another thread at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/18/quote-of-the-week-steven-schneider-jumps-the-skark/
It seems directly pertinent to this thread, so I copy it here to avoid the need for those who are interested to find it.
It is as follows.
Richard
——————-
Friends:
Comments like those of Schneider can be expected to become more frequent because they are a shroud intended to obscure sight of the corpse of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) scare.
The CAGW scare is dead. It continues to run around like a headless chicken, but – like the chicken – it is dead while still moving with an appearance of life. And the movement will be obvious in Mexico later this year.
The CAGW scare is a bandwagon carrying a variety of researchers, politicians, carbon traders, and etc. in a direction they all want to go. But the scare has been killed by Climategate, the failure of negotiations in Copenhagen, and the failure of global temperature to rise as CAGW said it would over the last decade.
So, the wheels are falling off the CAGW bandwagon.
Those with any wit can see they need to get off the bandwagon before it grinds to a complete halt.
In the meantime, those riding the bandwagon need a screen to cover its wobbly wheels. And the screen only has to be sufficient for it to last until the wheels have fallen off the CAGW bandwagon and its riders have found another bandwagon (ocean acidification?) and have climbed aboard it.
The screen is the Oxborough, Muir Russell and etc, enquiries together with extreme assertions such as those of Schneider and Hansen. The screen is a shroud to cover the corpse of the CAGW scare, and a shroud does not need to last for long. It will not take long for the screen to be seen through, but it only needs to last until after the IPCC Meeting in Mexico.
But, the important point is that the CAGW scare is dead: its continuing movement is merely an appearance of it still having life.
However, like the ‘acid rain’ scare of the 1980s, the smell of the corpse of CAGW will continue to pollute energy and economic policies for decades to come.
The ‘acid rain’ scare’ is dead, too. Nobody announced its death (and nobody will announce the death of CAGW) but few remember the ‘acid rain’ scare unless reminded of it.
And the ‘acid rain’ scare should act as a warning because it is very similar to the CAGW scare.
It was based on dubious ‘science’ that anyone could see was flawed.
It was denied by empirical evidence.
It was promoted for political and economic reasons.
‘Greens’ adopted it and promoted it as a method to attack industrial civilisation.
It was the major environmental concern in its day.
It was quietly forgotten when its political use had been fulfilled.
But the stench of its corpse pollutes the political scene to this day.
The Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD) of the European Union (EU) is one good example of the stench from the corpse of the ‘acid rain’ scare. The LCPD was established in response to the ‘acid rain’ scare, and it sets limits to emissions of oxides of sulphur and nitrogen (SOx and NOx) permitted from power stations. The civil servants who were put in place to operate the LCPD need to justify the continuing existence of their jobs, so they keep reducing the emission limits. There are no valid scientific reasons – and no valid reasons of any other kind – for these reductions. But the latest reductions will force closure of all except two of the UK’s coal fired power stations in 2014.
The power stations could continue to operate if they were fitted with flue gas desulphurisation (FGD). Some have sufficient land available for them to fit FGD but others do not. More importantly, FGD adds about 20% to the capital cost and about 10% to the running cost of a power station.
A power station has to recover its capital cost over the entire ~30 years of its scheduled life. This recovery of capital cost becomes difficult when the capital cost is increased by ~20% and the power station’s running cost is increased by ~10%. The recovery of capital cost becomes impossible when the FGD is retro-fitted to a power station that is 5-years old so only has about ~25 years of its scheduled life remaining. Hence, closing the power station (with large resulting losses) costs less than fitting FGD to keep it running.
So, as a result of the ‘acid rain’ scare, in 2014 the UK will be forced to choose between leaving the EU or having its lights go out.
The CAGW scare is dead but it has yet to lie down and be forgotten.
There will be a temptation to forget the CAGW scare as it fades away. But – as the effects of the ‘acid rain’ scare demonstrate – this temptation needs to be resisted.
Richard
We are witness to the decline and fall of a cultural paradigm that also posed as a scientific hypothesis. I doubt history will designate AGW as a proper scientific hypothesis however, at least not in its later incarnation. AGW has more in common with phrenology or the Enron scandal or a modern variety of tulip mania – a sociopolitically pathological phenomena, to be sure, but not a proper scientific hypothesis. I hope that we as a civilization have learned some lessons from this failed attempt to join messianic environmentalism, statism and “hard” science into one neat package.
So don’t quit your day job, Anthony…We will know the end of the AGW myth is truly well advanced when climate blog – including Anthony’s – traffic begins to decline.
One thing we should all remember is that should have the weather played into the hands of the warmist true believers, the circumstances today would have been much different, with or without Climategate… It is a sobering thought to realize that the fate of humankind hinges, quite literally, on stochastically fair weather for the next few years.
