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:
“If we accept AGW for argument’s sake, then increasing CO2 will be followed with increases in temperature.” Really? The planet does not agree.
There is no discernable temperature trend difference between pre-industrial CO2 levels and current levels. Therefore, the null hypothesis supports the idea that CO2 is an insignificant bit player in global warming.
The current naturally rising temperature trend from the LIA [one of the coldest episodes in the entire 10,700 year Holocene] has happened repeatedly, as even Phil Jones admits. It is becoming increasingly clear that the current rise in temperature over the past few decades and the rise in CO2 is mostly, if not completely, coincidental.
And when the raw BEST data is used, there is no evidence of accelerating warming, despite a ≈40% rise in CO2.
You have a belief system, Jose. I used to believe the same things. But when verifiable facts contradicted my beliefs, I changed my mind. What do you do?
TGB says:
February 11, 2012 at 3:21 pm
Smokey and James Sexton are exactly what I was talking about earlier, ………..
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I’m glad then that I didn’t bother much with what you were blathering. Sometimes I feel like I missed out on some pertinent information or another when I get focused on another part of the thread. I see in your case, I did not. Nearly 700 comments here and you took the time to say you don’t like the way Smokey or I discuss things here. Okay. Noted and I’ll give that all the consideration it deserves.
“humility”
Look it up.”
Indeed. I don’t know if you’ve ever really considered this hero worship you’re engaged in, or if you understand the vast fields of science “climatology” entails. But, even with decades of dedication, you seriously believe climate scientists are the creme de la creme of atmospheric physics, solar physics, chemistry, atmospheric chemistry, hydrology, statistics, ecology, geology, botany, biology, oceanology, paleontology, history, mathematics, programing, database management, meteorology, vulcanology, and a plethora of fields of science I haven’t mention? You honestly believe no one else could possibly have insights that these few scientists may not already posses?
Sis, you don’t know any of us. You don’t know our backgrounds. You don’t know how many years of what field we’ve been engaged in. You called me an academic nobody. And for that, I thank you. You’re right! I left the coddling arms of academia years ago. So, I’m short on humility? Perhaps. In the real world, we don’t get the luxury of being wrong, self-contradictory and duplicitous.
We don’t get to say absurd things like “heat defies physical laws and hides at the bottom of the ocean”. We don’t get to say after 14 years, “Oh crap! Those studies we did didn’t pick up the cold signal!!” Or, “Well, I would have been right about the coal hotting us up if they didn’t start burning coal in China.” or, “the oceans uptake CO2 as their hotting up!”
Everyone of those statements are a paraphrase from one of your heroes who’ve “devoted their lives to it.” ———————– Yeh, I know, I put the paraphrases in quote marks. I’ll respond when the video comes out.
Humbly yours,
James
Jose, it’s getting tedious correcting your statements. I am not going to convince you that CO2 is harmless and beneficial, because you have a belief system that appears to be immune to reason. None of your examples would pass the rigors of the scientific method, therefore they are just opinions. You say:
“Statistics cited by some AGW proponents do show that the weather has seen more out of normal patterns recently. Some would call this evidence.” That is provably wrong. And your discussion of computer models ignores the fact that models are not evidence. They are created by people paid to produce a result, and they are unreliable. [Note in the WUWT sidebar that of all the blogs listed, only one is in the “Unreliable” category.]
To clarify matters, I’ll give you a testable, falsifiable hypothesis to try out. It’s a simple one. Try to falsify it. By “falsify”, I mean according to the scientific method, using testable, empirical, verifiable facts and data. No chains of inferences, models, conjectures or opinions. Facts based on verifiable, un-“adjusted” data only, please:
At current and projected concentrations CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
If you can falsify that clear and straightforward hypothesis, you will be the first to be able to do so. But if, like the others you cannot, then Occam’s Razor says to leave out extraneous variables [such as CO2]; the simplest explanation is almost always the correct explanation: natural climate variability is sufficient to explain all observations, and the null hypothesis remains unfalsified.
Jose_X says:
February 11, 2012 at 5:23 pm
[James Sexton] >>
There is diminishing returns effect, yes, but the amount of extra CO2 increasing in the atmosphere
An analogy would be the Stefan Boltzmann formula. There is diminishing returns on adding new power flux from the point of view of the increases in temperature; however, if we were to add enough power at each step, that would make up for the diminishing returns effect.
