Guest post by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Even the name of the “Skeptical” “Science” blog is a lie. The blog is neither skeptical nor scientific. It is a malicious, paid propaganda platform for rude, infantile, untruthful, and often libelous attacks on anyone who dares to question whether global warming is a global crisis.
That poisonous blog has recently attacked 129 climate researchers, of whom I am one, for having dared to write an open letter to the U.N. Secretary-General asking him not to attribute tropical storm Sandy to global warming that has not occurred for 16 years.
The following are among the blog’s numerous falsehoods and libels:
1. On at least four occasions we are referred to as climate “denialists” – a term as unscientific as it is malevolent. We do not deny that there is a climate, or that it changes, or that the greenhouse effect exists, or that Man’s emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases enhance that effect and may cause some warming. We raise legitimate scientific questions about how much warming Man may cause, and about whether attempted mitigation can ever be cost-effective.
2. It is claimed that our “preferred route” to air our “grievances about global warming is via “opinion letters published in the mainstream media” rather than via peer review. Yet most of the signatories named by the blog as having “no climate expertise” have published papers in the reviewed literature. To take one example named by the blog, Professor Nils-Axel Mörner of the University of Stockholm has published some 550 papers, nearly all of them in the reviewed literature, and nearly all of them on sea-level rise, which he has been studying for 40 years.
3. It is claimed that our arguments are “unsubstantiated”. Yet our letter offered a great deal of substantiation, as will become evident.
4. Tom Harris of the Climate Science Coalition, one of the letter’s organizers, is described as “best known for grossly misinforming … university students about climate change in a Climate and Earth Science class he should never have been teaching”. The only sources given for this grave libel are a farrago of childish falsehoods on the “Skeptical” “Science” blog and its sole citation, an error-ridden screed circulated by the dishonestly-names “Canadian Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism”.
5. The fact that there has been no statistically-significant global warming for 16 years is described as a “myth”. Yet the least-squares linear-regression trend on the Hadley Centre/CRU dataset favoured by the IPCC indeed shows no statistically-significant warming for 16 years. The minuscule warming over the period is within the margin of uncertainty in the measurements and is, therefore, statistically indistinguishable from zero.
6. It is claimed that we were wrong to say there has been no statistically-significant global warming because the oceans have warmed. However, the standard definition of “global warming” is warming of the near-surface atmosphere. Also, measurements to date are inadequate to tell us reliably how much – if at all – the oceans have warmed in recent years.
7. It is claimed that we were wrong to say that computer models are now proven to exaggerate warming and its effects. Yet we had pointed out, correctly, that a paper by leading climate modelers, published in the NOAA’s State of the Climate report in 2008, had said that 15 years or more without global warming would indicate a discrepancy between the models’ projections and real-world observations and that, therefore, the models were proven incorrect by their creators’ own criterion.
8. It is claimed that we were wrong to state that some scientists point out that near-term natural cooling, linked to variations in solar output, is a distinct possibility. Yet some scientists have indeed pointed out what we said they had pointed out, though our use of the word “some” fairly implies there is evidence in both directions in the literature.
9. It is claimed that we used “careful wording” in saying that there is an absence of an attributable climate change signal in trends in extreme weather losses to date. Yet we were merely citing the IPCC itself on this point.
10. It is claimed that we were wrong to state that the incidence and severity of extreme weather has not increased. Though it is trivially true that temperature maxima have increased with warming, there has been no trend in land-falling Atlantic hurricanes in 150 years, and there has been a decline in severe tropical cyclones and typhoons during the satellite era.
11. It is claimed that we “falsely” accuse the U.N. Secretary General of “making unsupportable claims that human influences caused” tropical storm Sandy, and that “in reality, Ban Ki-Moon did not say climate change caused Hurricane (sic) Sandy”. Yet he had said: “Two weeks ago, Hurricane (sic) Sandy struck the eastern seaboard of the United States. A nation saw the reality of climate change. The recovery will cost tens of billions of dollars. The cost of inaction will be even higher. We must reduce our dependence on carbon emissions.” We had rightly written: “We ask that you desist from exploiting the misery of the families of those who lost their lives or properties in tropical storm Sandy by making unsupportable claims that human influences caused that storm. They did not.”
12. It is claimed that we are “a list of non-experts”. Yet half of the 129 signatories are Professors; two-thirds are PhDs, and several are Expert Reviewers for the IPCC’s forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report.
One day, the useless “Skeptical” “Science” blog may perhaps have a curiosity value to historians studying the relentless, lavishly-funded deviousness and malice of the tiny clique who briefly fooled the world by presenting themselves as a near-unanimous “consensus” (as if consensus had anything to do with science) and mercilessly bullied anyone with the courage and independence of mind to question their barmy but transiently fashionable beliefs. The blog’s falsehoods have made no serious contribution to the scientific debate that we who are genuinely skeptical and truly scientific have by our patient endurance now largely won.
