UPDATE: Below is Peter Hadfield’s response in entirety, submitted Feb 7th, 2012. I’ve made only some slight edits for formatting to fit. Comments are open. – Anthony
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Various You-Tube videos by a former “science writer” who uses a speleological pseudonym “potholer54” sneeringly deliver a series of petty smears about artfully-distorted and often inconsequential aspects of my talks on climate change. Here, briefly, I shall answer some of his silly allegations. I noted them down rather hastily, since I am disinclined to waste much time on him, so the sentences in quote-marks may not be word for word what he said, but I hope that they fairly convey his meaning.
For fuller answers to these allegations, many of which he has ineptly and confusedly recycled from a serially mendacious video by some no-account non-climatologist at a fourth-rank bible college in Nowheresville, Minnesota, please see my comprehensive written reply to that video at www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org. The guy couldn’t even get his elementary arithmetic right – not that the caveman mentions that fact, of course.
The allegations, with my answers, are as follows:
“Monckton says he advised Margaret Thatcher on climate change. He didn’t.” I did.
“Monckton says he wrote a peer-reviewed paper. He didn’t.” The editors of Physics and Society asked me to write a paper on climate sensitivity in 2008. The review editor reviewed it in the usual way and it was published in the July 2008 edition, which, like most previous editions, carried a headnote to the effect that Physics and Society published “reviewed articles”. Peer-review takes various forms. From the fact that the paper was invited, written, reviewed and then published, one supposes the journal had followed its own customary procedures. If it hadn’t, don’t blame me. Subsequent editions changed the wording of the headnote to say the journal published “non-peer-reviewed” articles, and the editors got the push. No mention of any of this by the caveman, of course.
“Monckton says the Earth is cooling. It isn’t.” At the time when I said the Earth was cooling, it had indeed been cooling since late 2001. The strong El Niño of 2010 canceled the cooling, and my recent talks and graphs have of course reflected that fact by stating instead that there has been no statistically-significant warming this millennium. The caveman made his video after the cooling had ended, but – without saying so – showed a slide from a presentation given by me while the cooling was still in effect. Was that honest of him?
“Monckton says Greenland is not melting. It is.” Well, it is now, but for 12 years from 1992-2003 inclusive, according to Johannessen et al. (2005), the mean spatially-averaged thickness of Greenland’s ice sheet increased by 5 cm (2 inches) per year, or 2 feet in total over the period. The high-altitude ice mass in central northern Greenland thickened fastest, more than matching a decline in ice thickness along the coastline. Since 2005, according to Johannessen et al. (2009), an ice mass that I calculate is equivalent to some six inches of the 2 feet of increase in Greenland’s ice thickness over the previous decade or so has gone back into the ocean, raising global sea levels by a not very terrifying 0.7 millimeters. According to the Aviso Envisat satellite, in the past eight years sea level has been rising at a rate equivalent to just 2 inches per century. Not per decade: per century. If so, where has all the additional ice that the usual suspects seem to imagine has melted from Greenland gone? Two possibilities: not as much ice has melted as we are being told, or its melting has had far less impact on sea level than we are being invited to believe.
“Monckton says there’s no systematic loss of sea-ice in the Arctic. There is.” No, I said that the 30-year record low ice extent of 2007 had been largely reversed in 2008 and 2009. The caveman, if he were capable of checking these or any data, would find this to be so. In fact, he knew this to be so, because the slide I was showing at that point in his video, taken from the University of Illinois’ Cryosphere monitoring program, shows it. Of course, the slide was only in the background of his video and was shown only for a few seconds. Since that particular talk of mine the Arctic sea ice has declined again and came close to its 2007 low in 2011. But it is arguable from the descriptions of melting Arctic ice in 1922 that there may have been less sea ice in the Arctic then than now.
“Monckton says there has been no correlation between temperature and CO2 for the past 500 million years. There has.” Well, there has in the past few thousand years, but the correlation since the Cambrian era has been spectacularly poor, as the slide (from a peer-reviewed paper) that the caveman fleetingly shows me using at that point demonstrates very clearly. For most of that long period, global temperatures were about 7 Celsius degrees warmer than the present: yet CO2 concentration has inexorably declined throughout the period.
“Monckton says a pre-Cambrian ice-planet shows CO2 has no effect on climate. It doesn’t.” No, I cited Professor Ian Plimer, a leading geologist, as having said that the formation of dolomitic rock 750 million years ago could not have taken place unless there had been 300,000 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere: yet glaciers a mile high had come and gone twice at sea-level and at the Equator at that time. Professor Plimer had concluded that, even allowing for the fainter Sun and higher ice-albedo in those days, the equatorial glaciers could not have formed twice if the warming effect of CO2 were as great as the IPCC wants us to believe. At no point have I ever said CO2 has no effect on climate, for its effect was demonstrated by a simple but robust experiment as long ago as 1859. However, I have said, over and over again, that CO2 probably has a much smaller warming effect than the IPCC’s range of estimates. The caveman must have known that, because he says he has watched “hours and hours” of my videos. So why did he misrepresent me?
“Monckton said there had been no change in the Himalayan glaciers for 200 years. There has.” No, I cited Professor M.I. Bhat of the Indian Geological Survey, who had told me on several occasions that the pattern of advance and retreat of these glaciers was much as it had been in the 200 years since the British Raj had been keeping records. That is very far from the same thing as saying there had been “no change”: indeed, it is the opposite, for advance and retreat are both changes. Why did the caveman misrepresent me?
“Monckton says only one Himalayan glacier has been retreating. Many have.” No, I mentioned the Gangotri and Ronggbuk glaciers as being notable examples of glacial retreat in the Himalayas caused by geological instability in the region. To discuss one or two retreating glaciers is not the same thing as to say or imply that only one or two glaciers have been retreating. Why did the caveman misrepresent me? It is this kind of intellectual dishonesty that permeates the caveman’s cheesy videos. He has not the slightest intention of being accurate or fair. If he had, he would surely have mentioned that the IPCC tried for months to pretend that all of the glaciers in the Himalayas would be gone by 2035. The IPCC’s own “peer-reviewers” had said the figure should be “2350”, not “2035”, but the lead author of the chapter in question had left in the wrong figure, knowing it to be unverified, because, as he later publicly admitted, he wanted to influence governments.
The caveman says I misquoted the lead author who had left in the erroneous date for the extinction of the Himalayan glaciers, but here is what that author actually said in an interview with the Daily Mail: “We thought that if we can highlight it [the erroneous date], it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.” For good measure, he said I had misquoted Sir John Houghton, the IPCC’s first science chairman, who had said that unless we announced disasters no one would listen.
Sir John, too, tried to maintain that I had misquoted him, and even menaced me with a libel suit, until I told him I had a copy of the cutting from the London Sunday Telegraph of September 10, 1995, in which he had said, “If we want a good environmental policy in the future, we’ll have to have a disaster”, and that I also had a copy of an article in the Manchester Guardian of July 28, 2003, in which Sir John had luridly ascribed numerous specific natural disasters to “global warming”, which he described as “a weapon of mass destruction” that was “at least as dangerous as nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, or indeed international terrorism”. Perhaps the caveman didn’t know any of this, but here’s the thing: I do not recall that he has ever bothered to check any of his “facts” with me (though, if he had, I wouldn’t have known because he lurks behind a pseudonym and, even though I am told he has revealed his identity I have no time to keep track of the pseudonyms of people who lack the courage and decency to publish under their own names).
“Monckton says Dr. Pinker found that a loss of cloud cover had caused recent warming. She disagreed.” No, I drew the conclusion from Dr. Pinker’s paper, and from several others, that cloud cover does not remain constant, but waxes and wanes broadly in step with the cooling and warming phases respectively of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. I did not misrepresent Dr. Pinker’s paper in any way: I merely used it as a source for my own calculations, which I presented at the annual seminar on planetary emergencies of the World Federation of Scientists in 2010, where they were well received. Less cloud cover, particularly in the tropics, naturally warms the Earth: the point is surely uncontroversial. If one removes the influence of this natural warming phase from the record since 1976, it is reasonable to deduce that climate sensitivity based on that period is much lower than the IPCC thinks. Strictly speaking, one should study temperature trends in multiples of 60 years, so as to ensure that the warming and cooling phases of the PDO cancel one another out.