I cancelled my subscription about a year ago, and filled in their form about re-subscribing. I said they could send me a letter when they decided they would once again live up to the “Scientific” part of their name.
November can’t come soon enough. Still, you have instituitions, like NOAA, who are falling all over themselves to spread panic and alarm.
Off topic. It is, after all, weather and not climate.
Coldest winter in South America kills people from Patagonia to Bolivia.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10679088.
Only three years after rare snowfall in Buenos Aires (first since 1918) and other parts of central and northern Argentina: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6286484.stm.
The ways of global warming are mysterious.
The five stages of death are
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
We’re at bargaining.
They never really believed it. It was just a way to push their political ideals.
Wall Street Journal;
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704075604575356611173414140.html
Setting up brick wall of 100 % correct when there is questions on the science is how the past always worked. Ignore the issue and it will go away showing we are still correct.
I hit the same brick wall in physics trying to show actual physical evidence to a theory that is defened as absolute.
Muir Russell was one whitewash too obvious. I think everyone knew that the Oxburgh and Mann were supposed to be bogus, but Russell held itself out as credible. Perhaps it was, instead, the worst.
Now will major media *finally* start a serious review?
The Times, UK, seems to be going the opposite direction, I wonder if there has been a managerial change.
Amazongate was retracted without due provocation and today they release a story of how Exon Mobile are still pouring money into sceptic causes.
I subscribed to Non Scientist for 20 years, but allowed my subscription to lapse because of their biassed coverage of climate change matters, and I told them the reason for my decision. Of course, I don’t know how many other subscribers they’ve lost for this reason, but the cynic in me suspects that this apparent change of heart may be a purely business decision.
Isn’t there some saying about rodent behaviour during marine disasters?
Well, a ray of sunshine at New Scientist!
I have left an encouraging comment – please all subscribers – give them some positive feedback to nurture this trend.
The ship of CAGW is rapidly sinking. Even the rats at New Scientist have enough sense to know the game is up and they are determinedly swimming towards the distant shore. I wonder if they will get sucked into the vortex as the huge CAGW superstructure plummets to the sea bed. Here’s hoping!
The end of the world is neigh when the New Scientist starts to jump ship. I had a subscription for a bit but let it lapse. The New Scientist is to Science as Newsweek is to news. A glossy cover promising a great revelation but an interior filled with duck feathers.
Perhaps what’s going on is that the warmist publications could dismiss the doubts raised by the skeptics, expecting that these expert independent review panels would provide the definitive net of evidence to make the skeptics looks like the fools they needed them to be.
However, the reviews did nothing of the sort. By focusing on very small aspects of the whole displayed by Climategate and Harry’s Readme file (okay, they ignored that one), the warmists didn’t get the support they needed. A few holes in the dike may have been plugged, but with chewing gum, not hydraulic cement; and all the other holes ignored by the reviews are still there and clearly need to be taken seriously.
The next La Nina might be interesting….
The Times are back on the CAGW bandwagon, I see….
Front Page of the Times:
“Oil Giant gave £1million to fund climate sceptics”
exxon mobil at it again… WHERE IS MY CHEQUE !!!!
Leading Article page 2 of THE Times:
Research Interests: Research into climate change needs to be independent and beyond approach…
basically the tiny amount funding ‘sceptics’ is questionable,
but the billions funding the bandwagon, is independant and beyond approach..
Page 5:
“‘Climategate Scientists’ still under fire over research’
“AFTER being CLEARED of scientific fraud by three seperate enquiries, the climate sceintists at UEA might have hoped that they would be able to quietly resume studying the growth of tree rings…
BUT they continue to be HOUNDED by climate sceptics – mostly based in Britain and the US – who REFUSE to accept the outcome”
it goes on…
Could someone tell the Times, that in one of the inquiries, the person consulted about whether the selection of papers criticised by the sceptics was a FAIR representative of the papers under question, as evidence… NONE of which were the critical ones in question of Phil Jones and teams work..
Was none other than Phil Jones himself !
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/7/18/more-on-oxburghs-eleven.html
bishop hill:
“Well, now we know who the redactions were. The contact through with the Royal Society was through Martin Rees – we knew that already. The other redaction, the other person consulted about whether the sample of papers was reasonable, was…Phil Jones.
Now, whichever way you look at it, this is a funny question to put to the accused if one’s objective is a fair trial. I mean, what could Jones say? “You’ve picked all my bad papers”? And of course Jones must have known that the sample was not representative.”
Look like the MEDIA big boys are out in force today, protecting the vested CAGW financial interests…
Other parts of the UK press seem also to be waking up!
