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
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Rational Db8 (used to post as Rational Debate) says:
February 13, 2012 at 6:05 am
re post by: James Sexton says: February 13, 2012 at 5:49 am
Well crap….. that html doesn’t play here…… trying again….. y=a^x suffices but a could = x and x could equal n^x Which is enough to describe the double exponential and whatnot, save for the factorials….. but then x could = n! ….. so then what? 🙂
All fun and games, except as far as I understand it, thus far an exponential curve fits the data just fine without any problems. In other words, CO2 increase has been and appears likely to stay exponential. This “faster than exponential” comes out of the blue and has no basis in the CO2 increase reality. Frankly it sounds as if it was tossed in just to be a bit of a scaremonger.
========================================================
Agreed…… was having a bit of fun with our new friend Jose. I’m waiting for the ultra-super-duper exponential.
Rational Db8 (used to post as Rational Debate) says:
February 13, 2012 at 5:46 am
Where does it state that “hard copy snail mailed signatures were obtained for all signatories”.
and in relation to your point regarding “true” climatologist, the expectation is that they have published a peer reviewed paper on climate change. There really is no exception to this.
Jose_X,
LIndzen is assessing the transient climate sensitivity, the 2xCO2 figure is just a standard way in the field of scaling a watt-temperature relation. I haven’t revisited the paper, but I doubt he did projections other than to use the generally accepted implications for different sensitivities at the expected CO2 doubling about the year 2100. The actual sensitivity to CO2’s watts may be quite different from radiation with different spatial and chemical coupling to the climate. In fact, in a nonlinear system, such a coincidence would be a surprise.
Lindzen’s reference to his earlier work, was because that work was an earlier treatment of the same analysis that received some criticism in part, and there is no need to repeat the parts he is citing in the new paper.
Yes, nearly all science is model based, but mathematical and statistical models are often more transparently reviewable in the literature (with cooperation from the authors), than are the type of numerical discretizations and parameterizations of physics, computational models that take CPU-years to run that barely avoid being as complex as the climate itself. When “model” is used unqualified in the climate sensitivity literature, it usually refers to these kind of models, and model-independent usually refers to analyses not using such models.
regards
Is there a reason why barely any of my comments get posted?
[every comment has been posted . . kbmod]
Werner Brozek, I do think sequestering research is a great idea, but obviously it would not be used if it didn’t reach an economical level that scaled well and could dent the release rate. Trying to break from the climate wars, the whole idea of having new sources of energy is something few people could dislike.
Rational Db8, I don’t know the latest on the 2^15 sigs. Mostly, I agree with you and others who want to focus on the science and not the letters after people’s names. Yes, lot’s of research is done by grad students. Einstein (man, we love to milk this guy’s name) had published 3 of his 4 papers of 1905 before he was even awarded his PHD (at least if I got the dates down right from Wikipedia last time I checked). Part of the problem is that despite this point, most people who care about this topic aren’t comfortable with more advanced physics/math (many who contribute to climatology also aren’t since they work in less mathematical areas), so we can’t debate to deeply on forums.
On “faster than exponential”: Well, the letters/variables you use are arbitrary. When I state y=k^x, for example, I was trying to communicate things I didn’t say, such that k is a constant, x is the time domain (in this case), and y is temperature. Faster than exponential just means that if we try to model the growth, “each” following unit step in time implies a higher rate than the “instantaneous” rate up to that point. In other words, if we appeared to be growing at a rate of 5% per 50 years, now we are going faster.. so no single exponential function (constant base value and variation in a linear function of x) would match that approximately and then keep up. Again, I am being loose and not mathematically or scientifically precise (which, for measurement data would require error analysis, etc). The point was just to show that the logarithmic value is going up some, and I think “faster than exponential” can convey that point (if we understand what I mean with those words). That’s all here.
Rational Db8>> thus far an exponential curve fits the data just fine without any problems.
You would really help me understand what you mean if you could provide a rough exponential function that matches data.
I don’t expect the increasing rate to continue forever, but at least try to answer this. What exponential function roughly explains the rates we had from 1850-1900, as well as for each following 50 year period and then for the last 12 years? The only way you can get an answer is to pick something in between and stretch out some error bars.
