This is a response by Christopher Monckton to the comment on the Nurse anti-science thread yesterday by anonymous commenter “The other Brian” who in typical troll style, tries to distract away from the post and point being made with noise.- Anthony
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By Christopher Monckton
I seem to get more than my fair share of ad-hominem attacks from trolls. One such has recently posted up a lifetime list of my supposed “errors”, and has made some nasty allegations. May I for once reply? The troll’s allegations are in bold face: my replies are in [italics].
Monckton said he advised Margret Hatcher on climate change – HE DIDN’T.
I have never met anyone called “Margret Hatcher”. However, like it or not, I did advise Margaret Thatcher on many scientific and other matters, including climate change. However, it was my successor, George Guise, who helped her to write the speech that announced the funding for what became the Hadley Centre for Forecasting. At that time (1988) she predicted that the world would warm at 1 C/decade. I certainly wouldn’t have gone that far.
He said he wrote a peer-reviewed paper – HE DIDN’T.
In the summer of 2008 Jeffrey Marque, the then commissioning editor of Physics and Society, which at that time advertised itself as publishing “reviewed” papers, asked me to write a paper about climate sensitivity. As was usual for Physics and Society at the time, the journal’s review editor, Professor Alvin Saperstein, reviewed the paper. After my revisions (chiefly to explain the derivations of several new equations) both editors strongly endorsed the paper. It was published and Dr. Marque wrote a supporting editorial. Within days, the usual suspects Remote-Sensinged me. Both editors resigned, and a mendacious disclaimer was added to the online version of my paper, saying it had not been peer-reviewed. Besides, has Al Gore written any peer-reviewed papers?
He said the earth has been cooling – IT HASN’T.
In 2008, I said the Earth had been cooling since the turn of the millennium on 1 January 2001. So it had, at that time: do the linear regression for yourself and see. Recent warming, however, means there has been little change in temperature since 2001.
He said a leading Danish expert found that overall Greenland ice has not been melting – HE DIDN’T.
Johannessen et al. (2005), whom I cited, reported a substantial net accumulation of snow, firn, and ice on Greenland from 1992-2003. In 2009 Johannessen published a further paper saying that since 2003 some 273 bn tonnes of ice had melted in Greenland. A simple calculation shows this represented one-quarter of the ice that had accumulated over the previous 12 years, and it raised global sea level by 0.7 mm, restoring a quarter of the 2.8 mm drop caused by the previous ice accumulation on Greenland.
He said there has been no systematic ice loss in the artic – THERE HAS.
One assumes the troll means the Arctic. In 2009 I reported that the summer sea-ice minima in 2008 and 2009 had both shown greater ice extents than in 2007. The same also now applies to 2010 and (on most datasets, and subject to final confirmation that the summer sea-ice minimum has passed) to 2011 as well. Arctic ice has certainly declined ever since the satellites have been watching, but there is some evidence that there was less Arctic ice from the 1920s to the 1940s (and even into the late 1950s in Northern Greenland) than there is today.
He says there has been no correlation between CO2 and temperatures over the past 500 million years – YES, THERE IS.
There has indeed been a remarkable correlation between CO2 and temperatures over the past 500 million years – but repeated reanalyses of the data have shown that it was temperatures that changed first and CO2 concentration change that followed. Though it is possible that the additional CO2 concentration reinforced the original warming in each of the past four interglacial warm periods (all of which were warmer than the present), it plainly did not trigger the warming, because the warming occurred first.
He says a pre-Cambrian ice planet shows that CO2 has no effect on the climate – SHOWS THE OPPOSITE.
In the Neoproterozoic era, some 750 million years ago, sea-level glaciers a mile high came and went – twice – at the Equator. There are no sea-level glaciers anywhere near the Equator today. At that time, CO2 was 30% of the atmosphere: today it is 0.04%. The reasonable point that I made, quoting Professor Ian Plimer, a geologist who has made a particular study of the period, was that even allowing for the fact that the Sun was 5% fainter in the Neoproterozoic than today, and for the fact that the planet’s albedo was much greater then than now, equatorial sea-level glaciers could not have come and gone twice if CO2 had the very large warming effect that is now imagined. Of course CO2 has some warming effect. The central question, however, remains how much warming CO2 will cause. My best estimate is 1 Celsius per doubling of CO2 concentration.
