By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
In the closing minutes of the final plenary of the U.N.’s Doha climate summit, when no one else had anything further to add, I spent a few seconds telling the delegates something that the bad scientists and the malicious media have done their level best to conceal. There has been no global warming for 16 years.
In the real world, this surely welcome news would have been greeted with cheers of relief and delight. Since the beginning of 1997, despite the wailing and gnashing of dentures among the classe politique, despite the regulations, the taxations, the carbon trades, the windmills, the interminable, earnestly flatulent U.N. conferences, the CO2 concentration that they had declared to be Public Enemy No. 1 has not stabilized. It has grown by one-twelfth.
Yet this startling growth has not produced so much as a twentieth of a Celsius degree of global warming. Any warming below the measurement uncertainty of 0.05 Cº in the global-temperature datasets is statistically indistinguishable from zero.
The much-vaunted “consensus” of the much-touted “ensembles” of the much-heralded “models” has been proven wrong. The much-feted “modelers” had written in 2008 that their much-cited “simulations” ruled out, to 95% confidence, intervals of 15 years or more without global warming. To them, 16 years without warming were as near impossible as makes no difference.
Yet those impossible years happened. However, you would never have known that surely not uninteresting piece of good news from reading the newspapers or watching ABC, BBC, CBC, NBC, et hoc genus omne. The media are not in the business of giving the facts or telling the truth any more.
Precisely because journalists no longer bother to provide the inconvenient truth to their audiences, and because they are no longer willing even to provide the people with the straightforward facts without which democracy itself cannot function, the depressingly ill-informed and scientifically-illiterate delegates in Doha can be forgiven for not having known that global warming stopped a long while back.
That is why they should have been excited and delighted when they heard the news – nearly all of them for the very first time.
But this was the alternative reality that is the corrupt, self-serving U.N. Howls, hoots and hollers of dismay and fury greeted my short, polite announcement. This absurdly inappropriate reaction raises a fascinating question.
How are we to dig a rat-hole wide enough to allow the useful idiots and true-believers to escape as each passing year makes it more and more obvious that their fatuous credo has all the plausibility of the now somewhat discredited notion that the world was to be snuffed out at this year’s winter solstice?
Every student of the arts of diplomacy in the civil-service and staff colleges of the U.K. hears much about the rat-hole problem. How does one let the other side off some hook on which they have imprudently impaled themselves, while minimizing their loss of face?
A cornered rat will fight savagely, even against overwhelming odds, because it has no alternative. Give the rat a way out and it will instinctively take it.
The first step in digging a diplomatic rat-hole is to show that one understands how one’s opponents came to make their mistake. One might make a point of agreeing with their premise – in the present instance, the long-proven fact that adding a greenhouse gas to an atmosphere such as ours can be expected, ceteris paribus, to cause some warming.
Then one tries to find justifications for their standpoint. There are five good reasons why the global warming that they – and we – might have expected has not occurred for 16 years: natural variability in general; the appreciable decline in solar activity since the Grand Maximum that peaked in 1960; the current 30-year cooling phase of the ocean oscillations, which began late in 2001 with the transition from the warming phase that had begun in 1976; the recent double-dip la Niña; and the frequency with which supra-decadal periods without warming have occurred in the instrumental record since 1850.
The next trick is to help them, sympathetically, to focus the blame for their error on as few of their number as possible. Here, the target is obvious. The models are to blame for the mess the true-believers are in.
We must help them to understand why the models got it so very wrong. This will not be easy, because nearly all of our opponents have no science or math at all.
We can start our deconstruction of the models by pointing out that – given the five good reasons why global warming might not occur for 15 years or more at a time – the modelers’ ruling out periods of 15 years or more without warming shows they have given insufficient weight to the influence of natural variability. We can poke gentle fun at their description of CO2 as “ the tuning-knob of the climate”, and help them to put things into perspective by reminding them that Man has so far altered only 1/10,000 of the atmosphere, and may alter 1/3000 of it by 2100.
We cannot altogether avoid the math. But we can put it all in plain English, and we can use logic, which is more accessible to the layman than climatological physics. Here goes.
The fundamental equation of climate sensitivity says temperature change is the product of a forcing and a climate-sensitivity parameter.
The modellers’ definition of forcing is illogical; their assumptions about the value of the climate-sensitivity parameter are not Popper-falsifiable; and their claims of reliability for their long-term predictions are empirically disproven and theoretically insupportable. Let us explain.
The IPCC defines a forcing as the net down-minus-up flux of radiation at the tropopause, holding surface temperature fixed. Yet forcings change that temperature. A proposition and its converse cannot simultaneously be true. That is the fundamental postulate of logic, and the models’ definition of forcing manifestly offends against it.
No surprise, then, that since 1995 the IPCC has had to cut its estimate of the CO2 forcing by 15%. The “consensus” disagrees with itself. Note in passing that the CO2 forcing function is logarithmic: each further molecule causes less warming than those before it. Diminishing returns apply.
We can remind our opponents that direct warming is little more than 1 Cº per doubling of CO2 concentration, well within natural variability. It is not a crisis. We can explain that the modelers have imaginatively introduced amplifying or “positive” temperature feedbacks, which, they hope, will triple the direct warming from CO2.
Yet this dubious hypothesis, not being Popper-falsifiable, is not logic and, therefore, not science. If a hypothesis cannot be checked by any empirical or theoretical method, it is not – stricto sensu – a hypothesis at all. It is of no interest to science.
Not one of the imagined feedbacks is empirically measurable or theoretically determinable to a sufficient precision by any method. As an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, I have described its strongly net-positive feedback interval as guesswork – and that, in logic and therefore in science, is exactly what it is.
There is a powerful theoretical reason for suspecting that the modellers’ guess that feedbacks triple direct warming is erroneous. The climatic closed-loop feedback gain implicit in the IPCC’s climate-sensitivity estimate of 3.3[2.0, 4.5] Cº per CO2 doubling falls on the interval 0.62[0.42, 0.74], though you will find no mention of the crucial concept of loop gain either in the IPCC’s documents or – as far as I can discover – in any of the few papers that discuss the mathematics of temperature feedbacks in the climate object.
Process engineers building electronic circuits, who invented feedback mathematics, tell us any loop gain much above zero is too near the singularity – at a loop gain of 1 – in the feedback-amplification equation. At a gain as high as is implicit in the models’ climate-sensitivity estimates, the geological record would show violent oscillations between extremes of warming and cooling.
Yet for 64 million years the Earth’s surface temperature has fluctuated by only 3%, or 8 Cº, either side of the long-run mean. These fluctuations can give us an ice-planet at one moment and a hothouse Earth the next, but they are altogether too small to be consistent with a feedback loop gain anywhere near as close to the singularity as official estimates imply, for homeostatic conditions prevail.
The atmosphere’s lower bound, the ocean, is a vast heat-sink 1100 times denser than the air. Since 3000 bathythermographs were deployed in 2006 no significant ocean warming has been found.
The upper bound of the atmosphere is outer space, to which any excess heat radiates harmlessly away.
Homeostasis, then, is what we should expect, and it is what we get. Accordingly, the climatic loop gain – far from being as impossibly high as the IPCC’s central estimate of 0.62 – cannot much exceed zero, so the warming at CO2 doubling will scarcely exceed 1 Cº.
It is also worth explaining to our opponents the fundamental reason why models cannot do what the modelers claim for them. The overriding difficulty in attempting to model the climate is that it behaves as a chaotic object. We can never know the values of its millions of defining parameters at any chosen moment to a sufficient precision to permit reliable projection of the bifurcations, or Sandy-like departures from an apparently steady state, that are inherent in all objects that behave chaotically. Therefore, reliable, very-long-term prediction of future climate states is known a priori to be unavailable by any method.
The modelers have tried to overcome this constraint by saying that the models are all we have, so we must make the best of them. But it is self-evidently illogical to use models when reliable, very-long-term weather forecasting is not available by any method.
This fundamental limitation on the reliability of long-term predictions by the models – known as the Lorenz constraint, after the father of computerized or “numerical” weather forecasting, whose 1963 paper Deterministic Non-Periodic Flow founded chaos theory by examining the behavior of a five-variable mini-model of the climate constructed as a heuristic – tells us something more, and very important, about the climate.
Bifurcations (or, in our opponents’ intellectual baby-talk, “tipping-points”) in the evolution of the climate object over time are not a whit more likely to occur in a rapidly-warming climate than in a climate which – like our own – is not warming at all.
Sandy and Bopha, and the hot summer in the U.S., could not have been caused by global warming, for the blindingly obvious reason that for 16 years there has not been any.
However, there are many variables in the climate object other than CO2 concentration and surface temperature. Even the tiniest perturbation in any one of these millions of parameters is enough, in an object that behaves chaotically, to induce a bifurcation.
Nothing in the mathematics of chaos leads one to conclude that “tipping-points” are any more likely to occur in response to a large change in the value of one of the parameters (such as surface temperature) that describe an object than in response to an infinitesimal change.
The clincher, in most diplomatic discussions, is money. Once we have led our opponents to understand that there is simply no reason to place any credence whatsoever in the exaggerations that are now painfully self-evident in the models, we can turn their attention to climate economics.
Pretend, ad argumentum, that the IPCC’s central estimate of 2.8 Cº warming by 2100 is true, and that Stern was right to say that the GDP cost of failing to prevent 3 Cº warming this century will be around 1.5% of GDP. Then, at the minimum 5% market inter-temporal discount rate, the cost of trying to abate this decade’s predicted warming of 0.15 Cº by topical, typical CO2-mitigation measures as cost-ineffective as, say, Australia’s carbon tax would be 48 times greater than the cost of later adaptation. At a zero discount rate, the cost of action will exceed the cost arising from inaction 36 times over.
How so? Australia emits just 1.2% of Man’s CO2, of which Ms. Gillard aims to cut 5% this decade. So Australia’s scheme, even if it worked, would cutting just 0.06% of global emissions by 2020. In turn, that would cut CO2 concentration from a predicted 410 μatm to 409.988 μatm. It is this infinitesimal change in CO2 concentration, characteristic of all measures intended – however piously – to mitigate future warming that is the chief reason why there is no economic case for spending any money at all on mitigation today.
The tiny drop in CO2 concentration would cut predicted temperature by 0.00006 Cº. This pathetic result would be achieved at a cost of $130 billion, which works out at $2 quadrillion/Cº. Abating the 0.15 Cº warming predicted for this decade would thus cost $317 trillion, or $45,000/head worldwide, or 59% of global GDP.
Mitigation measures inexpensive enough to be affordable will be ineffective: measures expensive enough to be effective will be unaffordable. Since the premium exceeds the cost of the risk, don’t insure. That is a precautionary principle worthy of the name.
When the child born in Bethlehem ~2012 years ago grew up, He told His audience the parable of the prodigal son, who had squandered his inheritance but was nevertheless welcomed by his father with a fatted calf when he returned and said he was sorry.
However vicious and cruel the true-believers in the global-warming fantasy have been to those few of us who have dared publicly to question their credo that has now been so thoroughly discredited by events, we should make sure that the rat-hole we dig for their escape from their lavish folly is as commodious as possible.
If all else fails, we can pray for them as He prayed looking down from the Cross on the world He had created.
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
How generous of you, Lord Monckton. Were I one of the rats, I would cringe in my hole.
Thanks for the literal Christmas gift. I’ll read it in the morning, after gift opening. I always enjoy your perspective.
Merry Christmas and thank you for bringing the good news to the UN Dohans at their shindig.
One objection: Pray first.
Very logical as always, but it has the premise that these governments, bureaucrats and NGOs ultimately want to do the “right thing” and we only have to show them how wrong their view of the “right thing” is. The real problem is that the CAGW meme is just a justification for getting money that they do not have to earn. This is true for increasingly socialist governments, increasingly expanding bureaucracies and the increasing entitlement culture that is pervading western society.
Until we have a catastrophic event that brings pain to a large number of people, the lesson is not going to be learnt and this money grabbing exercise will continue unabated.
M’Lord, you are more forgiving that I would be.
Yes, giving them a ‘climb down’ path and a pat on the head is an ‘easier out’. For everyone. Yet… Something nags at me that “The rat that makes it to the hole comes back. The one who takes one bite too many of the cheese, ends up permanently solved.”
I agree that ‘your way’ is likely the better and easier path. I suspect that “the other way” is more long term effective…
Perhaps best is to offer a smallish ‘rat hole’ for the least “committed”, and a largish selection of cheese balls on wire for the selected few…
These folks are working a scheme that involves $100s of $Billions per year much for self aggrandizement. How much did Enron take, and what was their punishment? How about Dennis Kozlowski? Ought not the ‘treatment’ be proportional to how other folks running such an operation were treated?
Perhaps I’m just not well suited to Politics and such “negotiations”. Perhaps I’m too enamored of just having a large shovel when dealing with rats, and less interested in helping the poor dears escape….
Or perhaps I just think they need a lot more “Clarification of the mind” going forward…
Wonderful Christopher……
As a former ‘true-believer’ I would agree that recriminations for the hideous costs of this folly is not the way forward.
I remembered how I felt when it dawned on me that I had been seriously misled and then subject to, frankly, outright abuse when I was seen to have recanted my former stance.
Apostasy is a most heinous crime after all……….
Thank you again for articulating the consensus of the powerless.
Merry Christmas, Christopher. Thanks for all of your efforts this year.
Very eloquent and inciteful, as always
To summarise: In ‘climate science’, it’s the gravy train which matters, not the science.
Happy Christmas to all.
This sounds like a lot of work. How about we just identify a handful of scape goats for them to tar and feather?
Nobel Prize ‘recipients’ and assorted people with more hair on face than head would be a good starting group.
Superb, I doubt the Arch Druid will deliver a better sermon at Canterbury today.
In reality, every measure we have of global temperature shows that the warming trend continues unabated. Every study of climate sensitivity shows that our no-feedback warming will be amplified by at least a factor of 2 in the short term, and much more than that if we allow slow climate feedbacks to kick in before trying to arrest the warming. It’s time to accept the evidence and look for solutions.
I totally agree with you, if we do not allow them to save face, this expensive farce will go on forever. In the 1980’s the world faced the threat of nuclear war, organisations like CND campaigned for unilateral nuclear disarmament as the best solution to the problem. Fortunately we had Margaret Thatcher as PM and Ronald Reagan was president of the US who both did exactly the opposite. The result was the collapse of the USSR and a safer world.
There are parallels today with AGW, cheap energy is boosting the economies of countries like China and India. In the West we are hamstrung by the desire to make energy as expensive as possible to prevent some fictitious threat from CO2, resulting in uncompetitive exports and consequently economies that are in decline.
Every time I get an electricity or gas bill I would love to place it in a certain part of the anatomy of a warmist, but I would much rather let him/her save face and have cheaper bills and taxes in the long term!
You hit the bullseye early on in this piece Lord Monckton, namely that zero ‘global warming’ for 16 years is fabulous news. It should have triggered excited worldwide media headlines and global rejoicing, dancing in the streets and the Mother of all planet-wide parties.
After all, ‘global warming’ was supposed to be ‘The Greatest Threat to Humankind, Ever’. For such a threat to be actually demonstrated to be without totally foundation should have caused humbling pieces of apology across multiple media platforms by literally thousands of environmental writers, activists and advocates, opinion-formers, policy-makers, general media big-mouths and above all, ‘climate scientists’. Wild celebrations should have traversed across the globe, followed, on cool reflection, by the largest collective sigh of relief, ever.
That it did no such thing demonstrates that ‘global warming’ was only ever the chosen vehicle to allow the self-appointed global elite to access what they really want – global control and authority.
They have been busted. Not by biased claims or rigged reports, but simply by the most devastating method of all; observed reality. They and their now entirely discredited ‘man made global warming’ pet theory, are a completely busted flush.
Merry Christmas to you Lord Monckton, to Anthony, and to all WUWT staff, contributors and readers.
I admire the sentiment but fear that some prodigal offspring are never going to be able to mutter the simple phrase ‘I may have made a mistake’. Still, it is Christmas when miracles supposedly occur so we can live in hope.
Merry Chrstmas everybody.
“That is why they should have been excited and delighted when they heard the news – nearly all of them for the very first time.”
The fact that they don’t know it, or pretend not to know it, shows that the whole AGW-movement is not about warming, but about politics. The confession at earlier climate-meetings that a treaty will be about global wealth-distribution says it all.
The public has long stopped believing the AGW-hoax. The only reason that people are OK with this war on oil and coal is, imho, that they are fed up with the power-geo-politics surrounding oil.
Yet the public has no idea what a world without coal and oil will be like. I think the only way to convince the public that this war on oil and coal is wrong is by showing the negative effects on their lifes. The AGW-hoax they do not believe, but in the green utopia they still do.
The climate-battle will only be won when the public sees what the green utopia is and will be demolishing. I hope it is not too late when reason prevails and that we then still have a democratic society and a market-eceonomy, so that we can regain the lost prosperity.
Thank you, Lord Monckton, for your inexhaustible instigation to keep fighting the good fight.
Thanks again for an interesting discourse. The problem is that not many people, particularly politicians, are prepared to admit they got it wrong: so the usual propaganda will continue for sometime to come. Its a little like turning a 100,000 tonne ship through a 180 degree change in course; it takes some time. Global warming has now become climate change, so the next step is global cooling no doubt. By then most of the advocates will have retired leaving this new form of money called carbon credits.
Excellent ending in the spirit of Christmas – or Easter. However, a lot of these people are mesmerised by making money and I don’t think you can cure them as easily as that. Providing a proud man or woman with a bit of a leeway is one thing … does it work when people are greedy. The most effective treatment for dealing with obesity is the one that involves shrinking their stomach with some needle and thread. However, in the end, as there are so many of them, we will have to turn a blind eye … like what happened at the end of the war.
Lot of strategic smarts in this post.
A very timely intervention. This approach is going to become more important if the cooling phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation continues and temperature stay more-or-less flat for couple of decades.
There are, so far faint, signs that the state-sponsored climate science community is aware of the problem and is looking for the type of exit strategy that Lord Monckton proposes. A press release from the University of Reading pointed to research that showed up to 30% of the decrease in Arctic ice was linked to the AMO. Zhou and Tung estimate that when the AMO is taken into account the underlying rate of increase in global temperature is half what models were predicting. Booth et al have tried to suggest that the AMO is not natural but anthropogenic.