I am not routing against you here. I am curious to see your answer. We can keep it in mind (yeah, right) over the upcoming 2 or 3 decades.
My best guess if I wanted to come up with one rate of growth would be to pick something close to where we are now, add in enough error bars to cover the slow periods of the past century, and hope that the future rate would soon slow down to get back to this rate I picked.
Rational Db8>> The AGW hypothesis doesn’t even rise to the level of a theory yet .. Popper…falsifiability.. verifiable, and repeatable
AGW may never meet that standard by the nature of the beast. That doesn’t invalidate the value in such an observation. And many sciences work towards “answering” questions in a way that would fall into this realm. You can’t go back in time to see things as they were then. You may not call them “hard” sciences or “Popperful” sciences, but they share much with sciences you would call hard sciences. I am not attracted to these sciences by nature, but I do recognize that real analysis goes on to gain insight into important questions.
>> the 7 eminent physicists skeptical of AGW alarm, including a great video of Dyson himself
I read Dyson’s remark and heard his interview at the bottom of that page, and those views strike me as a fair assessment of someone from his position. He took a moderate skeptical tone. That is more than fair.
For the record, he stated: “But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in.”
The video then goes on about how we appear to be focused too much on modelling compared to data gathering of ecosystems, etc.
I think a lot of work is being done to gather data on biological systems. You do realize that he almost seems to be supporting the idea that more money should be invested to help improve our understanding. I have come across this before. A normal skeptic reaction is to say that we don’t know enough, and the only real solution to that, if we think the question is an important one to understand better, is to invest more time and energy on research to try to answer those sorts of questions.
I don’t know what is a fair level of federal research dollars. I hardly think about that issue. I am sure a lot of research is done by private firms, whether or not they publish those results. I do think it is interesting that the “skeptic side” can’t possibly be a homogenous group because the questions posed and possible reasonable solutions vary wildly across the board (eg, from increasing funding because we know so little to the fact many appear to want much less funding to go here possibly saying that no amount could ever be enough).
>> 100 prominent scientists including Nobel winners and IPCC lead authors who wrote the U.N. warning against ‘Futile’ climate control efforts
If you wanted to play the numbers game, we just have to look at the several thousands (I think this estimate is accurate, but I haven’t personally checked) of scientists who signed on to the IPCC report and didn’t complain.
I would even suggest that someone like Dyson would support we take action on this issue.. just listen to the video and read his comment. .. so that is at least one Nobel Prize winner in support … wait wait, it seems Dyson has never been awarded a Nobel Prize..
Wikipedia > Although Dyson has won numerous scientific awards, he has never won a Nobel Prize, which has led Nobel physics laureate Steven Weinberg to state that the Nobel committee has “fleeced” Dyson. Dyson has said that “I think it’s almost true without exception if you want to win a Nobel Prize, you should have a long attention span, get hold of some deep and important problem and stay with it for 10 years. That wasn’t my style.”
Rats, but there probably are others. Without a Nobel Prize, the argument has NOTHINGK! HAAAAA.
>> Add eminent professor Harold Lewis
Yes, he wrote a scathing letter indeed, and I don’t want to downplay his complaints too much.
For what it’s worth (and it has got to be worth something), the other side of the coin is that there is a very large number of eminent scientists who didn’t write any such letter and don’t share those views.
>> 900+ peer reviewed research papers supporting skeptical arguments
I suspect a fair number of those offer good skepticism. If “the AGW side” wanted to put up a list, they probably could come up with a much larger number.
Anyway, I looked at the first paper on the list. It is a compilation of 18 proxies. The point was to show how hot it was during MWP. Of course, why were those 18 picked of the hundreds of proxy reconstructions that exist? Most people would say that Mann took a more reasonable (if “at least somewhat flawed”) approach by looking at a very much larger selection and using well defined objective criteria for selection and reconstruction.
In fact, Mann released the source code and certainly opened the research up to scrutiny. I do hear an awful lot about how closed off these climate science guys are. [Has Spencer’s team released the source code to their satellite data analysis computer programs?]