BLACKOUT BRITAIN FACES BIG TURN OFF
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/187749
This is very good news, that a national daily puts this story on the front page. Elsewhere however the Highways Departments are shutting off motorway lights (at night no less) to reduce our CO2 emmissions, and as an aid to astronomers.
Well, at least those nice folks in The Maldives can sleep much more safely now that UK drivers will be in the dark.
‘Highways’ won’t be so happy when the first lawsuit hits the doormat though!
I have just spent 5 days at Mana Pools on the Zambezi River and on the long drive there and back I spent a fair bit of time listening to NPR.
Well fellas I just have to tell you that AGW broke into so many discussions including turtles being moved away from oily beaches to that whole NPR Science Friday thing that I despair. I mean, really, I thought the Beeb was bad but NPR seem to have devoured the Kool-aid and the bowl it was served in.
Today some fliberty gibbet was telling me that Honey Bee Hive collapse was down to global warming too. Can’t somebody do something to get NPR back from the delusional edge.
Oh and yes, Mana was fabulous as always. Rich, diverse , scary and uplifting, living in Zimbabwe has it’s rewards.
wes george says:
July 19, 2010 at 4:15 am
We are witness to the decline and fall of a cultural paradigm that also posed as a scientific hypothesis. I doubt history will designate AGW as a proper scientific hypothesis however, at least not in its later incarnation. AGW has more in common with phrenology or the Enron scandal or a modern variety of tulip mania – a sociopolitically pathological phenomena, to be sure, but not a proper scientific hypothesis.
———————-
I understand what you are saying but you are wrong, as unlike phrenology, AGW was (and is) supported by individuals across the entire width of the scientific ‘community’, especially biologists, and it was, and continues to be, based around the premise that human-generated carbon dioxide is responsible for a warming atmosphere. It has a several full scientific hypotheses that are difficult to test in real-world conditions, but these hypotheses exist, including the one just stated. It also is based on the theory that human-generated carbon dioxide, as it increases, will trigger runaway global heating, overcoming all natural negative feedback systems in the process. The use of models does not negate the scientific nature of the theory. That is why, contra some opinion pieces posted at WUWT and elsewhere, which focus on the political foundations of CAGW, it is essential that the science be exposed. Yes the social engineering ‘cockroaches’ (that I referred to in a post on another thread here – I was not calling the warmists ‘cockroaches’) will draw on the propaganda and will find other causes if (when) this one fails, but it will be hard for them to find another Trojan horse of such global appeal.
The critical shortage of funds throughout the world after the financial shenannigans on the part of the banksters seems to, at last, be inducing a mood of sobriety and caution. The carbon trading schemes, which were set fair to make their inventors huge fortunes have been flatlining for some time and the Warmist scare stories are becoming increasingly ridiculous and desperate as the general public (with some notable exceptions) are now beginning to recognise the Green agenda for what it is, an audacious and unprincipled scam aimed at wrecking the economies of the developed world and driving the citizens in those economies back to a brutal pseudo-medieval lifestyle. Many more people are now reading important public documents, such as the three ‘Climategate’ inquiry reports, with much more care and precision before they make judgements. Those sober and careful judgements are now coming in and it seems that the Post-Normal era in science and politics is coming to a close, and not before time. I am delighted that the New Scientist is now using its critical and ethical faculties and employing those faculties to underpin their collective editorial judgements.
Science, all science, has been polluted by money, government money, which trys to produce government solutions — So government can produce more money for themselves.
The warmaholics are their own worst enemies. They latch on to any unusual, but not unprecedented, weather event, and claim it is due to AGW. Two prominent events recently relate to hurricanes in the North Atlantic, and Arctic sea ice. However, these pronouncements carry with them a danger. There is an implicit assumption that in the future, things will get more so. When this does not occur, there is trouble.
“Oh! what a tangled web we weave; when first we practice to deceive” Sir Walter Scott. When events do not go the warmaholic way, then they need to invent all sorts of reasons why not. When temperatures did not rise in the 21st century, we got Smith el al in Science, and Keenleyside et al in Nature. “The heat is in the pipeline”.
In September 2010 three events may cast some light on the coming AGW trainwreck. We get minimum ice extent data from the Arctic. Tropical storms in the NA reach their peak. The Royal Society is due to release it’s report on it’s official attitude to AGW. Two committees are due to report this month, and if Sir Alan Runge has had anything to do with it, these committees have operated on a level playing field. If the RS changes it’s official attitude towards AGW, it will be the equivalent of a magnitude 10 earthquake.
Mark September 2010 on your calendars.
There’s another article “When Scientists Sin”, Michael Shermer, in Scientific American, July 2010, that is along these same lines.
I don’t have a link to it.
As the pigs take flight, watch out for falling objects.
As Hell freezes over, take heart in the warming effect of CO2.