We must also bear in the mind the quote attributed (probably falsely) to Chesterton “When a Man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.” All those zealots who have used global warming as a peg on which to hang their religious fervour and grant applications are not lightly going to switch allegiance.
What would one do with the climate modelers after one gave them a way out? Continue to have them work in scientific institutions? What for? Are they good scientists?
They came to the field they are in because they were fascinated by the possibility of looking into the future with their computer programs. I’m being generous here and ignore simple desire for a large income without having to work as reason.
They never understood that that just doesn’t work. In my eyes they have absolutely no credentials that would make me think they would come up with any scientific results in the future.
Brilliant as always.
But do they want to grasp it?
A very happy Christmas to all who create, inhabit or visit WUWT.
Well said my dear lord. Never forget that a tiny helpless child is also an almighty God. We may lose a battle but in keeping to truth will always make us win the fight, in the end.
I predict that in about three years people will be standing in line for us to hear our prediction about the global cooling. Better we get our own house in order and get our story straight.
Christopher,
You may not be aware that Gillard has now made it illegal to speak out against our carbon tax, or risk a fine of up to $1,100,000. So much for free speech in Australia !
My Dear Lord Monckton,,because you have done sterling work on the detailed mathematics of the CO2 warming function in the models. it is with some trepidation that I write the following. However, the simple fact is that the assembled masses who use the Houghtonian model of the atmosphere, with its assumption of the Schuster-Schwarzchild two-stream approximation, have made an enormous mistake obvious to any process engineer with practical experience of heat transfer or physicist.with a thorough grounding in Maxwell’s Equations,
The fact is, the ~100 m GHG band IR emission/absorption path of the lower atmosphere is at near enough the same temperature as the Earth’s surface at equilibrium, a near black body IR emitter. The lower atmosphere is a grey body; near black body in the main GHG bands, low emissivity/absorptivity in the ‘atmospheric window’. Houghton made a big mistake in assuming it is a grey body.
The basic principle of the Maxwellian electromagnetic treatment of optical waves is that only the net vector from opposing wave fronts can do thermodynamic work. Because the CO2 GHG IR band thermal emission is the same amplitude as that emission from the surface, they mutually annihilate at the surface. This means there can be no CO2-AGW and no interaction via the water cycle with the moist part of lapse rate warming, the basis of the climate models.
NO CO2-AGW is possible. The maximum GHE is ~9 K.and is set mainly by water vapour.>/b>
Merry Christmas and a happy, slightly cooler New Year as we head towards the new Little Ice Age.
valuable information on the topic here:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00704-011-0448-2
Thank you for the article. One question, though.
I’ve Googled “3000 bathythermographs” and found only claims of how Mr. Monckton is wrong and there are much more bathythermographs than that which show the warming. Are those 3000 somewhat special?
I would appreciate the answer. To Anthony: I love your website, keep up the good work.
You are right on the button here.
If the forthcoming IPCC report changes direction, and/or if MSM starts reporting properly, how do the politicians save face?
On the other hand, if ALL the politicians are discredited, might we actually get some new ones who really were honest?????
Always a pleasure to hear from his Lordship. One observation, there are two types of rat involved here. There are the those that claim to be scientists, who can be dealt with as you describe. The others are the politicians, who we all know are quite happy to walk away from a fustercluck, especially if they can blame the mess on someone else. They usually then claim to be the best person to lead the world to a better future,which just coincidentally will also make them richer and more powerful. Plus ca change.
Dear Christopher,
The CAGW fraud as peddled by the UN was never about the science was it? That was a fabricated cover and a perfect excuse to set up the basis for a unified regulatory proto world government, the drawing together of regional governments under a supreme UN led world government. In of itself and standing alone on its merits the case for CAGW is nothing short of ridiculous, it is the embodiment of the Emperors cloak. While the fawning lickspittles shower the wearer with admiration and the mob shout their adulation it goes unnoticed by most that there is in fact no cloak, not until the little boy who has no stake in the process calls out do others realise the truth.
The cloak is the CAGW fraud and the little boy is the sceptic movement. The cautionary tale come to life in the modern age. As a fabricated useful cover the CAGW fraud was a vehicle, a way of uniting disparate opinion, a method of smothering dissent and caution and a way of uniting the public against a common enemy and a common threat. Make up a public threat and peddle that threat as imminent and dangerous and the public as we have seen through history can be manipulated by those with the will and the means to do it. While the gigantic funding flows those who benefit will not seek to end that funding, the law of self interest.
Thousands of scientists and many institutions rely on CAGW funding, a funding stream that would not be available. And whats more those involved know it too, as surely as the sun rises most scientists know in their heart the CAGW fraud is rubbish but self interest dominates. When the CAGW fraud folds it will do so faster than East Germany, those who peddled it will become overnight sceptics, in fact shortly after the CAGW fraud folds you will be hard pressed to find a true believer. Money and political support is the key, its propped the CAGW fraud long after it would have fallen out of favour and become just another phlogiston blunder.
Yours as ever
Stephanie Clague.
Well this would all be very interesting if it were not for the facts that
1) the world has warmed as predicted over the last 15 years. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming-links.html
[snip]
I’m not particularly in a forgiving frame of mind with these crooks and fraudsters either.
Well said, thanks. However this approach is predicated on the assumption that the warmmunists are at a point where they realise that they are ‘cornered’ and need a way out. It seems to me that we are far removed from such a situation and the majority warmmunists,and the MSM in particular, are in no way interested in exploring ways of gently, quietly and unobtrusively availing themselves of ‘rat holes’, however magnanimously provided. Nevertheless, there are some encouraging signs that certain governments are rethinking their positions.
Overblown and pretentious, but all in all a very entertaining piece of misinformation. But one would expect no less from Mr Monckton.
Thanks for the GREAT piece !!!!
As Cato said: Cum frueris felix quæ sunt adversa caveto – non eodem cursu respondent ultima primis. (When fortune is lavish of her favors, beware of adversity – events do not always succeed each other in one train of fortunes.)
Dear Lord, Thanks for your elaborate explanation to search or provide for a rathole. The most convienent procedure to achieve this is to blame the scientists. Of course not the science though. It reminds me of a chilling story an eastern European friend told me: Ceaucescu, the executed president of Roumania once complained to Stalin that he had problems with scientists. Stalin taken by surprise offered the following advice: Provide them(!) with a large project to keep them (!) busy. The solution was a huge project the Danube Black sea canal and related irrigations schemes. Best of wishes to you all.
My Lord…
They know not what they do….
Hmmmm….
I thinks.. They connive, betray, slander, deceive and pontificate…
A beautiful piece of writing which I expect to see up on the site of Skeptical Science in 2 hours..err days… errr years….
Merry Xmas my Lord and keep it up!
I must admit I would be tempted to just leave things as a question.
Real world measurements have shown that there has been no global warming for more than 15 years despite carbon dioxide emissions increasing to, and beyond, levels claimed to be ‘tipping points’. The climate models are wrong and the world is safe from catastrophic warming. Politicians, why are you not delighted with this news?
Thanks for this. Monckton is right, you must give the rats a way out, a way to save face. Otherwise this battle will continue for decades more.
Merry Christmas folks. We’re just starting to open our stockings now, the kiddies are all excited.
Merry Xmas Lord M ,Anthony and everyone else:-)
good post as always.
thing is allowing rats to escape means more rats later..lots more, usually.
We Aussies cop mouseplagues every few years, we know how bad it gets,
and the ABC and other media are breeding em up rather nicely.
we need the human variant of ratbait I fear, no one pushing the agenda to be in the job they held, or oven any admin power etc?
we also face the serious problem of our children and young adults who have been brainwashed since they hit kindy if not before..and changing that, is going to be damned hard to do.
the old Jesuit line, give me a child till six? and theyre ours for life etc
while I keep coming across warmist inserts to spead the word by stealth in many fiction books(where it belongs) and laughing thinking of how it will read to smarter folk later..meanwhile, it reinforces the warmist agenda in the already warped:-( the steam punk etc genre is particularly noticeable for that.
How do they save face? I don’t know. What kind of “out” can there be but the truth? The bandwagon is what needs to run out of steam before things can get better.
The only thing I can think of is that the AGW proponents will start to claim that there would always be warming by humans and then start to lower the amount of expected warming. Kind of like how they went from “global warming” to the skeptics’ position of “climate change” as if it was an AGW position all along.
(Tongue in cheek). I feel I ought to pic a minor nit; after all this is a science blog. “The child born in Bethlehem” did not occur 2012 years ago, but 2016. When Diogenes invented his computus, he got the date wrong by 4 years.
No forgiveness or mercy for the major players. Eye for eye, starve for starve, freeze for freeze.
Nice inspiration from the BBC today, oddly enough:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0124njf
Sic semper tyrannis.
A Christmas treat! Thank you, Lord M, for your gentlemanly and sophisticated prose combined with audacious street-Arab behaviour.
Well said my Lord. He also told his followers to love their enemies and do good to them. I feel you are doing your best to follow that hard as it is when all you get in response is hatred and misunderstanding
Have a blessed and happy Christmas
James Bull
I hate to be a complete jerk about this, but the climate fraud guys have already gotten people killed with their biofuel fraud making food prices rise out of reach of many. And made energy unaffordable for many. And caused the waste of BILLIONS of pounds/dollars/marks that could have gone to reducing poverty and deaths.
One of their own. Richard Parncutt, Professor of Systematic Musicology, University of Graz, Austria, already suggested how to deal with people who endanger others with their views on climate: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/23/beyond-bizarre-university-of-graz-music-professor-calls-for-skeptic-death-sentences/
Thanks
JK
In early times, the press was an essential ingredient in society because its members knew how to operate the complex the machines and to do specialist tasks like typesetting. Then came an increasing overlap of opinion over more factual news until now we have swarms of people, some rather good wordsmiths, who have close to no need in society for they merely gather up the droppings of people who might know, then cut and paste stolen wisdom into a narrative for the ordinary man and woman.It matters little if opinion is right or wrong, because people become comfortable following a few reporters whose opinions they come to value.
Even near-factual news like the evening weather report on TV is becoming a less objective item. During 2012, in Melbourne, we had the spectacle of the national map glowing a bright red as an animated gif or similar cycled through the temperatures of the day. Even the child knows the middle of the day + a few hours is often the hottest time. Is a bright red glow needed to reinforce this common knowledge?
We are well into the stage where TV affects group conduct. The USA record on gun homicides and the near unrelenting vision of guns on TV is superfluous. It would be interesting to compose a thesis on how guns infiltrated TV from the earliest times. Oh that it could have been pianolas or artist easels or similar.
It is not going to happen, but how I long for a large change that would split TV into 2 parts, one being fact and the other fiction, strictly enforced, so the viewer could turn off the one of choice and read a blog instead.
My main question is why there is a need for any reporters at the interface between science and the people. They perform an essentialy non-productive role at best, little more than pigeons with messages with rubber bands. At worst, they distort and make many, many mistakes, some of which come to be believed. My preferred option is a core of top scientists blessed with communications skills, who vet the public offerings of their scientific colleagues for prior accuracy. Medicine used to be a better model than most forms of science, but quackery and suspect products are in rapid increase. Watch out medicos, your already high insurance premiums will rise because psuedo reporters will invent circumstances for which regulators will require cover.
Merry Christmas all, Shalom Aleichem God Jul
There is no newspaper this Christmas Morning, so y’all will have to do.
Thanks for the Rat Hole. Knowledge and use of it might save the American politic. Now, if we can just connive to have it end in an inescapable bucket of truth.
I am sorry, Christopher, While I understand I do not AGREE, in addition to promulgating fraudulent science and Marxist twaddle, stolen an inconceivable amount of resources, for which I might forgive them, the have mounted a decades long attack on humanity, ob jectivism and the Enlightenment.
For that they need punishment not a Rat Hole
MFG, omb
Which “feedback-amplification equation” is being referred to here? Not this one obviously: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback
E.M.Smith
I think you are very well suited to Politics, but probably and unfortunately far too smart to get elected.
“Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men.” Romans 12:17 (ESV)
“Love your enemies” was barely understandable to the hearers of Jesus’ messages, unthinkable to treat the occupying Romans with love. Yet this principle underlies the Christian faith.
For those who know the experience of hate, persecution, bigotry, lying etc., even as we think of Newtown USA, forgiveness is the best way of healing. Overcoming evil with good, is the most effective way forward, but this is not natural to us. If it was natural to us the there would be no need for Christ to have been born into this world nor his death. “father forgive them for they know not what they do”, as Christ spoke on the cross, is perhaps a good statement to apply to those sucked in to the CAGW mania. Much as they like to use language such as “Deniers” and worse, and the proposed termination of the lives of sceptics, the victory is through forgiveness.
When Jesus told his hearers to turn the other cheek, he was not advocating surrender, he was advocating passive resistance. Romans were mostly right handed, and striking the left cheek was what they did, never the left cheek. Giving them the right cheek also was a statement of passive resistance – the Romans wouldn’t dream of striking it in those circumstances (with their left hand or a right backhand) because they would look more foolish that standing there just being offered it, which was bad enough and humiliating in the best way.
Lord Monkton is absolutely right, and it is good to see it spoken out.
Merry Christmas!
never the right cheek – that was a typo.
A few things…
1. “How does one let the other side off some hook on which they have imprudently impaled themselves, while minimizing their loss of face”. Does this work if we tell them that we are doing it to them?
2. “to focus the blame for their error on as few of their number as possible”. I vote for Mann and Gore myself.
3. “Let us explain…”. This is where you lost em.
Actually, in Matt 5:39 , I see that it was indeed the right cheek that was struck. It was the left cheek that was turned and not struck. This means that the initial strike was indeed a backhand, so not so hard or violent.
Sorry for the error of my memory, I should have checked before typing, but the principles remain the same.
Mike says:
December 25, 2012 at 2:59 am
“Well this would all be very interesting if it were not for the facts that
1) the world has warmed as predicted over the last 15 years. ”
Why, Mike, does NASA’s Goddard Institure for Space Sciences not use satellites to measure global temperatures but a measly 1,500 surface thermometers?
Why do you ignore the satellite measurements by RSS and UHA?
Mike says:
December 25, 2012 at 2:59 am
“Well this would all be very interesting if it were not for the facts that
1) the world has warmed as predicted over the last 15 years. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming-links.html”
Mike , from your link:
“The statistics show that the recent bouts of extremely warm summers, including the intense heat wave afflicting the U.S. Midwest this year, very likely are the consequence of global warming, according to lead author James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.”
That’s right, “according to James Hansen”, who happens to be the biggest rat of all. No need to go any further.
I’d say go easy and give an easy, face-saving escape route on the sheeple wearing rat’s clothing, but not so easy on the rats wearing sheeple’s clothing. While all rats may be equal, some are more equal than others. The usual suspects know who they are.
Thanks m’Lord M. The Doha Disclosure will surely be recognized as the trumpet call that wakened the sensible few to take a sip from the breaker of science. To achieve much we must be audacious. Well done.
The discomfort evidenced by the reaction of the faux-offended demonstrates where their true concern lies. Their discomfort is real – make no mistake, dear readers. The climate Gravy Plane® will soon be grounded for lack of money.
That there is a crying need for peace in the world gives me no comfort. We still face the reality that we are indeed our brothers keeper and I do not shy from the responsibility. The Family of Man has a common destiny, one that should not be hijacked by the forward.
Sorry,I got it wrong. It was not Diogenes, but Dionysus.
“The much-feted “modelers” had written in 2008 that their much-cited “simulations” ruled out, to 95% confidence, intervals of 15 years or more without global warming. To them, 16 years without warming were as near impossible as makes no difference.” Is there a source for this? If possible, I’d like a source or sources that can be said to be broadly based, not just one researcher going out on a limb.
One reason I’m asking is that I’ve seen (highly publicized) sources claiming that ten year plateaus are fairly common, and I wondered at the time why those same sources didn’t finish the job and figure out exactly how long is outside the realm of the reasonable.
I hope this will be re-published in the coming weeks (and from time to time) minus the Christmas references, since so many are too busy right now to read WUWT, and the piece deserves the widest possible dissemination
I shall as usual post a link elsewhere – but getting those to read it, who have swallowed the establishment line hook line and sinker, will be the main problem: they REFUSE to inform themselves
When the late summer arctic sea ice returns to normal extent, this major icon of global warming / climate change, will be wiped out. I intend to heavily promote the statements made that the sea ice will be gone by 2015 compared to the actual trend from the low of this year. Sometime in the not to distant future, I will be shouting from the roof top that the skeptics were right all along.
Merry Christmas.
I don’t get the part about the amplification hypothesis not being falsifiable. As noted by Monckon right in the beginning, a central prediction was that, with the assumed strong amplificaiton of CO2 warming, time intervals of 15 or more years without warming should now be statistically impossible (or very unlikely, and the residual likelihood will decrease with each additional year w/o warming). If we accept statistical criteria as a means of falsification in principle – and in medicine, for example, we do it all the time, clinical research would be impossible without it – this prediction is falsifiable, it has been falsified, and therefore the underlying premise is false.*
One needs to take this argument one step further: The models are in fact the very means of falsifying the warmers’ hypothesis! Without them, a specific, falsifiable prediction such as “a net warming must occur in any period of 15 years or longer” could not have been made. So, the modelers do indeed deserve recognition for their efforts.
Among real scientists, it is also understood that no shame attaches to having one’s predictions falsified by experiment – to err is human, and error becomes very likely when the player on the other side is so infinitely complex as the whole world itself. All that is required now is of those who had their predictions falsified in this instance is some humility and grace in defeat.
(*Or, if you want to be picky about it, not the amplification factor specifically, but the entire set of initial assumptions from which the models are derived, as a whole, has been falsified. This doesn’t make much of a difference in practice.)
Icarus62 says:
December 25, 2012 at 1:15 am
In reality, every measure we have of global temperature shows that the warming trend continues unabated. Every study of climate sensitivity shows that our no-feedback warming will be amplified by at least a factor of 2 in the short term, and much more than that if we allow slow climate feedbacks to kick in before trying to arrest the warming. It’s time to accept the evidence and look for solutions.
Icarus – you are incorrect there has been no warming trend since 1997. Now if you want to go back to the Little Ice Age you can and certainly the world has warmed out of that – but then I would ask why wouldn’t you go back to the start of the Holocene – as we are very much at the colder end of this interglacial.
Measurements of climate sensitivity are showing that it is about half the sensitivity of 3C from the IPCC models and there are studies showing that feedbacks become strongly negative with further heating and not positive as you claim.