If I wanted to judge those 18 by the cover of the book, I would say that besides being a small number very likely cherry-picked, it can easily include research difficult to reproduce and funded by sources hostile to AGW. If you pick data points that lie 3 sigma away from the mean, you can misrepresent the curve very well indeed. Hockey Stick meet The Quasimodo.
[I left the above at “at least somewhat flawed” for a lack of having had time to study the issue better. I respect the observations McIntyre made, but I think he focused on creating doubt and not on giving an estimate of likelihood of error. I think, once again, the answer lies somewhere in between.]
>> 31,000+ scientists disavowing AGW
>> Over 700 scientists worldwide disavowing AGW signed onto USA Senate report
I would like to see more than just the equivalent of 2% of those 31,000 put their name where it really counts.
I should add that “exponential” means something like constant rate of growth.
It’s cheating to make x a function of say x^2, x!, etc., and still call it exponential. For I can then just call everything “linear” since whatever I pick can just be multiplied by a constant (even by just 1) with some random added component (eg, .0001 or even 0). The definitions of these names tie the behavior of the function to the independent variable (the x-axis variable) in order to prevent this sort of ambiguity.
Here, just use this definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth , except that within the context of CO2 I am only assuming positive growth rates (no exponential decays, in other words.. at least not today).
I have had numerous comments not posted, at least five on this article and many more on others. Why did you not post my comment regrinding Moncktons Al Gore referral?
Often Joel Shore puts a spin on his comments that is easily deconstructed. So for those wondering who is being factual here, this page will provide the answer.
Isn’t Joel’s comment just like the typical alarmist response? More than thirty one thousand professionals with degrees in the hard sciences, over 9,000 of them with PhD’s, signed a clear statement that CO2 is harmless and beneficial to the biosphere. But instead of trying to falsify that statement [which neither Joel Shore nor anyone else has ever been able to credibly accomplish], Joel gives his uncited opinion that a couple of names out of 31,000+ were faked – not realizing that it is his cohorts who were being dishonest. And those names were promptly culled from the list, still leaving over 31,000 scientists and engineers stating unequivocally that CO2 is harmless and beneficial.
More information on the Petition is available here. Anyone with a degree in the hard sciences can download the petition, sign it, and mail it in. [I understand that this disqualifies “major 9985”, but the petition is limited to professional scientists and engineers.]
“the insubstantiality of Hadfields allegations” Have you not watched the videos Monckton? The proof is in the podding with over 20 identified mistakes made by you, which have all been documented and debunked by Hadfield.
Al Gore clearly gives examples of how the ocean is warming underneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (which is only a fraction of the whole Antarctica) and that this could increase melting. He also points out the increasing numbers of moulins in Greenland which posses a real risk of large sections of ice receding into the ocean. He gives no time frames for when this melting could happen but his explanations for the melting are both based on rapid time frames. This is a far cry from Monckton’s continuous mistakes.
This does appear to be a mistake made by Al Gore, he says all the people of some nations in the pacific, but it is not that bad, only small numbers of people are moving from these islands at present. So mistakes made by Al Gore 1 vs Monckton over 2o. And let’s not forget all the Monckton manoeuvres that Hadfield pointed out.
Al Gore does not give a reference to the scientific paper that explains after the last ice age the conveyor stopped, but he does explain that it could not happen today but points to Greenland as a possible source of water to stop it again. But that is it.
Al Gore never says “an exact fit” in the documentary, unless someone can show me that it was said, I put this down to another one of Moncktons mistakes. But CO2 and temperatures do correlate, CO2 is the driver of ice ages when instigated by Milankovitch cycles which Al Gore somewhat explains by says the relation is very complicated.
Due to the uncertainties of why Kilimanjaro is declining it cannot be seen as wrong to attribute it to global warming when so many other areas similar are melting due to it. I do think Al Gore could have pointed out that the science is not settled on that mountain yet, but at the end of the day, the extra warming must be playing a part in the melting. Again these points made by Monckton do not come close to his mistakes proven by Hadfield.