=========================================================
Sorry I didn’t get back to you in time. But, yes……. to save on confusion, I say “logarithmic” for the “diminishing returns” and “exponential” for the increase in the rate of increase.
I’d like to thank you for reasoned responses. It’s difficult to have a rational discussion when others continue with the personal assails. It puts one in a “mood”. At any rate, continuing, I think this is a common trap many fall into. As I alluded earlier, this only considers CO2 alone. And, I don’t believe it proper to do so. It doesn’t address many other facets of the CO2 relationships in the atmosphere. Nor its limited relationship to the energy exiting the earth.
First, while most people understand CO2 absorbs IR, they don’t come to acknowledge that CO2 only absorbs a very limited amount of the IR the earth emits. There are 3 bands of the IR spectrum CO2 emits: low intense 2.6, 4.4 and then from about at higher intensity about 14-16 um. The rest passes right through it. 2.6 is meaningless for this consideration. As I stated earlier, H2O also absorbs IR 2.5- 3.5um and then from about 6 um on up….., but, while it does absorb from about 7-13 um, it doesn’t do a very good job of it. Most of the IR in that range goes on out. Again, the 2.5-3.5 is meaningless. It is at a very low intensity and we actually get that same low intensity from the sun as well. http://faculty.icc.edu/easc111lab/labs/labi/waveradi.jpg
So, when we consider these things with the CO2, we see the constraints of the theory. The atmospheric H2o is about 3%-4% …. depending. So, when considering CO2 and its increases, we see that for the most part, increasing a GHG from 350ppm to 400ppm or 560ppm does mean much against 30 parts per thousand. Then we are left with a very low intensity, very narrow band of IR which CO2 will uniquely absorb at about the 4.4um range. So, when we consider the spectrum of the IR being emitted from the earth, CO2 can only capture an almost infinitesimal amount of the total energy being emitted. We could increase atmospheric CO2 by 1000 ppm and it would still be constrained by this IR range.
But, that’s not even the best part of all of this. Remember I stated that H2O doesn’t do a very good job of absorbing the 7-13 um range? Well, nothing else does either. And this is a much more intense range than 4.4. There’s nothing that closes that window. This is where the energy escapes. This is where it always has. CO2 does nothing to it. It’s still letting the energy out just like it did a million years ago, just like its doing today, and just like it will a million years from now.
So, a very small band of low intensity energy gets trapped by CO2 and less than 1/2 of it comes back to earth, so what? There are very great odds it gets bounced back out at a higher frequency, and out it goes at the speed of light. We could have 4000ppm CO2 and it wouldn’t change any of this.
Any reasoned critiques of this would be welcomed.
James
>> “If we accept AGW for argument’s sake, then increasing CO2 will be followed with increases in temperature.” Really?[link] The planet does not agree.[link]
So are you saying AGW doesn’t associate increasing CO2 with a positive “forcing” on temperature? Do you want to look AGW up?
If I didn’t say it before (and I thought I did), let me say that AGW absolutely does not claim that temperatures will rise continually day to day because there are many factors that contribute to the actual temperature (the sun and weather cycles being two major categories). CO2 promotes increases in temp, and this is important because the cycles average out to zero over time.
Of course, we aren’t just talking about surface air temperatures. Oceans acquire heat and the net amount split between the ocean and the air varies (with the oceans pulling in over 95% of total gains).
The cycling of heat between oceans and the atmosphere exists because of “inertia” (think of a spring set into motion even as you move the spring around.. it usually would swing to the opposite end even if you are moving the spring in a way that would neutralize some of that movement).
Cycles are a well studied part of any real system (eg, feedback control engineering). I am sure you have seen the elevator animation/graphic from skepticalscience that shows many cycles within the larger trends.
Picking the latest 2 year period is not going to disprove AGW, as I think you were intending to show.
>> There is no discernable temperature trend difference between pre-industrial CO2 levels and current levels. Therefore, the null hypothesis supports the idea that CO2 is an insignificant bit player in global warming.
No study. No paper. All you show are a few graphs of a few cities .. and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that the values they show are accurate. That picture is ripe for heavy duty cherry-picking.