If the evidence is examined with an open mind it is apparent that the climate is already homeostatic due to these negative feedbacks and thus there is no requirement to search for a ‘solution’ as there is no problem.
You should have noticed that people appear to want a problem to exist so that they can propose solutions that all have the effect of financially enriching themselves.
Sir Christopher raises and neglects som some valid points. The alleged rat problem is a sort of derogatory term for an issue that always occurs when a ideology, theory or faith evolves from underdog minority to the top. Wether youre pilgrim father in Salem or a protestant clergy in Suebia, this situation has often been a reason for witch hunting. Whitch hunting appeares more often in disputed grounds as post reformatorial german states as compared to inquisitorial and posconquista Spain. There is no cabal behind that, its often the ordinary (wo)man, professor or not and their violent fantasies which deviate and devasted in weak states. See Michael Hochgeschwender and H. C. Erik Midelfort for studies en detail. The way out here is to assure diversity among us AGW sceptics – it is being not all unanimously conservative on the role of the state and it is about taking more regional aspects and interests into account. Germans neither have seen climate being discussed so divisevely in left and right terms as with anglo saxons nowadays. Nixon founded the EPA, Merkel went to Kyoto. Along the Pielkes and the Stehrs and Storchs, I recommand to be more bipartisan about the role of the state or supranational entities when talking about climate “science”.
We shouldnt (but some of us do) take climate as a scape goat for a undercover discussion about wether the state is entitled to exist or raise raise taxes. The German salt and champaigne taxes where raised once to finance the emperors fleet – the very fleet sunk itself at Scapa Flow but the taxes apply happily ever after two world wars and three world cups later. And – why not? Same applies to carbon taxes and the way they are being discussed. At least in Germany, nothing is as proverbial assured as the grim reaper and the federal taxman, which collects money for the church and the various state and social security entities, inclusing a Medicare system existing since its been introduced by Count Bismarck. The benefit or disadvantage of a carbon tax or trade scheme is a political question, its not to be decided by climate modelers nor scientifical studies. Its a question of politics and – thats different point – adminstrative entities and should be discussed in their terms. But what both sides do, is coming up with sensitivities – but hey, the science about those is as settled as the last Question of Sigmund Freud – “The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What is climate sensitivity eh womankind about?” 😉
Mike says—- Well this would all be very interesting if it were not for the facts that
1) the world has warmed as predicted over the last 15 years. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming-links.html
JK——Has it? The IPCC AR5 draft disagrees -the temperature has been flat within measurement error for ten years. And unchanged, within the measurement error, from 15 years ago. See http://www.sustainableoregon.com/ipcc_predicts.html
Thanks
JK
It’s not so innocent. They know what they do and that it cannot control weather or climate. They *care* not what they actually do.
>>> Mike says: December 25, 2012 at 2:59 am
Well this would all be very interesting if it were not for the facts that
1) the world has warmed as predicted over the last 15 years. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming-links.html
Mike, it all depends on which set of FACTS you are using as FACTS.
Look at the current NASA temp chart of US temp anomalies.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.D.gif
Now let’s go back in time and look at the same chart as it was presented in 1999, before this AGW “hysteria” completely took over “science”.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/
Look at 1998 and 1933 in the 1999 chart. You can plainly see that 1933 was about .6C warmer than 1998. (the year of the Super El Nino).
Now look at that exact same chart as is presented today, and look at the 1933 and 1998 data points. What you will find is that the current “version” now shows 1998 as about .2C warmer than 1933! Walla. Somehow, 1933 got shifted downwards about .8C. The new FACT is that the past 14 years have been the warmest of the past century in the US!
Now to further this FACT-finding exercise. Go here.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
and plug in Annual Temp 1998-2011(in both sets of yr boxes) and append that to the NASA 1999 chart. (best to open another browser tab)
Note the downward US temp trend since 1998. Then note that from 2008-2011 the US temps were on average about a full 1C less than 1998. So if we append the recent 1998-2011 data to the 1999 FACTS we find that from 2008-2011 the US temps were about 1.6C less than 1933. Quite “average” compared to the last century.
So when you say “it’s a FACT”, I guess it all depends on the meaning of the word “is”.
Too comfortable a rat hole will mean the rats will be able to regroup and rear their ugly heads again. Another tactic may be to offer complete amnesty for coming clean and reporting those who gave the orders to commit scientific fraud by a set date, which should be quite short. Those that continue to hold out and doggedly continue the lie beyond the set date will be liable to extreme punishment (remember, the crime is high treason on a worldwide scale) with absolutely NO amnesty or mercy when the fraud is uncovered. I dare say some low ranking scientists will rat out early, which will preserve their scientific integrity. Scientists I would expect would not wish to subject themselves and their families to the humiliation of brazenly hanging on. I suspect it will start as a small trickle, then become a flood as the scientific community abandons the string pullers who had been manipulating them.
After WW 2, medium ranking Nazis were simply not adequately punished. allowing many to join the Green movement, which has infiltrated the IPCC. The Nazis were uber green-they loved nature and animals, but hated humans – very much like the Agenda 21 lunacy. In effect, through the UN we have had a regrouping of rats.
There WILL be severe repercussions when the extent of the fraud is unearthed, but this will be nothing compared to the total disaster that would be wrought on the human race were the Fabian Utopia to become reality.
I have picked up 3 major contradictions in the Fabian Utopia model so far. I dare say there are more. Given that the whole scenario is all so carefully choreographed, just 1 error in the logic train makes the whole Fabian model a piece of utter fiction(remember, it is humanity itself they are playing with and the original Fabians were writers of fiction), bit like a scientific theory-just 1 error and it is back to the drawing board.
1) On one hand, the UNIDO (popularly referred to as the Lima Declaration) says that nothing shall compromise national sovereignty, on the other, Agenda 21 calls for the abolition of statehood via one world government(with unelected leaders.) Sounds all warm and fuzzy, one world government- no need for war, but in reality, all will be comprehensively vanquished by the stroke of a pen. Wars are fought over national sovereignty and the rights to self determination.
2)The UNIDO divides the world in to 10 distinct economic zones, each specializing in specific areas, but none being self sufficient. If they do not toe the line, they will have key produce or food withheld. Australia is designated for mining and technology ONLY – NO agriculture, which explains coal seam gas in prime agricultural land when we basically float on the stuff and the total lunacy of the Murray-Darling water buyback. Jennifer Marohasy is the expert here- what I have learned is from her. In a nutshell, we are throwing away 40 % of Australia’s food production to convert the estuarine lower lakes in to fresh water lakes, which they have never been. On the other hand, ICLEI , sometimes referred to as Local Agenda 21 (totally ultra green lunacy) says that food should be sourced from within 100 miles (carbon footprint and all that crap), effectively having us Aussies starve by bureaucratic decree !
3) Human rights. On one hand, men in western countries appear to be discriminated against, yet there is a distinct pandering to Muslims, who are not noted for treating women well. Keep track of UN resolution 1618, which states that no action may be taken that harms a Muslim. Verbal “offence” constitutes “harm.” Bye bye freedom of speech, bye bye “Infidels.”
The stakes are high.
Thank you very much, Lord Monckton.
I will re-read this article many times and try to incorporate its teachings in my pages.
Merry Christmas to you and Anthony and all your readers!
Superb, thank you.
He shoots….He scores! Chalk yet one more goal by Christopher for Team Climate Truth. Now the question is, will the climate rats take the cheese? Here ratty,ratty,ratty….
Robert Orme,
It takes a long time to slow down a ship to a stop in a straight line.
To turn round through 180 degrees doesn’t take long.
John Brookes says: December 25, 2012 at 3:05 am
Overblown and pretentious, but all in all a very entertaining piece of misinformation. But one would expect no less from Mr Monckton.
====================================
This called a drive by spitball, John Brooke, and it seems that you are good for nothing else.
How about being really logical and refuse to shield them from the consequences of their malignancy?
How about not trying to thwart Darwin and let the principle of natural rejection extinguish the line?
Because if you fight the order of nature, we’ll soon be armpit deep in parasitic morons… oh, wait… we already are… i wonder how we got that way? not.
>>>“The much-feted “modelers” had written in 2008 that their much-cited “simulations” ruled out, to 95% confidence, intervals of 15 years or more without global warming. To them, 16 years without warming were as near impossible as makes no difference.” Is there a source for this? If possible, I’d like a source or sources that can be said to be broadly based, not just one researcher going out on a limb.
State of the Climate 2008 (NOAA)
Page 24 of the PDF
“The simulations rule out zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present day warming rate”
Lord Monckton, we may be spared the need to dig rat-holes. Reviews of the AR5 SOD show that they are digging rat-holes of their own. In the science part they have cooked up so many caveats and even used a totally illogical assumption for their forecasts (aerosols will drop substantially thereby permitting more warming -without this there will be no warming). This way, they will be right whatever the forecasts. They even have a forecast for reality trending outside of their forecast envelope!! Naturally, China, India, Brazil, Russia, etc will be increasing their aerosols (and CO2) with fossil fuel burning. These fearful rats have their own tunneling equipment.
I want to borrow Gnomish’s remark from the Haight Anxiety thread: “it can’t be nice right now for catastrophists children and pets” (my favourite for the year!!)
“Process engineers building electronic circuits, who invented feedback mathematics, tell us any loop gain much above zero is too near the singularity – at a loop gain of 1 – in the feedback-amplification equation. At a gain as high as is implicit in the models’ climate-sensitivity estimates, the geological record would show violent oscillations between extremes of warming and cooling.”
This is spot on. Also note that the ice core data shows CO2 rising and falling with ice ages. So some other forcing has a much stronger forcing effect that CO2. This implies CO2 is not the key driver of climate change, i.e. the feedback is negative and CO2 caused warming is attenuated not amplified.
“Process engineers building electronic circuits, who invented feedback mathematics, tell us any loop gain much above zero is too near the singularity – at a loop gain of 1 – in the feedback-amplification equation. At a gain as high as is implicit in the models’ climate-sensitivity estimates, the geological record would show violent oscillations between extremes of warming and cooling.”
This is spot on. Also note that the ice core data shows CO2 rising and falling with ice ages. So some other forcing has a much stronger forcing effect than CO2. This implies CO2 is not the key driver of climate change, i.e. the feedback is negative and CO2 caused warming is attenuated, not amplified
Can Lord Christopher really forgive the wind turbines and farms that desecrate the scenery of Scotland an can he really accept the massive pylons already marching across the banks and braes, all of which will remain for decades after this nonsense has ended.
And will he forgive Alex Salmond, the perpetrator of this barbarism, for conning the Scots into believing that the English will buy his wind generated electricity at three times the price of gas, should he achieve independence?
From where I sit in the Borders surrounded by the excrescences, I rather think not.
The denial of reality by the CAGW is akin to the denial of the European elites for the problem of encroaching Sharia.
Lord Monckton writes-
“…we should make sure that the rat-hole we dig for their escape from their lavish folly is as commodious as possible.”
The word commodious is an apt descriptor of the rat-hole needed for the flingers of CACC.
Or perhaps I have misinterpreted the Lord’s use of that word?
Mike says: December 25, 2012 at 2:59 am
Well this would all be very interesting if it were not for the facts that
1) the world has warmed as predicted over the last 15 years. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming-links.html
===================================================
Actually, the temperature record shows that the last warming trend ended sixteen years ago and that the last ten years is a cooling trend. Many expect this trend to continue indefinitely, which would be most unfortunate because a warmer world is to be preferred to a cooler world, for a number of reasons.
Your NASA link illustrates one the problems facing those who seek to understand this issue of global warming. In fact, Hansen’s assertion that drought, flood, heat waves, etc. are on the increase is false, as the recently leaked second order draft of the IPCC concedes, which see.
Once again, if you wish to comprehend this issue you must learn to think for yourself, or you will end up as a cow in a stampede.
Many thanks to everyone who has been kind enough to comment on my Christmas blog posting. Let me deal with the hostiles first. As ever, they are startlingly illogical.
The pseudonymous “Icarus62” says, “In reality, every measure we have of global temperature shows that the warming trend continues unabated.” One should be careful to avoid the totality quantifier (here “every”) unless one has examined and tested every element in the relevant set. A single counter-example suffices, therefore. The measure of global temperature favored by the IPCC, the HadCRUt data series, shows no statistically-significant warming for 16 years.
This result is supported by the UAH and RSS satellite lower-troposphere temperature datasets. I have not checked the GISS or NCDC datasets, since they have been tampered with so often, so unjustifiably and with so little explanation that they are little better than pure fiction, and I no longer use them.
“Icarus62” also says, “Every [the totality quantifier again] study of climate sensitivity show that our no-feedback warming will be amplified by at least a factor 2 in the short term, and much more than that [in the long term].” Again, a single counter-example suffices (or, since it is Christmas, let me give four of the many paper that are available). Lindzen & Choi (2009, 2011), endorsed by Spencer & Braswell (2010, 2011), find feedbacks net-negative.
Furthermore, not one feedback can be directly measured by any method. Nor can it be distinguished empirically from any other feedback, or even from the forcing that engendered it. Nor can its influence be distinguished empirically from that of natural variability. Nor can its value be established theoretically by any method. Nor can its ultimate value be discerned even by careful measurement of both forcings and consequent temperature changes within our lifetime, for the climate is not expected to return to equilibrium until 1000-3000 years a forcing has perturbed it (Solomon et al., 2009).
Accordingly, feedback values – and hence the modelers’ tripling of the small, harmless 1 K direct warming per CO2 doubling – are not Popper-falsifiable, not [by] logic, and not [by] science. It does not matter how many studies there are, on either side. Until a couple of millennia have passed, we shall merely be guessing: and, as the head posting pointed out, the underlying math – taken with 64 Ma of global temperatures fluctuating by no more than 3% either side of the long-run mean – would lead us to expect net-negative feedbacks, and around 1 K warming per CO2 doubling, not the 3.3 K that is the IPCC’s current central estimate (IPCC, 2007, p. 798, box 10.2).
Accordingly, there is no shred of scientific basis for “Icarus62’s” conclusion that “It’s time to accept the evidence and look for solutions”. That is a statement of aspiration based upon an unfounded belief in evidence that does not (and for up to 3000 years cannot) exist.
“Mike” bases his erroneous assertion that “the world has warmed as predicted over the last 15 years” on a paper based on temperature records going back not to 1998 but to 1950. Of course there has been warming since 1950, though one cannot be sure how much of it was attributable to us: but, like it or not, there has been no warming globally for the 16 years since 1997.
The paper in question is by James Hansen, and is much cited by Al Gore in his current climate presentations. But it tells us little that is not a self-evident consequence of 0.7 Celsius degrees of warming since 1950.
John Brookes says my posting was “overblown and pretentious, but all in all a very entertaining piece of misinformation.” And yah-boo to you too.
Next, I shall answer some questions posed by commenters. Alec M, after a rather compressed analysis that was way above my pay-grade, concludes that the maximum greenhouse effect is only 9 K and asks my opinion. We can determine, after a little spherical geometry and after allowing for the influence of clouds today, that the mean surface temperature of the Earth as a naked lithosphere would be some 21 K below today’s. So it may be that Alec M’s calculation is a little on the low side.
Mr. Neven asks about the 3000 automated bathythermograph buoys I mentioned. These are the Argo buoys, first deployed in earnest in 2006. There are now 3674 of them, though the full complement was originally 3000. They are run by the ARGO project, to which they report autonomously by satellite every so often. Between them, they have now taken more than 1 million temperature and salinity profiles at various depths up to 2000 [feet]. This quantity of profiles sounds impressive, but – as Willis Eschenbach has pointed out in an earlier posting – it is the equivalent of taking a single profile at a single location in the whole of Lake Superior less than once a year.
Though the ARGO project has insufficient resolution to be useful, it has a greater resolution than any previous system of measurement. What it shows, according to Dr. David Evans, who has analysed the data, is that the rate of increase in ocean heat content is four and a half times less than the models had predicted.
“lgl” asks about the feedback-amplification equation. The overall feedback gain factor, G, which is unitless, is equal to the reciprocal of (1 – Planck x fsum), where Planck is the zero-feedback climate-sensitivity parameter 0.3 Kelvin per Watt per square meter and fsum is the unamplified net sum, in Watts per square meter per Kelvin, of all individual positive and negative feedbacks operating on the climate object. Multiply any forcing delta-F by Planck to obtain the zero-feedback or instantaneous or “direct warming” that a forcing is expected to engender; multiply the direct warming by G to obtain the “equilibrium warming” that is expected to obtain after all feedbacks have acted and the climate has settled back to a new equilibrium following the perturbation caused by the forcing. Simple when you know how.
“miker613” asks for the source of my statement that the modelers had written in 2008 that their simulations ruled out, to 95% confidence, intervals of 15 years or more without global warming.” The source was a paper written by various leading modelers and published in the NOAA’s annual State of the Climate report for 2008. See p. 523 of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society for that year.
“Sam the First” asks that the head posting should be republished minus the Christmas references. I have sent Anthony the 2000-word talk from which the science and economics in the posting was taken, and I shall leave it to him either to make a separate posting of it in the New Year or link to it, whichever works best.
Michael Palmer says the feedback-amplification hypothesis is falsifiable, and has been falsified by the fact of 16 years without global warming. A little math to explain why I respectfully disagree. The climate-sensitivity equation states that warming is the product of a forcing and a climate-sensitivity parameter. In the absence of any feedbacks, or where they sum to zero, the sensitivity parameter (known as the Planck parameter) is 0.3 Kelvin per Watt per square meter, or thereby. However, between the moment of forcing and the moment when the climate returns to equilibrium up to 3000 years may pass. Throughout that period, if the feedback is as strongly net-positive as the IPCC would have us believe, the value of the sensitivity parameter increases, from 0.3 at the outset to 0.9 at the end. As I explained in the head posting, there are many natural events that may, over a shortish period such as 15 years, temporarily suppress the small warming that might be expected. Just to complicate things further, in the IPCC’s theory some of the longer-acting feedbacks might not even begin to come into play until 100 or even 1000 years have passed.
It is precisely because the strongly net-positive feedbacks posited by the modelers cannot be definitively Popper-falsified for thousands of years that the climate scam has been so successful. However, this is where logic comes to our aid. Popper’s celebrated paper of 1934 makes it quite plain that any hypothesis not capable of being falsified – i.e. subjected to empirical or theoretical tests that might prove it false – is not a true hypothesis at all, but merely a guess, and accordingly of no interest to logic, to math, or to science.