Frankly, that’s quite enough of these dull allegations. There are others, but they are all as half-baked and dishonest as these and it would be tedious to deal with each one. You get the drift: the caveman is a zealot and we need not ask who paid him to watch “hours and hours” of my YouTube videos to realize from these examples that his videos are unreliable. More importantly, it would interfere with my research: I hope shortly to be in a position to demonstrate formally that climate sensitivity is unarguably little more than one-third of the IPCC’s central estimate. My objective is to reach the truth, not to distort it or misrepresent it as the caveman has done.
He concludes by challenging his small band of followers to check the scientific literature for themselves to establish that the Earth has been warming and that CO2 is “largely responsible”. Of course the Earth has been warming since 1750: I have at no point denied it, though that is the implication of the caveman’s statement.
And of course there are scientists who say CO2 is “largely responsible” for the warming: that is the principal conclusion of the IPCC’s 2007 report, reached on the basis of a fraudulent statistical abuse: comparison of the slopes of multiple arbitrarily-chosen trend-lines on the global-temperature dataset falsely to suggest that “global warming” is accelerating and that it is our fault. Not that one has ever heard the caveman utter a word of condemnation of the IPCC’s too-often fictional “science”. But it is also reasonable to mention the growing band of scientists who say CO2 may not be “largely responsible” but only partly responsible for the warming since 1950. Would it not have been fairer if the caveman had pointed that out?
Climate skeptics have come under intensive attack from various quarters, and the attacks have too often been as unpleasantly dishonest as those of the caveman. Also, there is evidence that someone has been spending a lot of money on trying malevolently to discredit those who dare to ask any questions at all about the party line on climate.
For instance, after a speech by me in in the US in October 2009 went viral and received a million YouTube hits in a week (possibly the fastest YouTube platinum ever for a speech), a Texan professor who monitors the seamier side of the internet got in touch to tell me that someone had paid the operators of various search engines a sum that he estimated at not less than $250,000 to enhance the page rankings of some two dozen specially-created web-pages containing meaningless jumbles of symbols among which the word “Monckton video” appeared.
These nonsense pages would not normally have attracted any hits at all, and the search engines would normally have ranked them well below the video that had gone platinum. The intention of this elaborate and expensive artifice, as the professor explained, was to ensure that anyone looking for the real video would instead find page after page of junk and simply give up. The viral chain was duly broken, but so many websites carried the video that more than 5 million people ended up seeing it, so the dishonestly-spent $250,000 was wasted.
At one level, of course, all of this attention is an unintended compliment. But no amount of sneering or smearing will alter two salient facts: the Earth has not been warming at anything like the predicted rate and is not now at all likely to do so; and, in any event, even if the climate-extremists’ predictions were right, it would be at least an order of magnitude more cost-effective to wait and adapt in a focused way to any adverse consequences of manmade “global warming” than it would be to tax, trade, regulate, reduce, or replace CO2 today.
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
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Note: for anyone who wishes to see what this is about, you can see “potholer54” aka Peter Hadfield on Monckton at YouTube here – Anthony
UPDATE: Here is Peter Hadfield’s response in entirety, submitted Feb 7th, 2012. I’ve made only some slight edits for formatting to fit. – Anthony
Response from Peter Hadfield:
In January, Christopher Monckton criticized me on WUWT after I made a series of videos exposing errors in most of his claims. I have asked Anthony Watts for the opportunity to respond in kind, so that we can put Mr. Monckton’s verbatim assertions up against the documentary evidence he cites.
At first I was puzzled as to what Mr. Monckton was responding to in his WUWT guest-post, because he failed to address any of the rebuttals or the evidence I showed in my five videos. Then I realized he must have watched only the last video in the series, including a light-hearted 30-second ‘mistake count’. So in this response I am going to deal with what Mr. Monckton actually said, as shown and rebutted in my videos, rather than what he thinks I think he said, and what he thinks I rebutted.
Mr. Monckton doesn’t claim to be an expert, and neither do I. All I can do is to check and verify his claims. So the question is whether Mr. Monckton has reported the sources he cites accurately in order to reach his conclusions. I have made it very easy for you to check by playing clips of Mr. Monckton making these assertions in my videos, then showing images of the documentary evidence he cites. Since this response is text I will write out Mr. Monckton’s assertions verbatim and quote the documentary sources verbatim (with references in the body of the text.) References to the relevant video (linked at the bottom) and the time on the video where they are shown, will be shown in square brackets.
ON THE COOLING EARTH:
Since Mr. Monckton failed to address the evidence, but implies I was duplicitous in my timing, let’s see what my video actually showed. In a speech given in Melbourne in February 2009, Mr. Monckton said: “We’ve had nine years of a global cooling trend since the first of January 2001” [Ref 1 – 4:06] — and St. Paul in October 2009: “There has been global cooling for the last eight or nine years” [ibid.].
So in my video, the period Mr. Monckton was talking about was clearly identified in his own words, as well as in the graphs he showed, and I showed the dates the speeches were made, and the studies I cited covered the same period.
[“Waiting for Global Cooling” – R. Fawcett and D. Jones, National Climate Centre, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, April 2008]
[“Statisticians reject global cooling” — Associated Press 10/26/2009 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33482750/ns/us_news-environment/]
ON THE MELTING OF GREENLAND:
Again, let’s deal with what Mr. Monckton actually said, which is what I rebutted. In a speech in St. Paul in 2009, Mr. Monckton cited a paper by Ola Johannessen, and told the audience: “What he found was that between 1992 and 2003, the average thickness of the vast Greenland ice sheet increased by two inches a year.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbW-aHvjOgM 11:40)
No, he found no such thing. Johannessen said he only measured the interior of Greenland above 1,500 metres [1 – 11:59] In fact, he specifically warns that the very conclusion Mr Monckton reaches cannot be made: “We cannot make an integrated assessment of elevation changes… for the whole Greenland Ice Sheet, including its outlet glaciers, from these observations alone, because the marginal areas are not measured completely…. ” [“Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland” Ola M. Johannessen et al, Science November 2005]
ON THE LOSS OF ARCTIC ICE:
Mr. Monckton claimed there is no long-term systematic loss of ice in the Arctic, and I rebutted this with studies showing a decline in Arctic summer sea-ice extent since satellite measurements began in 1979. [1 – 8:20 onwards]
Mr. Monckton’s response: “I said that the 30-year record low ice extent of 2007 had been largely reversed in 2008 and 2009.”
So, as I said, he did not tell his audience there had been a 30-year decline. Quite the opposite – he said there was no long-term decline. Mr. Monckton showed his audience a slide covering just three years, referring to the 2007 low as a “temporary loss of sea ice” which had recovered by 2009. Then he told them: “So we’re not looking at a sort of long-term systematic loss of ice in the Arctic.” [1 – 8:27]
ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN CO2 AND GLOBAL TEMPERATURES SINCE THE CAMBRIAN:
Mr. Monckton’s conclusion about a lack of correlation rests entirely on a graph showing CO2 concentration and temperature over the last 500 million years [3 – 0:04]. The graph uses temperature data from Scotese and CO2 data from Berner. Neither researcher supports Mr. Monckton’s ‘no correlation’ conclusion. On the contrary, Berner writes: “Over the long term there is indeed a correlation between CO2 and paleotemperature, as manifested by the greenhouse effect.” [“Geocarb III: A revised model of atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic time” — R. Berner and Z. Kothavala, American Journal of Science, Feb 2001]
How so? Because paleoclimatologists have to factor in solar output, which has been getting stronger over time [3 – 4:45]. If the rising curve of solar output is compared to global temperatures over the phanerozoic (500 million years) there is a similar lack of correlation. But it would be absurd to draw the conclusion that the sun therefore has no effect on climate.