Why don’t you go back to your favorite graphs of average global temps and show the trends there for that time period? I don’t care about a few cities. We need to see global average temps.
I’ll assume you are arguing in good faith, so please go and replace that link to a few cities with a graph that covers average global temperatures. I’ll come back.
>> The current naturally rising temperature trend from the LIA [one of the coldest episodes in the entire 10,700 year Holocene] has happened repeatedly, as even Phil Jones admits.[link]
I did not see a link to Phil Jones discussion.
What I saw was a graph that shows (your point that there have been similar looking trends and) that this latest upward trend we are on was higher than the two that preceded it in earlier centuries.
I have provided other links (eg, from Wikipedia) that show that temps deviated upwards from solar irradiation levels particularly strongly in the last half century, coinciding with elevated rates of CO2 release.
I did math to show that the CO2 geometric growth in the atmosphere was significantly stronger in the last 50 years of the just finished century than it had been in prior 50 year periods.
>> It is becoming increasingly clear that the current rise in temperature over the past few decades and the rise in CO2 is mostly, if not completely, coincidental.
No study. No paper. No math or physics. You say this just by looking at graphs and extrapolating in your mind into the future.
I can agree with you that there might be cycles working soon to push temps down some before perhaps another strong rise in future years; however, I would think the climate models probably covered the main “forcings”, which would include the sun, so trust that temps won’t pull back down too much based on their projections. Major volcanic activity or changed human behavior might also play a role and deviate from projections. In any case, I think CO2 increases means such cycles will tend to take place at an increasingly upwards offset relative to wherever the trends otherwise would be located. And I do agree that there might be more major physics and effects that climate scientists have yet to account for properly, but that possibility doesn’t make the CO2 effect disappear (unless it was a CO2 neutralizing effect, and it would be interesting to see where that would come from).
>> And when the raw BEST data is used, there is no evidence of accelerating warming, despite a ≈40% rise in CO2.
That bottom graph has a stray point downwards a little past 2010. That value doesn’t appear in any of the other graphs you have shown recently. What gives?
If we remove that point, then the top and bottom graphs appear rather consistent (keep in mind that the scales are different in each graph).
>> You have a belief system, Jose. I used to believe the same things. But when verifiable facts contradicted my beliefs, I changed my mind. What do you do?
In many cases (eg, wrt CO2 and temps), I am not seeing how your evidence supports your claims. I have been indicating this in my replies. I’ll come back tomorrow maybe and see if you address some of the points I brought up.
Jose_X,
Your interminable nitpicking is evidence of your incurable cognitive dissonance. Orwell correctly labeled it “doublethink”. No facts will change your belief system, and I note that you carefully avoid trying to falsify my hypothesis – which, of course, falsifies your alternative hypothesis [I really question whether you even understand the null hypothesis].
Thanx for contributing innumerable inane comments to WUWT’s huge traffic numbers. But really, you’re making no sense. You are just commenting using free association, based on your True Belief in your preposterous and repeatedly debunked CO2=CAGW alarmist conjecture. Sorry you aren’t credible. But not everyone is.
>> “Statistics cited by some AGW proponents do show that the weather has seen more out of normal patterns recently. Some would call this evidence.” That is provably wrong[link]
Since when do deaths vary linearly with strength of weather events? If all else remains equal, then I would expect a strong correlation, but..
Today we have much better (a) medicine, (b) alert and forecasting mechanisms along with transportation and other infrastructure, (c) housing structures, etc.
As an example, look at the Haiti earthquake of not long ago. It was devastating in part because they lacked our modern technology and infrastructure (and more would have died if we hadn’t rushed as much aid as we did). A similar strength earthquake near some major US city would have been much less damaging.. and more so if the city was one that anticipates earthquakes. In 2012, we have a lot more experiences knowing when and where to expect earthquakes, so we have raised our standards where the locality demands it.
Here is a googled example of what I had in mind as concerns more extreme variations: http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
>> And your discussion of computer models ignores the fact that models are not evidence.
Models provide testable points. If the data points are realized (ie, if the test passes once we enter the future), that serves as a body of evidence. We have some amount of this evidence for past years since we first developed some of these climate models.