Al Gore is talking about precipitation trends and has moved on from talking about catastrophic result of global warming. He shows that parts of Africa are in draught, but clearly states there are many reasons for the problems in these areas. He then talks about Lake Chad which has dried up but he states that this is only making the other problems worse. He never says it is due to global warming. If only it was this easy for Monckton supports to back up all of his mistakes.
Al Gore explains that warming oceans will drive stronger Hurricanes and uses Katrina as an example of a Hurricane that moved over a warm ocean and became more powerful. He never states it was due to global warming. Just because the documentary is about global warming does not mean everything explained in it is solely caused by global warming, Katrina was an example of the sorts of dangers we can experience. These are nitpicks of Al Gore’s documentary not to be mistaken for the mistakes made by Monckton.
Again Gore does not claim that the polar bears deaths are due to global warming, but he says it is the first recording of it happening, and that we should be concerned due to the reducing of sea ice in the Arctic. The truth is if there was more sea ice in the arctic these bears may have not drowned.
At Least Monckton used the words “other factors” because that explains itself, global warming is expected to put pressure on coral reefs, Gore is meant to explain that to people.
Hadfield explains in many videos that Al Gores cleaver play on words distorts the truth in his documentary, but for Hadfield to make a video about it would not prove Al Gore wrong but mealy be pointing out his cleaver play on words. It would be a waste of time pointing out what I have just explained. They are not mistakes at all and to even compare them to Monckton is outrageous.
Smokey says:
February 10, 2012 at 1:27 pm
“The debate is if climate sensitivity is positive or negative.”
I was not talking about this Monckton article, I was referring to your constant points about CO2 being plant food. I am lost to understand why you keep on with that statement when you know this is about greenhouses gases. But when you refer to Spencers papers as fine and dandy I can see why you think the science is settled and move on to the debate that CO2 is a plant food. I also clearly state the values I referenced are from a doubling of CO2 and when I refer to positive or negative I mean more or less positive. But I see how you tackle this debate, “it is unmeasurable”, we should all stick our heads in the sand then shouldn’t we. Then you list all the skeptical papers that show the lowest possible sensitivity and claim the IPCC is lying to us. But don’t they know CO2 is a planet food!! And that all their findings which point to a warmer planet being bad is wrong!! And your other point regarding increased CO2 in the oceans, you claim to have read the links you referenced but you seem to have missed the key point “The increase in CO2 is making the ocean, not more corrosive, but more neutral.” Of cause the oceans are becoming more acidic, it is a term used to explain that the pH is moving towards the acidic side. But this is the type of pointless misleading information we have to expect from you.
Just one thing about Smokey’s list (the Petition Project) which of course should be considered anecdotal…
I just googled one of the signatories, namely Harendra Sakarlal Gandhi (thought it would yield unambiguous results) to quickly found that he worked for Ford, has a Ph. D. in chemical engineering and invented a system “called Premair, [which] cleans the air by a chemical reaction that destroys ozone (the main component of smog) and carbon monoxide. As air is drawn through a car radiator coated with the company’s platinum-based catalyst, ozone molecules are broken down into oxygen and lethal carbon monoxide is converted into carbon dioxide.
The system would complement catalytic converters in automobiles, which destroy pollutants before they are released, and could add $500 to $1,000 to the price of a car, according to Engelhard.”
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/28/nyregion/an-inventor-in-a-business-suit-with-none-of-the-usual-angst.html
He also died 2 years ago, but despite the stated policy “When we do learn of a death, an “*” is placed beside the name of the signatory” by the petition site, it’s not noted yet.
Smokey says:
February 13, 2012 at 10:19 am
With my terrible spelling I could see why you would not think I had a degree, but with the power of spell check I have acquired an Environmental Science degree and a postgrad in Climate Adaption. But because I have not published a peer reviewed paper on Climate Change I really don’t have the credentials to to be part of a consensus. Not that it would matter, its all in the peer reviewed literature. I have to admit I am finding this link a very interesting read http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html#Climategate
I said >> I respect the observations McIntyre made, but I think he focused on creating doubt and not on giving an estimate of likelihood of error.
What I meant to say is that I *worry* he focused on creating ….
I read some of his blog articles but have not read the papers (although at least one, 05, I think, was rather short).
