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.
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thingadonta, it’s ironic that SkepSci regulars will list the barely 5-year-old solar slump as one of the causes of the lull in warming, completely ignoring the same ocean lag which supposedly hides stronger CO2 warming from us. The ocean lag is an exponential rise, not just a delay, but there are rises over various time scales due to warming at various ocean depths.
I don’t think there’s much that hasn’t been debated there, so just rereading some old threads is more than enough of a fix for me.
trafamadore says:
December 4, 2012 at 2:25 pm
I answered the question for you, but it looks like you missed it. It happens, I’m sure it’s easier to keep up with everything at the relative quiet at sks. Click back to http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/04/skeptical-science-gets-it-all-wrong-yet-again/#comment-1164178 and follow my links. (And read my comments.)
The third link that came up for me was an article where Dr. Morner discusses the “tilting” but the article is saying that the graph was titled via adjustments sometime after 2003. Prior to that, the graph was essentially flat (see figures 5 and 7 and the corresponding description in the article):
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2011/Winter-2010/Morner.pdf
The article has the following paragraph, which would agree with the original comment by trafamadore about titling, but with possible justification for doing so:
@richard:
Dig down in the lunar regolith and the temperature stabilizes. It’s more about ‘insulation’ than about ‘greenhouse gas’. So you have 15 lbs of air above a square foot and that tends to stabilize via insulation. Dig down under 15 lbs of lunar soil, it’s more stable too. No, not exactly the same. (Different specific heats and evaporation / convection profiles). Go close to space for us, and you get the thermosphere:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermosphere
can be a couple of thousand degrees in the sun… yet somehow being under that 2000 C blanket, we don’t have ‘global warming’ to such temperatures. In a greenhouse, put a 2000 C roof on it and see what happens… (Yes, I know, a silly analogy. But then again, the “greenhouse gas” is a silly analogy too… it does NOT act like a greenhouse.)
Similarly, looking at temperature swings at the surface of the moon is a silly analogy. You need to measure it under the dirt… http://www.asi.org/adb/m/03/05/average-temperatures.html
puts it about about -35 C a meter down. Not too different from our polar regions. Oh, and doesn’t have a molten rock core and lava heating the place either…
And, as Rosco pointed out, the different rotation rate gives longer periods of heating and cooling, so the depth of ‘stability’ will be at greater mass depth than if the moon had a 24 hour day. I’d hazard a guess it would be about 15 lbs /ft of soil deep….
Ok, here we go again;
Regarding the “Greenhouse Effect” of gases in the Earth’s atmosphere;
Firstly, a man made greenhouse most definitely does NOT “TRAP” heat. Solely via the restriction of convection it MERELY concentrates heat (sunshine) that mostly dissipates shortly afterwards (i.e. after sunset). This concentrated heat is slowed from flowing to the adjacent volumes outside of the greenhouse. There is no “NET ENERGY GAIN” or “EXTRA ENERGY” involved in the functioning of a greenhouse. It is quite feasible to construct a perfectly functioning greenhouse out of materials (plastic sheets) that freely transmit infrared radiation. This is done ALL the time.
Secondly, a thermal insulating material performs its primary function by slowing the speed at which heat travels through said material. This is mostly simply expressed as the distance travelled in any unit of time, or the rate of forward progress expressed in units of distance (or area) traversed in any given unit of elapsed time (milliseconds, hours, days, light years, etc.). By slowing the speed at which thermal energy travels through any given system a thermal insulator delays the inevitable point in time when more thermal energy must be supplied to “fill up” any given volume with more heat (i.e. your furnace turns ON). For a more detailed understanding of this research the concept of “Thermal Diffusivity”, this is effectively a measurement of the speed of heat flowing through any given system.
The “Greenhouse Effect” from these alleged GHG’s does NOT IN ANY WAY slow the speed at which heat travels through the SUN/ATMOSPHERE/EARTH SURFACE/ATMOSPHERE/UNIVERSE system. Yes it delays the flow of any individual packet of energy as some small portion of the energy makes a few extra trips through the system at the same incredibly high speed (i.e. the speed of light, it’s quite quick according to my references). Multiple passes through the system at high speed while causing a delay is NOT THE SAME as being SLOWED DOWN. This delay is on the order of tens of milliseconds, since the frequency of the incoming energy is on the order of 24 hours (sunset, sunrise) this delay is meaningless.
The Greenhouse effect is a HOAX………. It has been misrepresented by folks with an EARTH SAVING agenda, these poor misguided fools are so full of HUBRIS they will never admit they are totally wrong.