In any earlier age, all who – like me – had a Classical training were taught this. That is why I, and most Classicists I know, have little time for the notion of climate panic. It is based upon a non-Popper-falsifiable guess that the net feedback sum to equilibrium is strongly net-positive. Without that guess, there is no climate problem. With that guess, there is still no climate problem, because one cannot found a problem – still less cripplingly expensive proposals to address it – upon what is little better than mere speculation.
Jim Cripwell says Christ was born in 4 BC. I have not studied the question of when He was born, so I was careful to put a tilde in front of “~2012” to indicate uncertainty.
Dr. Burns says Julia Gillard, described as a Prime Minister of Australia, has declared it unlawful on pain of a $1.1 million fine to speak out against the carbon dioxide tax. I shall be going to Australia and New Zealand on a three-month speaking tour from January to April, and I shall be saying exactly what I think of the carbon dioxide tax, whether Ms. Gillard likes it or not.
In view of the stramash that ensued when in a private address to Zionists in California a couple of years back I said that one of Ms. Gillard’s advisers had uttered a fascist remark, whereupon a hate-filled journalist paraded my comment all over Australia without thought for the damage he was doing to the hapless adviser, I shall not even begin to think, still less to say. which regimes in the 1930s made it unlawful to speak ill of themselves or of their freedom-destroying policies. My, my, no.
My province of Alberta Canada is officially rat-free.
We maintain this policy by immediately eradicating (eraticating?) all colonies of rats as soon as they are detected.
It works!
“No Liberals, Greens or NDP! Keep Alberta rat-free!”
Regards, Allan 🙂
P.S. Skill testing question: What does “Beware the dancing rats” mean?
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/prm3266
Keep Alberta Rat-free for another 50 years!
Anniversary celebration underway!
Fifty years ago, a rat infestation was discovered near Alsask, in central Alberta. The province reacted immediately to halt further westward rat migration. Due to the Rat Patrol’s vigilance, our province has saved an estimated one billion dollars over 50 years, in property damage, livestock losses, human suffering and healthcare, as well as lost and contaminated food.
Got everything right except the Sun part. The direct solar influence on temperature waxes and wanes with the solar cycle producing only a smidgen of temperature difference here on Earth that cannot be seen or deducted from the temperature record. It can only be mathematically construed it is so small. The indirect variable components of the sun’s interaction with Earth (cosmic rays, magnetic influence etc) produce far less temperature-forcing capability and cannot even be remotely considered as an agent in the past century’s warming record.
The sun can be considered, in comparison with Earth’s significant intrinsic variability, to be a constant. It is Earth itself which produces warming trends, cooling trends, and nada trends in the temperature record we debate.
Icarus62, you say on Dec. 25 @ 1:15 am:
In reality, every measure we have of global temperature shows that the warming trend continues unabated.
I am really unaware of that evidence. Would you be so good as to point it out?
Regarding the remarks on chaotic behavior, specifically the Lorenz attractor paper and bifurcation theory: This is followed by suggestions that chaotic behavior, which is to be expected in the global weather, prevents accurate long range climate forecasting. Yes, there is a boatload of small scale structure at the level of daily weather. Long term climate change is still a well posed problem, even though one may need to average over some considerable time to see underlying trends. The North polar ice cap is shrinking, which is expected to cause warming (less of the reflective ice). This is an example of feedback. Long story short, you can extract trends from noisy data, and chaos (positive Lyapunov exponents) won’t change that fundamentally. Though climate modeling seems like a formidable problem.
This misses the point. The science is largely irrelevant and CAGW is about money, jobs and power which becomes an end in itself and the original justification can be glossed over, turned into a fiction, or history rewritten to suit.
Some of the rats, probably the politicians who’ve been swayed to go along with CAGW would like a way out.
Most of the rats have a plentiful food source and know that by taking an exit route they would starve, so they’ll fight to the death. There’ll certainly be an effort to keep the show on the road using a different justification; sustainability, bio-diversity, whatever, or hope that simple inertia through having institutionalised thenselves will work.
An interesting way of looking at things Christopher, but unfortunately, I don’t believe the nonsense will end without a lot of people being hurt as the consequences of the policies which have been enacted are felt.
Forget the rat hole – tell the public the truth – you have been lied to by a cabal of interested parties – crooked politicians with nefarious motives, crooked scientists with grant money and reputations to make, and crooked activists from the green industry. Let all the crooks be hoisted on their own petard with no way out and a public that turns on them. Shine the light on their activity and show them no mercy. Letting them off the hook only allowed them to burrow like rats into some dark corner where they can continue their nefarious crimes using some new imagined terror. The only way to handle these crooks is the way the Rome handled Carthage – tear them to the ground and leave them no refuge, destroy their reputations completely.
Pamela Gray says:
December 25, 2012 at 7:54 am
“The sun can be considered, in comparison with Earth’s significant intrinsic variability, to be a constant. It is Earth itself which produces warming trends, cooling trends, and nada trends in the temperature record we debate.”
Debatable. At the moment I’m undecided. Bond events / Dansgaard–Oeschger event COULD come about as an internal quasi-periodic oscillation. On the other hand, Nile gauge records, and the freezings of the Rhine, show a pattern depending on Solar cycles.
While TSI stays constant, the UV component varies wildly.
What did the Nile do during the Maunder minimum?
Lord Monckton, thank you very much for your well written Christmas present.
I smiled so hard while reading it, my face cramped up and I’ll be wearing this silly grin until New Year’s.
Although I appreciate the logic of your argument, I fear providing a comfortable rat hole for these scoundrels to escape will merely create a refuge from which to propose another mythical theory such as Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Cooling (CAGC). I already see the bed wetters laying the groundwork for this by proposing man-made particulates have temporarily overwhelmed the CO2 greenhouse effect, so both CAGW and CAGC must be addressed simultaneously lest either extreme reach a “tipping point”.
I know how ludicrous that sounds, but one never goes wrong overestimating the stupidity of useful idiots; history has proven this many times.
I would propose using the CAGW fiasco to indite the whole Statist philosophy that has destroyed the integrity of science, bankrupted the world, destroyed entire economies, and stole individual freedoms.
The IPCC must be shut down for good and the ringleaders of the biggest hoax in human history must suffer the consequences for the $Trillions wasted and the lives destroyed.
Justice must be served lest Statism continue to rob us of our future and our freedoms and our property.
hh says:
December 25, 2012 at 8:00 am
“Regarding the remarks on chaotic behavior, specifically the Lorenz attractor paper and bifurcation theory:”
I know of NO paper by the climate modelers even trying to find a strange attractor. They seem to avoid discussing the chaotic aspect like the plague, as it would show the shaky ground they are on. As long as they don’t propose a theory of such an attractor, I therefore hold that they can’t simulate into the future with any skill.
“Long story short, you can extract trends from noisy data, and chaos (positive Lyapunov exponents) won’t change that fundamentally. T”
Nonsense. Noise is not chaos and Chaos is not necessarily noise. (You mentioned attractors yourself)
We know that climate has a brown noise power spectrum. You say predictions of long range states is possible; high frequency “noise” can be ignored? So please, provide a theory that shows how the power spectrum that makes up the climate is divided into two separate subsystems, one of which being “noisy/chaotic” and high-frequency; the other being a separate low-frequency system which you can simulate with any predictive skill. Go ahead, the onus is on you, DEMONSTRATE it. Because it is an absolutely extraordinary claim.
Brlliant treatise my Lord. I add my thanks for all your hard work this year and wish you and all the truth seekers a happy Christmas.
Mike, on Dec 25, 2:59 am you say:
Well this would all be very interesting if it were not for the facts that
1) the world has warmed as predicted over the last 15 years. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming-links.html
No kidding, does it actually say that? I followed your link, but I didn’t see that. Where, exactly? Could you point it out to me? What it appears to be is the classical definition of statistics – “Torture the numbers until they confess”. No less a dedicated warmist than Phil Jones seems to have difficulty seeing warming in the recent past. Only Hansen is visionary enough for that
Thank you, glenncz, that’s a good source. Are there more sources like that (that one might be sufficient, but just asking).
Followup question: Is this a drunkard’s walk type issue, where the truth is that if you already had one decade-long plateau, a second one next to it is just as likely as it ever was? [In which case a double decade plateau may be unlikely (<5%) but doesn't really make the model impossible.] Or is the "noise" limited in scope, so that it can only mask the signal for so long, and a decade-long plateau cannot continue and _must_ turn sharply upward (according to the models)?
Lord Monckton, who is 100% correct 99.99% of the time, may have failed here to take into account the time inconsistency problem that Finn Kydland and Edward E. Prescott described in their 1977 article “Rules rather than Discretion: the Inconsistency of optimal plans”, for which they were awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in economics. The relevance of this here is that while a simple calculation of costs and benefits may indicate that an escape path for the rats should be created, those calculations do not necessarily yield the optimal choice because they may not account for the effect on the future behavior of the escaping rats or the behavior of those who may choose a career as a rat at some time in the future.
The institution known as “science” will suffer great harm if the perpetrators of this fraud are allowed to escape with their reputations intact.
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the House (of Representatives) not a rat is stirring, not even John Boehner. Congress is off for the holiday, and the President is out in Hawaii. And here we are, one week from fiscal calamity.
They procrastinated all year and let it go to the last minute holding everyone hostage. They don’t deserve this vacation.
Merry Cliffmess, everybody!
This Christmas I am spending time with relatives who I consider moderate politically. They believe AGW is a serious problem, that the Polar Bears are in trouble, that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant, that the earth is warming, and that Greenland has largely melted (!).
They believe these things because they get all of their information from the mainstream media (mainly PBS). They have not been told anything different.
We who embed ourselves in the skeptical side may not realize how pervasive the propaganda is. The “science” may be dead but the ideology isn’t.
I can’t just tell them they are wrong. The just tell me I am wrong and wonder if I get all my information from Fox News, “the mouthpiece of the Republicans”. Lord Mockton’s article is fine but it treats the problem as if it were a science problem. It isn’t. It should be treated more like a cult. CAGW is a tool being used to drive an ideology that has nothing to do with science. De-programming can be very difficult.
There is much work to do.
DirkH says:
“What did the Nile do during the Maunder minimum?”
Unfortunately, there seems to be a long pause in the records, but somebody has tried to link anomalous Nile floods to temperature reconstructions, Paper from 2007
Extreme Nile floods and famines in Medieval Egypt (AD 930–1500) and their climatic implications
Fekri A. Hassan
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618207001449
Paywalled, but preview of graphs free.
Dear Christopher,
You are far too kind to those that want to destroy Western civilization.
Merry Christmas and thanks for all the good work you have done.
Neil
You have set me a pretty problem Lord Monckton. I write (behind a paywall) in a collective of analysts for Wikistrat. This is a perfect source document for analysis of the anti-side of the CAGW issue viewed as a strategy piece. The emotions thrown up by this issue actually challenge the underlying business model of the firm. Can a few hundred analysts from all over the globe and from disparate fields apply the “wisdom of the crowd” to your thesis? Are there public policy issues too hot for this model to work?
quote Lord Monckton:
“Dr. Burns says Julia Gillard, described as a Prime Minister of Australia, has declared it unlawful on pain of a $1.1 million fine to speak out against the carbon dioxide tax. I shall be going to Australia and New Zealand on a three-month speaking tour from January to April, and I shall be saying exactly what I think of the carbon dioxide tax, whether Ms. Gillard likes it or not.”
A gag order like the one implied above would be very, very disturbing. However, we must not exaggerate, or we loose credibility. I googled this and found this link.
http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/1053734
It seems to me that the Australian government is asking businesses not to exaggerate how much prices have risen due to the carbon tax. Australians? Did I get this right, or can you really be fined for talking about the carbon tax in a critical way?
You are right. As Machiavelli points out in his Discourses, there are two choices when dealing with vanquished foes: kill them or make friends of them. Any other course of action ensures that they will come back later and cause you problems. Humiliating the vanquished is particularly dangerous but, on the other hand, it is absolutely necessary that the vanquished actually feel vanquished.
Pamela Gray says:
December 25, 2012 at 7:54 am
Got everything right except the Sun part. The direct solar influence on temperature waxes and wanes with the solar cycle producing only a smidgen of temperature difference here on Earth that cannot be seen or deducted from the temperature record. It can only be mathematically construed it is so small. The indirect variable components of the sun’s interaction with Earth (cosmic rays, magnetic influence etc) produce far less temperature-forcing capability and cannot even be remotely considered as an agent in the past century’s warming record.
The sun can be considered, in comparison with Earth’s significant intrinsic variability, to be a constant. It is Earth itself which produces warming trends, cooling trends, and nada trends in the temperature record we debate.
=====================================
The total output of the solar fusion reaction is indeed fairly constant. However, that is only 1/2 the story. It is the Infrared bands of light/heat hitting the earth which have the warming effect on earth. Depending on which band happens to be passing from the suns reaction in strength as measured on the surface of the earth it can indeed have major control over earths systems.
Lower UV bands carry less energy/heat and are reflected by sea water tension or absorbed by the air and particulate matter. Higher UV bands pass these barriers (much like the difference between FM-108mhz line of sight and 2ghz or higher frequencies which will pass through solid objects) which then pass through surface tension of earth oceans and warm the upper layers.
While the suns total radiance and total output changes little, its that subtle change in strength within certain bands which have major effects on the earths surface.
I suspect the best rathole is to express understanding with them for the 25 years warming in the run-up to 1998, which naturally misled them into believing that a quarter of a century’s correlation with the model projections was proof that the models were accurate predictors of the future.
Rodney Leach
I am of the view that no amount of logical argument will persuade the ‘true believers’ in catastrophic global warming, because they didn’t arrive at their beliefs by logical argument in the first place, they arrived there by faith. As my geology professor used to say about creationists, “you can’t argue with someone’s belief”. However, there is hope for those within science who still basically understand the nature of objective scientific evidence, who may well come around with persuasive, empirically based, arguments.
I would go further though, and say that alot of the ‘faith’ that pervades climate alarmism is based on a certain type of fundamental assumption that is somewhat immune from certain forms of logical analysis and argument. That is, there is an assumption, in the first instance, of a ‘constant’, so to speak, that ultimately over-rides all other parametres, and all longer term trends, and this ‘constant’, is also particularly immune from such notions as internal variation, change, and ‘evolution’ to a new form, or system, or kind, (which is also why the bureaucratic elite couldn’t accept evolutionary theory and the importance/concept of variation in populations in biology for thousands of years, until around 1859, when Darwin and Wallace’s idea of evolution by natural selection directly challenged a then-prevailing assumption of ‘constancy’ of species). This tendency to assume an over-riding and prevailing ‘constant’, or ‘always dominant factor’, is also a fundamental assumption, dare I say, of stronger forms of socialism, i.e. that ‘social order’ over-rides all other internal social variations and trends. That is also partly why the left tends to accept the idea of c02 easily over-riding natural variation, much more so than the right, as it is an idea that is more attuned to their basic assumptions about the world.
I would go even further again, and say I think human beings as a species are pre-disposed ideologically to a tendancy to assume some form of ‘constant’, or ‘over-riding’ ideological parametre, most likely because it is ultimately a means to power, a subtle indication of a deeper Darwinian struggle for power and resources, that goes on in all cultures amd societies. It is biological evolution itself which has, unfortunately, left us this legacy, (e.g. many biologists have come to the opinion that our brains, rather ironically, are predisposed by evolution to have great difficulty accepting and understanding the very processes of evolution that created it, llargely because it conflicts with a tendancy to e.g. bureaucratic stability, and non- tolerance of significant minorities and/or strangers).
Human beings and societies will always have an irrational tendancy, even amongst the educated and elite, to assume certain forms of ‘immutable’ and ‘over-riding’ ‘non-changeability’, which is ultimately for their own personal interest and benefit within the Darwinian struggle for power and resources. And because it is a legacy of powerful forces derived from biological evolution itself, it is both rather pervasive, and strongly immune, from logical analysis and reason. One of the best ways to fight it, is by the historically tried and tested, empirically based, experimental, scientific method, which must also be verifiable, reproducable, and falsifiable; ‘models’, ‘projections’ and untested ‘scenarios’ are hopelessly prone to capture by human predispositions, politics and human bias.
mpainter says:
December 25, 2012 at 7:44 am
Mike says: December 25, 2012 at 2:59 am
………………………………….
Once again, if you wish to comprehend this issue you must learn to think for yourself, or you will end up as a cow in a stampede.
Or a rat in a hole…….
In reply to Monckton’s response: Your math is too incomplete to be veri- or falsifiable, but it seems that your argument was already addressed in general terms in the footnote included in my original post. Of course, the models are based not just on one number – the feedback factor – but on a set of them; and, of course, if the whole set of assumptions conficts with observation, one might blame any one of the assumptions, alone or in combination, or introduce additional fudge factors. This technique of using “ad hoc hypotheses” (Popper’s term), of sacrificing the pawn to save the bishop, cannot change the fact that the whole of the initial hypothesis has failed.
You cited a prediction made by some modelers in 2008, which amounted to their willingness to stand or fall with the prediction of observable warming within any period of 15 years. That claim is falsifiable, and it has been falsified; it may not have been based on good science, but it certainly did meet the Popper criterion.
As for Popper’s “celebrated paper”, it was indeed a book of some 300 pages, published originally under the title “Logik der Forschung”. I have read the whole thing (in German) and enjoyed it, although its main ideas would have fit neatly into a fraction of the space, and could indeed have been sufficiently presented as a paper. Maybe all the additional elaboration was needed to properly display the classically educated writer’s erudition 😉 Indeed much space in the book is taken up by Popper’s struggle with the prevailing philosphical fashion of the day, which sought to develop rules for establishing statements of empirical science as indubitably certain. Against this prevailing fashion, Popper maintained that science progresses through the falsification of hypotheses, not their “inductive verification”, and that our knowledge of the world remains always hypothetical; or in other words, that “the science” is never “settled”. To which I add, notwithstanding my classical education: Amen, bro’.
The data shows that Hansen was correct to cite a figure of 350ppm as an initial target for atmospheric CO₂ concentration. With the current global energy imbalance of 0.6W/m², we would have to reduce CO₂ to 345ppm just to halt global warming where it is now. That means sequestering 350 billion tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere immediately, and another 30 billion tons every year (barring successful reductions in emissions) to stop the warming and buy us time to work on alternative, zero-carbon technologies. Instead of disputing the evidence, wouldn’t it be smart to start proposing mechanisms to actually achieve that?