Our ability to test and prod the planet’s atmosphere is limited for obvious reasons, but the models are based on a lot of accepted physics. There is a core that was adopted from weather forecasting models, and other parts have been added to model CO2 and other parts using accepted physical theories based on observations.
>> I’ll give you a testable, falsifiable hypothesis to try out… At current and projected concentrations CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere… then Occam’s Razor says to leave out extraneous variables [such as CO2]; the simplest explanation is almost always the correct explanation: natural climate variability is sufficient to explain all observations, and the null hypothesis remains unfalsified.
That is not a null hypothesis at least for the reason that we can’t observe it. There is no data to consider. It lies in the future and you are asking the question today. When the future does arrive, we might find Armageddon, for example.
I would like to be able to say more concerning the null hypothesis and Occam’s Razor (eg, to give an analogy), but I am tired and also would probably want to first carefully read the Wikipedia pages on those. I do think I am correct in saying what I just stated in the paragraph above.
Now for a few zzzz.
.. wait, let me say that many climate models/formulas skeptics have derived to predict future temperatures would probably pass a few test points in the upcoming years (unless the model was very aggressive, eg, http://www.skepticalscience.com/year-after-mclean-review-of-2011-global-temperatures.html ). The temperature likely won’t change too too much in the upcoming 10 years, but where the projections differ significantly is as we move out a few decades into the future.
zzzzz….
Yes, TGB, you’re seeing exactly what I also suspected when I said this: “I’m more interested in observing how Mr. Monckton attempts to defend the indefensible, and exactly how tightly Mr. Monckton’s acolytes can affix their blinders before the blood actually stops.” (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/11/monckton-responds-to-potholer54/#comment-887580). While Mr. Monckton has offered no real attempt at a rebuttal so far, I’d judge James Sexton and Smokey neck-and-neck for the lead in exhibiting the most dangerously tightly affixed blinders, while Tom Murphy remains about two lengths behind. If I were forced to choose the “leader”, tho’, I’d give the nod to James Sexton based on the content of his posts. For Example, re: Mr. Monckton’s comments on correlation of CO2 levels and global temperature:
1) The beginning of this clip ==> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpF48b6Lsbo shows Mr. Monckton speaking to a graphic that supposedly provides concrete evidence that there’s been no correlation between CO2 levels and temperature over the past 500+ million years. That’s followed by Mr. Hadfield thoroughly debunking that deception referencing the research of one of the scientists Mr. Monckton’s own graphic, Dr. R.A. Berner, as well as research from another scientist, Dr. Dana Royer. … The hybrid graphic that Mr. Monckton presented didn’t take into account the change in TSI over time.
2) After being called out by Mr Hadfield in his videos, Mr Monckton replied in the WUWT thread entitled “Monckton answers a troll” (here ==> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/18/monckton-answers-a-troll/) where he does a monumental position shift (“Monckton Maneuver”, in Mr Hadfield’s terms) by stating the following:
“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.”
3) In this thread Mr. Monckton curiously re-addresses this very same issue by backing off of his previous “Monckton Maneuver” (I think he may have forgotten about his previous maneuver) with this comment, as seen above:
“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.”
4) And then we have James Sexton using the same debunked graphic to disprove CO2/Temp correlation … here, and elsewhere ==> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/11/monckton-responds-to-potholer54/#comment-888142 … this, as if he never knew the graphic and point were debunked, even though he claimed to have viewed Mr. Hadfield’s videos.
This all falls under the category of “If it weren’t so sad it’d be funny”.
Jose_X,
“A debate can end quickly if *either* side can provide decent evidence.”
And the reason there is still a lot of scientific controversy is that neither side has. If we are agreed on that, then, watch out, you are skeptic. But the issue won’t be settled by debate. The true consensus is that CO2 increases make the climate warmer, and there is also a consensus that we don’t know by how much. There is also a consensus that the direct effects of CO2 doubling will amount to only about 1 to 1.2 degrees C, and that sensitivity in that range is less than natural variation and will not be enough of a concern to justify considerable concern or sacrifice. So the central issue in the science is what the net feedback to CO2 forcing is, the concern about possibly dire consequences requires sensitivities in the 2 to 6 degrees C range during the fossil fuel era, which won’t go on for very many more centuries, because after that the forcing naturally reduces on its own. There is not good model independent evidence that net feedback is positive in the current climate regime. There is not a consensus on whether models are good evidence yet.