DaNims,
Thank you for your anecdote. But if that’s the best criticism you can come up with, it shows how very weak your complaint is. It still leaves over 31,000 scientists and engineers who state unequivocally that CO2 is harmless and beneficial.
So in the interest of accuracy, why don’t you inform Dr Robinson that one of the co-signers has died? Robinson will place the appropriate asterisks upon being notified. However, that will not change the original signature.
Art Robinson, the man who had organised the petition, admitted, as reported by the Seattle Times, that “little attempt was done to verify the credentials of those who responded,” and in his own words, stated “When we’re getting thousands of signatures there’s no way of filtering out a fake.”
The petition project is a joke, but I guess they admit many of the signatures and undergrads so at least they are honest about it.
major9985>> “The increase in CO2 is making the ocean, not more corrosive, but more neutral.” Of cause the oceans are becoming more acidic, it is a term used to explain that the pH is moving towards the acidic side.
I don’t know the consequences of this stuff in the ocean or how strong is the effect, but I can point to an analogy.
If your blood was becoming more neutral…. [yippy, hurray, woohoo]
.. it would be becoming more acidic. [boooo]
… and that likely wouldn’t be a good thing if it was happening in a “strong” way, for Wikipedia says, “blood pH is regulated to stay within the narrow range of 7.35 to 7.45, making it slightly alkaline.”
I liked the anecdote by DaNims because it suggests that there might be a lot of scientists or engineers out there who have not studied climate science but for one reason or other don’t think CO2 is a problem and might be willing to sign the petition. That is how I interpret that petition.. for many, a vote of healthy skepticism based on some scientific/engineering background but not much studying of the particular subject at hand.
As concerns the numbers, we could cut it in half and it would still be a significant number. [not to imply it represents a large fraction of the total of such professionals.. who probably number above 1 million just in the US.]
Smokey,
Yes, it’s weak and random. But I’m not gonna google all of them. I did another one though (Arlen Severson) who’s a professor of medicine. Nothing wrong there except of course that anatomy is really far from climate.
I think it’s fair to say that everyone is entitled to their opinion and when you meet the requirements (science degree), you’re entitled to sign this petition. But it still states opinions and without actual thourough understanding of the climate system as we know it, it’s nothing more than that.
The most ‘active’ field in the petition is engineering (9,933 sigs). Atmosphere, Earth, & Environment (3,805) is much less represented.
major9985 says:
“…you would not think I had a degree, but with the power of spell check I have acquired an Environmental Science degree and a postgrad in Climate Adaption. But because I have not published a peer reviewed paper on Climate Change I really don’t have the credentials to to be part of a consensus.”
You have no idea how funny that sounds.
Climate “adaption”? You can’t even spell your degree?? And “consensus”? That’s your goal?? You’re right, I would not think you had a degree. An amusing post none the less.
. . .
DaNims,
M.D.’s can be listed as OISM co-signers, but their underlying degree must be in the hard sciences. No sociologists, English Lit majors, or “_______ Studies” degrees.
I understand that you are trying to denigrate the co-signers as lacking understanding [and which presumes you possess understanding that they do not]. But the OISM co-signers include climatologists, physicists, chemists, geologists, etc., including many internationally esteemed professionals like Dr Edward Teller and Prof Freeman Dyson.
Furthermore, there have been several attempts by the alarmist contingent to organize similar but counter OISM petitions. In total, those counter petitions contain fewer than one-tenth the number co-signing the OISM Petition [and many of the same names appear on the different counter petitions]. So it turns out that the true “consensus” [for whatever that is worth], is heavily on the side of scientific skeptics. In fact, it is a comparatively small clique that is pushing climate alarmism.
Those tens of thousands of co-signers are not stupid. They are highly educated, knowledgeable professionals who understood and agreed with what they were co-signing. Instead of looking for ways to belittle them, maybe you should listen to what they are telling you: CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
. . .
Jose_X,
You need to learn something about the truly immense buffering capacity of the oceans. Atmospheric CO2 cannot cause a measurable change in ocean pH. The oceans contain about 450,000 times more CO2 than the atmosphere does. Do you honestly believe that the 0.00039 fraction of the air that is CO2 can possibly cause “ocean acidification”?