£1M paid by Exon to sceptics? A mere drop in the ocean. What has UK Gov spent this year alone on AGW promotion?
I endorse Richard Courtney’s post wholeheartedly.
The lights are about to go out fast in the UK, people will die young & old, all because of a scare story promoted by Global Governance mongers! When the only apparent solution to AGW is Global Government, unelected, undemocratic, unaccountable, & unsackable, run by Marxist Socilaist Intellectul Elitists, with tax-raising powers to tax the poor people in rich countries & give the money to rich people in poor countries, you have to be very worried. It’s typical of socialism, we’re all going to die but lets all die equal & broke, but of course we won’t will we Mr Blair et al, (£20M is his net worth this year since leaving office & increasing)! Am I correct in thinking that one of the sticking points at Copenhagen was that the “poor” countries didn’t want a to sign up to a payment verification system so that the new Global Government could keep tabs on where the money was really going? Or am I being just too cynical?
They don’t care what you think.
Cap and Tax WILL be coming for xmas.
It was never alive – it’s not dead now. It was always a fiction.
The goal has not been forgotten. Hoping for change got you here – it will keep you here.
They are coordinated and have clearly defined goals.
You do not.
They’ve been walking all over you from the beginning and laughing.
And they STILL have the money, so don’t even try to pretend they lost anything – you lost.
Even a sex poodle can be awarded a Nobel piece prize.
Science is not about what you know but who likes you.
On the comments section of the New Scientist there are these comments:
and
Compare and contrast:-
(1) The Times London July 19 Banner headline, front page:-
“Oil Giant gave £1 million to fund climate sceptics”
Authoratative source – why it is Bob Ward, attack dog PR guy from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change (whose only activity seems to be peddling global warming propaganda)!
Where the ExxonMobile money went? The Media Research Centre, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the Pacific Research Institute and the Heritage Foundation (and “some other 21 sceptic groups”, unspecified)
And
(2) The Times London July 19 page 42, Business News, half way down a piece headed “Carbon Trust steps up its search for business gems”.
“The Trust has has its annual central funding reduced to less than £88 million, from £100 million.”
So, £1 million from a big oil company for a bunch of business oriented think tanks = bad.
£100 million from taxpayers money to one Quango (out of hundreds!) set up specifically to peddle cAGW alarmism = good.
And this is responsible journalism?
The apparent change of heart is purely a business decision, as stated in:
Scottie says:
July 19, 2010 at 5:02 am
I’m surely not getting a subscription even if this “change of heart” remains, because these are still the same people and they’ll continue up pushing their propaganda on other issues.
-Scott
Thanks Anthony, and your fellow contributors to the truth! You guys have done more than anyone else to publicise the truth about the agw scare. I for one wouldnt have had the knowledge and ability to counter the lies by the so called scientists who were really just opportunists out to feather their own nests at the expense of everyone else. The fight is far from over, but you guys are hammering them!
Richard S Courtney at 4:08 am
…How remarkable! Just what I was going to say, except that my analogy would be that the the global warming horse is dead, but its muscles keep twitching. That’s what we are seeing in some of the media – the still-twitching muscles of the “man-made-carbon-dioxide-is-evil-and-causes global warming” dead horse.
The smarter AGW scientists are already edging towards the door marked “EXIT” and the rest will be wondering exactly how they were suckered into this shameful degrading, immoral and corrupt scheme in the first place.
As for New Scientist, I’m not so sure about them. Last month they published an article about how the atmosphere is becoming depleted of oxygen and how this is going to affect us. As the depletion rate is only 20ppm per year, the answer is obvious, but it didn’t stop them publishing.
A few weeks ago they, New Scientist, had articles about CAGW from a number of non-scientists who laid into the “deniers” and produced “evidence” that GHG’s were warming the atmosphere and it would be disastrouse ete. etc. I, along with many others I now know, wrote to them to tell them that the articles weren’t new and weren’t scientific and that they had at last exhausted my patience and I wouldn’t be buying their magazine again. I now believe that the negative response from their readers shocked those at NS who believed that climate “deniers” were “troofers” and “creationists” but were also scientists, engineers and mathematicians who have grave misgivings about the quality of the evidence that CO2 in the atmosphere would lead to a global catastrophe, and wanted a more incisive scientific investigation into what are really only assertions by the warmists.
Scott says:
July 19, 2010 at 7:13 am
The apparent change of heart is purely a business decision, as stated in:
=======================================================
It’s been a business decision all along.
People forget that these rags are a business, and like any other news media, disaster sells.
Would anyone buy a headline “nothing happened this week”, of course not.
Scientists want to be published in these rags, so they write in a way that gets them in there. This is part of the corruption of the peer review process. The rags have a say so in what they publish and will bounce it back if it if they don’t think it will sell.
