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
==========================================================
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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Smokey says:
February 13, 2012 at 1:39 pm
is heavily on the side of scientific skeptics
Interesting choice of words
re post by: major9985 says: February 13, 2012 at 11:12 am
major9985m, what is it that you don’t understand about ‘outdated and no longer applicable?’ That quote, if it is even accurate, was from over 14 years ago, and the process has long ago been revised and hard copy signatures obtained for each signatory with their credentials verified.
Why don’t you stop spreading what amounts to deceptive false propaganda at this point?
p.s., to those of you who continue attacking the petition project signatories, I sure don’t see you touching the qualifications of those who signed the letter to the USA Senate or the United Nations.
Smokey >> Atmospheric CO2 cannot cause a measurable change in ocean pH.
I haven’t had to deal with acid pH calculations in a long time and never did it very much. I do remember that pH of 7 represents a concentration of 1 part in 10^7; hence, I know that several orders of magnitude difference of solute might be fair game and register something on the pH scale.
OK, to avoid messing up the calculations, I’ll just quote Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid . And note that 1 part in 450000 is more than 10^-6.
> The extra dissolved carbon dioxide has caused the ocean’s average surface pH to shift by about 0.1 unit from pre-industrial levels.
Wikipedia references this: http://ioc3.unesco.org/oanet/FAQacidity.html
The webpage gives the relevant equations and constants in case you want to play with the numbers.
Can you tell me why Wikipedia is wrong and you are right? If there is a mistake, we might want to fix it.
[BTW, I am not saying I blindly believe what they are saying. I specifically avoided trying out a calculation because I don’t have enough confidence.]
As to just how many IPCC scientists were actually ‘signed off on’ or endorse the IPCC reports, or the supposed ‘consensus of thousands of IPCC scientists’, just take the word of Mike Hulme; IPCC insider, climate alarmist and strongly pro “post normal science” (which is an anathema to the very definition of science), excerpts copied below. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/14/the-ipcc-consensus-on-climate-change-was-phoney-says-ipcc-insider/
Or try the following, explaining how there is no ‘2,500 [or so] IPCC scientists who comprise a pro-AGW consensus,’ from: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/04/lawrence-solomon-on-consensus-statistics/
DaNims says:
“What was interesting with the
Ghandi anecdoteMann payola was that he had a strong financial interest in whether or not Co2 is seen as harmless or not.”There. Fixed that one for you.
The alarmist crowd has a big problem pointing to a perceived mote in someone else’s eye, while ignoring the giant beam in their own eye. In any set of 30,000+ individuals you will inevitably find a few instances where you can claim a conflict of interest. But the main actors in the Climategate emails are all seen to be unethically enriching themselves. They are seen committing fraud, and taking payola, and evading taxes, and taking endless, expensive jaunts to holiday venues at the taxpayers’ expense, and conspiring to divert money and publication opportunities away from anyone who doesn’t toe their CAGW line, and scheming to evade FOI requests, and collecting multi-millions in grant money. And on and on. The whole CAGW scam is built on payola and influence peddling.
So far Ghandi is your best argument, therefore your argument fails. One out of 31,400+. Wake me if you can find any ethical problems with even five percent of the co-signers [note that every actor in the Climategate saga has serious ethical problems; some are just more egregious than others].
For every Ghandi you can find, I can find a dozen unethical Climategate scoundrels. But I would prefer to discuss why the alarmist crowd completely ignores the scientific method, why they ignore Occam’s Razor, and why they are as far from scientific skeptics as they can be, and why they ignore the climate null hypothesis, and why they hate transparency, and why they are so defensive when it is pointed out that even though CO2 is steadily rising, the global temperature is not. Pick any or all of those subjects and we can discuss them. Maybe you’ll change my mind.
Alarmists should be rejoicing because their conjecture is being falsified; humanity is not facing a crisis after all. Instead, they double down with their repeatedly debunked scare stories. It is clear that they want runaway global warming to occur. They crave a climate disaster. They would rather see hundreds of millions of people die and be right, than see humanity prosper – even though they would have to admit they were wrong in their predictions. I would call that mindset evil incarnate. It’s not much different from Eugenicists, whose platform Germany adopted in the 1930’s. Fortunately for humanity, so far the planet is siding with the good guys.
. . .
Jose_X says:
“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 makes no sense at all. The “anecdote” was about someone named Ghandi [who hasn’t had a chance to weigh in with his side, has he?]. And it would probably surprise both of you, but doctors know quite a lot about CO2.