I always thought it odd that global (sic) warming (sic)
was being blamed for heat waves, when, to the contrary,
I would have thought that a series of heat waves would have
some effect on the mean global temperature.
The Lord, as always, brings Logic and Common Sense to a debate frequently lacking in such. A Christmas Present indeed! However, I would caution all sides in this issue to be careful about assuming what we “know”.
Logically, we should agree that our confidence about what we “know” decreases with time going forward, or backward. Furthermore, we are using models going forward and mostly indirect indicators for temperature going backwards to tell us what we “know” a “global” temperature. I have some experience with indirect indicators of temperature and statistically analyzed the data but would be cautious about claiming “know” especially to the fractions of a degree. Statistics are no substitute for Logic and Common Sense! We are even using our near-to-present direct indicators of temperature (which are fraught with questions) to distill and tell us that we “know” the temperature of the globe as a single, discrete number. We have hooked all of these “known” whole-Earth discrete data points, generated by a variety of methodologies, massaged statistically and created a chart that tells us that we “know” global temperature going back thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years and going forward for hundreds of years. Some not only “know” it, but “know” it quantitatively!
Now, tell me, do we really “know” what we think we “know”? Logically?
Certainly, we can observe many things. Glaciers growing or retreating, sea ice extent, solar data, etc. We have recorded temperature data in a number of places and have satellite data since 1979. And, as humans we want a way to summarize information into as small a space as possible but we should be careful about what we “know”.
Most everyone will agree that our satellite data are the best that we have but these data are short-term, particularly considering geologic time. These data are also reduced to a single “global” temperature. Now let me say, as a scientist and a biologist, that I applaud theorizing, research and analyzing data to the best of our ability to generate, hopefully, useful conclusions; however, we may need some humility relative to the quality of our data and what conclusions can be drawn.
Allan MacRae suggests: “Fifty years ago, a rat infestation was discovered near Alsask, in central Alberta.”
My mother was born in Alsask, and it actually lies barely outside Alberta on the other side of the Saskatchewan border, just south of the highway between Calgary and Saskatoon. It’s one of many many prairie towns that is slowly withering away.
However the rest is true; successive Alberta governments have made it a point to stop rats from entering the province, and to stop them from setting up shop here. Any farmer or rancher who suspects the presence of rats need only make a phone call or email, and the rat Patrol will be at the premises in short order to expunge the nasty critters at no cost to the owner.
There was no global warming from 1940-1960. Therefore the warming that has occurred since then did not happen.
“A cornered rat will fight savagely, even against overwhelming odds, because it has no alternative. Give the rat a way out and it will instinctively take it.”
Lord Monckton does a fine job but isn’t he leaving out what may be three of the most germane problems?
One, that they are not cornered.
Two, the rats have piled up an immense heap of observations they can falsely use as evidence so they don’t really need the models. It’s too easy for them to point at everything as prove of their claims.
Three, the rats have already made their own way out.
That being that even if the models and their observations are wrong, all of the measures they are pushing are still worth doing. Even the endless “monitoring” & “measuring” of all things must continue to in order to avoid the unknown, right?
And after all, they only want to cut pollution, promote conservation, reduced reliance on foreign oil, encourage sustainability, create livable and walkable communities, preserve fresh water, feed the masses and advance environmental and social justice for all.
Is that not the large hole the rats are already using, big time?
So I fear they cannot be baited or lured into using Lord Monckton’s hole. It will appear as a trap they can easily avoid by using their own large and friendly hole.
icarus62 says:
“With the current global energy imbalance of 0.6W/m², we would have to reduce CO₂ to 345ppm just to halt global warming where it is now.”
Icarus, wake up. Global warming halted a decade and a half ago, and it has been declining for the past ten years.
That is pretty strong evidence that CO2 does not have the effect that Hansen claimed. Who are you going to listen to? The always-wrong “Coal Trains of Death” James Hansen? Or Planet Earth?
There is only one correct answer.
•••
Steve Oregon,
The fact remains, they are still rats. ☺
Thanks for the posting Lord Monckton, while I agree that your proposal might be the civilized and realistic way of allowing this scam to fizzle, I want retribution.
The leaders and major benefactors of this scheme are well cloaked in govt institutions and wealth and may be un touchable via the legal systems available to us.
But the true believers who infest our local governance are the persons who have done us the most harm. Through their vicious stupidity and I cannot think of a softer term, the do-gooders have done everything in their power to destroy the society that supports them, to force funds from my pocket into insane energy schemes, to tax the air and control every aspect of our living.
Fools charge in where angels fear to tread, indeed.
And these folk have raised a righteous clamour, demeaning any who dare to question the sanity of their faith. Blind to the consequences of their bylaws, totally secure in their closed loop thinking, they are our betters and know how best we should live our lives, for only they have seen the truth.
Rat holes are useful, napalm comes to mind. I for one intend to rub their blind gullibility in on every opportunity.
John Brookes says:
December 25, 2012 at 3:05 am
Overblown and pretentious, but all in all a very entertaining piece of misinformation. But one would expect no less from Mr Monckton.
G’day John.
“Overblown and pretentious” I would grant you. “Entertaining,” definitely. But “misinformation?” I note that as usual with your ilk, you provide no substantiation.
MBW writes: “There was no global warming from 1940-1960.”
Yet the models in ‘predicting the past’ show global warming occurring then…
http://www.ipcc.ch/graphics/ar4-wg1/jpg/fig-10-4.jpg
(with the exception of the little blip due to the Agung eruption)
icarus62 says: December 25, 2012 at 9:41 am
Instead of disputing the evidence, wouldn’t it be smart to start proposing mechanisms to actually achieve that?
==========================
You have no evidence to give, because there is none. AGW is only unproven theory, and unproven theory is not evidence. Bald assertion is not evidence. A failed hypothesis is certainly not evidence. If you do get some evidence, please share it with us here at WUWT. WUWT has a standing invitation to any who would provide evidence, but so far no one has done this and I don’t expect you to show any, either.
Propose mechanisms? Absolutely not. Actually atmospheric CO2 is entirely harmless and even beneficial. Do not let yourself be frightened by the panic talk. Learn to think for yourself instead of citing bald assertions as science.
Lordship is a hereditary title, an accident of birth. In my amateur opinion, the actions of the man determine the emptiness or merit of the title. Further, in my amateur opinion, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley continues to live up to his title via writing this. I wish the elected leaders in the United States had half as much sense.
The alarmists aren’t going to just disappear. From both a coldly practical perspective and a compassionate one (whatever their ‘sins’, I don’t accept that any of the CAGW advocates are evil incarnate) it’s important to consider that by making it as painful as possible for CAGW advocates to eventually admit error, it minimizes their motivation to do so, at no profit to anyone.
Thank you Lord Monckton, Merry Christmas.
Thank you Lord Monckton. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all of you.
Always remember to take time away from the battle and enjoy. “Keep a weather eye to the chart on high.” (:
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
Having said that, the most “honorable” exit-strategy might be an admission that the carbon-cycle has been misunderstood, which is not difficult. This would allow the hard core radiative-physics modelers to still claim they are 100% correct, while acknowledging that the human impact due to fossil-fuel combustion is small because anthropogenic CO2 emissions are still trivial by comparison..
Models are “biology-lite” and the effects of the bio-sphere are easy to underestimate over time once the exponential growth rates of living organisms is considered. Oceanic photosynthesis and carbon-fluxes are much greater than realized back in Jim Hansen’s day, and carbon isotope fractionation processes even less well described. Someone looking for excuses could find no shortage of suitable candidates in the bio-chemical world.
The IPCC consensus can then say they didn’t get sufficient biological and biochemical input, and the biologists/biochemists can truthfully say they were never asked. The best ones never needed to put “global-warming” or “climate-change” in their grant applications.
mbw says:
December 25, 2012 at 10:06 am
“There was no global warming from 1940-1960. Therefore the warming that has occurred since then did not happen.”
CO2AGW believer, that’s pretty weak. It’s not even funny. Can’t you do better? Everybody here knows the data. You’re not on grist.
Well done sir, well done.
honestly I do not know if I am capable of being that forgiving though.
the whole eco warrior setup has wounded us in so many ways (land use, zoning, tree harvesting, oil production, etc) over the past decades I just do not have it in me to be that nice a person.
icarus62 says:
December 25, 2012 at 9:41 am
“With the current global energy imbalance of 0.6W/m², we would have to reduce CO₂ to 345ppm just to halt global warming where it is now. ”
Don’t you think that the climate behaves a little bit too complicated for a stage one thinker?
Michael Mann etal,
First know thyself, each of you and the whole of your rat invested borg.
Yours ever true from one of the ones you will know will be unforgiving of your sins.
From where I operated near the front lines, rats had little hope once we had their location on the grid.
Knowing ones like me are a minority and you are free from our judgement, still yet you should fear us.
Let it go before it is to late for you to do so.
DirkH says:
December 25, 2012 at 8:09 am
The Maunder Minimum (starting in about 1645 and continuing to about 1715) and the Nile River
http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/climatehistory.pdf
Here is information on what the Nile did, from a more exhaustive source of information:
A Chronological Listing of Early Weather Events, 6th Edition
By James A. Marusek
http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/weather.pdf
DirkH: 0.6W/m² is a big planetary energy imbalance. It’s the equivalent of around 430,000 Hiroshima nuclear explosions every single day. It would boil the oceans dry in around 33,000 years, which is the blink of an eye in geological terms. Clearly there cannot have been anything like that magnitude of imbalance for any substantial length of time in the entire history of the planet. I’m not suggesting it’s going to last for thousands of years but it does illustrate just how strong our warming influence on the planet is.
In my home, the province of Alberta in Canada, we are officially rat free. I think it’s the only place in human habitation except Antarctica, which is rat free.
We didn’t get to be this way by giving the rats an ‘out’ when they were discovered, but by systematically and mercilessly eradicating them via our “Rat Patrol”.
Apart from taxes, that is…
This is one of the most entertaining comment threads I’ve seen on WattsUpWithThat. Well done, everyone. A few more follow-ups to commenters, in the approximate order of their occurrence:
Chris Riley introduces the time-inconsistency problem: if we let the rats out through the rat-hole, there will be adverse consequences because the rats have been let out rather than destroyed, and because future rats may learn from today’s rats that dishonesty is not punished as it should be. Well, it’s Christmas, so I’m trying to be nice to the rats.
Mr. Riley says science will come to great harm if the perps are allowed to escape down the rat-hole with their reputations intact. Hey, a rat that uses a rat-hole is still a rat, and everyone will know that. It’s Christmas. See it from their point of view. No global warming for 16 years. Sea level hardly changing. Ice not melting as ordered. No 50 million climate refugees by 2010. The rats’ cousins in the media are doing a fine job of concealing these facts for now, but the truth is emerging, slowly, inexorably, and – for the rats – painfully. Digging them a nice, well-ventilated rat-hole is the last we can do to put them out of their misery.
Clay Marley reminds us that there are many innocents who believe what they read in the newspapers, and the headlines still shriek “World To End Shock!”, rather than the unexciting truth “Climate Continuing Changeable (Yawn)”. He says, “The science may be dead but the ideology isn’t.” It’s Christmas. Have faith. In time, what is plain to a few will be plain to all. Much time, effort, and taxpayers’ money will have been damagingly squandered in the meantime. But it’s Christmas. Be merry. Be hopeful. The end of the nonsense is in sight.
My noble friend Rodney Leach says we should “express understanding with them for the 25 years’ warming in the run up to 1998, which naturally misled them into believeing that a quarter of a century’s correlation with the model projections was proof that the models were accurate predictors of the future.” That would be very kind of us: for the rate of warming from 1976-1998 was equivalent to just 1.7 Celsius degrees per century: no faster than the warming rate from 1860-1880 and from 1910-1940. What it showed was that there was none of the acceleration in the warming rate that the models had so confidently but erroneously predicted. Still, it’s Christmas, so this one may be worth a try.
“Tmlutas”, who writes for a “collective” (oof!) of analysts analyzing the skeptics’ strategy, says, “The emotions thrown up by this issue actually challenge the underlying business model of the firm.” (Hurrah!) And he asks, “Can a few hundred analysts from all over the globe and from disparate fields apply the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ to your thesis? Are there public policy issues too hot for this model to work?”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s Christmas. My rule is to try to do the kind and gentle thing first, and only to take off the velvet glove when the iron fist needs to swing into action. It is fascinating how often and how spectacularly this works.
An example. During the Falklands conflict, British troops were trying to dislodge superior Argentinian forces from a strategically-crucial redoubt at Goose Green. H. Jones, the gung-ho, lead-from-the-front British commander on the spot, made the same mistake Wellington had made at Talavera: he led several unsuccessful uphill charges against enemy forces that had the advantage not only of height but also of ability to see into dead ground between them and the Brits. Jones and many of his men were killed.
His no. 2 found himself unexpectedly in command and decided to pray. (Did I say it was Christmas?) The answer came to him at once and he told his sparky to patch him through to the Argentinian commander.
“Now, look here, old boy,” he said in his most authoritative, cut-glass, public-school-and-Sandhurst drawl, “We both know how this is going to end. So what I’m going to suggest is this. You all lay down your arms like good chaps and come out with your hands up, and I’ll see to it that you get properly fed and watered, your wounded treated, and safe passage back to Argentina on the first boat. How about that?”
“Si, señor!” And, to everyone’s astonishment, 1500 Argentinians found they had surrendered to 200 Brits.
Another example. During the British miners’ strike of 1982-3, their Communist leader, Arthur Scargill, detailed several hundred miners to go to London and demonstrate in Parliament Square.
I was working for Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street at the time. Oliver Letwin, now the Minister for Government Policy, came rushing in to the office he and I shared and said, “It’s so unEnglish! The miners are rioting in Parliament Square!”
“Nonsense,” I said, “They do that every Friday night when the pubs tip out. They mean no harm at all.”
“B-but they’re coming this way! They’re already at the end of the street! What shall we do?”
“I’ll go and talk to them,” I said, and reached for my bowler hat, as one does.
“You’re not going to wear that stupid Charlie Chaplin hat, are you?”
“Of course,” I replied. And I strode confidently out through the big black door into Downing Street. Well, I hoped I looked confident, anyway. At the end of the street, held back by two nervous bobbies and pressing hard against the flimsy barriers, were several dozen noisy miners. Letwin peeped out of the window above to watch the lynching.
As soon as the miners saw a bowler-hatted figure shambling out of No. 10, they jeered. I walked steadily towards them. Halfway there, I slowly lifted my hat to them and smiled. Instantly, the jeers turned to cheering.
As my Staff Sergeant used to say, “The one unmistakable way of making a polite gesture at a distance is to take your ‘at off. And, no, sir, I’m not going to talk about the dozens of ways of making impolite gestures at a distance.”
I went up to the crowd and spoke to one of the miners at the front in a conversational tone. The rest instantly fell silent so that they could hear what we were saying (St. John Ambulance manual of crowd control, page 1).
“You’ve come a long way to speak to the Prime Minister,” I said, “but she’s out just now. And it’s Christmastime. So what I propose is that we go across the street to the pub, I’ll buy you a beer, you can give me your message for the Prime Minister, I’ll take a note of it and it will be on her desk this evening.”
The miners filed happily across Whitehall to the pub and, three years later, when I left the Prime Minister’s service, two of them came to my farewell party in the State Apartments. It’s possible they were the first miners ever to set foot in Downing Street under a Tory government.
Bottom line: “Tmlutas” should feel free to test out this well-practised strategy on his analysts. We Brits have been using this method successfully for centuries – but then, we’re just that little bit subtler than some of us like to make ourselves look.
My own three-stage strategy for dealing with the global-warming profiteers:
1. Go on quietly, politely, telling the truth about the science and the economics.
2. Er …
3. … that’s it.
As the Lord of Life said to Pontius Pilate, Ego in hoc natus sum, et ad hoc veni in mundum, ut testimonium perhibeam veritati (Unto this was I born, for this came I into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth). Not a bad motto for us skeptics, that.
Notoriously, Pilate did not tarry for an answer. But within 100 years the truth of Christianity had spread throughout the known world.
Cheer up then, or, as the monks used to sing in Advent, Consolamini, consolamini, popule meus. All will be well. The climate profiteers, like the Romans in Judea, have the money, the power, and the glory. But we, like the Child who was born this day, have the truth.
Magna est veritas, et praevalet.
Sorry for the length of this comment. I’m holed up in isolation till tomorrow, having had norovirus. I’m not allowed near anyone till tomorrow. So you, gentle readers, have been my Christmas entertainment. Thank you, one and all.
The will to power–yes. And the “circulation of the élites” (Pareto). Leading environmentalists sense that this is their movement’s moment in the sun, and believe that it deserves to rule and displace its exhausted, non-charismatic predecessor-elites. The king rats sense that power is there for the seizing. Hence their opportunism and unprincipled behavior. They are justifying themselves in terms of raison d’état.
The UN General Assembly is a club of and for the world’s dictators. Their whole purpose is to destroy the economies of the rich countries before we can threaten their rule. It therefore makes sense for them to have joined forces with the people who have admitted wanting to destroy those economies themselves (see green-agenda.com).
I see no reason, then, to credit any of them with goodwill as Monckton does. Let’s stop helping the UN’s publicity machine, until we can elect leaders who will pull us out.
The Second Order Draft of AR5 does admit no statistically significant warming in 14 years (SOD p. 10-3, lines 50-52):
http://www.stopgreensuicide.com/Ch10_attribution_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch10_All_Final.pdf
Starting in 1998 the statistically insignificant trend is actually negative. It is logical they would pick that year, since it was the high point, but it is also surprising, since they usually pick dates to hide what is going on rather than to expose it. Maybe they picked 98 in order to stay under the 15 year period of no-warming that they admit would falsify their models.
You’ll notice that icarus, along with all the other alarmists, haven’t taken the action they so demand of the rest of us. Such as stop using all modern, fossil-fuel enabled conveniences.
Hypocrites all.