In my continuing attempt to point out poor journalism, NPR radio in Wyoming, this morning at 7:50 AM MDST, included “climate change” as one of the possible causes for the decline in honey bee populations! This may be a new low and adds to the previously reported extremely long list of almost everything in the world which may be caused by AGW.
@Tenuc: “The ship of CAGW is rapidly sinking.”
I wish I could share your optimism, but too many politicians have now nailed their flag to the CAGW mast for it to be shredded and discarded, at least for a generation. I think the next IPCC AR will be the last salvo from the warmists, if they don’t cause panic and mayhem then there is every likelihood that the more intelligent of them will start to back away and that the science will become less and less strident. But it will be a long hard road to get to a stage where our children aren’t being brainwashed by Greens into believing humans are the cause of all the earth’s problems and can be dispensed with.
New Scientist was a staple in out household from the early 60’s and now it… no….wait…what’s that? It’s still arriving in the post? I also stopped subsrcibing for the reason that virtually all articles contained unbearable regurgitations on ‘everything is going to die’, ‘it’s worse than we thought’ CAGW.
To my surprise they kept coming. Not the editorial implants, the mags! Huh.
I presume the environmental armeggedon movement has or is about to identify a new raison d’etre so it is safe to move on. Dunno. The problem with thinking subscribers is they can think!
Perhaps one day I will add (whatever the new ‘green’ disaster is) to my grandchildren’s fireside stories about acid rain, ozone, CO2, black helicopters, international cooperation, Third World Development, Obama and the other terrifying subjects that clutter the minds in a tottering civilisation. Hopefully our grandchildren will build a better world based on intelligent cooperation instead of artificial division.
Humour will out CAGW alarmism…
Bill Clinton: (march 2010)
Noting that it was spring: “otherwise known to Al Gore as proof of global warming.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7495834/Bill-Clinton-pokes-fun-at-Al-Gore-during-Gridiron-dinner.html
A UK TV/Radio personality:
Terry Wogan: (april 2010) predicting people saying in 50 years time
“All those windmills! What were they thinking of?”
Terry Wogan – 10th April 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/terrywogan/7575889/Nobody-likes-a-smart-alec-so-Ill-do-my-gloating-quietly.html
Another ray of hope was The Guardian’s debate which included serious sceptics McIntyre and Doug Keenan
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/barry-woods-on-guardian-panel/
I want to know who leaked the emails. Why has this not been addressed? Is that not an important issue? If it was Briffa, would that not be a bombshell? What the deuce?
A welcome change from a journal that I gave up on a long time ago.
However, some journals are still peddling the “..we are on the edge of disaster due to GW..” line. From Louise Gray today.
See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7895611/Photos-show-dramatic-shrinking-of-Mount-Everest-glaciers.html
Still some life left in the uncritical stance of the MSM.
Ed
Reported by the French newspaper ‘Le Figaro”:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/environnement/2010/07/19/01029-20100719ARTFIG00349-une-carte-du-rechauffement-climatique-dans-google-earth.php
The Met Office plays Google (scorching) Earth…
The best exposé I’ve seen is chapter 5 of Roy Spencer’s book, The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists. The error he points out is very subtle, so it’s easy to see how the warmists are so sure they can’t be wrong. Here are a few snippets:
Chapter 5 is pretty technical and ought to be supplied with more “training wheels” to make it easier to grasp.
One of the IPCC’s biggest ‘poster child’ propganda, was that tuvalu was sinking
(in much the same way the ‘hockey stick’ was a propaganda tool)
BBC: June 2010 – Low Lying Islands growing not sinking.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10222679
“A new geological study has shown that many low-lying Pacific islands are growing, not sinking.
The islands of Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia are among those which have grown, because of coral debris and sediment. (the process that Darwin discovered!!)
The study, featured in the magazine the New Scientist, predicts that the islands will still be there in 100 years’ time. ….. ”
—–
The new scientist article could not bring themseleves to say growing and said ‘shape changing’
Interviewing a kiribati climate scientist, apparently suprised bythe discovery that coral islands grow, bythe process described..
As discovered by Charles Darwin:
THE
STRUCTURE AND DISTRIBUTION
OF
CORAL REEFS
Charles Darwin: 1842
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=F271&pageseq=1
The IPCC really keeps abrest of all this ‘new science’ doesn’t it!
Ahhhh, positive omens and portents I see!
Courtney,
Thanks for the info about ‘The Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD) of the European Union (EU)’. Wasn’t aware of this but am seeing similar effects here in the US, with operationally efficient and effective high energy density coal fueled power plants like the one at the University of Wisconsin – Madison being destroy and rebuilt as a low energy density ‘biomass’ power plant. There was no economic analysis, no cost trade studies, no science or logic supporting this action. There was only political gamesmanship dressed in the mantle of ‘green is good’ wishful thinking! And yet, the kinder supporters of the green agenda at UW-Madison are outraged (really) at the 7% increases to their tuition costs. They have yet to learn that they will pay a high price for what they demand, if it is not economically viable.