And by Jose’s specious reasoning, it would be just as easy to get the same number of co-signers to say that CO2 is a real problem. But that petition didn’t get any traction. For the most part, intelligent, educated people understand that CO2 is harmless and beneficial, while the credulous ones buy the scare stories.
Smokey says:
February 13, 2012 at 1:39 pm
I clearly state that I have not published any peer reviewed work on climate change so do not have the credentials to way in on the debate. This is why the petition project is a joke and only people like yourself would even bring it up. I also make it clear that consensus means nothing, something skeptics seem to cry about but yet jump on the idiocy of the petition project. The insane thing I am learning from people like you smokey, is the Arctic could be free of ice all summer, temperatures going through the roof, but you will claim it is all due to natural processes. Even how you look at a cooling period and think it means something, over the last forty years there has been six and this one is not even cooling http://tinyurl.com/5sbf3kd Then you have the lack of knowledge to understand that there are many factors driving climate, causing temperature records to fluctuate http://tinyurl.com/c5a2dyt but science has brains to consider this. Then comes the old man suggestion that humans cant control climate end of story statement which I have heard from you before, yet geoengineering has shown that a controlled release sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere will cool the Earth. Basically everything you say is wrong and its a shame, because its clear you have so much to rant on about.
re post by: Jose_X says: February 13, 2012 at 11:21 am
Let me just copy a previous post of mine from another thread, with a few minor edits in [brackets]. From: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/26/sea-cucumbers-dissolving-coral-reefs/
Rational Debate says: December 27, 2011 at 3:01 pm
Science is about precision – and that includes terminology. Obviously on comment posting folks often don’t take the time to ensure that they’re using exactly the right phrase or wording – but it does get important when we start talking about the basics (no pun intended!).
You’re never acidifying a solution, [nor are you making it more acidic], until or unless you are adding sufficient acid to bring that solution to an acidic state – e.g., under pH 7.0. You may very well be adding an acid to the solution, but so long as the solution is basic, by the proper terminology you quite simply aren’t acidifying in any sense of the word. If you are adding enough acid or diluting enough to go to a pH 7.0, then you are neutralizing the solution. If you are lowering pH, but are still above 7.0, then you aren’t acidifying, you are reducing alkalinity or moving towards a neutral solution [or becoming less basic].
Corrosion, on the other hand, is relative and not specific to pH, even though we typically think of a corrosive solution as one that is most likely acidic. Alkaline substances can be just as highly corrosive, however. Whether something is corrosive or not all depends on the system it is in, and the various physical and chemical reactivities of the substances present. For example, water, through the process of erosion, corrodes rock. You can conceivably have an alkaline substance that is corroded by another alkaline substance, all based on the particular structure and reactivity of each, and just how much difference there is in the level of alkalinity of each substance.
But you’re never acidifying a solution so long as it will remain [at, or] above, a pH of 7.0.
Point out one email that shows anything, I have read every email you people have found at its all a joke the way you make up this fantasy of evil you think you are reading. But I seriously doubt we will get a email reference from you.
There is no climate null hypothesis, there is facts such as man increasing CO2, increased downward infrared radiation, global warming seen in the Shrinking Cooling and Rising Atmosphere, the continuing warming trend, the loss of temperature correlation with solar forcing, the fact that all temperature record that don’t show a warming during the MWP do show one for the global warming we are seeing from CO2.
Like I have stated to you before, the trend is up, this is not even a cooling period, it is so hot they are the warmest on record, with five actual cooling periods over the last 40 years they have gradually leveled out to not even show a cooling during this decade. Everyone talks about a cooling trend in the near future but none of you reference a peer reviewed paper that suggests it.
This is why I despise people like you, you are lost in a sea of hate. The IPCC has reduced its expected warming from a doubling of CO2 as new evidence has come available, just because you want to deny all the facts and only focus on a couple of skeptical papers that shows the lowest possible warming does not come near to what your evil mind suggests.
@Jose_X
You seem to have this very strange penchant of acknowledging that you haven’t read the research paper or studied relevant aspects of it, or don’t understand xyz, or haven’t dealt with the math or science involved… then you plow right on to make various definitive statements about how those papers are in error or the facts or science or what-have-you are thus and such contrary to whatever the skeptic’s view might be.
While I commend you for your honesty in these regards, I have to say it’s bizarre that you then profess opinions on said issues so strongly, and often as if they were facts.