While I largely agree with the idea I disagree with the generosity involved. Ideally such a rat hole should be designed in a way that will make sure those of lesser guilt can escape but only by making sure those at the top of the scam pay the piper. That has two benefits: the most guilty get punished by those who followed them for the tangible reward of absolution of their involvement. The second, more important one, is the damage the underlying fabric of social trust among those who were involved. It is frayed and the next fraudster to come along can no longer rely that his followers won’t throw him to the sharks without second thought if they fear that the jig is up.
Lord Monckton’s comment @11:40 above is well worth reading.
…
icarus62 says:
“It’s the equivalent of around 430,000 Hiroshima nuclear explosions every single day.”
How much is that in Olympic-sized swimming pools? ☺
Yes, I am ridiculing you. The planet is ridiculing you. Your entire belief system is based on scary, context-free numbers and unscientific, evidence free “What-ifs”.
Stop scaring yourself. It is unbecoming an adult, if that’s what you are. Nothing unprecedented is occurring. Everything we observe today, including global temperature, has been exceeded in the past, and to a much greater degree — and when CO2 was much lower. How do you explain that? Would you accept ‘natural climate variability’? The planet has been much warmer, and much colder, without any human input.
The planet is doing just fine. The putative effect of CO2 emissions is only an evidence free conjecture. CO2 may have a minor effect, but if so it is only a minuscule, third order forcing, and it’s effect is saturated. There will be no measureable warming due to CO2 even if it continues to rise.
No one has ever identified any global harm due to CO2 emissions. Therefore, CO2 is, by definition, “harmless”. Although CO2 causes no global harm, it is provably beneficial to the entire biosphere. More is better.
Where do you get your crazy ideas, anyway? Tell them you want a refund.
Lord M. Personal experience, the RAT that was invading our temporary trailer on a nuclear site, in the 1980’s. Had a suspicion about ONE hole, about .7″ diameter… “Impossible” most in the trailer said. Set a clever trap, and made it cover the hole upon the entrance of the rat. ALSO set up a barrier with cardboard boxes.
Rat came in, was trapped! WAS VERY AGRESSIVE. Jumped easily 2′ high, we had the barrier JUST high enough, and were able to observe without being bitten. Used a stick and cleared the hole. PLEASE NOTE RAT WAS WIGGLED THROUGH THAT HOLE WITHIN A MINUTE. (Of course, it sensed the cold/fresh air and went for it.)
SO your analogy is petty good! However, let’s not forget that rats carry the PLAUGE. Let’s also not forget that leaving GARBAGE out in the open, un-processed, and to fester/rot, and stink…brings the RATS. Could that be the very POOR work that passes for “Science” these days? The “self re-inforcing/religion/paradigm situation among the “science elites” which broaches no REAL critical examination?
I’d call this, “Piling up the garbage and letting it rot.” OUR JOB IS TO CLEAN OUT THE GARBAGE, and..I suppose, like Reme in Rattatoulie, we can give the Redundant Atrocious Terrible (climate) Scientists as way out. Who knows, with the garbage gone, they may not stink any more!
Max
I don’t want the rats to have an out. [snip] If they are allowed to escape, they will only reemerge in the future to cause even more destruction.
Then one tries to find justifications for their standpoint. There are five good reasons why the global warming that they – and we – might have expected has not occurred for 16 years: natural variability in general; the appreciable decline in solar activity since the Grand Maximum that peaked in 1960; the current 30-year cooling phase of the ocean oscillations, which began late in 2001 with the transition from the warming phase that had begun in 1976; the recent double-dip la Niña; and the frequency with which supra-decadal periods without warming have occurred in the instrumental record since 1850.
———–
Good summary Christopher. Now who are you drilling a rat hole for again?
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=V3FnpaWQJO0&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DV3FnpaWQJO0
perhaps Gilder Radner has the answer…. “Oh you meant CO2 …ohh sorry never mind”
D Böehm says:
“Where do you get your crazy ideas, anyway?”
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/global-warming-proceeding-as-fast-as-predicted-global-sea-level-rise-faster-than-predicted/question-3362387/?page=3
Notwithstanding the soft touch method herein suggested.
These Earth First, Greenpeace, trees before humans types are not rational operators who know fact from fiction as real working operators such as the miners you met.
These would take your hat, curse you for attempting to bribe them with beer and use the ACLU to take your assets for just the acts of uncovering the fraud.
Better time for this would be when energy cost has gone up 200% or so, then do the consideration of how nice to be to this uncut evil.
With a gracious and sombrero due tip of his hard hat towards
Monckton of Brenchley says:
December 25, 2012 at 11:40 am
Magna est veritas, et praevalet.
Caution:
Google translate changes the above into:
Magna est veritas to fry a lie. …
And although I very firmly want to fry their lies by righteously magnifying their exposure, I doubt this is the intention of your quote.
Instead,Google translate recommends:
Magna est veritas, et praevalebit.
Great is the truth, and gets the upper hand.
icarus62 says:
December 25, 2012 at 11:27 am
“DirkH: 0.6W/m² is a big planetary energy imbalance. It’s the equivalent of around 430,000 Hiroshima nuclear explosions every single day. ”
Now don’t wet yourself but normal insolation is equivalent to 250833333.333 Hiroshima bombs a day. There I said it. Extinguish the sun!
Christopher saysMan has so far altered only 1/10,000 of the atmosphere, and may alter 1/3000 of it by 2100.
————
So a quote from “How to Lie with Statistics” is in order:
It’s all a little like the tale of a roadside merchant who was asked to explain how he could sell rabbit sandwiches so cheap. “Well,” he said, “I have to put in some horse meat too. But I mix ’em fifty-fifty: one horse, one rabbit.”
————
The important thing about CO2 is that 20% of the radiation of the earth’s waste heat into the
vacuum of space is due to CO2. Changing the amount of CO2 blocks off that exit route just slightly.
D Böehm says:
Steve Oregon,
The fact remains, they are still rats. ☺
How well I know that.
Here in Oregon we are infested with a disproportionate share of them at every level of government and academia.
They function as a Borg-like parasite, crafting countless ways to fund their wretched & obnoxious selves and impose their vermin agenda upon society.
Jeff Alberts says:
December 25, 2012 at 12:01 pm
“You’ll notice that icarus, along with all the other alarmists, haven’t taken the action they so demand of the rest of us. Such as stop using all modern, fossil-fuel enabled conveniences.”
Icarus62 pops up from time to time, he’s an ardent end-times believer. He just comes up with the silliest slogans the warmists distribute and when you argue with him he quickly switches to the next one. Normal malthusian, we destroy the planet through our ways, that kind of stuff. Like Attenborough only with less success. Will hitch a ride on the next malthusian thing once CO2AGW has bottomed out.
icarus62
Looking at your post at Sodahead:
1. Did you make the ‘graphs’ yourself?
If not, where did you get them from?
If so, what data did you use to construct them?
2. You make the following statements:
1. Global sea level rise is above the fastest rate predicted in the IPCC reports
2. Accelerating melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets
3. Global warming is proceeding as fast as predicted in the IPCC reports
4. Oceans have been warming faster in the last decade than in the previous two.
Can you supply the data you used to support these four statements?
All the data I can find refutes the first three statements and I cannot find any data for the last one.
As always Lord Monckton, it has been a great pleasure spending my Christmas day reading your commentary and the responses here. I generally concur with your position, one should not put the opposition in a position of no retreat possible unless your intent is to destroy them in all particulars. Hopefully they will allow themselves to display an uncharacteristic measure of discretion and “get out while the getting is good” as the old phrase goes.
Anyone who has the slightest degree of good sense and awareness of how thin the support for the AGW hypothesis really is, would have gotten out a long time ago. Some are certainly lingering longer than they should looking for either a turn in the data that will allow them to shout “Aha see we were right all along!” or for a break in the pressure where they can quietly slink out the back door when everyone is distracted and looking in another direction.
I see (reading between the lines) that a few are planting seeds of uncertainty that some day in the future they can point to and say, “Well we always had some doubts about x or y.” Then they will point to some future event and say it was the confirmation that they were looking for to confirm those doubts.
A few however I fear are either so corrupt, greedy or just plain dishonest that they will stick out until the last shred of supposed evidence has been destroyed and will ultimately leave with their reputation shattered and with it unfortunately much of the public’s respect for scientists as a group.
The one group I feel sorry for, is the gullible masses who believe everything that they read from any source that they view as credible (such as our mass media who without shame destroy every tenent of good journalism in their persuit of ratings and a political agenda. Many of those who have been intentionally misled, were never taught or are not inclined to ever make any sort of rationality check on what they see, hear or read. They will be severely wounded if they ever catch on to how badly they were played by the propaganda of the mass media and a few snake oil salesmen like Gore. He and his kind obviously are and never were honorable, or trustworthy enough for any public office or position of authority. They will only pay for their crimes against humanity in the history books I fear, as most of them are insulated behind layers of money, connections and sycophantic followers so they are probably untouchable.
Please keep up the steady flow of the truth of the matters regarding the charade of AGW.
Larry
Magna est veritas, et praevalet—“Great is truth, and it prevails”—is a quote from [“3 Esdras, 4:41”]] of the Vulgate. It is hardly Lord Monckton’s fault that Google Translate provides incompetent Latin translations.
Other_Andy says:
December 25, 2012 at 1:06 pm
“Can you supply the data you used to support these four statements?
All the data I can find refutes the first three statements and I cannot find any data for the last one.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/28/mythbusting-rahmstorf-and-foster/
Excellent essay, I’ve been thinking of a way for the warmistas to save face and bow out of this insanity. But who offers the escape plan, and who do they offer it too. The warmistas have any number of ‘rats’ that need extraction — I just don’t see who can be a representive for either side.
Oops; dear Moderator, whilst you‘re moderating, please fix my reference to the Vulgate, which should be “3 Esdras, 4:41”.
Jim Cripwell says Christ was born in 4 BC. I have not studied the question of when He was born, so I was careful to put a tilde in front of “~2012” to indicate uncertainty.
According to Matthew, without question, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great (hence the three wise men, the slaughter of innocents, etc). According to Luke, without question, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod Antipas, when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. No wise men, no flight to Egypt to escape a slaughter of innocents that in any event could hardly have passed unremarked upon in contemporary histories. There is no possible mistaking the two times, and they disagree by at least 15 years (Herod the Great DIED in 4 BCE, Jesus would have had to have been born by around 6 BCE).
So we have no idea when, or if, an actual person corresponding to Jesus was born. Only two of the “Gospels” discuss the birth at all, and they radically disagree (compare the “geneology” of Jesus in the two Gospels as well). We therefore can be certain that the Gospels, written no earlier than the late first century or earlier second century by people who were not there, are not reliable witnesses.
While I am no great fan of Popper’s criterion of falsifiability or the Logical Positivist verifiability (because the middle path of a Bayesian weighting of both positive and negative evidence given an entire network of prior evidence supported beliefs is the way our brains and our common sense actually work) it is interesting to see such a vast array of statements as those that constitute Christianity, that not only cannot be falsified but that mutually contradict one another, cited inside a piece attacking the “religious” beliefs of CAGW enthusiasts because they are illogical and unscientific and cannot be disproven.
Two points, then. First, one may or may not be able to “falsify” predictions of CAGW, but one can certainly assess evidence and alter the weight of one’s beliefs in the proposition. Positive evidence (e.g. continued warming) can and should increase our degree of belief in the proposition. Negative evidence (a failure of continued warming) can and should decrease our degree of belief in the proposition, or force the modification of the proposition. So it goes with all of our beliefs. All scientific logic and reason requires is this systematic alteration of the network of beliefs towards one that is more consistent with the data and all the other evidence supported beliefs in the network. You might try reading E. T. Jaynes’ book Probability Theory, the Logic of Science at some point because it is one of the most profound works of epistemological philosophy ever written (and you might want to read Richard Cox’s short treatise “The Algebra of Probable Reason” first, as it is the foundation).
Second, no one requires people to be consistent, and of course you are all welcome to be as religious as you please, but perhaps you might consider separating a good rant on poor philosophy, logic and evidence-based reason from de facto affirmation of a worldview that has long be proven to be indefensible on the grounds of all three.
I’m just saying.
Happy Newtonmas, everyone…
rgb
Other_Andy says:December 25, 2012 at 1:06 pm
I didn’t look at much on Sodahead but noticed the sea level graph seems to show the correct rate of ~10cm/40years or 2.5mm/year, regardless of the text. weird
The pseudonymous “Icarus62” talks of a “Planetary ENERGY IMBALANCE” of 0.6 Watts per square meter, equivalent to exploding 430,000 atom-bombs. In 33,000 years, he wails, the oceans will boil away.
“Planetary ENERGY IMBALANCE”! Gee – straight out of a kid’s sci-fi comic. Ming the Merciless commands: “Adolf, target the Megatron on the Earth and irradiate it with a Planetary ENERGY IMBALANCE of 430,000 atom-bombs’ equivalent for 33,000 years. That will boil the oceans away. Heh, heh! Then I shall be Master of the Universe – if I live long enough.”
So let’s shut the trash-mag and do the math. First off, some perspective. The Sun is around 30% more luminous than it was a few billion years ago. That’s a hefty 55 Watts per square meter of the Earth’s surface, after allowing for albedo and rotation. Yet the oceans have not boiled away. Still there, last time I looked. That Eschenbach has been sailing all over it.
Seen in that perspective, the Earth is not going to have much of a problem dealing with an extra net down-minus-up flux at the tropopause of a piddly 0.6 Watts per square meter, now is it?
Any “Planetary ENERGY IMBALANCE” resolves itself by a simple mechanism known as temperature change. Up goes the temperature, up goes the outgoing radiation, and everything goes back into balance.
If there were a “Planetary ENERGY IMBALANCE” such as “Icarus62” imagines, we’d be able to tell, because temperature would be rising. But it is not rising. It has not been rising for 16 years.
So there is no “Planetary ENERGY IMBALANCE”. Not at the moment.
The two boundaries of the Earth’s atmosphere – the ocean below and outer space above – exert a continuous and powerful homeostatic influence, keeping the temperature broadly stable. In the past 1000 years, absolute Earth surface temperature has varied by only 0.5%, or 1.3 K, either side of the 1000-year mean. In the past 64 million years, it has varied by only 3%, or 8 K, either side of the 64-million-year mean.
That means it is going to take a lot more than a footling 0.6 Watts per square meter of forcing to boil the oceans away. Oh, and the world’s fossil fuel supply might last for another 1000 years, not 33,000. Within 40 years after the fossil fuel is used up, the additional CO2 we added to the atmosphere will have left it again.
The finity of the fossil-fuel supply and the 40-year residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere impose between them an upper limit on the amount of warming we can cause. Any mathematician, unlike Ming the Merciless or Icarus the Accident-Prone, checks his limiting cases before worrying what is or is not going to happen in 33,000 years’ time.
The ocean, the atmosphere’s lower boundary, is three orders of magnitude denser than the atmosphere. It acts as a gigantic heat-sink. One would have to heat up the atmosphere by a large amount for a long time before ocean temperature changed much.
At the atmosphere’s upper boundary, any additional radiation simply passes harmlessly away into outer space. We need not worry too much about heating up the Universe. Or the Earth, for that matter.
“Adolf, replace the wax on Icarus’ wings with something a little softer. Then, when the Megatron gets us up to a ‘Planetary ENERGY IMBALANCE’ of 0.6 Watts per square meter, the softer wax will melt, his wings will fall off, and he will plunge headlong into the ocean – if it’s still there. Heh, heh, heh!”
“Zu befehl, mein Ming!”
—————————
Apologies for not having translated “Magna est veritas, et praevalet.” The Vulgate gives “praevalet”, not “praevalebit” (the present tense, not the future tense). The King James Version – the only valuable output of any committee anywhere – has, as always, the best translation: “Great is truth, and mighty above all things.”
“The overall feedback gain factor, G, which is unitless, is equal to the reciprocal of (1 – Planck x fsum)”
Hmm… Do you have a reference for that or is it just something you made up?
roger says:
December 25, 2012 at 7:35 am
Can Lord Christopher really forgive the wind turbines and farms that desecrate the scenery of Scotland an can he really accept the massive pylons already marching across the banks and braes, all of which will remain for decades after this nonsense has ended.
And will he forgive Alex Salmond, the perpetrator of this barbarism, for conning the Scots into believing that the English will buy his wind generated electricity at three times the price of gas, should he achieve independence?
From where I sit in the Borders surrounded by the excrescences, I rather think not.
Windfarms are actually subsidy farms not power generators; they are money laundering devices to pass tax monies to politicians’ supporters and families. Recent history has shown that windpower only exists while the initial subsidies are available; as soon as the subsidies cease the windfarm companies declare bankruptcy and leave the windmills to rot in the wind. The corroding unmoving relics of the windfarms will be a monument to Alex Salmonds overweening hubris for many years – he will come to regret welcoming them to Scotland.
Following up on Monckton of Brenchley says:
December 25, 2012 at 7:45 am:
Thank you for your excellent presentation, and for being at the right place at the right time, and pressing that button 🙂
My previous post seems to have got swamped in the rush. Something along the lines being up against the Hydra rather than rats … cut one head off and two grow in its place. Every other comment has been made by others.
Following up on Australia’s ” …$1.1 million fine to speak out against the carbon dioxide tax”.
This is not correct.
The offence is to unjustifiably ascribe a price rise for goods and services to the effect of the carbon tax.
Since every good or service has input of energy of some kind that has to be paid for, justification should not be difficult, but those of us who have to set prices (and are not protected by parliamentary or other privileges) are very much aware of who will be assessing the justification.