The “Greenhouse Effect” simply causes the gases in the atmosphere to warm up/cool down ever slightly faster that they would otherwise, on the order of a few milliseconds out of each day which contains about 86 MILLION milliseconds.
Cheers, Kevin.
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.
———–
Well I sort of agree about over interpreting the significance of Sandy.
But Chris is speaking for the other signatories and that is not his right. In fact some signatories do in fact deny the importance of CO2.
Yet most of the signatories named by the blog as having “no climate expertise” have published papers in the reviewed literature.
——–
Prove it. I want to see statistics showing how many papers each signatory has published that is related direclty to climate and which requires expert knowledge of climate.
Okay Oaky, back on. For a bit.
I found the link that I thought was Mörner; it was not, it was Monckton talking about Mörner and other global warming data on sea level changes. So Mörner is semi faultless. Mea culpa.
The tilted graph is in
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/co2_jan_2011.pdf
on page 33. The Mörner ref is in the page before; I remembered it as him but was wrong.
So is it ironic to remember a link to someone I never heard of, Lord Monckton, and attribute it to someone I vaguely remember, Mörner? Of course what I really remember was the really weird graph, it is really weird, I have never seen something like that in the Science world.
And Mörner is not completely clear in my book; his 04 work in the Indian ocean has not been supported in subsequent work and I don’t know where or if he has responded to it. The data from Mörner that _is_ used by Monckton is “reinterpreted” with new strange data, and I wonder what strange bedfellows we have here. But you can draw your own conclusions. I am sure some of you will believe them both blameless because they think AGW is a crock.
That graph _is_ great. I might even put in my lecture on integrity in science. Lord Monckton, you are a treasure, I couldn’t dream up this stuff.
Lazy says:
“In fact some signatories do in fact deny the importance of CO2.”
Name them. I want to know who I agree with.
CO2 probably has an effect. But it is minor; too minuscule to even measure. Unless, that is, you have some empirical measurements…
David Ball said on December 4, 2012 at 5:18 pm:
Anthony, I am not upset that you closed the “open thread”, but I am disappointed. It was just getting good.
I’m not. Now that the (C)AGW-pushing “science” has been devastated, helped in no small part by nature itself not complying, and the “debate” is increasingly shown to be a near-naked unjustified political power and money grab, I’m surprised at the number and identities of the non-scientific complete nutters who’ve been on “my side”. That thread was thoroughly polluted and beyond redemption, I’m not shedding any tears.
I know the “other side” has its share of whackos and it should be expected we’ll have some as well. But over there a lot of the loudest and craziest are presumably the leaders and the respected authorities. Over here, not so much.
I’m in this to defend real science from pushers of hyped-up pseudo-science, not to switch to a different type of nonsense. The enemies of my enemy… Are stark raving loonies I probably wouldn’t associate with under other circumstances.
KevinK says:
December 4, 2012 at 7:39 pm
Case in point.
D Böehm says, December 4, 2012 at 9:24 pm: “CO2 probably has an effect. But it is minor; too minuscule to even measure. Unless, that is, you have some empirical measurements…”
============================================================
So, no empirical measurements are known to you, but nevertheless “CO2 probably has an effect”. Interesting.
WOW! Christopher really kick the crapper out of that AGW strawman… [snip]
The irony has not escaped me that realists are called “deniers” by the “SS.”
Sometimes, a WUWT comment thread is so enjoyable that I read through the whole thing. There are some real gems here.
Kev-in-Uk says:
December 4, 2012 at 6:40 am
I might have written your comment word for word.
Ric Werme says:
December 4, 2012 at 10:45 am
So, it was not Mörner who tilted the axis, but the IPCC, and Trafamadore has reversed the roles of the transgressor and the referee throwing the flag.
davidmhoffer says:
December 4, 2012 at 11:48 am
OMG, ROFLMAO.
thingadonta says:
December 4, 2012 at 4:08 pm
You are correct. It’s weird talking with obvious lay people who do not recognize the fundamental importance of phase delay in physical systems. The sanctimonious twits at SkS form a veritible Petri dish of Dunning-Kruger in action.
KevinK says:
December 4, 2012 at 7:39 pm
This one, not so enjoyable. KevinK, are you telling me these do not work? Such a waste, all that gold being shot up into orbit for no reason.
The pseudonymous “trafamadore” sneers at me for allegedly having tilted the University of Colorado’s sea-level graph in an improper or unscientific fashion. He says: “I found the link [to the graph]. I thought it was Mörner; it was not, it was Monckton talking about Mörner and other global warming data on sea level changes. So Mörner is semi faultless. Mea culpa.”