He says there has been no change in Himalayan glaciers for 200 years – THERE HAS.
Professor M.I. Bhat, of the Indian Geological Survey, whom I consult regularly and cite on the state of the glaciers, has consistently said that except in areas of local geological deformation the pattern of advance and retreat of the glaciers is much as it has been over the past 200 years since the Raj first kept records.
He says only one Himalayan glacier is retreating – NO, LOTS OF THEM ARE.
The Ronggbuk glacier has disappeared altogether; the Gangotri glacier has been receding for 200 years; and many other glaciers are receding. Merely because I mentioned one glacier as receding, it is not legitimate to infer that I said or implied that only one glacier was receding.
He claim that CO2 forcing is 1.135 watts per square meter when it is three times higher.
A finding of low climate sensitivity in Lindzen (2007) suggests that the warming exercised by CO2 is equivalent to assuming a forcing of 1.135 W m–2. In saying that, I explicitly referred to the forcing of 3.7 W m–2 at CO2 doubling that is the IPCC’s current estimate (interestingly, down from 4.4 W m–2 in its first two assessment reports).
He confuses forcing with sensitivity.
A radiative forcing is a change in the net (down minus up) flux of radiation at the tropopause resulting from some perturbation of a presumed pre-existing equilibrium in the climate object, such as a doubling of CO2 concentration in the air. The resultant warming, or “climate sensitivity”, is the product of three parameters: the radiative forcing, the Planck or no-feedbacks sensitivity parameter; and the overall temperature-feedback gain factor (Monckton of Brenchley, 2008). Dividing any one of the three factors by, say, 3 to take account of an important discrepancy between models and observations, such as that which Lindzen identified, has precisely the same effect as dividing any of the others by 3.
He says a leading climate researcher found a loss of cloud cover is responsible for recent warming – SHE SAYS IT SHOWS NO SUCH THING.
The researcher in question had demonstrated that the loss of cloud cover between 1983 and 2001 had caused a very substantial radiative forcing, which, I hypothesized, was the main reason for the rapid warming between 1976 and late 2001, since when there has been no warming. Many papers (e.g. Tsonis et al., 2006) note the links between the Pacific and other oceanic oscillation indices, variations in cloud cover, and variations in global temperature, on a timescale of approximately 60 years. This cyclicity – which long predates our influence on the climate – is startlingly visible in the global instrumental temperature record. In an invited presentation to the World Federation of Scientists’ annual seminar on planetary emergencies in 2011, I drew some legitimate conclusions about climate sensitivity from the researcher’s observations. I did not, of course, ascribe these conclusions to her: I merely used her result as an input to a determination of climate sensitivity. My paper has now been published in the Proceedings of the seminar, and separately in a book of scientific papers about climate sensitivity.
He misquotes scientists to mislead his audience.
No instances are given to support this libel, so I cannot comment. This unpleasant allegation was originally made by an associate professor in a non-climate-related field at a Bible college in Minnesota: however, he had repeatedly misquoted my words and had put then his misquotations to third-party scientists, using their understandably furious responses against me. He will be dealt with firmly in due course. Serious academic dishonesty of this kind, wilfully persisted in, is not something to be encouraged.
He says planets with a high albedo are cooler than planets with a low albedo – WRONG.
If all other parameters be held constant, increasing a planet’s albedo (for instance, by covering it with ice) will act as a mirror reflecting more of the Sun’s radiation back into space, rather than allowing the radiation that reaches the ground to be displaced from the visible spectrum to the near-infrared, where – on its way out – it can interact with greenhouse gases. Or has the troll decided that there is no such thing as the greenhouse effect? Since there is, ceteris paribus a more reflective surface makes for a cooler world.
He gets information in peer-reviewed science papers wrong.
Not a single instance is cited. This is pure yah-boo.
He says some planets are warming because of the Sun – NO THEY’RE NOT.
There has indeed been evidence of simultaneous warming in many planets of the Solar system, and I have mentioned this. However, given the difficulties of reliable measurement and imaging, I have not sought to draw definitive conclusions about the role of the Sun in “global warming” from such observations.