This has given rise to a few creative standards, eg “I/we cannot confirm or deny that this price rise has anything to do with the carbon tax”.
the tradition of the ruling classes to protect one another seems to be based on the fear of establishing a precedent of rabble sending them to the guillotine.
until a few years ago, the grunts were there for killing each other – and the president, et al, were granted immunity from fear of soldier’s grim death. losing in a war just meant the ruler ran off with the treasury and found sanctuary with a former ally. his punishment was a rich retirement.
when reagan dropped a bomb in khaddafi’s yard, violating this convention – leetists howled; the fighting stopped.
it’s not for somebody else to generously acquit the criminal against whom the victim has a righteous claim.
there is no ‘right of the predator’ and no ‘droigt de senior’.
there are the rights of individuals and compensation, restitution and retribution are the proper remedies.
the ONLY one with the right to forgive is the victim and ONLY on his own behalf.
no one can make himself lord and master of anybody else, nor presume to dispose of another’s rights.
do try to avoid a religious rap that eases (but requires) your sacrifice.
this tender concern for the predator can only be shown by one of his family.
if it is not your nature to be fed on and sacrificed to the predators of the world, then do not fall for a narrative that would have YOU be the guilty party by failing to forgive the loss of life and limb.
they require you to define yourself as sheep. don’t do it.
know, for certain, that sacrifice is no virture- it is suicide on the installment plan.
know, for certain, that whoever preaches this to you does not value your life; he merely wants you not to fuss at the altar where he will see you butchered.
obviously these folks haven’t heard the Good “16 years” News, or they are wilfully ignoring it:
24 Dec: KVOA Tucson: AP: Group to hand out free endangered species condoms
The Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity says that since its population awareness campaign began in 2009, the group has given out 450,000 free endangered species condoms, featuring pictures of polar bears, panthers and other threatened species…
Jerry Karnas, the group’s population campaign director, says the condoms help attract attention to the problem of how increasing human population is affecting wildlife, some already on the brink of extinction.
http://www.kvoa.com/news/group-to-hand-out-free-endangered-species-condoms/
Center for Biological Diversity – Meet the Staff
Jerry Karnas, Population Campaign Director, graduated from Swarthmore College with majors in political science and environmental studies. Before joining the Center he led campaigns on climate change, clean energy, manatees, Everglades restoration and oil drilling; he also advised clean-energy companies and political candidates. He was a climate advisor to Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and in 2008 won an Emmy Award for best public service announcement for the “Faces of Climate Change” campaign.
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/about/staff/index.html
Endangered Species Condoms – a project of the Center for Biological Diversity
The Center for Biological Diversity marked this year’s Earth Day by distributing 100,000 free Endangered Species Condoms around the country
POLAR BEAR
An international icon of global warming, the polar bear is going extinct as the Arctic sea ice melts beneath its feet because of the greenhouse gas emissions of 7 billion people — especially those in high-consumption nations like the United States.
http://www.endangeredspeciescondoms.com/
workingforgreen.org: Biodiversity in the Age of Big Money Environmentalism
Counterpunch Weekend Edition January 15-17, 2010 by MICHAEL DONNELLY
As a grassroots activist involved in the environmental campaigns of the last four decades, of course I’m going to be interested in histories written about them…
One of the primary groups examined in Bevington’s study was the Center for Biological Diversity (formed in 1989), [22] and which in 2008 received support from elite philanthropic bodies that included the Foundation for Deep Ecology, the Environment Now Foundation, Tides Foundation, ExxonMobil Foundation, The New York Times Company Foundation, and even the “big green” environmental outfit, The Wilderness Society. Corporate funders of the “grassroots” Center for Biological Diversity included the likes of Goldman Sachs, the Bank of America, and Microsoft. [23] The fact that Bevington describes a group funded by the world’s leading capitalist elites as grassroots demonstrates how desperately well-meaning environmentalists cling to the illusion that by working with capitalists (not the grassroots) they will be able to counter the destruction wrought on the planet by capitalists (evidently for the benefit of the grassroots). [24] Needless to say it is hardly surprising that the Center for Biological Diversity was pleased by the fact that Edward Humes’ “devot[ed] a fourth of his book” Eco Barons to their history and achievements. [25]…
http://wrongkindofgreen.org/category/non-profit-industrial-complex-organizations/organizations/center-for-biological-diversity/
Doc Hastings, Chairman, Natural Resources :
Press Release: DOJ Documents Confirm Center for Biological Diversity Received Millions in Taxpayer Funds from ESA-Related Lawsuits
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 27, 2012 – The Center for Biological Diversity today sent a letter to House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings claiming their organization had only received $553,000 in taxpayer funds resulting from Endangered Species Act (ESA) related attorney fees and court cases. This claim conflicts with data obtained from the Department of Justice (DOJ), which shows over $2 million in taxpayer dollars have been paid out to the Center for Biological Diversity and their attorneys for cases open between 2009-2012.
The Center for Biological Diversity appears to have derived their erroneous number by including only checks made out directly to the Center for Biological Diversity over a select period of years. Attorney fees are typically paid out to the attorney of record. The Center for Biological Diversity is conveniently failing to include the majority of funds that were paid directly to their hired lawyers. Nine of the lawyers who have received payouts are currently employed by the Center for Biological Diversity.
http://naturalresources.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=301242
The pseudonymous “lgl” is not perhaps au fait with the standards of politeness that are expected in these comments, He had asked me to explain the feedback amplification equation. I had explained it in surely reasonable and (in the absence of reference books, for I am isolated by ill health till tomorrow) accurate detail.
Now he suggests that I made up the answer. Bah!
So he is going to have to do the homework for himself. The locus classicus for the application of feedbacks to electronic circuitry, from which the climate modelers lifted the concept of feedbacks and translated it to surface temperature, is Bode (1945), published by Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, New York.
So, since “lgl” cannot be bothered to be polite, I am disinclined to explain my answer to him any further. He can look it up for himself in Bode – all 551 pages of it.
But, hey, it’s Christmas, though the pseudonymous “lgl” does not seem to have noticed. So I’ll let him off with a warning and another reference, this time to no less than the Holy Books of IPeCaC, yea, verily.
I refer him to IPeCaC (2007, AR4, p. 631 fn.), a footnote so execrably written that I doubt it will leave him any the wiser: but at least it is only a few lines long.
He will find that IPeCaC treats the Planck parameter (incorrectly, in my submission) as a feedback rather than as part of the reference frame for the climatic feedback loop, expressing it not as 0.31 Kelvin per Watt per square meter but as its reciprocal, i.e. 3.2 Watts per square meter per Kelvin.
As far as I can discover, that Sibylline footnote, which appears crafted to confuse, is the only place in which the IPCC discusses the mathematical method by which feedbacks are mutually amplified.
And you will certainly find no mention of the crucial concept of closed-loop gain anywhere in IPeCaC’s turgid, self-congratulatory tomes.
I had to go and sit at the feet of a learned doctor of process engineering in 2007 until I understood something of how feedback math works.
Most of the bloviators on climate have no idea of feedback math at all: otherwise they would collapse laughing, as I do, every time someone said “But there’s a consensus”.
icarus62 says:
December 25, 2012 at 11:27 am
DirkH: 0.6W/m² is a big planetary energy imbalance. It’s the equivalent of around 430,000 Hiroshima nuclear explosions every single day. It would boil the oceans dry in around 33,000 years, which is the blink of an eye in geological terms. Clearly there cannot have been anything like that magnitude of imbalance for any substantial length of time in the entire history of the planet. I’m not suggesting it’s going to last for thousands of years but it does illustrate just how strong our warming influence on the planet is.
Please understand that I am trying to understand this in light of:
Discussing the Late Eemian Aridity Pulse (LEAP) at the end-Eemian:
“Investigating the processes that led to the end of the last interglacial period is relevant for understanding how our ongoing interglacial will end, which has been a matter of much debate…..”
“The onset of the LEAP occurred within less than two decades, demonstrating the existence of a sharp threshold, which must be near 416 Wm2, which is the 65oN July insolation for 118 kyr BP (ref. 9). This value is only slightly below today’s value of 428 Wm2. Insolation will remain at this level slightly above the inception for the next 4,000 years before it then increases again.”
dW/m2 = 12
Sirocko, et al, 2005, A late Eemian aridity pulse in central Europe during the last glacial inception, nature, vol. 436, 11 August 2005, doi:10.1038/nature03905, pp 833-836.
So my lack of understanding here is comprehension of the magnitude of a +0.6 W/m2 anomaly when we are only 12 W/m2 “only slightly below today’s value (2005) of 428 Wm2.”
This may not be an isolated incidence, though the 2005 insolation value at 65N 21Jun is higher by some 46 W/m2:
“However, the June 21 insolation minimum at 65N during MIS 11 is only 489 W/m2, much less pronounced than the present minimum of 474 W/m2. In addition, current insolation values are not predicted to return to the high values of late MIS 11 for another 65 kyr. We propose that this effectively precludes a “double precession-cycle” interglacial [e.g., Raymo, 1997] in the Holocene without human influence.””
state Lisiecki and Raymo PALEOCEANOGRAPHY, VOL. 20, PA1003, oi:10.1029/2004PA001071, 2005.
I’m just having a hard time getting my mind wrapped around how such a large forcing as +0.6 W/m2 fits into the grand scheme of things, end-interglacial, where 12 W/m2 is considered “slightly below today’s value”, a 3 order of magnitude difference. Possibly with an error bar of say 46 W/m2?
One of us is missing something here, and I would not be at all surprised if it was me.
lgl says:
December 25, 2012 at 1:50 pm
Full quote:
“The overall feedback gain factor, G, which is unitless, is equal to the reciprocal of (1 – Planck x fsum), where Planck is the zero-feedback climate-sensitivity parameter 0.3 Kelvin per Watt per square meter and fsum is the unamplified net sum, in Watts per square meter per Kelvin, of all individual positive and negative feedbacks operating on the climate object.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback
See Formula:
G_c = A/(1-AB)
(Notice that A=1 in Lord Monckton’s explanation)
icarus62 says:
December 25, 2012 at 11:27 am
DirkH: 0.6W/m² is a big planetary energy imbalance. It’s the equivalent of around 430,000 Hiroshima nuclear explosions every single day. It would boil the oceans dry in around 33,000 years, which is the blink of an eye in geological terms.
But to give us a better feel for what boiling “the oceans dry” will look like, icarus, could you please translate the total amount of ocean water boiled off into how many “Lake Eries” there will be sitting just a little above us and suspended in the atmosphere so precariously?
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley: “Every student of the arts of diplomacy in the civil-service and staff colleges of the U.K. hears much about the rat-hole problem. How does one let the other side off some hook on which they have imprudently impaled themselves, while minimizing their loss of face?
A cornered rat will fight savagely, even against overwhelming odds, because it has no alternative. Give the rat a way out and it will instinctively take it.”
=============================================================
Christopher, the way out for “climate rats” has always been there, but they have not taken it yet. For the simple reason that they are not really cornered and they do not have to “fight savagely”, anyway not against your argumentation, the odds are not overwhelming etc. .
Your “16 years without global warming” argument is not good enough, because they can easily counter it with the “overall trend”. Your “negative feedback” argumentation you brought some time ago has no basis in science and contradicts your own position about “greenhouse gases”, you can not claim water vapour to be a “greenhouse gas” and at the same time negate it’s positive feedback. Your point about “future costs” is extremely weak and can be easily dismissed.
At the same time your adherence to the “man made global warming” concept is what the “climate rats” should be happy about, and you did not fail to convey that AGW message in almost every article you wrote on this blog, including this one.
An efficient fight against “climate rats” has yet to come and It should not be on the basis of agreement with the AGW concept. The only way is first to demonstrate that neither A nor GW nor consensus are true and second to communicate it properly.
The escape route for “climate rats” looks like that to me. Politicians and journalists can save face only blaming “climate scientists”. “Climate scientists” have no one else to blame and will suffer face loss accordingly. On the positive side, Christopher, you did not claim to be a “climate scientist”, as far as I know, you are rather a journalist, so it does not look that bad for you personally, but I suggest you not wait for too long.
That link leads to hyperbolic chicken little pronouncements that are laughable even to me, a non-scientist. You need to do a lot more reading.
For example, it proclaims:
Newsflash: while gazillions of joules (10*22) sounds dramatic, what Levitus, et al, actually found was not. The actual change in ocean heat content and mean temperature for the 0-700 m layer for the world oceans and individual basins was 0.168 C during the entire 39 years from 1969-2008. Let’s round it off: 0.17 C in nearly 40 years. That’s a 1/3 degree Fahrenheit in four decades.
See the Levitus, et al, findings here on page 14:
ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat08.pdf
The rest of the site you linked to is equally hyperbolic and half-cocked in its assumptions.
The proposition that CO2 causes significant warming is even more suspect in the light of the satellite record.
Surely, the starrting point is to ask why should one not consider the satelitte record as the best data set for the past 33 years? After all, it does not have the UHI issue nor the poor siting issues. Further, it is not continually basterdized in the same manner as the land temperature data set and the equipment theoretically is capable of better and more accurate resolution. .
Unless one can put forward a convincing argument against considering the satellite data set as the best quality data set we possess of recent events then one should look at the satellite data set and see what it says. It clearly suggests that there has been no CO2 induced warming these past 33 years (not 16 years). The satellite data set is essentially flat between ’79 and ’97 and between ’99 and 2012. There is only a step change around the super El Nino of ’98 and unless someone can suggest a process whereby CO2 is responsible for that event, the unavoidable conclusion is that there is no discernible CO2 signal in 33 years worth of data. This covers a period when approximately 2/3rds of manmade CO2 emissions have occured!
I firmly consider that one should press home precisely what the satellite data set is telling us, namely that temperature sensitivity to CO2 at around 370ppm is statistically zero. Since response may well be logarithmic, it follows that at around 400ppm it is unlikely to be any greater and there is reason to suspect that it may be even less (if that be possible!).
PS. I accept that one needs to consider aerosols but is there any good quality evidence to suggest that the concentration of aerosols is greater today than it was 33 years ago? There is reason to be extremely sceptical of the argument that aerososl are masking some underlying warming. The empirical evidence on aerosol concentrations needs very careful scrutiny.
Of course, the real problem is that presently the politicians do not want to listen to the shortcomings of the science regarding AGW, Indeed, it is incredible to consider why there has not been more critical thinking about why is a temperature rise of 3degC or 5degC or even more, a problem?
Is there any evidence that life did not flourish during the holcene optimum? Is there any evidence of any mass extinctions at that time? Indeed, does not the history of man’s civilasition firmly demonstrate that warmth is good and that the era of each great civilisation is related to the warmth. Look at the spread of the iron and bronze ages across the globe. It is no coincidence that whilst man in the UK was building stonehenge, the Egyptians were building wonderful temples and pyramids. When you do not have to struggle for your very survival, greatness can be achieved. Why anyone should wish to hamper western civilasation throwing them back towards the stoneage, beggars all sentinent comprehension.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
December 25, 2012 at 7:45 am
The measure of global temperature favored by the IPCC, the HadCRUt data series, shows no statistically-significant warming for 16 years.
This result is supported by the UAH and RSS satellite lower-troposphere temperature datasets.
I applaud your generosity of spirit, however you are too generous with the facts in favour of the people who believe in CAGW.
For example RSS has a negative slope for the last 15 years and 16 years. However:
For RSS the warming is NOT significant for 23 years.
For RSS: +0.130 +/-0.136 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990
For RSS: +0.135 +/-0.147 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1991
For RSS: +0.142 +/-0.159 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1992
For RSS: +0.107 +/-0.166 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1993
For RSS: +0.069 +/-0.174 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For RSS: +0.043 +/-0.190 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
For RSS: +0.036 +/-0.210 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996
For RSS: -0.003 +/-0.229 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1997
For RSS: -0.045 +/-0.250 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1998
For Hacrut4, the warming is NOT significant for 18 years.
For Hadcrut4: 0.098 +/- 0.111 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
For Hacrut3, the warming is NOT significant for 19 years.
For Hadcrut3: 0.098 +/- 0.113 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hadcrut3: 0.075 +/- 0.120 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
For GISS, the warming is NOT significant for 17 years.
For GISS: 0.113 +/- 0.122 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996
For UAH, the warming is NOT significant for 19 years.
For UAH: 0.143 +/- 0.173 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For UAH: 0.123 +/- 0.190 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
For UAH: 0.120 +/- 0.211 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996
Lord Monckton, it might be appropriate to and in the light of being precautionary, compose a Requiem nam Rattus…just to be prepared spiritually on their behalf. 🙂
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, thank you very much for this most thoughtful of Christmas gifts, perspective. Who would have ever thought we would re-fight alchemy ~13 centuries later, this time around turning carbon into gold…….
Climate Alchemy, I think you nailed it.
Dear Lord Monckton – Get well soon. I had to look up norovirus and it sounds ghastly. Keep up the hydration and what I’ve read says you should pull through fine.
Merry Christmas.
Lord Monckton,
Two points I feel need to be made.
Firstly, AGW is physically impossible on this planet. Even you have made the same mistake with your maths. The vertical circulation of air masses via convection is dependant on energy loss at an altitude higher than where the air is heated. There is only one mechanism for this in our atmosphere, IR radiation from radiative gasses. Without this convection stalls. The most basic empirical experiment will show you what happens to the temperature of a vertical column of air that is heated at its base when the vertical position of cooling is changed. CO2 cools our atmosphere. AGW is physically impossible.
The second point is that there can be no Rat Holes in the age of the internet. Sceptics will never forgive and the Internet will never forget. A quiet and civilised end to this hoax is ultimately a great risk to all human civilisation. Those who escape will just try again. Avoiding a vicious end game does not justify the future risk posed by those involved in the scam.
‘Icarus Icarus ubi es’ Icarus Icarus where are you?
When the theory does not fit the observations then the theory has to be changed, not the observations.
To give an analogy Icarus flew too close to the sun and his waxen wings melted and he fell to the earth and was lost. A Greek myth maybe but sobering example of a theory of flight that subsequent observation proved invalid.
Common ground is what needs to be found. There may never be full consensus on what drives climate, although an emergent paradigm manifestly more successful than the current one might well drive the current model to effective extinction. However total polarisation in the climate scientific community is unhealthy for the long term.
Politically, skeptics need to step back from a position that appears to say that nothing humans do can harm the earth’s ecosystem or climate. We can harm it. This apparent complacency is what enrages activists on the other side. CO2 does not warm the planet – or if it does, only negligibly. However plant cover does cool the planet and excessive loss of vegetative cover could possible cause either local (UHI) or global warming, and other adverse effects such as aridity. Damage to ecosystems in other ways such as chemical pollution is also a reality.
As Monkton himself has pointed out, the Versailles treaty at the end of WW1 which humiliated Germany stored up trouble for the future and was a mistake. This should not be repeated.
Of those last 16 years, how many have been in the top 10 hottest since global record keeping began? 9. The last decade was of course the hottest decade since record keeping began and in fact there has been warming over the last 16 years. The trend in the HadCRUT4 global surface temperature dataset since 1997 is 0.084 ± 0.152°C per decade (GISS and NCDC datasts show a similar warming trend since the cherry picked starting point of 1997). While the trend is not statistically significant (to 95% level) the value is positive, meaning the average surface temperature has warmed over this period. The “no warming over the last 16 years” was of course just another factually challenged Daily Mail article by David Rose (challenged by the Met Office- his alleged source of a non existent report).