Most of the other issues that have been discussed here are side shows to the actual scientific issues. The flattening of the warming curve, the opportunity to study solar activity in an extreme activity range, and political propaganda conspiracies keep things interesting. Nature herself may resolve the issue, the longer the warming can stay in a relative pause despite continuing CO2 forcing increases, the more suggestive it is of lower climate sensitivity and a dominance of natural variation. If the sun goes into a Dalton or Maunder minimum and we don’t actually get some decent cooling within a decade or two, would be a feather in the cap of higher sensitivity. to CO2. Models that provide insight into multi-decadal and other climate modes and start fitting the observations to within 0.1W/m^2 or better necessary to attribute a 0.58 W/m^2 energy imbalance with any credibility could also end up being decisive.
Some people have requested proof about CO2 being bad. Ocean acidification was cited as a possible “bad’ consequence with the reply to this being that we haven’t the tools necessary to measure pH accurately.
From http://funwithkrill.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/how-do-we-measure-ocean-acidification.html “Thanks to the analytical improvement in the 1990’s, we are able to measure seawater pH precisely to the 3rd – 4th decimal place (±0.0004 pH units) based on the colorimetric principle.”
This blog appears to state that ocean acidification IS in fact happening: “Our measurements have to be good and long enough for us to say for sure that ocean acidification is happening.”
This is direct, verifiable, measurable science, not unsubstantiated claims.
There are consequences of this acidification and, considering the world’s population relies on the oceans for a good part of its food supply, perhaps we should take heed of this negative consequence more. Check out http://www.oceanacidification.net/ for more.
JohnK,
Yes ocean acidification is a potential negative, there is some natural variation in pH from place to place. The fears that organisms won’t be able to form calcium based shells and structures don’t seem to be born out yet, with some evidence that some organisms might actually do better Most attempts to attribute coral issues to acidification and warming alternately get shown to be temporary and due to other causes. I don’t think there is any reason yet, to assume that ocean life forms are not robust to this kind of change. Their metabolisms are active and don’t seem to leave concentrating of calcium and magnesium to chance.
JohnK says:
February 11, 2012 at 10:50 pm
Some people have requested proof about CO2 being bad. Ocean acidification was cited as a possible “bad’ consequence with the reply to this being that we haven’t the tools necessary to measure pH accurately.
From http://funwithkrill.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/how-do-we-measure-ocean-acidification.html “Thanks to the analytical improvement in the 1990’s, we are able to measure seawater pH precisely to the 3rd – 4th decimal place (±0.0004 pH units) based on the colorimetric principle.”
==========================================================
Hi John, I think that was covered here a while back, or something similar. I think the biggest problem people have, is 1), no one has shown how a slight drop in Ocean pH is harmful. And 2) the confinement of the measurements.
As you know, the oceans’ currents move water around quite a bit. These measurements are from just a small part of the ocean. The ocean’s pH isn’t uniform. So, if you were to take a measurement one day and then come back and see that the pH has dropped a couple of thousandths or so, it’s difficult to derive any meaning from it. Where did that particular part of water come from? If the currents had carried it from a river flowing into the ocean then we would expect it to be slightly lower. I believe there may also be a relationship between pH and temps. And in many areas there would likely be seasonal differences as well.
But, here’s the crux of the difficulty I have with all of this. We’re told oceans absorbing CO2 will become less alkaline. Ok, maybe, the ocean has some wonderful mechanisms to deal with CO2. But, I can see the logic in this. We are also told the very same CO2 is warming the world, including ocean temps. But, then it has also been stated that warm oceans outgas CO2. The very same CO2 that was absorbed and making the oceans less alkaline, gets outgassed . You see the problem with this?