If “trafamadore” had bothered to read the link he mentions, he would have seen that the graph in question was indeed one of several supplied by Professor Mörner, the author of an excellent, comprehensive, and accessible paper “Sea Level Is Not Rising”, published by the Center for Democracy and Independence, London, 2011.
“Trafamadore” says: “Of course what I really remember was the really weird graph, it is really weird, I have never seen something like that in the Science world.” Quite right: the graph is weird. But the weirdness comes from the fact that the original, raw data from the Topex/Poseidon laser-altimetry sea level record from 1992-2000 shows no sea level rise at all, and the GRACE gravitational-anomaly sea-level record from 2003-2007 actually shows sea level falling: yet the Colorado graph, relied upon by the IPCC and all the usual suspects, shows sea level rising at a rate equivalent to 1 ft/century.
Professor Mörner was puzzled as to why the University of Colorado record shows sea level rising steeply. Accordingly, at a conference organized by the (skeptical) Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow in 2004, he asked a member of the Colorado sea-level team what on Earth was going on.
He was told that the data had been deliberately tampered with because otherwise no rise in sea level would have been evident.
The Professor, rightly furious at this flagrant abuse of scientific method, went back and realigned the bogus Colorado record to fit the raw data, ignoring the subjective – or, as he calls them “personal” calibrations that Colorado had deployed so as to get the result they wanted.
Therefore, it was the Colorado team that had tilted their graph – and had admitted having done so. Professor Mörner merely tilted the graph back again to match the real-world data, and to give some indication of the magnitude of the Colorado team’s self-confessed scientific dishonesty.
Interestingly, the entire eight-year Envisat sea-level satellite record, from 2004-2012, shows sea level rose at a rate equivalent to just 3 cm/century, well within the measurement uncertainty and hence statistically indistinguishable from zero. The Envisat record, which was not studied in Professor Mörner’s paper, provides striking confirmation of the conclusion of that paper, which reads as follows:
“Only rates in the order of 0.0 mm/year to maximum 0.7 mm/year seem realistic. This fits well with the values proposed for year 2100 by INQUA (2000) [chaired by Mörner] and Mörner (2004), but differs significantly from the values proposed by the IPCC (2001, 2007). If sea level is not rising fast, and is not going to rise fast, then the greatest threat imagined by the IPCC disappears. The idea of an ever-rising sea drowning tens of thousands of people and forcing hundreds of thousands or even millions of people to become sea-level refugees is simply a grave error, hereby revealed as an illusion.”
Professor Mörner ends with these words: “I hope that by this research we can free the world from the artificial crisis to which the IPCC has condemned it. There will be no extensive or disastrous global sea-level rise in the near future. That was the main threat in the IPCC’s arsenal of bugaboos, and now it is gone.”
A final demonstration that Professor Mörner is very likely to be correct is that the Marxist climate-extremist, George Monbiot, exactly like “trafamadore”, carefully ignored all of the information in the Professor’s paper, including his specific statement that he had tilted back the graph in order to demonstrate how far it departed from the raw satellite data, and wrote:
“Monckton and Morner engage in one of the most blatant distortions of evidence I’ve ever seen. They take a graph published by the University of Colorado, which shows a clear trend of global sea level rise, then they tilt it by 45 degrees until the line is flat, whereupon they announce that there’s “no trend”. For sheer, transparent chutzpah that takes some beating.”
Now that readers have seen some of the evidence from the paper itself, they will understand why the libels of the reliably inaccurate and malevolent Monbiot, and the confused ramblings of “trafamadore”, themselves constitute a “blatant distortion of the evidence”.
Any reader who would like a copy of Professor Mörner’s excellent paper, which is not available online except in an unauthorized version that distorts all of the graphs, should contact me.
KevinK says:
December 4, 2012 at 7:39 pm
To add a little more detail… The GHE is clearly not working on Earth in the manner claimed by the AGW faction. But, it is not because the fundamental theory is wrong. It is because the system is complex (much more so than an MLI blanket on a space vehicle), and the simple models are inadequate to describe the full effect in the terrestrial climate system.
The post states that:
It’s true that there is “no statistically-significant global warming,” but this statement is misleading, since it’s virtually meaningless. For noisy signals such as these, over short intervals like sixteen years, the slope is sensitive to the endpoint. The graph that was lifted from the Daily Mail used HadCRUT4. Let’s look at that data over four different time intervals, starting with the one in the Daily Mail’s graph:
In the top graph, the slope is a mere 0.0032 degees per year, which, extrapolated to the year 2112, would give a mild temperature increase of 0.32 degrees. But what happens when we play with the endpoints?