So when gradually rising solar output is taken into account there is a very clear correlation between CO2 and global temperatures, and the source of Mr. Monckton’s data points that out. So does another senior researcher in the field [“CO2 as a primary driver of Phanerozoic climate” — D. Royer et al, GSA Today, March 2004].
ON THE PRE-CAMBRIAN ICE PLANET:
Again, let’s look at what I showed in my video, which was a clip of Mr. Monckton himself, speaking in a debate:
“750 million years ago, a mile of ice at the equator, ice planet all round, therefore at the surface 300,000 ppm of CO2. Will you tell me how that much CO2 could have been in the atmosphere and yet allowed that amount of ice at the equator?” [3 – 5:17]
Since Mr. Monckton thinks this is a puzzle for climatologists, let’s go through the well-understood explanation step by step.
Mr. Monckton agrees with the experts that the frozen planet was due to very weak solar output (about 8% less than today.) And he agrees that the high albedo (reflectivity) of this white surface would have reflected most of what little solar warmth the Earth did receive.
But he doesn’t seem to accept that volcanoes would have continued releasing CO2 into the atmosphere of this frozen planet over millions of years, and that this eventually warmed the planet enough to unfreeze it [“CO2 levels required for deglaciation of a ‘near-snowball’ Earth” T. Crowley et al, Geophysical Research Letters, 2001]. He cites no peer-reviewed research showing why paleoclimatologists are wrong. (No, the opinion of “a leading geologist” is not the same thing.)
ON HIMALAYAN GLACIERS:
Mr. Monckton writes in his WUWT response: “the pattern of advance and retreat of these glaciers was much as it had been in the 200 years since the British Raj had been keeping records. That is very far from the same thing as saying there had been “no change””
Then let’s look at what Mr. Monckton actually said to his audience in St. Paul:
“The glaciers are showing no particular change in 200 years. The only glacier that’s declined a little is Gangoltri.” [3 – 10:20]
So is it a pattern of advance and retreat? Or no particular change? Or only one glacier retreating? Which?
In his WUWT resp onse, Mr. Monckton went on to say: “To discuss one or two retreating glaciers is not the same thing as to say or imply that only one or two glaciers have been retreating.”
But you DID say it, Mr. Monckton. Here it is again: “Only one of them [Himalayan glaciers] is retreating a little and that’s Gangoltri.”
ON MISQUOTING MURARI LAL:
Speaking about Murari Lal, the man behind the IPCC’s 2035 disappearing glaciers fiasco, Mr. Monckton told his audience there was: “….an admission that he [Lal] knew that figure was wrong but had left it in anyway because he knew that the IPCC wanted to influence governments and politicians.”[4 – 3:50]
This is not even borne out by Monckton’s own source, cited in his response, which is a quote from Lal in the Daily Mail about the 2035 date: “We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.” Nowhere does Lal say he knew the figure was erroneous.
MISQUOTING SIR JOHN HOUGHTON:
Mr. Monckton claims Houghton wrote this in the Sunday Telegraph of September 10, 1995: “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.” [4 – 5:50]
And I maintain Houghton wrote: “If we want a good environmental policy in the future, we’ll have to have a disaster. It’s like safety on public transport. The only way humans will act is if there’s been an accident.”
Who is right? Well, both Mr. Monckton and I have exactly the same source [Sunday Telegraph, September 10, 1995], but I actually show an image of it in my video [4 – 7:24]. Take a look. Even though it turns out my quote is correct and Mr. Monckton’s is clearly a gross misquote, he still insists in his WUWT response that he got the quote right.
ON HIS CLAIMS ABOUT THE ROLE OF THE SUN…
Mr. Monckton showed and quoted an extract from a paper by Sami Solanki: “The level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episodoes on to come.” [5 – 1:21 onwards]
That could suggest the sun is a likely culprit for recent warming. But why didn’t Mr. Monckton tell or show his audience what Solanki wrote in the very next line?
“Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades.” [“Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the last 11,000 years” — S.K. Solanki et al, Nature Sep 2004]
ON THE ROLE OF THE SUN IN RECENT WARMING:
Mr. Monckton said: “The solar physicists – you might take Scafetta and West, say, in 2008, they attribute 69% of all the recent global warming to the sun.” [5 – 3:48]
No, they don’t. In my video [5 – 4:32] I showed the actual document Mr. Monckton refers to (an opinion piece) where Scafetta and West wrote: “We estimate that the sun could account for as much as 69% of the increase in the Earth’s average temperature.” [“Is climate sensitive to solar variability?” Nicola Scafetta and Bruce J. West, Physics Today March 2008]
I hope we all understand the difference between “69%” and “as much as 69%.” But what about all those other “solar physicists” who purportedly support Monckton’s position? Well, they don’t. Solanki’s figure is up to just 30%, Erlykin less than 14%, Bernstad 7%, Lean ‘negligable’and Lockwood –1.3% [5 — 4:40]
[4:41 “Can solar variability explain global warming since 1970?”– S. K. Solanki and N. A. Krivova, Journal of Geophysical Research, May 2003]
[“Solar Activity and the Mean Global Temperature”
A.D. Erlykin et al, Physics Geo 2009]
[“Solar trends and global warming” — R. Benestad and G. Schmidt, Journal of Geophysical Research” July 2009]
[“How natural and anthropogenic influences alter global and regional surface temperatures: 1889 to 2006” J. Lean and D. Rind, Geophysical Research Letters, Sep 2008]
[“Recent changes in solar outputs and the global mean surface temperature. III. Analysis of contributions to global mean air surface temperature rise” — M. Lockwood, June 2008]
Mr. Monckton then asserts that the International Astronomical Union (IAU) agrees with this conclusion (that the sun is largely responsible for recent warming.) After he had been confronted during a TV interview with the plain fact that it didn’t [5 – 5:49 “Meet the Climate Sceptics” BBC TV Feb 2011], Monckton gave a reason for the error in his WUWT response:
“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.”
Maybe so. But that doesn’t explain why Mr. Monckton continued to make exactly the same claim elsewhere. At St. Paul he said:
“Most solar physicists agree [that the sun is largely responsible for recent warming]. The International Astronomical Union in 2004 had a symposium on it, they concluded that that was the case.” [Monckton rebuttal – WUWT 16:27]
And in his film ‘Apocalypse No!’ a slide headed ‘International Astronomical Union Symposium in 2004’ was shown to an audience, along with its main conclusions. Third on the list, Monckton read: “The sun caused today’s global warming.”
Monckton told the audience: “This is not my conclusion, this is the conclusion of the International Astronomical Union Symposium in 2004. This is what they said, this is not me talking here.” [Monckton rebuttal – WUWT 16:34]
Mr. Monckton has to accept that this claim is completely spurious. This is why he dislikes detailed examinations of his sources. While he takes every opportunity to debate on stage, where his speaking skills are essential and his assertions can’t be checked, an online debate is far tougher, because every paper and fact CAN be checked. So come on, Mr. Monckton, let’s debate this on WUWT to see which of us has correctly read your sources.
The rebuttals I made are not “inconsequential aspects of my talks” as Mr. Monckton claims; they include almost every major topic he covers, from the melting of Arctic and glacial ice, to the role of the sun and the correlation between CO2 and temperature. His only recourse in his WUWT response was therefore to call me names, attack my character and my competence, and question my financing and my motivation… anything but answer the documentary evidence I presented. And then he adds one more error — a ridiculous claim that I asked my “small band of followers” to “check the scientific literature for themselves to establish that the Earth has been warming and that CO2 is “largely responsible.”
Since I can’t establish that myself, I certainly wouldn’t advise other amateurs to have a go. So I ask Mr. Monckton to cite the source for this claim, sure in the knowledge that once again we will see a yawning gap between what the source actually says (in this case, me) and what Mr. Monckton claims it says.