Elizabeth says, December 4, 2012 at 10:51 am: “Lord Monckton Totally agree I have four higher degrees and my father was a well known atmospheric physicist (published 3 papers in Nature and was a student with Einstein in the Max Planck Institut Fur Physik in 1935-37) who told me in 1997 that AGW was a tax scam (did not even bother explaining the physics), It was so obviously absolute XXXX as far as he was concerned. I am 100% that you will be re-vindicated historically.”
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I thought, Christopher Monckton supported AGW concept, in his own words on this thread: “We do not deny that there is a climate, or that it changes, or that the greenhouse effect exists, or that Man’s emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases enhance that effect and may cause some warming.”
Here is an older quote: ” The world is not warming at present. It has not been warming for almost a decade and a half, though it has been warming since 1695.[…]My best estimate is that the CO2 we add to the atmosphere this century will cause around 1 C° of warming by 2100. But that is not far short of the IPCC’s own central estimate of 1.5 C°.” (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/17/monckton-in-a-rift-with-union-college-earth-scientists-and-activists/)
trafamadore:
Your posts on threads of WUWT seem to be of a type. They make unsupported assertions that attempt to demean and/or mislead.
Nils-Axel Morner is probably the world’s leading expert on sea level. He is – by any standards – an outstanding scientist. Your smears of him are unsupported and despicable.
If you want to attack somebody then have a go at someone whose record warrants it such as Hansen, Mann, and Jones. They have abandoned science to become advocates of what they call their “cause”.
Richard
If what was said is libelous, are libel proceedings being started? The only way to curb the behaviour of these zealots is to punish them whenever legally possible.
Sceptical Science, Open Mind, Real Climate Scientists, Concerned Scientists…
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
“There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.”
“Myths which are believed in tend to become true.”
“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_orwell_5.html
Rob Honeycutt:
At December 4, 2012 at 2:02 pm you say
They should ask for their money back.
Richard
trafamadore says:
But I’m sure I saw his data on the web somewhere in a graph tilled at 30°
Okay, I just googled “tilted sea level graph” and Morner’s name comes out at the top. You don’t forget things like that, pretty entertaining.
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Okay I did the same. the two links that come up are from skepticalscience.com. And both links are dead. You’e a legend mate. Keep going!
This quote from Greenie Watch (Philosophers psychologize climate skeptics) sums up best SS and its worshippers:
“They clearly don’t know what they are talking about. Psychologically they are “deniers” of the facts and dependents on authority: Both are infantile disorders.”
trafamadore
What’s the truth about you? You don’t come on like a serious scientist. You don’t seem as one who takes pride in correct judgement, as a scientist ordinarily does. You spout propaganda and some stuff you make up on the spot like “global oscillation-er”.
The believers in the Hockey Stick and the always heating gas have never had credibility which was why they have tried to steer the conversation away from the fact Greenhouse Gases block 50% of the sun’s infrared and 25% of the sun’s total energy before it gets to earth.
To them this is called warming.
richard says:
December 4, 2012 at 6:32 am
As I am not a scientist I would like someone in simple terms to explain the following,
The moon in the daytime with no GHGs gets to 250f in a few hrs and at night time the temps plummit….
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The moon has no ATMOSPHERE. Do not forget convection will move heat around. It is the main source of green house heat. You stop the movement of air. If you look at tropical forest vs desert you can also see that water will even out the temp. Also in the example below the average temperature is about 4C lower in Brazil despite the fact that Algeria is further north above the tropic of Cancer.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/21/some-thoughts-on-radiative-transfer-and-ghgs/#comment-1040071
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/21/some-thoughts-on-radiative-transfer-and-ghgs/#comment-1041066
When people reminded them in peer review that the first, initial function of Greenhouse Gases was to block incoming energy, and a large fraction of the sun’s total transport, those people were told they were fired.
@Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7
December 4, 2012 at 11:56 am
Love it, I hope you don’t mind my borrowing it.
Cheers
trafamadore says:
December 4, 2012 at 2:25 pm
Trafamadore is now doing Mosh type drive by comments. Vroom vroom …… now off I go back to the safety of the chorus girls from SkS.
“trafamadore” is just making things up when he says the open letter to the UN Sec Gen is just an opinion article from me.
I describe the whole open letter project in “Behind the scenes – preparing the open letter to the U.N. Secretary General on his climate science mistakes” and answer the questions:
– Where did it come from?
– Who wrote it?
– Why are some of the best known climate skeptics not among the now 130+ endorsers?
– Why did most mainstream media not report on the letter?
