Reactions are coming in worldwide worldwide to figure 1.4 of the IPCC AR4 draft report. and the revelation that climate sensitivity is lower by aerosol analysis than the IPCC officially projects. Hotheads are blowing gaskets because the hot air just went out of their cause. William Connolley (with an e) gets the “blown head gasket award” for this round, see below.
First some op-eds:
Washington Times: EDITORIAL: Chilling climate-change news
New leak shows predictions of planetary warming have been overstated.
Forbes: Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels: The UN’s Global Warming Forecasts Are Performing Very, Very Badly
Investors Business Daily: Climate Change Draft Undermines U.N.’s Claims
PowerLine: Climate Alarmism: The Beginning of the End?
Climate scientist Richard Betts thanks Nic Lewis for “constructive contribution” to climate sensitivity debate. http://t.co/TU02i5rf
http://twitter.com/mattwridley/status/281706335320555521
Media Matters: WSJ’s Climate “Dynamite” Is A Dud (citing the duds dudes at “Skeptical Science”)
The Telegraph, Delingpole: Global Warming? Not a snowball’s chance in hell
Tom Nelson points out this fun exchange between Matt Ridley and William Connolley (with an e) via James Delingpole:
Twitter / JamesDelingpole: Climate troll and banned …
Climate troll and banned Wikipedia tinkerer William Connolley bursts a sphincter at Worstall’s place http://timworstall.com/2012/12/19/is-climate-change-really-a-damp-squib/ …
[Connolley comment] Anyone saying “trust me, I’m an IPCC expert reviewer” is a cretin. *Anyone* can be an “expert reviewer” just by asking to see the draft. It doesn’t mean the IPCC have vetted you in any way.
Is climate change really a damp squib?
[Matt Ridley’s sane, measured response] …I have since gradually come to the view that the extra feedback necessary to make CO2 warming dangerous is increasingly implausible, though still possible, and that the measures we are taking to cut carbon emissions are doing and will do more harm especially to poor people than warming itself. I may be wrong in this, but it’s not unreasonable to debate this possibility — and nor is it outside the scientific consensus, by the way.
I bring to the subject the same technique that I bring to all the topics I cover as a journalist. (Only on climate (and religion) am I told that my credentials disallow me from even having a view.) I read both sides of the question, I challenge assumptions and I listen to arguments. In this case reputable climate scientists like Judith Curry and Richard Betts agree that Nic Lewis has made a good case and deserves to be considered and debated. Would that Dr Connolley would show the same open-mindedness.
Over at Tamino’s place, Tamino is his usual self, calling other people and their conclusions “fake” while oblivious to his own use of a fake name.
Next, Tamino will call Nature itself “fake” for not cooperating at the correct pace. He seems to conveniently forget all the adjustments (all upwards) that been applied to the surface temperature record this past decade. No matter, as long as the adjustments fit his conclusion. /sarc
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And that trend line will deviate from the post-LIA pattern how? If it warms at all, likely at a lower rate; the early stages of the “tipping” into the end of the Holocene.
joeldshore says:
December 23, 2012 at 5:05 pm
Why don’t you try computing the uncertainties on those trendlines of yours.
I agree that the slopes in both cases give significant warming, but I was replying to a different point of yours earlier:
As you can see, a fit of the HADCRUT4 data from 1975 to mid 1997 actually gives a slightly lower slope than a fit of the data from 1975 to the present
The “slightly lower” slope to 1997 may give some people the impression that global warming is accelerating. My choice of lines shows at least a slowing down of the warming.
joeldshore says: December 23, 2012 at 5:02 pm
=====================================
Glad to have your response. A few thoughts:
“I use the term “noise” to refer to short-term variations”
You apply the term “noise” in a curious fashion. Noise refers to the meaningless and random accompaniment to signal which is to be rejected in determining the signal. Your application of the term “noise” to temperature data is inappropriate and without meaning. Your dismissal as “noise” the trend of the last sixteen years is also meaningless, but arbitrary and unscientific as well.
“What is untenable is people carefully cherrypicking how they measure trends in order to, say, start at what may have been the biggest El Nino in the last century.”
The issue is this: which way is climate headed? We have a flat trend for the last sixteen years and a cooling the last ten. This is the most recent data available and hence best serves for answering that question. Your dismissal of the most recent data as “cherry-picking” is pejorative, arbitrary and unscientific. Your rejection of the most recent trend and reliance on the historical trend of 1975-1997 to forecast future climate is poor methodology and in fact, insupportable.