He said the International Astronomical Union has declared that the Sun is responsible for the recent warming – IT DIDN’T.
I cited a paper given by Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov at the 2004 symposium of the IAU in St. Petersburg, Fla, but put “IAU” at the foot of the slide rather than Dr.
Abdussamatov’s name. Dr. Abdussamatov, like other researchers in the field (e.g. Solanki, 2005; Shaviv, 2008, 2011; Svensmark, 2011; Kirkby, 2011), offers evidence to the effect that the role of the Sun may be rather greater than is found congenial by those who would like to blame nearly all recent warming on CO2.
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The moderators should perhaps be more vigilant in banning contributions from trolls who state in terms, as this one does, that I “misquote scientists to mislead [my] audience”. One understands the trolls’ increasing desperation as their scientific and economic case collapses: but lying about those of us who have long seen through the nonsense is not going to help them now.
The science is in, the truth is out, the game is up, and the scare is over. Get used to it, get real, get a job, and get a life.
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And now a response from Anthony to the second to last paragraph about moderation.
As Mr. Monckton knows, I don’t always agree with him.
That said, it is an unfortunate truth that people that haven’t the courage to use their own full names when publicly criticizing others (“The other Brian”) spend so much time trying to beat down others while not having to worry about consequences. Unfortunately, that is the reality of the Internet today. The best choice is dealing with such individuals is to take their claims head on, which you’ve done.
WUWT does not approve a few comments that fall outside of our commenting policy, but as a recent analysis by Ian Rons Further Down the “Bore Hole” shows, we do in fact publish the vast majority of comments compared to other blogs, even some that are not necessarily fair. This is by design, because having a debate with opponents is something other blogs refuse to have. Otherwise, we’d be no better than RealClimate, “Tamino” aka Open Mind, or Joe Romm, all sites which heavily censor opposing viewpoints. [Update: Another example is Skeptical Science, which invoked a grade school level tactic (strikeout) in attempting to refute Dr. Roger Pielke Senior – see here]
While there’s always something in an endeavor that can be criticized, the fact is that our moderation policy is one of our best strengths, and why WUWT consistently outperforms these other blogs in traffic, reach, and total number of comments. Therefore I think we’ll keep the policy that has worked so well. Besides, if those comments had been deleted, we’d not be having this entertaining discussion now.
izen, the main difference is that Monckton is happy to debate what he bases his position on and what scientists and papers he is quoting.
Al Gore on the other hand flees debate and expects people to just take his word for it even though he has been proven to make false statements.
If you look up recently for instance Monckton attended the press club in Australia for a debate with an AGW alarmist as well as answering to the usual ad-hom attacks and other insinuations.
It is therefore at least my view that Moncton is a mouthpiece for science but with a political twist (and thank God he is pro-democracy / anti-global government) whilst Al Gore is all political spectacle without even the debate.
Max Hugoson ( September 18, 2011 at 12:16 pm) said about
what Frank Lee MeiDere said on September 18, 2011 at 2:25 pm :
I’m with you on the whole video thing. While not coming near your speed of reading, I am quite fast, and even a decent reader can absorb much more information at a far faster rate by reading it in print than sitting there waiting while a single idea in a video slouches its way to be born. The same is true, only more so, with documentaries. ……….. Videos may be high-tech, but in effect they’re a throw-back to the stone-age storyteller.
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Axel comments:
The thing is you see that “modern man” is really just a “stone age” man with clothes on, living in some rather more salubrious caves than in the past. The brain works in a very similar fashion, and yes, unsurprisingly, the “story telling” narrative although perhaps imparting less “information” than a long treatise, is nevertheless more memorable, and of course the viewer is able to use innate sense to interprete the “body language” and mannerisms, facial expressions, tone of voice, and many other things which can either reinforce or expose the speakers agrument as being more or less likely to be truthful and believable.
This is why the Police, for instance, would wish to interview suspects in person, rather than just asking them to send in a letter or an essay describing their innnocence or suchlike.