I also must note that you seem to use wikipedia as a reference almost exclusively, when it’s well known that the bulk of any climate related article on wikipedia has been corrupted. Just search WUWT on “William Connolley.” Here, I’ll even start you out: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/19/wikibullies-at-work-the-national-post-exposes-broad-trust-issues-over-wikipedia-climate-information/
p.s., while wiki can be a useful starting place for your OWN internet research, it is a notoriously inaccurate and often seriously flawed source.
Rational Db8 (used to post as Rational Debate) says:
February 13, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Nothing has changed, link me to where it explains that they redid all the signatures and verified all 30000+. I am sure there are lots of actual true climate scientists that saw that the fake peer reviewed paper sent with the petition was a joke but signed the paper because they really do think CO2 will not warm the planet by much. But the deceit that went into the petition has been shown http://tinyurl.com/7gcvrcj also the fact that they just let anyone sign it is wrong.
The Seattle Times also investigated the Orgeon Petition, and found that some questionable people had signed.
“Several environmental groups questioned dozens of the names: “Perry S. Mason” (the fictitious lawyer?), “Michael J. Fox” (the actor?), “Robert C. Byrd” (the senator?), “John C. Grisham” (the lawyer-author?). And then there’s the Spice Girl, a k a. Geraldine Halliwell: The petition listed “Dr. Geri Halliwell” and “Dr. Halliwell.”
Asked about the pop singer, Robinson said he was duped. The returned petition, one of thousands of mailings he sent out, identified her as having a degree in microbiology and living in Boston. “It’s fake,” he said.
“When we’re getting thousands of signatures there’s no way of filtering out a fake,” Robinson, 56, said in a telephone interview from Oregon.”
major9985 won’t listen, but for those interested, there are lots of dissenting scientists who don’t think CO2 is a problem. See here, and here, and here.
And major9985 believes there was no MWP warming. Wrong.
major9985 also says: Point out one email that shows anything, I have read every email you people have found at its all a joke the way you make up this fantasy of evil you think you are reading. But I seriously doubt we will get a email reference from you. Wrong as usual. See references here, and here, and here. Also see Steven Mosher’s excellent book on Climategate.
major9985 has a broken moral compass. He blames Dr Robinson for some dishonest people sending in fake names, instead of blaming the perps. I would try to find Robinson’s letter explaining the thorough vetting process since that happened, but major9985 wouldn’t listen anyway.
major9985 says: There is no climate null hypothesis… all temperature record that don’t show a warming during the MWP do show one for the global warming we are seeing from CO2.
Arch CAGW alarmist Kevin Trenberth knows there is a climate null hypothesis. He wants to get it changed, so skeptics are forced to try and prove a negative. Trenberth wrote that “…the null hypothesis should now be reversed, thereby placing the burden of proof on showing that there is no human influence.” I would explain the null hypothesis to major9985, but he probably wouldn’t listen. major9985 believes there is no null hypothesis. Little does he know.
re post by: Jose_X says: February 13, 2012 at 9:58 am (your comments in blockquotes)
I’m sorry, Jose, you cannot just loosely redefine the meaning of terms that are being used scientifically or mathematically. I believe it is easy enough for you to find plenty of exponential curve fits to the CO2 changes over time, including in the IPCC. You, on the other hand, made the most extraordinary claim that the CO2 increase we’ve seen over time is “faster than exponential.” It is therefore up to you to show that an exponential curve cannot be fit to the existing data. There is no need for your ‘error bars’ or anything else – it’s simply been an exponential increase over time.
If the various experiements aren’t falsifiable, they are essentially meaningless and that very much does invalidate observations because there is no way to tell if those observations are meaningful vs. either confirmation bias, experimental bias, systemic bias, correlation not causation, misattribution, etc., or some combination of the above. There is a reason Popper is often called the Father of Modern Science. This is how humans have achieved our most rapid advances by far, and why the ‘soft science’ have made a snail’s pace of advancements if that.
Now you are delving into sheer speculation, and I heartily disagree with your interpretation. It seems pretty clear to me that Dyson is pointing out the misallocation or poor allocation of funds, and the gross problems with using climate models.
You might try a little prioritization – when present conditions such as cancer, malaria, starvation, etc., are killing millions each year, and ‘anthropogenic global warming,’ after 30 some odd decades of heavily funded research cannot even get past the null hypothesis of natural variability, it certainly seems that much of the resources could be utilized to far greater benefit to all.
I’ve got to say that’s a bizzare statement, since there is no greater ‘homogenity” among the AGW side either.
Science isn’t advanced by concensus – I merely posted the counter to claims by others here of a ‘consensus’ or overwhelming majority, etc. Claims which are without merit in many different ways.