May this be a lesson they learn well and soon…
Vigilantfish writes:
“It [AGW] has a several full scientific hypotheses that are difficult to test in real-world conditions, but these hypotheses exist, including the one just stated. It also is based on the theory that human-generated carbon dioxide, as it increases, will trigger runaway global heating, overcoming all natural negative feedback systems in the process. The use of models does not negate the scientific nature of the theory.”
Could you please state the hypotheses? No one else has been able to state them. The “runaway global heating” depends on “forcings” caused by CO2 molecules in the atmosphere. Yet no one has presented reasonably confirmed hypotheses that explain these forcings. Surely, by now, everyone knows that the results of model runs cannot be treated as data or evidence because the models are run (solved) in “model universes” created by programmers, not in the actual universe.
Crispin in Waterloo: July 19, 2010 at 7:43 am
Perhaps one day I will add (whatever the new ‘green’ disaster is) to my grandchildren’s fireside stories about acid rain, ozone, CO2, black helicopters…
Three-Five Echo, Three-Five Echo, this is Archon on Fox Secure Delta — do not acknowledge — mission abort, I say again, mission abort and RTB via Tacit. You were *spotted*, you idiot. Archon out.
Cor blimey! Whatever next?
First the BBC reports details of the whitewash, then the WSJ gets all feisty, then some mag I’ve never heard of called the Atlantic gets sceptical… and now New Scientist gets all scientific.
Am I dreaming?
New Scientist is covering its arse because the more obvious corruption is the more will backfire in its face in the future. If the warmistas dig their heads in the sand long enough and the media buries enough skeptical stories, New Scientist will go back to promoting the global warming religion.
FYI–
Dr. Stephen Schneider has died on a flight to London of apparent heart failure. RIP.
The NY Times had very complimentary things to say. I believe one should never speak ill of the recently departed, so I have nothing to say.
“…based on the theory that human-generated carbon dioxide…”
Ah yes, that indomitable human-branded CO2. It makes the atmosphere heat up far better than natural CO2 (must be something about the origin of the carbon, or perhaps the oxygen?) Apparently they believe it but can’t measure it, can’t produce a viable theory to support their allegations, nor can they offer a convincing explanation.
I thought that was a hoax when I first read it. I thought it was too bizarre a coincidence to be true!
I don’t know where else to put this since I couldn’t find what i thought was an input connector.
When a column comment line is closed to further posts; as is the Stephen Schneider one below here; could you put a message to that effect at the TOP of the page; so people don’t waste their time; as I just did; writing something that goes in the circular file.
I typically scan a thread to see what others have said or offered; on subjects of interest; and then offer a post, if I think I can add anything or otherwise. It is obvious that a lot of people post on threads; without having any idea what has already been said; so there is often no continuity of discussions; or dialog.
I have often posted things; only to find questions or comments related to what I just wrote; that clearly shows the person simply hasn’t read anything said before.
But the only way to find that a thread is closed is to post somethign and be told the gate is locked.
George
Fix that can you Chasmod !
Jim G. writes:
In my continuing attempt to point out poor journalism, NPR radio in Wyoming, this morning at 7:50 AM MDST, included “climate change” as one of the possible causes for the decline in honey bee populations! This may be a new low and adds to the previously reported extremely long list of almost everything in the world which may be caused by AGW.
Just shows an NPR bias for Colorado. Here in Florida, we have been reporting large, dragon-like snakes that are popping up in fields and gulping down fruit and vegetable pickers. We are sure that they are caused by global warming but we can’t get NPR’s attention.
Cold Englishman says:
July 19, 2010 at 5:58 am (Edit)
the Highways Departments are shutting off motorway lights (at night no less) to reduce our CO2 emmissions, and as an aid to astronomers.
Don’t know which part of the UK you live in, but Oop Norf, the motorways never did get lighting. Personally, I can use my headlights to drive in the dark, and I prefer the night-time countryside without the orange glow syndrome.
Q/ wes george says:
July 19, 2010 at 4:15 am
We are witness to the decline and fall of a cultural paradigm that also posed as a scientific hypothesis. I doubt history will designate AGW as a proper scientific hypothesis however, at least not in its later incarnation. AGW has more in common with phrenology or the Enron scandal or a modern variety of tulip mania – a sociopolitically pathological phenomena, to be sure, but not a proper scientific hypothesis. /unQ
The first & only Marxist Hippie Cult.