References: (Hadfield’s own videos)
1 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbW-aHvjOgM
2 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTY3FnsFZ7Q
3 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpF48b6Lsbo
4 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3giRaGNTMA
5 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRCyctTvuCo
Jose_X says:
February 10, 2012 at 7:50 am
James Sexton, I looked at the graph from 2001 to 2009 that you linked.
Two points. First, one source of argument is that different people rely on different data sets, and these show slightly different things. Is there a reason why you aren’t using the BEST http://berkeleyearth.org/analysis/ dataset?
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Yes, there is a reason. Berkeley’s analysis is not yet complete. Further, their data hasn’t updated since about Feb 2010. Additionally, Berkeley is a land only analysis. Which, I thought was cute of SkS to forget to highlight this to their readers. Anyone using that data set is either ignorant of these facts or are intentionally misleading their readers. Continuing on with the SkS graphic, notice the length in years they’ve pointed out. 10 years is the longest length of time of flat temp periods. Notice, I’ve pointed out 15 years. But, we don’t have to just look at the most recent example…. we’ve got a duration of 70years in the past with inclining atmospheric CO2 levels and temps that didn’t increase. There’s a word for what is occurring, coincident comes to mind.
You then ask,
The answer, of course, is in their own silly discourse. The effects of atmospheric CO2 is suppose to be logarithmic. So, your posit about when we had less emissions isn’t correct. Because it is closer to the previous doubling rather than the next…… so the increases in the past, while less in volume, were suppose to carry more potency.
I don’t dwell in academia, but, I’m not sure what is stated by some of the more excitable scientists is really being taught in our universities. My stepson is taking a physics course at the moment. Nowhere in his text do I find these outrageous posits though the text does delve into spectrometry and radiative forcing. Please note, I don’t challenge the idea that CO2 absorbs and then re-emits energy. I’m simply stating its isn’t significant enough to matter. As you’ve stated, there are many mechanisms which go towards the makeup of our climate.
I hope I was clear enough to answer your questions.
James Sexton says:
February 10, 2012 at 7:25 am
“read up”
-I have read ever comment and debunk done by Hadfield and at no time is the use of “quote marks” referenced as a mistake that Monckton made.-
“Who said anything about 200 years?”
-To blindly take the stance that everything Monckton has said was true without even looking at the facts, show a lot about someone.-
“Yes, people can look at other people’s data and interpret it differently.”
-No they cant, they have to prove it. In relation to Moncktons claim from Ola Johannessen paper, it was not even an interpretation it was a complete fabrication of the results.
“Really? Who says?”
-No one says it. It’s a guideline as a minimum, something I see you don’t understand. And just like everyone points out on your page, there could be a 60 year cooling period, but if it is due to large volcano eruptions then it has to be taken into account. Your childish claims that you have falsified CO2 as a driver of temps is ridicules.-
“ Again, read up…… this is very tedious to repeat myself over, and over and over again.”
-Point out one then, you clearly claim you have debunked every point Hadfield has made “except the quotes”. Should not be hard for you.-
“No, he did not. Above, you’ll see only 10 points he attempted to make.”
-Are you serious? Have not watched any of Hadfields videos? You only have to watch the last one that summarises all the 21 mistakes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRCyctTvuCo . Like I said before, you are blinded with blind faith. The insane thing is Monckton even goes on to make up more outrageous claims to try and manoeuvre around all his mistakes. This literally nearly doubles the amount of mistakes Hadfield debunks. And if you ACTUALLY watched the videos you would know-this.
“…… sigh…. where did you pull that out from?”
-I explain that the debate over climate sensitivity is not over and your claim that CO2 benefits mankind is a figment of your imagination, and your reply is “sigh”?-
“ The ocean’s mechanisms to deal with CO2 is more than adequate.”
-And what do you base that claim on? Because some corals are growing faster. It is the food chain which is of concern “Nature, Reduced Calcification of Marine Phytoplankton in Response to Increased Atmospheric CO2, Issue 407 p.364 -367” –
lljames says:
“Peer review is the only way to understand the data… The peer review is the ONLY way to find out the truth.”
You didn’t understand a word I wrote. Did you? You didn’t read my links, or Montford’s devastating exposé of Mann and his clique. Did you? Climate peer review has been thoroughly corrupted. But your mind is made up and closed tight. You believe the false propaganda that the media and the climate alarmist charlatans spoon-feed you. Don’t you?
. . .
DaNims,
“…a real-time debate would have the contestants speaking past each other.” Just as I predicted: Excuses. A debate isn’t about the debaters, it is about convincing the public. The alarmist contingent lacks verifiable facts, thus they cannot convince the public of their impending doom scenarios.
. . .
@Tom (@renegade4dio),
WUWT is the most un-censored climate site on the internet. You’re nitpicking because you don’t agree with the site’s Policy page. Fine. Start your own blog. Good luck with that.
. . .
LeMorteDeArthur,
Thanx for you un-cited opinion. Read the post right before yours to see how little your nitpicking matters.
. . .
Jose_X says:
“Smokey, what evidence do you present that CO2 in increasing amounts in the atmosphere is good for people?”
Happy to help educate you. And to the alarmist contingent, pay attention here:
click1
click2
click3
click4
click5
click6
click7
[More on request.] Increased CO2 is absolutely a net benefit to the biosphere. More is better. There is no downside at current and projected concentrations. You have been fed a pack of lies by people demonizing “carbon” for their own self-serving interests. If you can prove global harm per the scientific method, due specifically to CO2, I’ll sit up straight and pay attention. Because you will be the first to be able to show any such proof. CO2 is harmless and beneficial to the biosphere [which includes humans]. No global harm = harmless, see? And beneficial, because in a world where one-third of the population subsists on less than $2 a day, more food is beneficial because it helps avert death by starvation. See? Or are you a media lemming, immune to these verifiable facts?
And you ask: “Is there a reason why you aren’t using the BEST dataset?” The BEST data set has been artificially “adjusted” to give a scary hockey stick shape. But that false adjustment has been debunked.
. . .
major9985 says:
“Even if you consider the skeptical climate sensitive value of 1°C for a doubling of CO2 “0.27°C/(W/m2)”, the increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past 150 years would still account for over half of the observed 0.8°C increase in surface temperature.”
So what?? Just as an increase in CO2 is beneficial, an increase in global warmth is beneficial. More warming would open up millions of arable acres in places like Siberia, Canada, Mongolia, Alaska, etc., to farming. In a world where one third of the population barely gets enough to eat, warming would be entirely beneficial. The planet has been much warmer in the past, when the biosphere thrived. Really, people have been so spoon-fed with wild-eyed alarmist propaganda that they can’t think straight.
major9985 says to James Sexton:
“I explain that… your claim that CO2 benefits mankind is a figment of your imagination, and your reply is “sigh”?”
That would be my response, too. See the 7 links in my post above. CO2 absolutely benefits mankind and the rest of the biosphere, which would not exist without it. The biosphere is currently starved of CO2, and even if CO2 levels doubled, they would be at historically low levels. But the public has been fed such a bunch of lies demonizing “carbon” that they eventually just become unthinking head-nodders motivated by blind faith in scientific charlatans.
You also question the verifiable statement: “The ocean’s mechanisms to deal with CO2 is more than adequate.” by asking:
“And what do you base that claim on?”
It is tedious educating one scientific illiterate at a time, over and over again. But I’m here to help: The ocean has an essentially infinite buffering capacity. It can take all the CO2 in the atmosphere, doubled and squared, and the pH needle would not even move. This has been shown repeatedly. Do a search of the WUWT archives, keywords Middleton and Eschenbach, for several articles that destroy the whole notion of the “ocean acidification” scare. I’d do the search for you, but you will learn better if you put some effort into it yourself.
Now you may return to your life’s passin in your mom’s basement: ad hom attacks against Monckton. And as you can see, that’s safer than pretending you’re up to speed on the science.
. . .
FaceFirst challenged me to produce a testable hypothesis. I’ve been posting the following hypothesis for months without any refutation, credible or otherwise:
At current and projected concentrations, CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
OK FaceFirst, using the scientific method and emprical, testable facts, try to falsify that hypothesis. If you can. You will be the first to even try.