There is nothing secret about all this so here are the answers to these questions:
http://www.fcpp.org/blog/behind-the-scenes-preparing-the-open-letter-to-the-u-n-secretary-general-on-his-climate-science-mistakes/
Tom Harris
International Climate Science Coalition
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org
Another eloquent, polite, informed rebuttal from Christopher Monckton. Evidence, as if it were still needed, why these ‘consensus’ scientists (and just about the entire mainstream media) lack the simple courage to face him in open debate. Bravo, sir! Long may you continue to hammer home the ‘inconvenient truths’ of the great CAGW fraud. You are a credit to the skeptical movement.
I agree with your thoughts on the site ‘Skeptical Science’. In my opinion it isn’t being run with fair reference to available data and the current state of the science, and independant ideas are not allowed. It is run as a propaganada exercise, to promote a particular view.
I blogged for some time on Skeptical Science (sic) about the idea that the increase in warming in the late 20th century could be attributed partly or mostly to a heat time lag from the increase in solar output between about 1750-1950. After all, every day the maximum daily temperature normally occurs a few hours after the solar maximum around noon (nothwithstanding clouds and other factors), and every summer the maximum seasonable average temperature occurs about 6 or so weeks after the solar maximum at the summer solstice. So obviously in nature there is a heat time lag after a maxima in incoming solar radiation, and this works on both short and longer time scales-it is an unambiguous fact and is observable. There is some referance to it in the literature on climate change-one paper by Usoskin, for example, who studied the differences between proxies for solar maxima and proxies for temperature (albeit both a little unreliable) over the last 1000 years or so, came to an average delay in maximum temperature on earth after a solar maxima of about 20 years.
However I have to say that the first thing I noticed on the ‘Skeptical Sceince’ forum to this basic idea was that most of the responses were neither rational nor reasonable, and sometimes mailicous and quite irrational. Most of the time bloggers were not even prepared to admit that the concept of a heat lag was even valid. I attributed this reluctance to trying to protect one of the cornerstones of the climate alarmist arguments, that late 20th century warming couldn’t have been caused by the sun, because solar activity had not increased during that time (and repeated by virtually every science academy around the world). (Does it increase between noon and 2pm, when temperatures continue to rise, I asked?) So unreasonable were most responses that even John Cook was prompted to write a follow up article “Heat time lag” to state that, yes, the concept of a heat lag on the scale of decades was valid, but that late 20th century warming was not attibutable to a heat time lag from solar output because this would have meant that the earth’s atmosphere would be now approaching equilibium (ie heat in equals heat coming out), which various papers including from Hansen et al., show that disequilibrium of the earth’s atmosphere was actually increasing (i.e. heat in was not being matched by heat coming out), due to increasing build-up of greenhouse gases. I checked through these papers and concluded that their conclusions were based on arbitrary greenhouse gas modelling-that one had to assume that greenhouse gases were causing warming to begin with to get their figures on the atmosphere’s equilibrium state. So I still remain convinced that the idea that late 20th century warming could be mosly attibutable to a heat time lag from solar output on the scale of centuries and decades is still valid, and worth looking into, even though solar output has now both plateau’d and more recently declined.
I blogged on other areas of science I know a little about, such as mass extinctions and the geological record (I am a geologist), which the site wants to nearly all attribute to greenhouse gases, but I generally no longer blog on the site Skeptical Science, because in my opinion it isn’t a forum which rationally debates the science.
@trafamadore
“SkS point is that these “experts” should be answering the “debate” using science and peer review, the way that science experts usually do for a living.”
But the “science experts” air their Scary Stories about global warming through propganda pieces published in the mainstream media. The sceptics need to reply there as well.
@ur momisugly eco-geek says:
“Quoting: We do not deny that there is a climate, or that it changes, or that the greenhouse effect exists, or that Man’s emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases enhance that effect and may cause some warming.
This is the entire problem. We have warmists who believe in global warming. We have sceptics who believe in global warming.”
Hold on there.
The sceptics don’t deny it, but that doesn’t mean they believe it. They may not be sure either way.
(I don’t deny that the Prime Minister is a hologram, but that doesn’t mean I believe she is a hologram. I’m just not entirely sure about it. I can’t deny when I don’t know.)
“Therefore we have a broad media consensus that GHGs cause global warming. The differing views within this consensus can never be reconciled with each other or with the laws of physics BECAUSE THEY ARE BOTH WRONG.”
Are you saying that the GHGs do not have a warming effect?
SkepticalScience says : “when the sun ‘goes down’ on the moon, the temperature drops almost immediately, and plunges in several hours down to minus 110 degrees C (-166F).”
This is of course utter rubbish !
The moron that wrote this obviously does not understand that the data is presented in the form of a lunar day divided into 24 hours.