Any person can (and they indeed do) copy & paste the words and phrases of others, and in this sense they are simply repeating ideas, and statements, and in a circular fashion then use this repitition as “proof” of a premiss, which is of course a peripatetic fallacy of logic. This may not be evident at first sight from a written text. We have no idea how hesitant the author was when he wrote such texts, and indeed where these juxtaposed segments may have originated from.
With a video, it is far easier to judge if someone may be not be genuine or whether they are sure of the facts which they are relying upon. Yes of course textual theses have their place, but Videos and Audio recordings are important tools for education,and not just in a formal sense.
Interestingly according to your website “probablydontlikeyou.wordpress…etc”, you “don’t give a damn”, and you quote Gavin Schmidt’s RealClimate website as an “info” source. “Gavin Schmidt is a climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and is interested in modeling past, present and future climate.” according to his own CV, yet I have yet to see a video appearance where he didn’t look shifty and evasive. I certainly wouldn’t buy a used car from G. Schmidt Autos.
I think that your education colleagues are correct in their assessment of the use of video, and that you have underestimated the strengths of such media.
@- peaknikmicki says:
September 19, 2011 at 4:37 am
“izen, the main difference is that Monckton is happy to debate what he bases his position on and what scientists and papers he is quoting.”
The main diffeence is that Gore is in step with the scienetific understanding of over 90% of the scientific community, and certainly with all those scientists actively engaged in the physical sciences associated with climate and the Earth sciences.
Monckton bases his position on quotes from scientific papers, which are then repudiated by the very scientists that wrote the papers….
either there is a vast global conspiracy and since the 1950s climate science has pursued a ‘Lysenko’ dellusion…
Or like continental drift AGWis a theory that was proposed many times over the last century, but until better data in the 1960, (sea floor spreading, CO2levels, plate tectonics, radiative transfer equations) was not fully accepted. Now both are well established parts of the overall scientific understanding of the world around us.
1.Monckton said he advised Margret Hatcher on climate change – Monktons previous employment makes no difference to his understanding of climate.
He did advise Margaret Thatcher as far as I can tell. However, this seems to be a moot point given his scientific claims are entirely verifiable as he is specific about his beliefs, his calculations and how he delivers other authors scientific work.
2.He said he wrote a peer-reviewed paper – He wrote a paper which received what he believes was peer review, to be staunchly reprimanded by the same journal and it’s reviewers
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm
This is not a peer reviewed paper and is stipulated as being part of the newsletter, not part of a scientific review process. The reason for this is due to the heated dispute between the journal editor and the members of the board who did not approve of allowing what they perceived to be garbage science into the journal. The alternate explanation is conspiratorial, but again this doesn’t even matter — this to me is another moot point, as we can directly assess the scientific claims of Monkton, which are entirely verifiable. Monkton then queries, did Al Gore write any peer-reviewed papers? Again, we can directly assess any scientific claims that Al Gore makes as these are scientifically verifiable.
3.He said the earth has been cooling – IT HASN’T.
The claims are that between different time points you can claim anything is true but we know that a linear trend through a time series does not yield a proof e.g. pirates increasing and cyclones diminishing. However, if something has a logic basis in which it operates, then given a plausible model it can give some meaning to the result when correlated at a 95% CI i.e. the chance of seeing something happen which is not linked to what we expect to see is 5 in 100. When this is confirmed through multiple lines of evidence, this shows the scientific method at its current understanding and can only be discredited by new findings which are consistent and then also reproducible. If you show conclusively that the sun has remained consistent in it’s irradiance then assuming the sun is responsible for sudden changes in what was a ‘stable system’ means you require more complicated variables which are yet to be proven, hence it is unscientific to claim it. If we do find them, then that’s great, however, there would be no scientific merit to this claim because the proof to this concept does not meet basic requirements e.g. The sun could reflect solar radiation which could be producing clouds which could be producing negative forcing and cooling the earth… but in the last 150 years the sun has been in an 11 year solar cycle. This means you require extraordinary claims to how it works.
4.He said a leading Danish expert found that overall Greenland ice has not been melting – HE DIDN’T.. the Danish expert clearly rejects Monkton’s misrepresentation of his work.