Mr Hadfield has a new video up which covers the recent headlines about Himalayan glaciers. He does something remarkable and reads the original paper: – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJSA0iZ_xeA
Jim Cornelius,
FYI, The 1000 cubic miles of ice melted over the eight years, amounts to about 15cm of sea level rise by the year 2112 (100 years). Of course, this would be an addition to sea level rise from thermal expansion.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281000+cubic+miles+%2F+area+of+the+oceans+%29+*+100+%2F+8
James Sexton says:
February 11, 2012 at 8:48 am
Pax: I have probably interpreted your post wrong here and there, for that I am sorry, but you are doing the darndest to evade the topic =o)
On topic though: potholer and Monckton are having a discussion on the sematics used -you(James Sexton) disliking arguments over semantics is irrelevant, it’s the scope of the topic!
John, let’s try to stick to simple questions, on topic.
James Sexton said:
Pax says: No, we can’t discuss an 1/2-1 hour presentation as a whole. First off, It’s impossible in this format, second it’s off topic. the best strategy is to break it down to sizeable bits that still conveys the message within.
I’ll do my best to pose simple questions, I do not care for others misrepresentation, we are discussing Christopher Monckton’s.
@John Sexton: Question 1. Is stuffing a presentation with gross misrepresentations OK as long as one understand his general opinion about the GW?
Monckton is precisely on the skewer for his inability in understanding or representing the message of others! Goodness me, it will be long winded but let’s get your CONTEXT.
Here, Monckton has just changed the subject, so this is a new chapter at page 21, from one of Monckton’s pdf presentations:
(Page 21)Moncktons slide headline announced: If the threat is real, why need They lie?
(some of) Moncktons slide text body:
Moncktons next slide(p.22) headline announced:We’re all gonna lie!
To me that implies to me that persons mentioned or depicted are liars. That was enough context, now the problem:
Moncktons slide text body [Talking about Sir John Houghton]:
@Paxmax: You totally screwed up the formatting you clutz.
Martin Lewitt,
Thanks for debunking the pothole propaganda. He is a clever conniver, and an asset to the unthinking alarmist lemmings. But is it science according to the scientific method? Obviously not. It is cherry-picked character assassination that avoids the scientific questions, which are the central issues in the debate over CAGW. Pothole cannot refute the science, so he attacks the messenger.
Jose_X: You are overwhelming me. I’m here to educate, and happy to do so. But please take one point at a time. I’ll not respond to numerous nitpicking comments, when the answers are found in the WUWT archives, where there are dozens of articles and thousands of comments answering your questions. I stand by what I post. Read the comments that explain the science by using the WUWT keyword function. If you don’t know how to do that, let me know, and I’ll walk you through the process.
You appear to have a basic ability to understand the issues, and if you are not playing games here, I think you can eventually learn what is true and what is not. That ability will make you a scientific skeptic in short order, because the runaway global warming scare is based entirely on fact-free conjecture. It is a story, nothing more.
But by arguing every point I raise and agreeing with none, maybe you’re just trolling. Time will tell. So take it one point at a time. I’m happy to educate, if you’re sincere. And really, if you can, try to falsify my hypothesis that CO2 is harmless and beneficial, using the criteria I set out. I’ve tried myself, and I can find no credible evidence that it isn’t a valid hypothesis.
Jim Cornelius says:
“Mr Hadfield has a new video up which covers the recent headlines about Himalayan glaciers. He does something remarkable and reads the original paper.”
And that is precisely what he should do, if he wishes to be informed – unlike his usual suspects he flashed across the screen (Fox News and the Daily Mail for starters). Once again, though, he dismisses the relevance of a 63 billion tonne difference (-10.5%) from where the ice loss should be at this time. This also translates into a melt rate 30% less than the previous ice melt studies spanning the same time period. Given their statistical significance, these data should be incorporated into the total population of data available to climate models because, clearly, they have failed to align with actual observations (temperature wise anyway but that variable does directly impacts ice melt).
However, Mr. Hadfield diligently posits, “Now, it’s okay to run with this headline because it is a significant piece of news. For scientists, the fact that the fact that the world is warming and ice is rapidly melting is old news, and indeed, the study wasn’t supposed to be evidence of global warming. Its purpose was to look at how much sea level rise could be expected from this ice melt.”
This is another example of his employing fallacious logic – the straw man argument in this case. The critics Mr. Hadfield cited did not use the “Nature” article as evidence of global warming. Rather, they referenced it appropriately as evidence that the ice melt rate (and indirectly sea level rise) was less than previously estimated. Recall that this is the very ‘thing” that Mr. Hadfield dismisses by omission to focus on the skeptics’ silliness of highlighting the Himalayan surprise.