Let’s move the start point forward 20 months, from July 1997 to March 1999. Now our measly little 0.0032 degrees per year has jumped to 0.0081 degrees, an increase by a factor of 2.5! But we can do more. Let’s say, for some reason, we’re really interested in events halfway into 2010. Still starting with March, 1999, we find, in the third graph, that we have a slope of 0.16 degrees per year, or 1.6 degrees over the next century, which is double the second graph’s slope, and five times the slope shown in the first graph. Finally, if we restrict ourselves to March 1999—June, 2007, we get a slope of 0.0309, giving a more worrisome warming of 3.4 degrees over the next century!
But not to worry. The slopes on these graphs—all four of them—are completely bogus in characterizing long-term temperature trends. All of them—including the top one, identical to the one published in the Daily Mail—have slopes conveying some message, but based only on the selection of the endpoints. So, you can say that there was no statistically significant warming within the last sixteen years. But we can also say that temperatures rose at a rate of 3.4 degrees per century within the last sixteen years, because the time interval of March 1999—June 2007 is most assuredly within the last sixteen years.
In a previous post, there is, I’m afraid, some further evidence of this problem:
Werner Brozek says:
December 4, 2012 at 9:29 am
Looks impressively flat. But just move the starting points of each series forward by two years:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1999.25/trend/plot/rss/from:1999.0/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1999.1/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1999.25/plot/rss/from:1999.0/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1999.1
In the first case, the slopes are all around 0.0003 degrees per year or lower; in the second, they range from 0.033-0.046. Not a worrisome rate, but the fact that it changed so much by changing two years tells you that neither measurement is worth much. At this point, the actual standard deviation of the slope isn’t really the point. But looking at some standard deviations,
In the satellite data, the error bars for the series starting in 1995-2012 range from -0.064 to 0.342, and for 1996-2012, the error bars range from -0.089 to 03.65. If the error bars include slopes that would give projections, over the next century, of a temperature drop of nearly one degree, and also include a temperature rise of around 3.5 degrees, they’re not telling you that there’s no warming to worry about. They’re telling you that you just don’t have enough data.
Woodfortools.org is a wonderful resource. But on their homepage, the give this warning:
Anyone who wants to use that website owes it to themselves to read the material at both of those links, but especially the second one.
All of this is made worse by another point feature of the last 16 year interval: we actually know that the temperature curve has been flattened by two natural events. The large upward spike in 1998 was due to a record-breaking El Niño event, while the more recent end was affected by both a double-dip La Niña and an increasingly quiet sun. The effect is to boost the temperatures at the beginning of the time period and suppress them at the end. Saying, as some do, that “global warming stopped sixteen years ago” is like climbing a mountain, finding a place where the trail levels out, and declaring that there’s no more mountain to climb. If you happen to be on top, you’ll be right, but judging by mountains that I’ve climbed, doing this would set you up for a long series of disappointments.
To make any long-term sense out of this, you have to account for these known features. Rahmstorf and Foster presented a paper where they applied corrections to the temperature record for solar, volcanic, and ENSO influences, showing it to be consistent with a 30-year trend. Bob Tisdale took issue with this paper; his account is here:
Mythbusting Rahmstorf and Foster
Posted on November 28, 2012
Rahmstorf and Foster’s paper is linked in the first paragraph.
I’m not really convinced that the paper is “mythbusted,” because the discrepancies that Tisdale shows would, if corrected, only serve to raise the plots some around 1989 and 2000. The flattening out of 1998’s giant El Niño spike, along with the raising of the curve for recent years, would still stand, and the trend would probably still match the models (which didn’t include the ENSO events at their actual times, because the timing couldn’t be predicted, and didn’t include the solar and volcanic events at all, because they couldn’t be predicted at all). But the accuracy of that paper is not really my point—I’m really just trying to say that the seemingly flat temperatures over the last decade (though how flat depends on how you pick your cherries) are artificially flattened by transient natural processes, and if you don’t correct for them, you need to at least discuss these along with the temperature curve.
Now, El Niños/La Niñas come and go. The sun is another story. The last solar cycle was quiet; the current one is shaping up to be quieter still. While we can’t predict very far, a prolonged solar minimum is certainly plausible, though certainly not guaranteed. So, that “flattening” process could continue for an extended period. If the “warmists” are right about CO2, this could actually be convenient. If we suddenly need more warming, we could perhaps do something like a crash program for mountaintop removal mining of coal, and then burning the coal in place to get as much warming as possible. We don’t know which way it’s going, so we’d better think about being ready for anything.
But back to plotting and interpreting plots, and the idea that “global warming stopped 16 years ago” and similar statements: again, heed the warning given at woodfortrees.org.