Waaaa? Pointing out poor prioritization, poor research/experiemental designs, fundamental flaws with currently utilized research approaches, or advocating other or shifted areas of research doesn’t begin to equate with advocating taking action on the issue. And who ever claimed that there weren’t any Nobel Prize winners who support AGW? Heck, Obama and Gore both immediately come to mind on that count. So what is the possible point in this entire digression of yours?
Other than this joke, which did get a grin out of me. (Col. Klink strikes again!!)
Who knows what the proportions are. The alternative hypothesis is that apparently there have been far more efforts to obtain similar pro-AGW-is-seriously-bad signatures, and that there are plenty of reasons to believe that such efforts would have as much and probably more chance of success as the AGW-isn’t-serious signatories – and yet thus far they’ve been unable to gain anywhere near the number of comparable pro-AGW signatories.
Maybe, maybe not. Speculation on your part. More importantly, the point and issue isn’t ‘who has more on their side.’ Science isn’t run by concensus. What lists and numbers like these show, however, is that there is still raging debate on virtually every aspect and within every disiciple associated with ‘climate science.’ That the issue is far from settled, and nowhere near a level that justifies social upheaval caused by attempts to ‘mitigate’ or avoid something so grossly uncertain and currently unsupported by the body of existing science.
I suggest you read up a bit more on who’s doing the cherry picking. Here’s a small start: http://climateaudit.org/2005/06/02/mbh98-proxies/
Are you kidding me?? Please, educate yourself at least a tiny bit on the issue before making such proclamations. For a start, see: http://tinyurl.com/7qj3luz Mann has been anything but transparent on this issue. As to Spencer’s source code, you’ll have to check that yourself.
Are you a fantasy book writer? Because you are making up supposed problems here as if they had any basis in reality, all without providing the slightest indication that you have even a smidgen of fact for such speculation.
Please, reread the part of my reply and the associated link above which begins “are you kidding me??”
I’m sorry, I haven’t got a clue what you mean by this, nor where you think is ‘where it really counts,’ if open letters directly to the United Nations and the USA Senate aren’t ‘where it counts.’
Jose_X is either trolling or insane. My view is that he is insane. He opines:
“wait wait, it seems Dyson has never been awarded a Nobel Prize.”
Prof Richard Feynman [winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics] stated that Freeman Dyson should have received the Nobel Prize. But in the hard sciences only three recipients are allowed. Dyson was the fourth and most junior member of the Feynman team. Dyson himself synthesized and reduced to practice the Feynman/Schwinger/Tomonaga solutions to the renormalization problems of quantum electrodynamics. By Jose_X trying to denigrate Dyson, Jose shows his ignorance. Freeman Dyson signed the OISM Petition. Does anyone but a lunatic believe that Dyson doesn’t understand as much about climate science as anyone?
Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180): “The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” Take heed, Jose_X.
The number of scientists signing the petitions or participating in the IPCC process dwarf the number of scientists actually doing research in the relevant area of scientific dispute, net feedback to climate forcings and climate sensitivity. The largest number are the modelers because of the scale of these projects, but only the subset of these working on the global application of the models and on key model diagnostics are at spearhead of the science. The remaining relevant researchers are a subset of theoreticians, physicists, paleo-climatatologists, and solar scientists that are attempting to make model independent assessments of net feedbacks and climate sensitivity. It is just dozens of scientists, probably less than 200 in total. Necessarily, the relevant literature is also small, so it should be no surprise that scientifically literate people from other disciplines, who have made the effort to become familiar with the literature, can have more informed opinions than researchers in the multidisciplinary field of “climate science” that have not made that effort, and most of the thousands who participate in the IPCC and sign these petitions have not made the effort.
It is amazing how “climatologists” who publish, essentially using the models as paper mills, can think they have an informed opinion based upon model “evidence”, yet they have not done a basic review of the model diagnostic literature.