Finally, I note that Phil Joseph Juliansen has disappeared without providing the Mann chart in AR-4 that he claimed he could produce. Bye, Phil.☺
[SNIP: Over the Top rant. Tone it down. -REP]
@Smokey, you wrote :
<>
I’m afraid your response to me was in fact to someone else…
I know you feel that global warming opens up the world to more farming. But, you are leaving out the oceanic conveyor. Once that stops flowing from the Arctic, the places where we do enjoy temperate climate and farming will be gone. So, there will be an exchange. Not more of it.
You can’t criticize any of Monckton’s claims!!
How dare you people!
He’s a self-proclaimed Lord that has created a cure for AIDs and nearly everything else.
Everything he says should be treated as holy scripture!
Shame on you “alarmists”(Curious here.. Saw a mod “snip” and chastise a person for using the pejorative “denialist” but seems to be permitted to say “alarmist”.. why is that?), you just need FAITH! The Lord[Monckton] works in mysterious ways…
DaNims,
My apologies. That was Jose_X’s comment.
moffie,
The only way the ocean currents will stop is due to an obstruction. They are a response to the 2nd Law, and move to even out temperature differences, the same reason the jet streams exist. But hey, it’s a pretty good scare story!
I call out Monckton, who [SNIP: That is a rant, too. Drop the pejoratives or continue to get snipped. -REP]
James Sexton >> Berkeley is a land only analysis … Anyone using that data set is either ignorant of these facts or …
Call me ignorant of that fact, but satellite doesn’t imply better. Each method has pros and minuses. Looking at as many trees as possible up close vs looking broadly at the forest. The forest view has positives but is more challenging to discern the detail at the highest level. More specifically, I think I recently read that satellite coverage of the pole(s) is weak.
Anyway, my main point was to point out that each side in this debate, on this question of trending of temperatures in the last decade, has backing. I’d call it a draw on that point.
Monckton was not doing 15 years, and 15 is surely better than say 10 or 8; however, neither is as good as 30. But why not 50 or 100, right? I don’t know the full answer, but too few years is statistically meaningless. Too many and we have a scenario far removed from current driving conditions. Anyway, I’ll skip this question for now, as I don’t really have a good answer.
>> we’ve got a duration of 70years in the past with inclining atmospheric CO2 levels and temps that didn’t increase … The effects of atmospheric CO2 is suppose to be logarithmic.
Let’s eyeball this graph (repeat link) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Temp-sunspot-co2.svg
From 1850 to 1900 it appears CO2 grew by about 295/285 or 3.5%. From 1900 to 1950, we get 310/295 or 5%. From 1950 to 2000, we get 370/310 19.5%. So far from 2000 to 2012 we have 393/370 or 6%. That 6% in 2 years represents 30% (if we keep this rate) or 50%+ (if we keep accelerating similarly to the past) for the 2000 to 2050 period.
Summarized:
1850 – 1900: 295/285 = 3.5%
1900 – 1950: 310/295 = 5%
1950 – 2000: 370/310 = 19.5%
2000 – 2050: 480/370 – 555+/370 = 30% – 50%+ ?
>> so the increases in the past, while less in volume, were suppose to carry more potency.
As you can probably see above, this wouldn’t be true. The more recent the increases, the greater is the geometric (not just arithmetic) rate. In other words, our instantaneous doubling life (in the sense of “half life”) is getting shorter.
Notice I calculated rates relative to the prior step and not to the original base period. So, FWIW, if I had used the common base period, I’d get these values.
1850 – 1900: 295/285 = 3.5%
1850 – 1950: 310/285 = 9%
1850 – 2000: 370/285 = 30%
1850 – 2050: 480/285 – 555+/285 = 68.5% – 94.5%+ ?
>> Please note, I don’t challenge the idea that CO2 absorbs and then re-emits energy. I’m simply stating its isn’t significant enough to matter.
I want to point something out.
Our intuition can be wrong. When we do the correct math, we can end up surprising ourselves. The prior example of CO2 growth calculations was an example of thinking past rates were more potent but then realizing otherwise [I’ll assume for the moment that you will agree with this last example.] It seems the gut was wrong.
I do wonder if we did the correct math for the greenhouse effect if in fact we would get something negligible like .0001 K or something like 1000K or something in between like say 3K … for a doubling of CO2 at current rates.
OK, let me put it in a different way. On many occasions, Monckton has been found to be factually inaccurate regarding the presentation of scientific data and personal information, such as his claim of being a Nobel Laureate, which unambiguously appeared on his personal website while being provably nonfactual. It would be advisable to take his presentations with regard to climate change, a field in which he has no formal qualifications, with extreme caution.
[REPLY: Thank you. -REP]
Jose_X says:
February 10, 2012 at 10:48 am
James Sexton >> Berkeley is a land only analysis … Anyone using that data set is either ignorant of these facts or …
Call me ignorant of that fact, but satellite doesn’t imply better.
==================================================
Jose, I’m sorry, I wasn’t clear. I wasn’t calling you ignorant, but, rather the people who used the data set in an attempt to show something. And I really wasn’t calling SkS ignorant, either. I wish I had more time at the moment, but sadly I’m busy at work. I just wanted to be sure and clear that up.
“I do wonder if we did the correct math for the greenhouse effect if in fact we would get something negligible like .0001 K or something like 1000K or something in between like say 3K … for a doubling of CO2 at current rates.”
We have to first determine how much additional IR would be absorbed by additional CO2 which would not already be absorbed by other gases like… say H2O…… for the bands that also get absorbed by H2O, they’ve already hit their saturation point.
I realized after posting the last comment that you may (or may not) gain from a more detailed analysis.
Version 1:
The question is whether the rate is exponential, faster or slower.
Let’s look at the 3 values 3.5%, 5%, and 19.5%.
The generic exponential is y=k^x. This curve has just one variable.
Using 3.5%, we get that y_2/y_1 = (k^x_2)/(k^x_1) = 1.035. Since I eyeballed using unit steps of 50 years, that will be the x_delta.
1.035 = (k^x_2)/(k^x_1) = k^(x_2-x_1) = k^x_delta.
Using the next value, we have
1.05 = (k^x_3)/(k^x_2) = k^(x_3-x_2) = k^x_delta.
Similarly, the third step will give
1.195 = (k^x_4)/(k^x_3) = k^(x_4-x_3) = k^x_delta.
Now, we can formally solve for the k in each of the 3 cases, but we don’t have to bother to plug in the 50 year value to know that the k in step 3 is greater than in step 2 which is greater than in step 1.
So, if the rate of growth had been exponential (k^x), we would have found the same k value in each case. We see that the rate is greater than exponential.
And let’s just make sure that a logarithm is the inverse function of an exponential.
log base b of (k^x) = x times log base b of k.
If b and k are the same, then we get just x [Ie, log(b,k) = 1 if b and k are the same). x is exactly what we are supposed to get if we calculate the inverse of a function of x. In other words, g(f(x)) = x, whenever g is the inverse of f.
This is not a clean proof, of course, so ..
Version 2:
.. let’s consider another view while we leverage the above calculations.
1850 – 1900: log (C_2/C_1) = x_delta log k_1 = log 1.035
1900 – 1900: log (C_3/C_2) = x_delta log k_2 = log 1.05
1950 – 2000: log (C_4/C_3) = x_delta log k_3 = log 1.195
This shows that log k_1 < log k_2 < log k_3, no matter what the base is of the logarithmic function [by convention, the base is likely either 10 or e or 2].
In other words, each succeeding step had a logarithmic value of the ratio of growth that was greater than the prior. And this logarithm of the ratio of growth of CO2 is the Arrhenius relationship I think you are talking about. We see that this logarithmic value was greater in each succeeding 50 year period. And we anticipate we'll get again a larger value for the 2000 – 2050 period.
James Sexton, I should have been more clear myself that I understood you weren’t attacking me. It is true, I am ignorant of many points. Googling, it seems HadCRU is a mix of land and satellite, so after they get updated, I’ll consider using those values when referencing.. at least if I have a handy link and the exact values are important to the conversation.