I encourage the reader to view how Fox News reported the article and determine if Mr. Hadfield’s concern is correct in that the reporting is slanted vis-à-vis the Himalayan glacier ice melt data. But with the inclusion of text such as, “[Jonathan] Bamber was quick to caution that the new study doesn’t alter his view that the climate is changing, and rapidly. ‘This new study doesn’t change our view of the risks and threats from climate change,’ he said in an online chat at the Guardian. ‘What it does do is improve our knowledge of the recent behavior of one part of the climate system,’” I’m hard-pressed to understand his concern (i.e., much ado about nothing) – http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/09/himalayan-glaciers-have-lost-no-ice-in-past-10-years-new-study-reveals/#ixzz1mAo0ZWVi .
In the end, though, Mr. Hadfield leaves the skeptical viewer with the “puzzling” question of, “What on earth could be causing [1,000 cubic miles of ice to melt between 2003 and 2010]?” He’s disingenuous in posing this question because Mr. Hadfield knows their response; it’s climate change – a process readily accepted by skeptics; it’s the primary driver of that change that results in differences. A more accurate and helpful question (to the debate) could have been, “Given that the rate of ice melt isn’t as large as previously thought, where can the models be improved to better reflect the observational data?” But alas, he did not ask this – because as a good journalist (with a melodious speaking voice, too) Mr. Hadfield has an agenda and we are his audience to sway.
The original conveyed message and quote was entirely different.
Sir John Houghtons original:
“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.”
===================================================================
Ok, if English is your second language then some of this makes sense. In the states, we have a similar quote we can compare this to…….
You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid. — Rahm Emanuel
Both of them mean essentially the same thing. Paraphrasing with quotes, — “We’re going to scare the crap out of you in order to manipulate you into accepting rules and laws you would otherwise not tolerate.” If you don’t see how this is dishonest, then I’m not the one that needs felt sorry for.
Answer me this, what does the qualifier “so in short” mean to you? Did you read Monckton’s explanation? But, again, all of this is a trivial semantic discussion which does everything it can to avoid the most obvious of recent historical facts! This is exactly what the alarmists have done!
Heat waves….. global warming….. unbearable killing cold fronts—- climate change, floods, droughts, snow, tornadoes….. all disasters. All blamed on CAGW/CC/Climate weirding…. what ever. The best part is they pretend this stuff never happened before. And there is no real attribution that can be tied to CAGW and the natural disasters.
So, maybe, because I don’t have the video clips of Houghton which caused him to back off of his law suit threats….. maybe Monckton used the quote marks wrong… maybe. But, he was/is exactly right in the meaning and execution of the thought Houghton expressed.
But, here’s some comedic relief for you. While we’re concentrating on the minutia, and expecting perfect attribution, punctuation,……….ad nauseum…. @John Sexton <———— who's he?
You see, now I could jump up and down and froth at the mouth and whatever, but I know what you meant, or more specifically to who you were writing.
But, Pax, we've done this over and over and over, again. I have stated, in essence, that Monckton probably wasn't technically and precisely correct in some of these matters. But, he was and has been correct in the meaning conveyed. Which is fine if you want to jump up and down about it, but when I and several others point out the blatant hypocrisy, it's met with chirping cricketts.
Pax, again, I'm not interested in pursuing this line any further. You're not ever going to see the dichotomy you hold. And, I've got my own blog to run. You should pop by.
Best wishes,
James
Jack Greer says:
February 11, 2012 at 10:19 pm
4) And then we have James Sexton using the same debunked graphic to disprove CO2/Temp correlation … here, and elsewhere ==> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/11/monckton-responds-to-potholer54/#comment-888142 … this, as if he never knew the graphic and point were debunked, even though he claimed to have viewed Mr. Hadfield’s videos.
========================================================
Lmao, thanks Jack! You caused me to go back and look. As you can imagine, anyone engaged in this discussion has read innumerable papers, watched countless videos, and worked out many people’s opines. When I was younger, I had quite a memory, but as I age, I learn to remember the mildly important stuff and mentally flush tripe. If you don’t find Hadfield’s analogy of CO2 to a home furnace laughably vapid and incorrect, I’d suggest you go find a different favorite topic to worry about. Perhaps, there’s a blog which discusses something more your speed, like a celebrity gossip blog or something.