Smokey says:
February 13, 2012 at 6:54 pm
I know there are lots of people that for one reason or the another think the Earth is not going to warm that much from increased CO2 but like you have said before its computer models “speculation” that determines climate sensitivity. The facts are increased CO2, increased downward infrared radiation, atmosphere global warming. The funny thing is all these people know that man is increasing the temperature of the earth but they think it wont be that bad, well thats not good enough, if most peer reviewed science explained that it was not going to be that bad that would be great, but it doesn’t. You lose smokey, deal with it. We are the ones with all the facts you are not. I am open to everything you say, I don’t stick my head in the sand regarding the IPCC expected warming of 2-4.5 degrees Celsius
Hold your horses there smokey, let’s not start making stuff up like Monckton. Of cause there was a MWP but many temperature readings around the world do not show a warming from it, but they all show a warming from the resent warming from CO2 due to it being a global gas http://tinyurl.com/8yp3hmg . The simple fact is the MWP was not a total global warming, it was more localised, it has even been explained as a La Nina event http://tinyurl.com/y8l78s9
Nothing new smokey, the “trick” and “hide the decline” have all been explained. I do agree the hiding of data was not the best, but these guys were under enormous pressure with people left right and centre attacking them. The blocking of skeptical papers was their job, if a paper they rejected was actually good, it would have simply been published in anther peer reviewed journal. Nothing has happened due to these emails, and every time you spit evil nonsense about it, you are just repeating debunked claims.
That is a good way to put it, but it is more than just the fact they don’t really check all the applicants, its the fact they sent a non peer reviewed paper with the petition that is designed to trick people, and that they want people with a degree or equivalent to sign it. Then you have the balls to claim 32000 scientists don’t believe in global warming. I feel sorry for you people.
Nothing has changed, they got 32000 people to sign and now simply they claim that volunteers are checking every new applicant. Robinson clearly stated that they could not check them all at the beginning, but really who cares, with only 39 climatologist, they only need to verify them and that’s it. And these 39 better have published something.
This is what we have to deal with, people like you thinking that one test can wish away man made CO2 rise, increased infrared, Shrinking Cooling and Rising Atmosphere, increasing temperatures, arctic disappearance, increased Greenland and Antarctica melting. This stuff is facts and it is not going to stop, and your little world where you think some guy in a backyard can prove a null and that is the end of it is a joke at best. Stick to gardening smokey.
James Sexton says:
February 13, 2012 at 2:49 pm
More pointless dribble by the looks of it James, is your name on the petition? It is a degree or equivalent!
And by the looks of it I have to explain myself, I could have a PhD but unless I am active in the peer review process I would not participate in a study that was designed to prove or debunk climate change. I hope you can realise the stupidity of it. But we have to all remember you cherry picking 30 year cooling periods and claiming to have nullified CO2 warming..Classic.. A statement that clearly shows you have no understanding of the climate system. You even show a graph that illiterates no correlation between CO2 and temperatures over 500 million years ago, but dont even read the paper that it is from which clearly states the sun was 30% dimmer back then and that there was a correlation! You think a 7 year cooling trend is statistically significant because Monckton claims it is, but because you have not got a clue what is shown in Hadfields video you don’t know that Monckton in later speeches says it is not significant. I can see why you are not a part of the petition, but its people like you that are a part of it.
re post by: major9985 says: February 13, 2012 at 11:14 pm
Hello??? Orwell, Orwell anybody?
and:
Now that would be a neat trick
Finally:
The ignorance of the most basic aspects of the scientific method, not to mention ethics, contrasted with the certainty of belief displayed is truly amazing, and pathetic.
I should amend “The ignorance of the most basic aspects of the scientific method, not to mention ethics, contrasted with the certainty of belief displayed is truly amazing, and pathetic.” by adding: Or just indicative of someone who is very young, likes to bluster a lot, and pretend to be an adult while online.
Rational Db8 (used to post as Rational Debate) says:
February 14, 2012 at 12:55 am
You are the one that is pathetic. There is no evidence to suggest the Earth is going to go into a cooling trend. There are countless studies on CO2 which you seem to know nothing about, you cant just increase downward infrared radiation and expect nothing to happen. But it does not matter, you have no proof, no scientific method to explain anything. You just think no one knows anything about the climate. Well wake up and read a book. The warming trend is up, this decade was not even a cooling it was a faltline and the hottest one ever, Arctic will be gone by 2030-2040 the way it is going. You calling me pathetic because I am taking the side of almost every scientific peer reviewed paper that says there will be a warming from CO2. And why don’t you explain the scientific method that could disprove that increased CO2 is not going to have an effect on temperatures? You seem to think you know the “Scientific Method” so well. Explain your technique. Because many other people have gone down that path.