I have seen all related videos, read everything and made myself popcorn! Now, bring me Moncktons reply on Potholers Greenland question and let the game begin!
Smokey,
What was interesting with the Ghandi anecdote was that he had a strong financial interest in whether or not Co2 is seen as harmless or not.
You might have missed the post were I stress that many more have got engineering degrees than atmospheric, climate or earth related science degrees.
In other words, as I stated, it’s fine for them to have opinions and express them when given the chance, but it doesn’t mean much else.
I would suggest creating a new thread where only Monckton and Hadfield can respond that way we can get statements in print from Monckton and then the counter or corredtion from Hadfield.
Please make LeMorteDeArthur’s wish come true!
major9985 says:
February 13, 2012 at 11:02 am
Smokey says:
February 13, 2012 at 10:19 am
With my terrible spelling I could see why you would not think I had a degree, but with the power of spell check I have acquired an Environmental Science degree and a postgrad in Climate Adaption. But because I have not published a peer reviewed paper on Climate Change I really don’t have the credentials to to be part of a consensus. Not that it would matter, its all in the peer reviewed literature. ……
==========================================
Major, I don’t know what web browser you’re using, but there’s no reason to do that to yourself. There is a spell-check add on with MS’ Internet explorer, or just download Firefox if you’re using a PC. I believe Mac also has a spellchecker available with their browser. ……..
As to the rest of your post, I share Smokey’s view. But, be of good hope! Some of the tripe we’ve seen discussed here and other places lead me to believe a box turtle and a hammer can get published, you just need someone who can replicate the form of a paper. Then just make crap up as you go…… In the end, put the requisite homage to CAGW and odds are you’ll be able to shop off somewhere.
Here, I’ll get you started…… Let’s say the parasitic wasp known as Dicopomorpha echmepterygis does something we can remotely consider as useful/harmful, then posit that with the soot coal puts out the weight of the particles will weigh the wasps down and they won’t be able to do x,y, or z like they used to or conversely we could say the CO2 benefits it by XXX thereby creating a problem of epic proportions……either would cause a chain reaction by either increasing or decreasing the population of x,y, or z and then we’re all gonna die because of it…. simples…..
On a related note…..
@ur momisugly Smokey….. no doubt, but boy did they have me worried!!! You see I thought all the coccolithophores of the oceans were going to die because of the hotting and extra CO2! Those are the little critters that take carbon and make Calcium Carbonate for scales. But, just when I thought the end was nigh, a group of scientists did a study and found, “Neither the rate of calcification (production of particulate inorganic carbon, PIC) nor the PIC:POC ratio were significantly affected by elevated pCO2, temperature or their interaction.”
Whew! That was a close one! Fiorini, S., Middelburg, J.J. and Gattuso, J.-P. 2011. Effects of elevated CO2 partial pressure and temperature on the coccolithophore Syracosphaera pulchra. Aquatic Microbial Ecology 64: 221-232.
Now, I haven’t vetted them and I think Middelbugy may have a cousin that once filled up their car with gasoline, so there is that……
re post by: DaNims says: February 13, 2012 at 2:14 pm
WHOA!!! Hold the presses!!! It’s been discovered that Engineers have no understanding of systems, system feed back and forcing, hydrological systems, fluid flow, physics, radiative physics, complex systems analysis, computer modelling of systems, the basic scientific method, dynamic systems, high level mathematics, geophysics, geology, thermodynamics, etc., etc…. that computer engineers have no actual understanding of computer modelling, and the entire field of ecological engineering turns out has nothing to do with understanding ecological issues. Agricultural engineers have no meaningful understanding of agricultural systems, That energy engineering, including solar engineers and wind engineers, have no understanding of those systems.
What a sad, sad day to discover this tragedy and conspiracy that has pretended competence in these various disciplinary areas – that has gone so far as to require professional licensing even!!!
DaNims, it’s heartbreaking, but thank you so much for bringing this travesty to the world’s attention – and I suggest that you immediately notify the head of the IPCC, railroad engineer Pachuri, that he is out of a job because he’s clearly not qualified to evaluate anything related to ‘climate science.’