Born out of hatred for their fellow beings, fueled by a desire to punish their fellow beings, lead by an Elite that wishes to largely eradicate their fellow beings.
regards
‘Nature’ is showing signs of heading the same way:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/sun-rediscovered-by-nature/
Theo Goodwin says:
July 19, 2010 at 8:55 am
Vigilantfish writes:
“It [AGW] has a several full scientific hypotheses that are difficult to test in real-world conditions, but these hypotheses exist, including the one just stated. It also is based on the theory that human-generated carbon dioxide, as it increases, will trigger runaway global heating, overcoming all natural negative feedback systems in the process. The use of models does not negate the scientific nature of the theory.”
Could you please state the hypotheses? No one else has been able to state them. The “runaway global heating” depends on “forcings” caused by CO2 molecules in the atmosphere. Yet no one has presented reasonably confirmed hypotheses that explain these forcings. Surely, by now, everyone knows that the results of model runs cannot be treated as data or evidence because the models are run (solved) in “model universes” created by programmers, not in the actual universe.
____________
Aaagh! You have forced me to undertake a mental exercise that I have been lamentably lax in not having done before – trying to defend the AGW hypothesis to figure out what it scientific about it. It’s a good exercise to do! While trying to think of a scientifically defensible AGW hypothesis that has any possibility of being tested, I could not come up with a single solid example. AGW theory postulates that humanly generated excess CO2 will cause the world to warm up catastrophically or otherwise. Problems with theory: warm up from what temperature? How do we know what amount is “excess” based on a record of CO2 concentrations that is very short, or is not entirely reliable for the distant past? How much CO2 is really generated by human activity, given a changing natural baseline? IS there an optimum world temperature? What is a catastrophic amount of warming? What are the meteorological effects of warming – does a warmer world really generate more snowfall in southern regions, as as been argued this year, and if so, why was this not predicted prior to this past winter? At what world temperature does the polar ice cap disappear in the summer? Why, in a scientific community that defends evolution and castigates skeptics of any portion of Darwin’s theory as ‘creationists’, do scientists who fear-monger about AGW want evolution and change to suddenly stand still, preferably in the 1950s – a period which so much of sociology and popular culture is eager to demonize in the west. In a scientific world that prizes quantification, precise quantities and measurements to answer many of these questions are missing.
But note that in my comment above, I did not argue that the AGW theory generated good hypotheses, just that it generated hypothesis regarding warming and the effects of warming. Like eugenics – which was a science – the hypothesis is not easily tested. It is becoming abundantly clear that skeptical hypotheses and studies are proving to be more accommodating to testing one way or the other, just as was the case with eugenics. During the eugenics hype, the skeptics eventually had better — and more readily tested, or empirical genotypical — evidence for the way that heredity operates. Anthony’s surface stations project is a great example of steady data- gathering with a clear hypothesis to be tested.
If predicted colder winters come to pass, and Britain is left in the dark and cold without electricity, will there be a Marshall Plan brought in to send shiploads of coal for the old aged pensioners ? Unfortunately, we believe that the UK authorities have long decreed that all fireplaces and chimneys have to be either removed or blocked up just to prevent this sort of adventurism!
Please note that Stephen Schneider died of a heart attack today.
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/nobel-climate-scientist-dead-at-65/story-e6frfku0-1225894383878
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Dr. Stephen Schneider, leading global warming guru, has just died in London:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/earth/20schneider.html
The ‘New York Times’ has an appropriately flattering obituary:
“He rejected hyperbole, readily conceding that uncertainty was unavoidable… climate-change skeptics use that uncertainty to advance their cause. But because the costs of global warming – from the melting of icecaps to the flooding of islands – is so high, Dr. Schneider maintained, not acting is riskier than acting.”
Is it acceptable to pick holes in an obituary? I hope so, because I can’t resist… Skeptics ‘use’ uncertainty to ‘advance’ their cause?! It’s sad that to the end Dr. Schneider never understood the problem with the ‘precautionary principle’.
‘Climategate’ is very much like the ‘Gulf Oil Spill’, those closest to the slimy odoriferous hateful waves get the worst of it. But everyone will be the worse for it.
‘New Scientist’ is right on the beach and is feeling the effects more than most.
I am posting this here because Anthony closed comments on the “Quote of the Week – Steven Schneider Jumps the Shark” thread, due to Schneider’s passing.
I also extend my condolences to Professor Schneider’s family, friends and colleagues.