Smokey says:
February 10, 2012 at 9:59 am
“So what??”
-The debate is if climate sensitivity is positive or negative. Everything else you say is pointless nonsense smokey. And of cause you continue this pointless garbage whenever you can as you try and back up others claims of it being beneficial to mankind. I have already explained to you before I would not get into this crazy debate with you, CO2 is plant food, BUT its also a greenhouse gas that is warming the planet. Skeptics say by 1C, many say more, this is what is being debated. Go back to your garden and leave this debate to the adults.
And I can explain why you cant reference anything regarding ocean acidification, is because your wrong. Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.25 to 8.14, representing an increase of almost 30% in “acidity” http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2005/2004JD005220.shtml –
I’ll also postpone a conversation on CO2 saturation. The accepted view is that this is not a major issue. We get a hint of this by doing a simple shell model of the atmosphere and adding more and more shells (think of each shell as a sweater). The result is that, with each additional shell, if all else remains equal (and in our atmosphere all else will not be equal.. but that is another point), the temperature of the surface would be greater.
The intuition is that if a given amount of absorption happens lower in the atmosphere because the concentration is greater (Beer Lambert law suggests doubling the concentration would lead to the same absorption at half the distance), then we can model the whole atmosphere as having extra shells. Overall, there is more energy absorbed that otherwise would radiate into space right away. An oven analogy would be like adding more layers to the oven.. meaning less heat escapes for a given input power. We can even use a mirrors analogy (eg, a 50% reflection 50% transmission mirror at IR range) to see that we are bouncing more photons back at the planet if we add more layers of mirrors, with the next layer out sending back a fraction of transmitted photons that otherwise would leave to space earlier.
If the energy is not in space, it is concentrated here in the atmosphere. The temp rises until the outgoing rate (after surface temp increase by “back radiation” and subsequent reductions via the extra shells/sweaters/insulations/mirrors) matches the relatively constant and ongoing input rate provided by the sun.
If the sun were to stop shining, then ghg would merely slow down dissipation towards 0K, but the slow down effect leads to higher temperatures because the sun keeps adding the same dose over and over and over at the same steady rate.. again, an oven analogy helps.. where equilibrium is reached only after the inside cavity has gotten so hot that the amount escaping matches the input power (by electricity).
And “back radiation” is real (measurements exist all over the world and are consistent, at near ground level, with the Trenberth diagrams). It can be measured leveraging the effect of thermocouplers. See for example the exercise at the bottom of this page http://mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/node136.html , where we see that blocking the line of radiation path does lead to a lower temperature than if we don’t block the line of sight (and yes, convection is what regulates temp efficiently despite different bodies receiving different net doses of IR radiation).
Also, it is possible that a box with glass or instead with Seran wrap will have very similar temperatures inside when exposed to the sun (and assuming well conduction and convection insulation)… as in the Woods experiment or as done by N Nahle. Which of the two boxes gets hotter depends on the exact properties and setup, but while the glass absorbs IR from the inside out, it also absorbs IR from the outside in (back radiation.. assuming you are exposed at an angle to get lots of it comparable to what the box releases upwards). Then the glass radiates this total amount isotropically. The result may or may not be a wash in comparison to the Seran wrap case (where Seran wrap is basically transparent to IR in either direction). So the result of that experiment doesn’t prove too much wrt ghg effect in the atmosphere.. especially since our atmosphere, at the highest altitudes, doesn’t receive any IR back radiation as does the box on the ground.
Anyway, “see” you in a while.. maybe.
Some error fixes:
From the first “math” comment:
>> So far from 2000 to 2012 we have 393/370 or 6%. That 6% in 2 years represents 30% (if we keep this rate) or 50%+ (if we keep accelerating similarly to the past) for the 2000 to 2050 period.
Oops.
(a) That 6% is in 12 years (not “2”), and
(b) the rate towards 2050 would put it in the 24% to 40%+ range (give or take some percentage points).
For the sake of keeping the math less than totally incomprehensible, let me fix two other parts based on this above fix.
>> 2000 – 2050: 480/370 – 555+/370 = 30% – 50%+ ?
2000 – 2050: 460/370 – 520+/370 = 24% – 40%+ ?
>> 1850 – 2050: 480/285 – 555+/285 = 68.5% – 94.5%+ ?
1850 – 2050: 460/285 – 520+/285 = 61.5% – 82.5%+ ?
And this next date period in the “Version 2” section of the second “math” comment should be till 1950, not till 1900:
>> 1900 – 1900: log (C_3/C_2) = x_delta log k_2 = log 1.05
1900 – 1950: log (C_3/C_2) = x_delta log k_2 = log 1.05
BTW, the whole point of all of that math was to “clarify” (eg, to myself) that the logarithm value as per Arrhenius relation on CO2 concentration has been going up in successive 50 year periods.
Also, from that second “math” comment,
>> [Ie, log(b,k) = 1 if b and k are the same)
Ie, log(b,k) = 1 if b and k are the same
..ie, just get rid of the mismatching [)
And finally, let me add that a “shell model”, as I mentioned in the last comment, ignores convection (diffusion equations), evapo-transpiration, and 3D modeling. All it does is to assume each “1D” atmosphere shell has the same flux coming in as going out. In reality, the troposphere has a linear temp profile not predicted by the shell model or (I think) by a purely radiative transfer model. Convection redistributes heat acquired via IR absorption in high amounts near the ground which then will be released a bit more evenly throughout the atmosphere based approximately on the Stefan Boltzmann relationship.
Also, if anyone is still trying to follow, by “shell model” I mean the model used here http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/03/second-law-and-its-criminal-misuse-as.html and in the paper linked to from here http://climateguy.blogspot.com/2011/06/radiation-physics-constraints-on-global.html .
major9985 says:
“The debate is if climate sensitivity is positive or negative.”
No, actually, this article is about Lord Monckton’s response, and you don’t get to frame the terms of the debate. We could discuss your weak spelling and punctuation abilities, or we could compare the alarmist contingent’s whiny complaints about Monckton’s pejoratives with your juvenile comments. Instead, I prefer to point out where the alarmist crowd is wrong in their assumptions. I’ll use your last post for starters.
First, climate sensitivity is based on 2xCO2, which is not evident from your comment. There is so much debate regarding the sensitivity question because it is not measurable, it is only inferred; a conjecture. Internationally esteemed climatologists place the 2xCO2 temperature response at anywhere from ≈1.5°C down to Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi’s 0.0°C. [I doubt you can match his C.V.] Dr Spencer puts the sensitivity number at under 0.5°C, and the three Drs Idso estimate well under 0.5°C. Prof Richard Lindzen’s estimate is a little over 1°C. [The UN/IPCC guesses the number is a preposterous 3°C or more, but they have a vested interest in fanning climate alarmism.] So really, the debate is not about whether sensitivity is positive or negative. Maybe you read that in a comment somewhere.
Next, CO2 has not been “warming the climate” for the past decade and a half, even though it keeps rising. Like the rise in beneficial CO2, global warming is on balance a good thing, despite your alarmist blog indoctrination.
Finally, your claim that “between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.25 to 8.14 representing an increase of almost 30% in “acidity” is model-based nonsense. From your link: “A noniterative, implicit, mass-conserving, unconditionally stable, positive-definite numerical scheme that solves nonequilibrium air-ocean transfer equations for any atmospheric constituent and time step is derived.” Grant-sniffing baloney. The oceans are big, and they don’t know the pH in 1751. It’s just a grant-driven WAG.
I don’t like to spoon feed you the correct information, because it means more if you find it on your own. And if you want to bask in ignorance by not reading the following articles and comments, it is of no concern to me. But I don’t want a casual reader to be misled by the gross misinformation in your posts. So for their sake I’m happy to provide some links that decisively deconstruct the “ocean acidification” nonsense:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/28/the-fishes-and-the-coral-live-happily-in-the-co2-bubble-plume
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/27/the-ocean-is-not-getting-acidified
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/19/the-electric-oceanic-acid-test
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/25/the-reef-abides
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/24/chicken-little-of-the-sea-visits-station-aloha
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/10/ocean-acidification-chicken-of-the-sea-little-strikes-again
Now I’ll go out and work on my garden, which is going gangbusters because of the added CO2.