There are experienced scientists on this forum, but many others as well. For the latter, especially: please be aware that such cherry-picking, and using insufficient data, need not be conscious. I think there are vastly more misleading statements made because someone stumbles on a result that pleased them, and ran with it, than because someone consciously decided to spread misinformation. Science is fun, and important. For the great issues of the day, it’s good to see so many people become interested in it. But science can be difficult, too. There’s a reason why scientists spend so much time learning to do it, under the watchful eye of an experienced mentor. And young scientists learn early on that they have to understand the tools of their trade, including statistics. They’re very powerful, but they don’t have any training wheels or seat belts. Fortunately, if you crash and burn, the worst effect is usually just a short-lived reddening of the face, and, hopefully, a lesson learned. Have at it, engage in the argument, support your point—but if you don’t know what you’re doing, it will be obvious to those who do, and your argument, with them, will fall very flat.
Oops. The graphs that I tried to include didn’t make it. They were supposed to be right after my first full paragraph (the one following the quoted paragraph). The can be found at:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8061/8245570335_aa7cc77f64_b.jpg
The link to Bob Tisdale’s guest post also disappeared; it is
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/28/mythbusting-rahmstorf-and-foster/
Sorry about that.
@Bart:
I think KevinK is saying nothing about vacuum ‘filled’ insulation. He is making an assertion about air filled boxes. That convection dominates in an air (and water vapor / condensation) filled environment and so must be prevented with physical barriers. The ‘radiative’ aspect is below the noise level of evaporation/ convection / condensation. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, or that it would not be dominant in an vacuum, but just that it is irrelevant to a moist air filled box, or planet…
I have a good friend that I have been debating global warming with for some time. He (who has a PHD in mathematics and computer science, is a professor at a prestigious university) sent me these links in response to some recent comments I made regarding the 16 years of no global warming.. Any responses from WUWT would be helpful:
“Here are two results from a single Google search on the subject that I performed this morning.
http://news.discovery.com/earth/no-global-warming-hasnt-stopped-121017.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/16-irrefutable-signs-that-climate-change-is-real-2012-11?op=1
Please tell me how this fits into your view of the subject.”
KevinK said “Firstly, a man made greenhouse most definitely does NOT “TRAP” heat. Solely via the restriction of convection it MERELY concentrates heat (sunshine) that mostly dissipates shortly afterwards (i.e. after sunset). This concentrated heat is slowed from flowing to the adjacent volumes outside of the greenhouse. There is no “NET ENERGY GAIN” or “EXTRA ENERGY” involved in the functioning of a greenhouse. It is quite feasible to construct a perfectly functioning greenhouse out of materials (plastic sheets) that freely transmit infrared radiation. This is done ALL the time.”
My (quite old) book on greenhouses is wrong then. It describes the restriction of convection as the main effect but also describes glass absorbing most outgoing IR and returning 1/2 of it back to objects in the GH. That effect persists after sunset with an exponential decay, not an instant drop as you imply.
“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.”
I’m going to be picky here. Start at 1995. Because that is the date that Phil Jones from UEA had to start with when some clever “skeptical” journalist asked him if there had been statistically significant warming since 1995. And Phil quite rightly answered, “No”.
If asked now, he’d have to change his answer to yes, because now there has been statistically significant warming since 1995. So when 129 “skeptics” write a letter to try and influence public opinion, they move the start date, so that they can recycle the “no warming since…” line. Its misleading, and it shows a distinct lack of imagination.
Here’s a challenge. When was the last 15 year period that showed statistically significant *cooling*?
LazyTeenager:
At December 4, 2012 at 8:05 pm you misrepresent and lie when you write
Firstly, nobody cares what an anonymous internet troll like you “sort of agrees” so please don’t bother us with your worthless opinions.
Secondly, the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley has a complete “right” to explain the document which he helped to draft.
Thirdly, you have no “right” to ascribe your interpretations of signatories’ views. Signatories decided that they agreed with the document, and the document says this about “the importance of CO2”.
Richard
Moderators:
My reply to LT seems to have gone in the ‘bin’ and so does my request for you to retrieve it.
Richard
jazzyT:
At December 4, 2012 at 11:22 pm you say
The data you cite do NOT – as you assert – “tell you that neither not measurement is worth much”.
Your assertion tells everybody that you don’t have a clue about the subject on which you pontificate.
Each datum you cite shows that the indicated trend cannot be distinguished from zero at 95% confidence.
Please note that this is true for every single datum which you provide and, therefore, “the fact that it changed so much” (i.e not at all) “by changing two years tells you” that there was no discernible change at 95% confidence.
Richard