The expert quoted disagreed with the way Monkton produced his work and even went to lengths to write about how he misconstrued his work. If you believe Monkton over the source of where Monkton got the information, that’s bizarre. At least on this one point you should not believe Monkton’s claims because I’ve watched his seminars many times and I know that the way he presents the information and the way he explains it above is totally inadequate. I would suggest you watch his presentation because it is very surprising that he would not concede this point.
5.He claim that CO2 forcing is 1.135 watts per square meter when it is three times higher.He confuses forcing with sensitivity.
6.He said the International Astronomical Union has declared that the Sun is responsible for the recent warming – IT DIDN’T.
It was one paper provided at a conference that Monkton then claimed to be the position of the entire IAU which he clearly stated. It’s simple, retract the statement, admit fault. When you say something, if you didn’t mean to say it then clarify, or if you were misled, or have henceforth fixed your errors then appropriately account for being wrong but explain how you abridge the problem. This again, isn’t even a big deal, except that you inappropriately try to say it was just a footnote, when you quite clearly state it is the position of the IAU.
And now a response from Anthony to the second to last paragraph about moderation.
Anthony I always gave you credit as an honest moderator and I really enjoyed your website for all the knowledge I gained. I also believe in freedom of information and have concerns with the political agenda of the climate debate. However, given the nature of how frivolous Monkton’s claims have been, his appalling calculations and attempts to hide his bad data, I can’t in good faith not say what I really believe about him. I think he is committing fraud and has quite seriously damaged the credibility of skeptics. To me, he is the Al Gore of the skeptics position and after watching the responses in this thread I don’t think half the people are as skeptical as they think they are. I trust you to continue your good work Anthony. I hope you continue to find a divide between your personal beliefs and those of Monkton because he seriously misrepresents, misquotes scientists and others whilst simultaneously claiming his victimisation.
Monkton states, “The moderators should perhaps be more vigilant in banning contributions from trolls who state in terms, as this one does, that I ‘misquote scientists to mislead [my] audience’.” I don’t claim to know Monkton’s motivations and it isn’t even important. The fact is he does misquote and he does misrepresent, and then when confronted, he denies it happens, even though it’s just confronting him with his own words. I hope the moderators don’t ban my contributions, and I don’t think they will. They’ve always been the place I trust to allow dissent, but I don’t expect them to allow verifiable dishonesty.
@- peaknikmicki says:
September 19, 2011 at 4:37 am
“izen, the main difference is that Monckton is happy to debate what he bases his position on and what scientists and papers he is quoting.”
The main diffeence is that Gore is in step with the scientific understanding of over 90% of the scientific community, and certainly with all those scientists actively engaged in the physical sciences associated with the Earth sciences.
Monckton bases his position on quotes from scientific papers, which are then repudiated by the very scientists that wrote the papers….
either there is a vast global conspiracy and since the 1950s climate science has pursued a ‘Lysenko’ dellusion…
Or like continental drift AGW is a theory that was proposed many times over the last century, but until better data in the 1960, (sea floor spreading, CO2levels, plate tectonics, radiative transfer equations) was not fully accepted. Now both are well established parts of the overall scientific understanding of the world around us.
izen:
More like Gore and Phelps are two sides to the same coin…
One’s an activist zealot and the other a religious zealot, NOT scientists – but they both preach and spout lies. They use their rhetorical skills to promulgate a ideological viewpoint, NOT explicate the science or true religious values. If what you want is their point of views only then pay attention to them only; but both are a waste of time. Two sides of the same coin to me.
Moncton is heads and shoulders above either of these two charlatans and anyone with a lick of common sense can see that.
An operating definition of troll that I like is:
Troll – someone who has, over a significant period of time, shown that their intent is predominantly to disrupt discourse on specific topics; topics which they are ideologically opposed to.
John
Accurate and polite riposte, typical Monckton, this guy is unflappable. Proud to be British on occasions such as this.
Regards to WUWT.
Richard Drake wrote: For to be pseudonymous is at best a priviledge. At worst it’s an act of cowardice. What it can never be is a badge of pride or, as some seem to think, the very embodiment of the first amendment.
Books are published by pseudonymous authors, such as George Eliot, and we have books named after pseudonymous authors, such as “The Federalist Papers”. Famous scientific papers have been published by pseudonymous authors, e.g. “student”: “On the probable error of the mean”. They are marks of pride and embodiments of the first amendment. I can emulate them without affecting to rank with them.