So, CO2 is a heat source? That’s prolly why I bothered to commit that to memory…. I was too busy laughing. Thanks Jack…… I’ll probably remember from now on!
@James Baldwin Sexton said February 12, 2012 at 8:22 am
I accept your non-response to the issue as admission that the graphic you presented, multiple times, doesn’t mean what you confidently thought it did … just like Mr. Monckton. Thanks for owning up.
When Jose_X posted Mr. Hadfield’s video #3 for you to reply to re: the glacier issue, I thought you’d eventually watch it as that video starts immediately by displaying your formerly favorite graphic. Great, now watch the rest.
Evidence of whether what Lord Monckton attributed to Sir John Houghton is a misrepresentation of his motives, rather than just a misquote, would be whether Sir Houghton does seem to exagerate or hype beyond the evidence. There is something that indicates that he does, his “weapon of mass destruction” essay. He showed little restraint in associating all kinds of extreme events with global warming.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/jul/28/environment.greenpolitics
Jack Greer says:
February 12, 2012 at 9:00 am
@James Baldwin Sexton said February 12, 2012 at 8:22 am
I accept your non-response ……..
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Lol, that wasn’t a non-response….. you guys really do have a comprehension difficulty…… CO2 is nothing like a furnace in your house. It’s a vapid analogy and the only response is to laugh and move on. Defend it if you want Jack, but there’s really nothing to address. Well, sure, there is the cherry picking of time intervals, but we’ve covered the hypocrisy and duplicity ground already. Go try that insipid sophistry on a 12 y/o. It doesn’t work with grown-ups.
Yes, one must have the ability to think conceptually to understand Mr. Hadfield’s point. Others prefer to cling to the tactic of deflecting diversion. Just as with all of your graphics presented to supposedly disprove the correlation between CO2 and temperature, the response revolves around the requirement to consider all factors at play.
Keep working at it, James. Even tho’ it’s “all sciencey and that”, the concept of statistical significance isn’t really that difficult to grasp.
It seemed to have worked just fine on you. I don’t know what that means about your age, chronologically or mentally. Are you still defending the overlayed Scotese/Berner graphic as clear evidence of the lack of correlation between CO2 & temp?
@ur momisugly James Sexton: To be totally different from you I actually answer resonable questions: -Yes, I read Moncktons response and as usual he doesn’t explain anything. The libel thingy -a simple distraction. The Sunday Telegraph 1995 article has the correct quote, the false quote appeared appeared online and Monckton probably just ate it all up and then added some more.
Sir John Houghton: “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.”
A more correct “in short” version of Sir John Houghton’s quote would be:
“Only after a disaster will humans make a good policy, because we are hard to convince”
Sir John Houghton commented the actual state of the human condition, not his intent, but you can’t see it, can you?
Monckton’s bastardisation of the actual quote has added malicious intent which never was there to begin with. Rahm Emanuel’s quote -offtopic.
James Sexton says: “…maybe Monckton used the quote marks wrong… maybe”
Pax says: No! not “maybe” He definitely got it wrong. Monckton has a degree and background in journalism -he should know how important it is fact checking is! The quotes don’t line up and Monckton didn’t make references to him paraphrasing Sir Houghton, he kept using rhetoric as “Houghton said”.
James Sexton says: But, he [Monckton] was/is exactly right in the meaning and execution of the thought Houghton expressed. [and] ..he was and has been correct in the meaning conveyed.
Pax says: So you think Monckton is a mind reader too? Otherwise how would he get it exact? Oh, that speaks volumes about you, those comments right there is RICH in information.
I’ll write that down as “Yes, James Sexton thinks it’s OK to grossly misrepresent or fabricate quotes to prove an overall point”
James Sexton said: “here’s some comedic relief for you”
Thx! You where actually on the right track there! =o)
James added: “And, I’ve got my own blog to run. You should pop by Best wishes, James”
Thx, but no thx, the way you interpret the information conveyed to you is very repugnant.
Tata… /Paxmax