With over half a billion years worth of climate data, comprehensive conclusions have shown over the long term there is indeed a correlation between CO2 and temperature, as manifested by the atmospheric greenhouse effect.” p.201. (http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~ajs/2001/Feb/qn020100182.pdf). This was the same conclusion for all the other studies:
CO2 as a primary driver of Phanerozoic climate — D. Royer et al, GSA Today, March 2004 (http://droyer.web.wesleyan.edu/GSA_Today.pdf)
CO2 forced climate thresholds during the phanerozoic, Dana L. Royer 2005 (http://droyer.web.wesleyan.edu/PhanCO2(GCA).pdf)
Atmospheric CO2: Principal Control Knob Governing Earth’s Temperature, Andrew A. Lacis, Gavin A. Schmidt, David Rind and Reto A. Ruedy, 2010 (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6002/356.abstract)
“Absorption of Solar Radiation by Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” T.G. Kyle et al, Jurnal of the Optica; Society of America. Vol. 55.
“Direct Absorption of Solar Radiation by Atmospheric Water Vapor, Carbon Dioxide and Molecular Oxygen” Giich Yamamoto, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences Dec 1961, pp. 182-188.
“Solar Radiation Absorption by CO2, Overlap With H2O, and a Parametenzation for General Circulation Models” S. M. Freidenreich, V. Ramaswamy, Geophysical Research, Dec 1992.
“Parameterization for the absorption of solar radiation by O2 and CO2 with application to climate studies” Ming-Dad Chou, Journal of Climate, 1990 Vol 3 pp. 209-217
A fine riposte, with lotsa good points.
Rational Db8 (used to post as Rational Debate) says:
February 14, 2012 at 12:55 am
My bad I forgot to add this:
words that I can debunk would be good.
Do you not understand the basic concept of increased greenhouse effect?
As the lower atmosphere warms due to an enhanced greenhouse effect, the Stratospheric is expected to cool as a consequence. It is Jones et al. (2003). The tropopause is the atmospheric boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere and is expected to rise. Observations indicate that the tropopause height has increased several hundred meters over the past 3 decades. Santer et al. (2003). The layers above the stratosphere are expected to cool and contract as a result of global warming, it is Laštovička et al. (2006).
Rational Db8 says of major9985:
“The ignorance of the most basic aspects of the scientific method, not to mention ethics, contrasted with the certainty of belief displayed is truly amazing, and pathetic.”
True. major 9985 is a nutcase, indoctrinated by alarmist blogs like Pseudo-Skeptical Pseudoo-Science. As if.
So is Industrial engineering – just as Pachauri has. The head climate scientists is not a a climate scientist?
What are the degrees of Mann, Jones, Trenberth, Amman, Wahl, etc.?
How many have degrees in “Climate Science”?
major9985 says:
February 13, 2012 at 11:53 pm
James Sexton says:
February 13, 2012 at 2:49 pm
More pointless dribble by the looks of it James, is your name on the petition? It is a degree or equivalent!
And by the looks of it I have to explain myself, I could have a PhD but unless I am active in the peer review process I would not participate in a study that was designed to prove or debunk climate change. I hope you can realise the stupidity of it. But we have to all remember you cherry picking 30 year cooling periods and claiming to have nullified CO2 warming..Classic.. …….
You think a 7 year cooling trend is statistically significant because Monckton claims it is, but because ……..
===============================================
Wow, and not even a thank-you for pointing you towards a proper spell check…….. Yes, that was an attempt at a thing I like to call “humor”. I do appreciate the fact, though, that not all share in my sense of it.
But, it’s difficult not to laugh at these responses.
You should read up and see how I’ve explained the difference between “significant” and “statistically significant”, you seem to be suffering from the same problem many others have. But, I understand the challenges of common English language. The 30 year graph was shown to show how laughable the concept is to only attach meaning to events of 30 years or longer. But, you’re selling me short! I didn’t stop at 30 years. I showed 50 years and I showed 70 consecutive years of increasing atmospheric CO2 and no increase in temps!
Now, when I did such things I knew I’d get some very vitriolic responses, and I wasn’t disappointed. Any reasonable person would say, “Hey, wait a minute! This isn’t congruent with what we’ve been told! We should look into the reasons for this!” If I had put 150 year graph up, it would not have caused people like you to pause and think. And the reason it didn’t is because the greater climate conversation isn’t about CO2 or temps.
It is about the deep seeded belief that man is an aberration of nature and not a part of nature; that man is destructive towards nature. Therefore, anything that works towards the benefit of humanity must be destructive towards nature. Man caused CO2 production is a proxy for human advancement and prosperity. And, that my friend, it what this is about. There’s a word for this, it is commonly known as misanthropy.
This will probably be my last time checking back here. I’ve had my say and I’ve seen all of the irrational and hypocritical responses to my comments. This was an exciting thread!