Anonymous behavior is interesting and discussions about it bring out a lot of energy and personal emotion on the topic.
I consider anonymity as purposeful intent to avoid identity; someone hiding something associated with themselves; for them identity is perceived to be problematical. Thus, in that perspective, in dealing with the topic of anonymity we are dealing with some aspect of avoidance behavior.
John
I wrote the longest comment I’ve ever written and it seems to have disappeared. This leads me to just leave my note that Monckton clearly showed himself to make many claims that he would later alter. He also repeats the errors in his slides which he has been already told are incorrect. The scientific papers that he uses (when he uses them) are shown to discredit what he says when put into context. The authors of the papers refute his claims, and he also made errors in his calculation which he can’t just undo.
Wouldn’t it just be too funny if Willis E did verification of Monckton’s calculations from his slides?
REPLY: It was in the spam folder, recovered. – Anthony
Richard Drake: I can appreciate your position vis-a-vis anonymity. I am fortunate enough that my name is common enough, that even with it, you would have trouble finding me in most middle to large sized cities. Assuming I were to tell you what city I live in.
I have had issues with those who disagree with what I have to say, trying to locate me in the real world in order to express their displeasure. I will not put my family through that again.
It is not just one’s reputation that is at stake, sometimes it’s ones job, sometimes it’s your personal safety, or that of your family.
@- ldd says:
September 19, 2011 at 7:25 am
“Moncton is heads and shoulders above either of these two charlatans and anyone with a lick of common sense can see that.”
Anyone with a lick of common sense would avoid BOTH of them as a source of credible scientific information.
izen says:
September 19, 2011 at 7:15 am
Or like continental drift AGW is a theory that was proposed many times over the last century, but until better data in the 1960, (sea floor spreading, CO2levels, plate tectonics, radiative transfer equations) was not fully accepted.
Still Waiting for Greenhouse.
“Truthseeker:
Roger Knight has touched on this, but it should be repeated clearly for everyone to understand. It is a logical fallacy to say “since person A is wrong about X then anything they say about Y is also wrong”.
+++++++
Thanks Truthseeker. This is one strange thing about Americans – perhaps having to do with their Calvanist past or something. “If I can show that the witness lied about attending a birthday party in 1971 then nothing they say about anything else is true.”
It is so desperately weak as to make on wonder what reality is – most likely the warmists have no rebuttal of substance. I always enjoy reading a distillation of criticisms of Monckton because the warmists so obviously have no answer to his science and economic calculations – they have to huddle in secret corners to talk about how he once picked his nose and ate it.
I see R Gates weighing in with his ego and ‘schooling’ (I won’t stoop to calling it ‘education’) adding at the end an ad hom against virtually everyone who follows WUWT. How interesting. Way to go RG. Boy that really stung! Better read up on Aristotle who was so full of himself he flattened the Earth and mis-led millions for centuries. He was famous, educated (well… ‘schooled’) and wrong.
You are claiming for yourself an above average dose of schooling, yet are beaten in argument to the point of having to regurgitate old saws from the annual troll conventions and warmist censorship sites. Gates, if you really are interested in the science, read the whole set of Moncktons papers at the Science and Policy Institute. There is more common sense and properly calculated science in there than in all of RC’s mindless rants, blocks, appeals to authority and insouciant arrogance. And eloquent to boot. I suggest first his paper on the hot spot over the equator that is palpably not there – one of the core claims of AGW is as hollow as any of your titles from the Kingdom of Names.
Can you imagine a debate between Gavin and Monckton? With Gavin unable to bin anything that disagreed with some arbitrary factoid he pulls out of thin air? With no appeal to authority able to divert the topic to some helpful blind alley? Can you imaging what Monckton would have to say about the peer review process Gavin is so fond of defending, as evidenced as recently as Aug and Sept this very year?
If you are so smart, RG, why can’t you see that this CO2-rooted CAGW is a load of hokum propped up upon a set of misrepresented, misunderstood, incomplete, malformed opinions of how the world works? The fact that so many similarly titled co-conspirators are on in the scam matters not a whit.