Yet, Schneider was thick in the the fray, even to the last, and he would have wanted the fray to continue, hoping – of course – that his debaters won out in the end. In that spirit, I don’t think it is entirely poor taste to argue with him still…
Schneider had said in Stanford Magazine:
Now, this, ladies and gentlemen is exactly – EXACTLY – what The Royal Society, with Isaac Newton and his enemy Robert Hooke deep into their own fray at the time (being all but sworn enemeies) was formed to deal with, in 1666. Yet Hooke was hard upon empirical science and Newton wasn’t far behind him. The very PURPOSE of The Royal Society was to establish a basis for SCIENCE. And that science – most fervently in the case of Hooke – had to be based on EXPERIMENT, not claim or inference. Certainly not on bombast or argument. If there was no experiment proving each and every jot and tittle, it was not science. That was the raison de’tre of The Royal Society: Experiment and empiricism. NOTHING was to be accepted as fact, as science, until it had been backed up by tested in the real world.
For his attitude about experiment, Hooke has been a bit of a favorite of mine.
THIS – what Professor Schneider is doing – is NOT science. Where is the empiricism? Where is the experiment?
Let us leave out that what the CRU and Mann and 90% of the work at the IPCC and RealCimate are doing is simply massaging numbers and trying to read meaning into those numbers. (Their part in this is not science, but statistics.)
Let us leave out any arguments over whether those meanings/interpretations are correctly assessing anything whatsoever.
Let us instead go to the heart of what Professor Schneider is doing here. He is arguing that there are any number of vague, unspecified “tipping points” out there, any or all of which will have some heinous effect – the effect he is claiming as the basis for his work.
Robert Hooke would be turning over in his grave.
What Schneider is doing is rank proselytizing – the very core of religion.
And if there is ONE thing The Royal Society was against, it was religion. Science had one HELL of a time separating itself from the thought processes of religion those 400 years ago. It had been trying for at least a century to do so. Religion had so many ways of ARGUING things – things that were untestable, things that were beliefs, things that were un-opposable – the “how many angels fit on the head of a pin” stuff. Arguing issues brings in tangential issues and analogs which make things less and less clear and make finding the true understanding of the subject less and less “findable.”
Argument is not science.
Claiming something is not science.
Massaging numbers by itself is not science.
Facts are science. Ask the ghost of Robert Hookes, who is the real father of the scientific method, if anyone is (…perhaps Ptolemy is). And the ghost will tell you. “What experiments have you run? And how many people have replicated it?”
Hauling his “tipping points” into the fray, Professor Schneider drags us all the way back to the 1600s and before, to a time when you didn’t even have to have FACTS.
A tipping point is not a fact. Warnings about ONE tipping point is twice removed from being a fact. Warnings about multiple and vague tipping points? THAT is Schneider going pretty Vatican or Billy Graham on us. It is conjuring up demons and devils and witches – AND FEARS. Fears of unnamed and scary THINGS.
Schneider has brought the Bogeyman into the fray.
As just about his last contribution to the fray, Schneider has – I hesitate to say it, because of his passing and seeming a cruel bastard – taken science backward 400 years. “Tipping points” – especially vague warnings of unnamed bogeyman tipping points – what are these doing in a scientific discourse? That is hell and damnation stuff, and they have no business here. And STANFORD Magazine, no less, is the publisher? As science??????? Wow. . . .
WUWT has been cited as a reference in this interesting article about the New Scientist shift:
http://news.suite101.com/article.cfm/does-new-scientist-see-paradigm-shift-on-greenhouse-gas-theory-a263695
*drip, drip, drip*
@CRS, Dr.P.H. July 20, 2010 at 1:52 pm:
A great observation in that link. A fine turn of events. Since I am not a scientist (see my post 2 posts up), I am free to use the phrase “tipping point.” Might we have reached one?. . .
From CRS dr phd’s article:
“Climategate caught media attention as it appeared to show damning revelations of alleged misconduct by researchers at the UK’s University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) indicated by leaked emails in November 2009.”
Oh yeah, I remember that. It “caught media attention” alright – several weeks after it broke and could no longer be ignored! It “caught media attention” in late DECEMBER! That’s when they started asking hard questions. For example, they asked skeptics, “So what are you saying, that there is some kind of vast global global warming conspiracy?!”
Read more at Suite101: Does New Scientist Foresee Paradigm Shift on Climate Theory? http://news.suite101.com/article.cfm/does-new-scientist-see-paradigm-shift-on-greenhouse-gas-theory-a263695#ixzz0uHxzyoab
Vigilantfish,
You made a good, honest effort. My criticism is this: there are no hypotheses that explain how concentrations of CO2 can cause what climate scientists call “forcings,” such as changes in cloud behavior throughout the atmosphere, yet these “forcings” must exist if CO2 is to cause temperatures to rise by three or so degrees this century. The MAIN POINT here is that THE HYPOTHESES DO NOT EXIST. Think on that for a minute. They DO NOT EXIST. So, when climate scientists claim that temperatures will rise their claims are based on a science that is fundamentally incomplete.