Factor in that a “lunar” hour as shown in the data is ~29.5 Earth hours and you see a completely different picture of a heated surface radiating into a vacuum and at an extraordinarily slow rate may I say !
For example, from the lunar noon to sunrise is ~ 531 Earth hours and the temperature falls from ~390 K to ~100 K – hardly “plunges in several hours down to minus 110 degrees C”.
It is actually a very slow rate of cooling – about 0.5 K per hour averaged as climate scientists love to do – especially when compared to convective cooling here on Earth.
From lunar sunset to lunar sunrise is ~ 354 Earth hours and the temperature falls from ~ 220 K to ~ 100 K – again an incredibly slow rate of cooling at about 0.34 K per hour.
Even from lunar noon to lunar sunset the temperature drops from ~ 390 K to ~ 220 K in ~170 hours – the fastest observed yet a mere 1 K per hour.
From lunar sunrise to lunar noon the temperature climbs from ~100 K to ~ 390 K in ~170 hours – almost twice the fastest cooling rate observed.
No matter how you read the data the Moon radiating its heat to the vacuum of space cools very slowly – in a 12 hour night the Earth is never going to lose much energy at the rates observed on the Moon.
It is absurd beyond belief to ignore the rate of rotation about the axis of the Earth as the most significant factor in explaining why the surface is warmer than the blackbody figure – the data from the Moon proves this conclusively !
I can put near boiling water in my freezer and have ice in ~ 8 – 10 hours at only minus 15 C and water has a higher thermal capacity than Moon regolith not to mention latent heat of freezing – proof that conduction/convection cool surfaces much faster than radiation alone – its also why they put the fan in the oven, use fans to cool engine radiators etc etc.
Why would the Earth lose “heat” to space faster than the Moon ?
In 12 hours a 1 K per hour rate of cooling doesn’t seem to be any problem at all – bring it on.
Which brings me to that other fraudulent claim seen everywhere.
Space is cold. This is claimed to support the atmosphere acts like a blanket keeping us warm analogy.
Firstly it is absurd to associate physical properties like temperature of hot or cold to something that has no substance at all – a vacuum !
I am amazed people with PhDs can make such ludicrous claims.
Space is only as “cold” as the radiation traversing a particular area – true the minimum observed is a few W/sq m but this is not any sort of constant.
It is absurd beyond belief to claim that near Earth orbit space is “cold” when it is literally “bathed” is solar radiation powerful enough to heat planetary surfaces to ~ 390 K. The only place to avoid it is in the shadow of the Earth or the Moon.
Anthony, I am not upset that you closed the “open thread”, but I am disappointed. It was just getting good.
thingadonta says:
December 4, 2012 at 4:08 pm
I agree totally with your opinion of Skeptical Science, and your ideas on Heat Time Lag.
I particularly see the temperatures of the soil surface, as measured for agricultural use, being better indicators and more relevant than air temperatures measured a metre or so above the actual surface.
With the oceans, until we understand the circulation and how the heat absorbed on the surface can be buried deep and returned to the surface again, your thoughts, which align with mine, remain valid arguments.
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
December 4, 2012 at 11:56 am
Oh I would dearly love to stencil that on the tailgate of my pickups and drive through Boston but I would need bullet proof glass and tires.
It should be surrounded by the logo on this t-shirt from this site
Okay, my reading comprehension is obviously not very good.
Can you please indicate where in the quoted item 6 does it say that sea temperatures have little influence on climate?
My reading of the item is that the standard definition of “global warming” is warming of the near-surface atmosphere. In other words, the air temperature that we experience. That certainly seems to agree with what I always understood it to be.
Now, I accept that sea temperatures impact air temperatures, and sea temperatures play a significant part in dictating air temperatures, especially in coastal areas and over water. However, even if the oceans have warmed, if air temperatures have not statistically-significantly risen, then the statement in item 6 appears to be true.
So I don’t understand your point. Can you please clarify?
Louis Hooffstetter says:
December 4, 2012 at 2:51 pm
Ric Werme says: “If anyone has confirmation about this “correction factor,” please post it here.”
Right, that’s the adjustment said to be applied before this adjustment is applied. That adjustment has the decent to be in units of length, this adjust actually units of volume, and it’s just too weird that people are taking a sea level and adding a volume to it. Dimensional analysis is a wonderful thing to learn….
I’ve always been impressed by the way climate scientists report changes in temperatures in tenths, hundredths or thousandth’s of degrees when there is no measurement of average global temperature that would give you those kinds of error resolutions. In chemistry I never would have dared to be so brave to do that much data overreach. If one is not skeptical about results that have so much measurement error giving such positive and authoritative results.
Great response to SkS.