If Hansen-the-Shrill was right, and so far he has never been right, we would find some CO2 increase leading, not lagging, some warming. That is not nit-picking about his membership in some club or if he picks his nose. All the evidence to date shows he guesses wrong. Repeatedly.
Long may they live and long may they prosper, but not on my nickel. They should finance their own wind farms.
Vintage Monckton! The repostes that are accurate reveal that he has no case – a 3 year ‘recovery’ in arctic ice from a record-shattering low – and a 10 year flat trend at a record high, or else repeat the offence.
Greenland ice and Johannessen 2005: Monckton cherry-picks a study showing the expected result that the centre of the island will accumulate snow and ice as precipitation inceases and performs a ‘simple calculation’ to extrapolate to the whole land mass. This despite the fact that the very paper he cites says this is not legitimate:-
“First, we cannot make an integrated assessment of elevation changes–let alone ice volume and its equivalent sea-level change–for the whole Greenland Ice Sheet, including its outlet glaciers, from these observations alone, because the marginal areas are not measured completely using ERS-1/ERS-2 altimetry (see Fig. 1).”
But this is exactly what Monckton did.
IAU: here’s the slide used by Monckton:- http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/abraham_solar2.gif
Fairly unequivlocal. And totally wrong. The head of the Sun and Heliosphere division of the IAU was understandably unimpressed: “there is no such formal position endorsed by the IAU let alone any claim from the IAU that suggests that global warming can be explained by solar variability. Please pass this information to whomever might have used the IAU name to claim otherwise”.
Peer review: Elsewhere Monckton maintains that his APS website post was peer-reviewed, and he has ‘published’ on the subject of climate sensitivity. (EG http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/sppi_press_release_monckton_paper_peer_reviewed.html , or at about 1.22 here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o2sdqhDFWo&NR=1 ) Yet Al Saperstein, who Monckton tell us reviewed the work, differs …
“He stressed that that the article was not sent to anyone for peer-reviewing. Saperstein himself edited it. “I’m a little ticked off that some people have claimed that this was peer-reviewed,” he said. “It was not.”
Notwithstanding its status, the article had 125 errors http://www.altenergyaction.org/Monckton.html
Who exactly is the troll here?
REPLY: You are, your trolling track record here is well proven. – Anthony
————
Billy Liar,
Reminds me of the futility expressed in the play ‘Waiting for Godot’ by Samuel Beckett. CAGWists are waiting in vain for nature to arrive with their postulated CAGW by CO2; just like the characters Vladimir and Estragon in the play wait endlessly and in vain for Godot.
John
Richard Drake says:
September 19, 2011 at 1:51 am
et al on anonymity.
I have a fairly unique surname. I work in a smallish engineering discipline.
My employer is quite specific about exposing his good name (like most employers); and many employers now take the reasonable view that an employees behaviour can reflect poorly on the employer.
I may wish to work for Siemens one day. Given my views here they may not wish to employ a skeptic (they do build rather a lot of those pointless wind turbines).
Alternatively I may find I am part of an engineering team putting together a proposal involving ‘renewable’ power sources.
I like to think I would turn down any overt invitation to work on such senseless projects; however I have a family to feed (and a mortgage to feed); so I may need to swallow my pride and dirty my hands.
And I don’t even work in climate related areas ! What would you do; if you worked at the UEA ? Or perhaps worked for the wrong bit of NASA ?
There are many reasons some of us will not use our own names; I consistently (like many others) use the same pseudonym.
Thank you to all boards that allow us this privilege.
@ur momisugly Drew says:
September 19, 2011 at 7:08 am
———————————————-
Did you bother to read Monckton’s replies?
“2.He said he wrote a peer-reviewed paper – He wrote a paper which received what he believes was peer review, to be staunchly reprimanded by the same journal and it’s reviewers”
It was reviewed and published. What happens afterward, in respect to the claim, is immaterial.
“3.He said the earth has been cooling – IT HASN’T.”