James Sexton said: “Read up…. Look at things in their entirety and not some video clip taken out of context”
Me: “read up”? your favorite remedy? oh I’ll read up and nail you while doing it.
James Sexton said: “Look at things in their entirety” and “see that Christopher Monckton was accurate and truthful”
Me: oh yeah? says the dude swooning for Monckton, cherrypicking a short time trend while totally ignoring the full picture of ongoing global warming.
Moncton said [about global temperatures circa 2001-2009] in Melbourne 2009: “hefty” and “statistically significant cooling” and it wasn’t so, he was called upon his tripe, Monckton himself finally acknowledged it (Moncton refutes Abrahams 2010), after being schooled.
Drop it James, Monckton admits it’s wrong to say so, time you grow a pair and admit it to.
You can keep up your “had-crutch” temperature series 2001-2009 all you want, doesn’t change the fact that Monckton was in error and finally admitted it. Drop the comfort blanket, the short series means nothing, remember who said “Look at things in their entirety”? More info: http://sks.to/escalator
NEXT
Monckton said “we are not looking at a long term systematic loss of ice in the arctic”
James Sexton chimed in regarding potholers debunking of Moncktons unsubstanciated claim: “…you attempt to refute his claim by going back beyond his point of reference and declare him omitting facts, but you are doing exactly the same! What was the arctic ice area prior to the 70s?
Allow me to google that for you! and I did and it came back with:
http://nsidc.org/icelights/files/2010/11/mean_anomaly_1953-2010.png
Which shows your(James Sexton) precious “cia generated comfort blanket 10-15% ice hump” that came during the 60’s and went *poof, gone* even faster and several orders of magnitude more ice has melted since then. “a systematic, long term loss of ice” is what it is -Monckton claimed otherwize and got called, and failed to produce.
So, what now James? Move the goal post? You know we can do this all the way back to the cambrian? the snow ball earth? you know? If you want to wriggle from that we end up with a freshly baked solar system, with a giant ball of molten minerals, hardly worth quibbling about snow coverage, am I right?
Monckton himself had a lame comeback with another unsubstanciated claim about low ice in the 1920’s. Keyword: Unsubstanciated! and remember Monckton claims at his talks “All I say is sourced and can be verified”. This new unsubstanciated claim can therefore be dismissed.
*poof* Gone!
I’m going to keep going, on topic, possibly in vane hope you’ll learn. Expect more.
[SNIP: The videos have been posted here numerous times in the past and your language violates site policy. -REP]
Jose_X says:
February 10, 2012 at 11:39 am
James Sexton, I should have been more clear myself that I understood you weren’t attacking me. It is true, I am ignorant of many points. Googling, it seems HadCRU is a mix of land and satellite, so after they get updated, I’ll consider using those values when referencing.. at least if I have a handy link and the exact values are important to the conversation.
=====================================================
Jose, thanks for adding some sensible points into the conversation. While I enjoy a rancorous dialogue at times, there is a point when it becomes too tedious to maintain. I’m still stamping out fires at the office. But, I thought I could help you in your quest for a good link to data.
Most of the graphs I’ve offered are of not my making… sort of, but the come from this site. http://www.woodfortrees.org It is a “non-partisan” site, if you will. It’s ran by an altruistic fellow, Paul Clark. There isn’t any comments there. Just a very nice application. Go there, and click on the “interactive” It will take you to the application. You’ll be met with a graph and a drop down box. with other input options. He has a plethora of data bases he’s directly linked to including Hadley’s. There’s also GISS’, and the two satellite temp data bases (BEST is also there.). And a bunch of other delicious data bases as well. He even provides a link to the “raw” data if you want subject the data to more rigorous inspection.
For anyone involved in the greater climate discussion, I highly recommend going to that site. The data is updated as soon as the various organizations update their data. The best part, is that its free. There’s no opinion stated, there’s no slant and no “interpretation” Just data and some nice tools to use.
There is a donate button in which a person can donate to a favorite charity of Paul’s a woodland preservation and planting charity as I recall.
“In other words, each succeeding step had a logarithmic value of the ratio of growth that was greater than the prior.” —- agreed.
And, I agree with most of all the other you’ve stated. But, we’re still not seeing a rise in the temps. When I was speaking of the logarithmic effect of CO2, I was discussing the decline of its effect. Where the thought is each doubling would be equal to the effect of the prior doubling of CO2. Diminishing returns, if you will. And, I agree with it, but typically we only regard the individual gases, one at a time, and this isn’t proper. Again, I would point you to the spectrometry.
Most IR is completely “invisible” to CO2. It passes straight through. Of the IR which CO2 responds to, H2O also responds to for the most part. In this regard, we’ve moved the discussion well beyond doubling any ppm. H2O is ~3-4% in our atmosphere or, 30,000 – 40,000 ppm. So, discussing only the IR bands where H2O and CO2 overlap, when we discuss going from 350ppm to 560ppm or what ever….. we see that it doesn’t effect much of anything. We are then left with some very narrow bands of absorption. Does atmospheric CO2 warm things? Sure in theory. It’s just like me raising the sea level when I spit in the ocean.
Lord Bourgeoisie of Frackinghampshire says:
“On many occasions, Monckton has been found to be factually inaccurate regarding the presentation of scientific data and personal information, such as his claim of being a Nobel Laureate, which unambiguously appeared on his personal website while being provably nonfactual.”
Lord Bourgeoisie’s has created a textbook example of the straw man fallacy vis-à-vis the assertion that Lord Monckton claimed that he was a Nobel Laureate. Let’s review what actually happened – just like Mr. Hadfield does but through the video media.
Here’s is the text of the Nobel Laureate claim, as it was presented on the “Science & Public Policy Institute” (SPPI) web site for a number of months in 2011:
“[Lord Monckton’s] …contribution to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 – the correction of a table inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise – earned him the status of Nobel Peace Laureate. His Nobel prize pin, made of gold recovered from a physics experiment, was presented to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York, USA.”
Now, if one wishes to accept this assertion at face-value as being the truth (i.e., not a play on words and their meaning), then I suspect they’ll likely accept the Holy Bible or Quran as historically accurate documents, which must be accept at face value as the truth. People with a working knowledge of the AGW debate are readily aware that the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Vice President Al Gore and the UN IPCC for their work on advancing the knowledge of global warming to the peoples of the world – http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/ .
These same people know that Lord Monckton has been an outspoken critic of AGW and the UN IPCC and would laugh heartily if someone believed that the IPCC would acknowledge him as a worthwhile lead, co-lead, author, or contributor of any chapter within any of the IPCC four, assessment reports.
Therefore, the immediate conclusion (again, from those familiar with the AGW debate) is that Lord Monckton is once again poking fun at the IPCC – and possibly the Nobel Committee for their poor peace laureates that year. Of course, one could extrapolate that anyone associated with the IPCC is deserving of the title; the prize was awarded to the organization, but what is that without the people? So, what a wonderful opportunity it was to juxtapose an AGW… denier – Lord Monckton – with the world’s AGW… champion – the IPCC.
Regardless, the Nobel Prize “pin” and it being made from recovered gold are pointed clues to the joke – the Nobel Committee only awards a medal, diploma, and cash prize to the chosen laureate. Again, if one wishes to accept a pin as truth to the Nobel Laureate claim, then I suspect they’ll likely accept a 10-year old wearing a plastic sheriff badge as a legally appointed law enforcement officer.
And lastly, the Nobel prizes are only awarded by the Nobel Committee (based in Norway) and not by an Emeritus Professor in America. This is common knowledge. Thus, the Nobel Laureate claim can only be regarded by someone with a working knowledge of the AGW debate as… a joke. To do otherwise is to question one’s own intelligence.