In the time frame in which Monckton was speaking, using HadCrut, it absolutely did cool. Models don’t measure heat transfer. Models don’t measure anything. All the rest of your writings are rationalizations to explain how this, ( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/to:2008/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/to:2008/trend ) isn’t cooling. Sorry, I can look at my thermometer one day, then look at it the next to determine if that day was warmer or cooler than the other day. I don’t need a model nor the scientific method to make that determination. Try again Drew. What you just wrote is the silly.
“4.He said a leading Danish expert found that overall Greenland ice has not been melting – HE DIDN’T.. the Danish expert clearly rejects Monkton’s misrepresentation of his work.”
Read Monckton”s reasonable explanation. If a scientist offers information, is it under the caveat that one must agree with the conclusions to use the data? That’s the dumbest argument I’ve seen against Monckton and there have been several irrational arguments against him.
5.He claim that CO2 forcing is 1.135 watts per square meter when it is three times higher.He confuses forcing with sensitivity.
There has been no provable estimation of CO2 forcing. You don’t know its 3 times higher any more than he knows it. Again, read the explanations at the top (Monckton’s own words) He’s clearly demonstrated he understands what a forcing is. If you read right above his understanding of a forcing you’ll see where he derived his numbers from.
“6.He said the International Astronomical Union has declared that the Sun is responsible for the recent warming – IT DIDN’T.”
Now, I know you didn’t bother to read his explanation. He admitted and explained his mistake. What more do you want from the guy? Some form of self-immolation?
What’s wrong with you people? Argue his science, argue his numbers. Quit trying to make him out to be a person that intentionally deceives. My goodness, if our climatologists were 1/2 as candid as Monckton we wouldn’t have near the discussions we are having today.
James
At 8:14 PM on 18 September Frederick Michael had addressed me with four lines from Kipling’s oft-quoted poem “If” (1895) and no further comment, as if this were somehow a profound message.
Okay. Let me offer in return a bit of “Macdonough’s Song” (1917):
Taking my example from Frederick Michael, no further expatiation is offered.
izen says:
September 19, 2011 at 3:51 am
@- Russ says:
September 19, 2011 at 2:36 am
“Compairing Gore to Monckton is an insult to Monckton.”
They are both politicians, NOT scientists. They use their rhetorical skills to promulgate a ideological viewpoint, NOT explicate the science.
If what you want is their political take then pay them attention.
But if you want the science both are a waste of time. Two sides of the same coin….
But Gore wants to be a carbon billionare and Monckton wants to stop the BS.
So again, compairing Gore to Monckton is an insult to Monckton.
@- Billy Liar says:
September 19, 2011 at 12:28 pm
“Still Waiting for Greenhouse.”
Perhaps like Vladimir and Estragon, you wouldn’t recognize it if you saw it.
What ‘better data’ would you require to acknowledge its existence ?
—————–
Izen,
I think you are creating/imagining the wrong protagonist. It is moi, not Billy Liar. (I thank Billy Liar for the lead off tip to Izen)
Unlike Vladamir and Estrgaon, we are not in the climate science imagined existentialist marshmallow world. We can, as individuals, judge for ourselves the hard value of the science product, independent of its source. N’est ce pas?
This is the open, transparent science media here, not the ‘Teams’ controlled echo chamber.
John
@- Russ says:
September 19, 2011 at 4:53 pm
“But Gore wants to be a carbon billionare and Monckton wants to stop the BS.
So again, compairing Gore to Monckton is an insult to Monckton.”
The other difference is that Gore is presenting a viewpoint supported by 100% of the worlds’ scientific organisations, 99% of the scientists active in the field and ~80% of the scientifically literate.
While Monckton is pushing a fringe, crank extreme position only supported by a few percent with a common political dogmatism against AGW, not a coherent scientific argument.
@- John Whitman
Perhaps in this transparent arena you could explain what evidence, data or events would persuade you of the reality of AGW?
@ur momisugly izen, The other difference is that Gore is presenting a viewpoint supported by 100% of the worlds’ scientific organisations, 99% of the scientists active in the field and ~80% of the scientifically literate.
Yeah and that’s why you warmist are now throwing Gore under the bus lately, because he is doing such a bang up job, Good one. No wonder you paint Gore and Monckton with the same brush. Good try though.
So again, compairing Gore to Monckton is an insult to Monckton.”