So, where’s the straw man fallacy in Lord Bourgeoisie’s assertion? Well, the above written claim never appeared on Lord Monckton’s personal web site (whatever that is – a Facebook page?) Rather, it was posted at SPPI’s web site under Lord Monckton’s biography as Chief Policy Advisor. Contrary to popular myth, Lord Monckton does not own SPPI – http://whois.domaintools.com/scienceandpublicpolicy.org . He is the policy advisor to it and posts presentations and articles there, but so do a number of other people, as well.
Thus, it was SPPI (with Lord Monckton’s consent) who was “asserting” the Nobel Laureate status. What is more interesting here is why was such a straw man fallacy advanced against Lord Monckton? Truthfully, Lord Bourgeoisie can only be blamed for parroting the false argument and not creating it. This was one of several fallacies attributed to Lord Monckton during the summer 2012 lead up to the historic climate change vote in Australia. Peter Sinclair at “ClimateCrocks” appears to have been the source behind pushing this fallacious reasoning – http://climatecrocks.com/2011/07/18/monckton-im-a-member-of-parliament-ive-cured-hiv-there-is-no-climate-change/ , which was then embrace by the pro-AGW apologists and spread throughout the blogosphere.
Lord Bourgeoisie rightly urges the reader that, “It would be advisable to take [Lord Monckton’s] presentations with regard to climate change, a field in which he has no formal qualifications, with extreme caution.” I agree, but we must also apply the same level of caution to Mr. Hadfield’s presentations, as well – he also has no formal qualifications. And just because Mr. Hadfield may entreat his readers of having candor on climate change, that does not mean he actually exhibits it. And yet, Lord Bourgeoisie does not advise the reader on adopting such caution with Mr. Hadfield. Why?
“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg,” – Abraham Lincoln.
Paxmax shows himself to be just another misinformed climate alarmist:
“Don’t you guys (Smokey and James Sexton) think it’s pretty silly to call the years 2001-2009 a period of “global cooling” when the trend was just barely deviating from a stand still?”
Cut and paste where I wrote what you put in quotation marks, and where I discussed 2001 – 2009. That sounds like Phil’s false claim that Mann’s original hokey stick chart is still being published by the IPCC.
It is true that the planet’s temperature has been relatively flat for about the past fifteen years while CO2 continues to rise, and that drives the alarmist lemmings into conniption fits. But as I’ve written before, I think natural global warming is still in an uptrend, and until the trend is decisively broken, it will contunue. I also wrote that the warming is entirely beneficial, as is the rise in CO2. There is no verifiable, testable evidence to the contrary.
Before the current warming pause there was natural long term global warming, going back to the LIA. Those attributing that warming to CO2 are engaging in the argumentum ad ignorantium fallacy: “Since I can’t think of any other cause, it must be due to CO2.”
Well, maybe, and maybe not. The fact is that the warming follows the same trend line, both before and after CO2 began to rise. The null hypothesis is the statistical hypothesis that states that if there are no differences between observed and expected data, the alternative hypothesis is falsified. CO2=CAGW is the alternative hypothesis, and the climate null hypothesis has never been falsified because there are no observed differences in trend from the pre-industrial era, which is to be expected if CO2 has little or no effect. As Dr Roy Spencer puts it: “No one has falsified the hypothesis that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability.” The rising long term trend line is well within the parameters of natural variability, therefore the presumption must be that CO2 is inconsequential. William of Ockham would agree.
[Climate charlatan Kevin Trenberth is well aware that the null hypothesis is central to the global warming question, and he also knows that it falsifies his catastrophic AGW. So Trenberth demands: “The null hypothesis should now be reversed, thereby placing the burden of proof on showing that there is no human influence.” Of course, that would put the onus on skeptics to prove a negative, which would completely overturn the scientific method. Too bad for Trenberth, it ain’t gonna happen. The null hypothesis falsifies CAGW, and that, among other uncomfortable facts, will help to derail Trenberth’s grant gravy train – which is why that scientific charlatan is trying to destroy the scientific method.]
The effect of CO2, if any, is too insignificant to measure and thus can be disregarded for all practical purposes. It is a bit player that might cause global T to rise a little. But where’s that missing heat?? And if CO2 doubles, it will still be just a tiny trace gas. Doubling might be important, if we could see any effect from the modern CO2 rise [other than the beneficial increase in agricultural production]. But there is NO “fingerprint of global warming” from CO2 that passes the scientific method. If ΔCO2 caused a measurable, testable T rise, then the question of the climate sensitivity number would be testable. It isn’t.
Paxmax says:
February 10, 2012 at 1:32 pm
Holy mother of….. are some of you entirely incapable of context? You guys blather about a 30 year period and think a decade is an insignificant part of it? It is a 1/3 of your arbitrary 30 year period…… the decadal decline at that time was 0.1° C….. or it reversed 1/5th of the warming seen in the 30 year period. That’s insignificant? Not in my book. But, that’s not the dumbest part of your statement….. you snidely quote me and state, “Drop the comfort blanket, the short series means nothing, remember who said “Look at things in their entirety”? More info: http://sks.to/escalator .”
Pax, did you bother to look at the graph you showed me? Your asking me to grow a pair? Grow a brain and understand the word context. Then move on to trickier ones, like hypocrisy and duplicity. WTF? Do you think time started in 1973? While you’re learning some stuff, you should read my response to Jose about why BEST shouldn’t be used. Then go verify what I stated. Now, I understand you don’t vet stuff before you blather here, so I’ll let you know that SkS’ graph was derived from the BEST data. Further, lol, I don’t have to hold onto the 2001-2009 graph. I’ve shown where we’ve had over 50 and over 70 years of declining or flat temps during increasing CO2. And, I’ve also shown how the temps haven’t raised in the last 15 years. Go back to your escalator and see if you can discern a period of time that showed flat temps for that length of time. You can’t because it isn’t in there. They left that part out. Here’s 50 consecutive years temps didn’t respond to increasing CO2…. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/from:1865/to:1914/trend/plot/best/from:1865/to:1914 That’s using the same data set SkS did to make their misleading graph.
That’s great Pax, can I take it that you will now quite being a hypocrite when people reference time? Or is this going to be just a one time thing? Does this mean we can now have a discussion about arctic ice caps like time didn’t start in 1979? Oh, wait, given what you blathered just prior, you it seems you wont. BTW, you need to vet that data. It isn’t congruent to the aforementioned 10-15%….. you might end up looking as silly with that graph as you have with your others.
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“So, what now James? Move the goal post?” Again, you’ve lost all context. Monckton showed a recent graph showing the icecap bottomed out in 2007. Hadfield even mentions the graph’s time period, then he shows his own graph with his own cherry picked time frame to refute Monckton….. And that’s what I was objecting to. I wasn’t making a statement as to whether or not we’re gaining or losing ice, I was simply pointing out the hypocrisy and duplicity. And, it continues with you and many more people. Pax, because you seem to be a little slow on the uptake, I’ll spell it out for you. All of the graphs and data presented on one side or the other is cherry picked. Every damned bit of it. I’d explain why but you seem to be incapable of understanding other more simple concepts, so I won’t bother to try.
“I’m going to keep going, on topic, possibly in vane hope you’ll learn. Expect more.”
The only thing I’ve learned from you is that you refuse to understand simple language. And, I’ve learned that you’ve wasted a huge amount of my time. I can write volumes about time frames and context until my fingers fall off and you will still not understand.
If you’re going to continue, you may as well just from time to time continue to link to the SkS cherry picked graph used to illustrate how its wrong to cherry pick. Base on an incomplete, land-only, unupdated data base. That will tell me all I need to know from you. You don’t know WTF you’re talking about and you simply parrot without thinking. And apparently reading is a difficulty for you, seeing how, when asked why I don’t use BEST data, I explained almost word for word what I’m telling you. If you would have bothered to attempt to learn something yourself you may have saved yourself from this embarrassment.
[SNIP. -REP]