The problem is there is no accountability in public office and there is no prospect that the ruling [class] will pass a law making them personally accountable for their misdeeds. Democracy is but an illusion, and hence we are left with a situation whereby the ruling class can commit gross negligence with impunity. This means that they can promote there preferred cause de jour without consideration of the consequences for those adversely affected by it.
Until there is real accountability in public office nothing will change.
As regards CAGW, this will come to a natural end relatively quickly because of the conjunction of the the fact that the west has run out of money with western economies being in stagnation for at least a decade to come, and natural variation making it clear that the climate system is far more complex than CO2 alone controlling the temperature knob. It is the combination of these two facts which will bring this unsavoury edifice crashing down. During the next 5 years or so there will be an ever increasing number of ‘scientist’ and politicians jumping ship and it is [likely] that things will turn nasty as the blame game begins (as it inevitably will).
The pseudonymous “Ratduke” gets picky about the date of birth of the Lord of Life, but – as I had already pointed out – I am no expert on that. He worries that the Gospels are “not reliable witnesses”: yet the considerable quantity of independent, verifying documentation from other sources gives us an excellent idea of the stunning power of what Anglican theologians splendidly call the “Christ-Event”. Ratduke may like to read “Jesus, an Experiment in Christology” by Father Schillebeeckx for further details of what can be discerned of His life, death, resurrection and electrifying effect on the known world without relying upon any religious texts at all.
Ratduke, who seems anti-Christian, criticizes me for touching briefly upon my own religion in the head posting while challenging climate-extremists who parade quasi-religious views. The distinction is that I admit that my religion is incapable of scientific demonstration and that I believe it nonetheless, while the adherents of the New Religion of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarm (CACA) pretend that the daft notions in the Holy Books of IPeCaC are science when they are in truth not science but logically-insupportable quasi-religious beliefs masquerading as science.
Ratduke also considerably over-stretches the bounds of Bayesian probability, which is of no help whatsoever in determining the probability that an uneducated guess may prove to be true. Nor do I recall, anywhere in the Four “Gospels” of IPeCaC, any attempt to assign Bayesian probabilities to anything, and particularly not to the value of the strongly net-positive overall feedback gain multiplier, central to the CACAistes’ case for panic, without which there would be no global warming problem.
That value is a guess. It is not verifiable by any method except waiting up to 3000 years and, in the meantime, taking measurements more detailed and precise than anything we are yet capable of. Because it is a guess, it does not merit the assignment to it of any form of probability, whether frequentist or Bayesian – or, for that matter, of any probability distribution or probability-density function. A guess is a guess is a guess. It is not science, not science, not science.
Because it is a guess, it is not Popper-falsifiable. Perhaps Ratduke would like to explain to me the role of random guesses in science. If they have a role, no doubt he can make a fortune in the casino at Monte Carlo.
It is always possible that I am missing something. But I was brought up in the Classical tradition of observation, measurement, meditation, deduction, hypothesis, and experiment. I was taught that “I guess” and “I believe” had no place in science, and that “Wow!”, “I wonder why that happened”, and “I’d better check” were the way forward.
Ratduke is entitled to alter his “degree of belief” in CACA if he wants, and, indeed, to the extent that CACA is quasi-religious, “degrees of belief” in it are perhaps not inappropriate. But – call me old-fashioned – science to me is not a matter of belief, but of seeking the truth by objective methods, not subjective beliefs. Al-Haytham called the scientist “the seeker after truth”, not “the believer”. Huxley called blind faith “the one unpardonable sin”.
Unless Ratduke can assure me that IPeCaC’s current central estimate of ~3 for the overall feedback gain factor by which it wishes us to multiply the tiny instantaneous warming caused by additional CO2 concentration so as to create a climate “crisis” is based on anything better than unverifiable guesswork, I decline to regard that estimate as science. It is religion. Ratduke is entitled to his religion, but he is no more entitled than the CACAistes to maintain that his religion has anything to do with science.
Even if climate alarm were appropriate, economically speaking it would still be one or even two orders of magnitude more cost-effective to meet the invoice for adaptation to warming’s adverse consequences the day after tomorrow than to spend trillions futilely trying to prevent it today.
Finally, since Ratduke seems to think today is Newton’s birthday, I shall be as picky with him as he has been with me on the matter of birthdays. As a result of the adjustment to the calendar in the 17th century, Newton turns out to have been born on January 4, 1643, not December 25, 1642. The deletion of 11 days from the calendar was not received kindly in all quarters: in Russia, peasants demonstrated under the slogan “Give us back our 11 days!” One imagines their descendants now write IPeCaC’s reports.
Darn I did not realize that humans only learned to write, and measure temperature just 16 years ago.
😉
Larry
Clay Marley says:—-This Christmas I am spending time with relatives who I consider moderate politically. They believe AGW is a serious problem, that the Polar Bears are in trouble, that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant, that the earth is warming, and that Greenland has largely melted (!).
JK—–Try this on them:
1. What actual evidence have you seen that man’s CO2 is causing dangerous warming? (We all know that unusual weather is not proof that man is the cause; nature puts out 96% of the CO2 compared to man’s 4%; that Al Gore’s ice cores show CO2 increases FOLLOW temperature by about 800 years; that Al Gore’s temperature chart showing a sudden recent rise is a fraud and that the climate was warmer in the Medieval, Roman, Egyptian and Minoan times without man’s CO2, previous warmings have been at the same rate as the current one, and that no one has explained what caused those earlier warm periods AND why that cause is not the cause of the current warming.)
Note that each of the statements are easily verifiable.
2. Separating out the last of the above:
We know that many (or all) of Medieval, Roman, Egyptian and Minoan times were warmer than the current warm period. Explain what caused those warm periods and why that cause is NOT the cause of the current warm period.
Thanks
JK
@policycritic:
Please follow the conversation.
My reply was to Boehm’s question about icarus62’s previous post.
Also read my post at 1:06 pm.
[snip. Too much snark, as usual, from Mr Seitz. Please stop being a Grinch. — mod.]
I was searching for some famous quotations about rats, but only found one, which coincidentally was about rats finding a way out:
When the water reaches the upper level, follow the rats.
– Claude Swanson (1862 – 1939)
I found many more about aristocrats, bureaucrats and democrats. Oh well, close enough:
I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends… that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.
– Adlai E. Stevenson Jr. (1900 – 1965), Speech during 1952 Presidential Campaign
You get fifteen democrats in a room, and you get twenty opinions.
– Senator Patrick Leahy (1940 – ), May 1990
Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy.
– Charles Peters
The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too.
– Oscar Levant (1906 – 1972)
Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.
– David Cronenberg, Rocketboom, 07-19-06
I am from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.
– William Duncan Vandiver, US Congressman, speech at 1899 naval banquet
The legacy of Democrats and Republicans approaches: Libertarianism by bankruptcy.
– Nick Nuessle, 1992
Most managers were trained to be the thing they most despise — bureaucrats.
– Alvin Toffler
Not to downplay the importance of unemotional examination of scientific rhetoric, touching briefly on beliefs, in this case religious ones, is no more offensive in scientific discussions than mentioning that I am Irish, or short, or a flaming redhead, or female, or talkative, or a newly confirmed independent. Sometimes it just makes sense to include these dressings. No big deal and tends to bring color and context to discussions.
Lord Monckton accepts (at any rate for the purpose of argument) the general premis behind GW because to challenge that premise is considered to be a step too far. However, should CO2 emissions continue unabated and should temperatures not correspondingly rise, then there will come a time when one will inevitably have to consider whether the reason for the lack of temperature rise is because the so called basic physics has been misunderstood, or misapplied.
One facet of the theory is that whenever there is a rise in CO2 concentrations temperatures must rise; they cannot stand steady, they canot fall. That means that in any year where there is a rise in CO2 concentraions but no rise in temperature an explanation is required as to why the temperature has not risen. Natural variation, is a convenient explanation, namely we cannot identify why there has not been a rise in temperature but it must because there is some natural unknown and unexplainedd process at work which has cancelled out the rise that would otherwise occur.
Of course, with better understanding of the cliamte system, we should be able to identify the natural process involved that cancelled out the temperature rise. But there may well come a time when we shall have to put our arms up and accept that the radiative model is wrong (at least in part).
If temperatures do not rise in the next decade, it will be interesting to see to what extent the radiative model survives in its present form.
I understand why Lord Monckton does not wish to question this and prefers to emphasise other issues. But I envisage that there may well come a time when it is openly questioned in scientific circles since I consider that the two most likely candidates for explaining why there is no warming is (1) that feedbacks are negative, and/or (2) that the radiataive model is simply wrong..
I am grateful to Werner Brozek for pointing out that according to HadCRUt, which is IPeCaC’s favored dataset, there has been no statistically-significant global warming for 18 years (v. 4) or 19 years (v. 3). I have indeed been too kind to the true-believers.
Jo Brighton, however, seems to think that a positive trend that is not statistically significant “means the average surface temperature has warmed”. Not so. Any trend that falls within the measurement uncertainties in the dataset, whether that trend be up, down, or flat, is not statistically distinguishable from zero. Zero means zero.
Jo Brighton goes on to attack David Rose of the Daily Mail (actually, it was the Mail on Sunday) for having pointed out, based on data in a report that she says the Met Office had not issued (actually, it had), that there had not been any global warming for 16 years (actually, there hadn’t been any).
The Met Office has been reported to the prosecuting authorities for fraud in having attempted to keep its climate-change-related grants well-padded by falsely maintaining that Mr. Rose had been wrong to say there had been no global warming for 16 years. He was and is correct. The Met Office is now a standing joke in the UK. Its obsession with global warming has caused it to get its seasonal forecasts hopelessly wrong time and time again.
Piers Corbyn, a solar physicist, produces more accurate 45-day forecasts than the Met Office’s 5-day forecasts. Now that there are so many private-enterprise weather forecasters capable of doing a far more reliable, more honest and less prejudiced job than the Met Office, I am not the only politician wondering whether it should be shut down.
Jo Brighton also uses the bogus statistical device of attempting to nullify the embarrassing recent absence of global warming by saying, “Of the last 16 years, how many have been in the top 10 hottest since global record-keeping began? Nine.” So what? After 300 years during which global temperatures have recovered following the Maunder Minimum, where would one expect the warmest years to be? At the beginning of the period, in the middle, or at the end?
An earlier posting by me explained how to determine the least-squares linear-regression trend on a dataset. Perhaps Mr. Brozek and I should get together to produce monthly updates to show just how long a period without warming there has now been.
There has been no global warming for getting on for two decades. Get over it. Serially-inaccurate attempts at statistical nit-picking merely serve to emphasize how very little warming there has been in recent decades. The models were wrong. The scare is over.
I’ve tried Christopher, I really have offered up the Chamberlain side of me. I know it’s Christmas and turn the other cheek and all that but the Climate Cleansing brigade just stir the Churchillian Bulldog in me and now I can’t rest til these Holocaust people are brought to their knees begging for mercy with perhaps a Marshall Plan for them all. It’s in the genetic makup my good man-
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/musicologist_of_death/
Dear Dr. Brown.
I almost always read any post you make and generally learn something of value from them.
I wonder if you will remark on tactic of mocking your name or comment on the individual’s ratiocinations which are based on his faith while acknowledging faith as non-science.
I hope you may skillfully evade his trollish distractions and engage him on a valid issue in spite of the terrible temptation to pwn his butt over his demonstration of kinship with his favored species?
The concept of rights is the razor occam would use. I wonder if you might apply and develop that long-lost concept to this. It was never about faith or science, to be sure.
The ONLY valid ethical considerations are RIGHTS and DAMAGE, after all.
JoBrighton says: December 25, 2012 at 3:02 pm
“While the trend is not statistically significant (to 95% level) the value is positive, meaning the average surface temperature has warmed over this period.”
In fact, the margin of error of .152 means that no trend is attributable. It means, in fact, that actual cooling cannot be ruled out, as an actual result. You need to educate yourself on the significance of the term “not statistically significant”.
“The last decade was of course the hottest decade since record keeping began”
This is good, because a warmer world is a better world. A warmer world means higher humidity levels, a longer growing season, more arable land in production as deserts shrink, and this means greater food production. This is most important in a world where population is expected to double and redouble over the next century. To prevent mass famine, food production will have to be doubled and doubled again. Famine and the death of billions through starvation is the danger that the world is faced with over the next century, not warming.
Warming also means milder winters. Why would you lament this? People are dying of the cold, not of the heat. And this brings us to the temperature trend of the last ten years: we are cooling, and this trend will continue indefinitly, some believe. This is chilling news because a cooler world means shorter growing seasons, less rainfall, a shrinkage of arable land, and mass famine worldwide, if this trend continues. Cooling is what extinguished the Norse settlements of Greenland.These were established in an era that was warmer than today. This is history, JoBrighton.
“The “no warming over the last 16 years” was of course just another factually challenged Daily Mail article by David Rose (challenged by the Met Office- his alleged source of a non existent report).”
Actually, the “no warming over the last sixteen years” is obvious from glancing at the temperature trends since 1997. You don’t have to be a genius to see it. But some people cannot think for themselves and can only repeat what they are told.You need to resist the scare talk, or you will never figure things out for yourself. So brighten up,and wise up.
Larry, I suggest you familiarise yourself with the work of the NOAA, we’ve got pretty good global temperature records going back the 1850’s and detailed country records well before that. According to the NOAA, the top 3 hottest decades in the last 16 have been the last 3. The top 15 hottest years all occurred in the last 15 years. We’re now 333 months where every single month globally has recorded a temperature above the global 20th Century average. Every single month.
The last decade was the hottest on record globally despite both a predominance of La Nina phases and the lowest TSI in over a century. That should have indicated a strong cooling phase, instead we had the hottest decade on record. Nuccitelli et al. (2012) gives provides all the observational evidence an impartial observer would require to show the earth is still warming and why natural variability is in the long term smaller than the long term warming trend. If you want the longer term, then ice core records give us excellent evidence, which confirms that CO2 levels are far higher now than at any period over at least the last 750,000 years and that they’ve risen more rapidly in the last 150 years than at any time over that period. Now, if you’re lucky enough to have total knowledge know with complete certainty the nature of all the interactions of the climate system, and you’re conclusion is that everything will carry on as before, then good for you. Sadly, you’re not. The evidence in so far shows the scientists have been too conservative in their estimates of how fast and strong those climate change impacts will be.
😉
Jo.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you Christopher. I thank you for the extraordinary contribution you have made over the years in the war against climate corruption.
Greg House says:
December 25, 2012 at 2:29 pm
Politicians and journalists can save face only blaming “climate scientists”. “Climate scientists” have no one else to blame and will suffer face loss accordingly.
I believe this needs to be carried one step further. Who is it that pays climate scientists the huge amounts of money to come up with scary scenarios due to warming?
Monckton of Brenchley says:
December 25, 2012 at 3:17 pm
The pseudonymous “Ratduke”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I presume your slur against rgbatduke by labeling him “Ratduke” was unintentional. You can be forgiven given your state of ill health. If you wish to duel with him over matters of religion, by all means, have at it. As to your remarks regarding his science, I presume also that you don’t know that he is Robert G Brown, one of the most respected contributors to this blog, holds a PhD in physics, and is a respected researcher and professor at Duke. You may wish to reconsider your remarks in that light.
Russell Seitz says: “You don’t have to be depressingly illiterate and ill-informed to accept Monckers as an authority figure, but it certainly helps.”
The argumentum ad hominem – the logical fallacy of attacking the man and not his argument – is a shoddy sub-species of the argumentum ad ignorationem elenchi, the fallacy of introducing an extraneous consideration or red herring to the discussion, demonstrating that one is ignorant of the manner of conducting a rational argument, and implying that one is ignorant of its matter as well.
Mr. Seitz was lucky to get his little item of pointless malevolence through the moderators, but if he really cannot raise his game – on Christmas Day of all days – he may perhaps be more profitably engaged in reading Charles Dickens’ “The Christmas Carol” or playing in someone else’s sandpit.
[It did pass, but only after thought and consideration. That is, thought and consideration of what your response might be. 8<) Mod.]
JoBrighton says:
December 25, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Of those last 16 years, how many have been in the top 10 hottest since global record keeping began? 9.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If I put $10 in a jar every day for 100 days, I’ll have $1,000. If, for the next 100 days, I put in one penny each day, at the end of 200 days, I will have $1,001. While it could be said that over the last 10 days, I’ve had more money in the jar than ever before, and that the trend is positive, the fact is that the tax man cometh and he has no interest in my pennies. They are not statistically significant.
Beyond that, of which global record do you speak? The geological record falsifies your position. The historical record falsifies your position. The ice core record falsifies your position. The records of monks in Europe, China and Japan falsify your position. Crop records going back hundreds of years falsify your position. Most recently, Keith Briffa published updated work to his own tree ring analysis which falsifies his hockey stick graph cited by the IPCC and, also…your position.
JoBrighton says:
December 25, 2012 at 3:02 pm
The last decade was of course the hottest decade since record keeping began and in fact there has been warming over the last 16 years.
To the nearest year, there has been no warming at all for 16 years, statistical or otherwise, on several data sets.
Data sets with a 0 slope for at least 15 years:
1. HadCrut3: since May 1997 or 15 years, 7 months (goes to November)
2. Sea surface temperatures: since March 1997 or 15 years, 8 months (goes to October)
3. RSS: since January 1997 or 15 years, 11 months (goes to November)
See the graph below to show it all.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.33/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.0/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.25/plot/rss/from:1997.0/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1
However in view of the significance of the 16 years lately, I would like to elaborate on RSS. The slope for 15 years and 11 months from January 1997 on RSS is -4.1 x 10^-4. But the slope for 16 years and 0 months from December 1996 is +1.3 x 10^-4. So since the magnitude of the negative slope since January 1997 is 3 times than the magnitude of the positive slope since December 1996, I believe I can say that since a quarter of the way through December 1996, in other words from December 8, 1996 to December 7, 2012, the slope is 0. This is 16 years. Therefore RSS is 192/204 or 94% of the way to Santer’s 17 years.
Now with regards to “ the hottest decade”, that is not relevant as far as NOAA is concerned. They are only interested in WARMING and not BEING WARM.
PDF document @NOAA.gov. For anyone else who wants it, the exact quote from pg 23 is:
”The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf
Another fact that may be of interest: With RSS, 2012 ranks 11th so far to the end of November, and 2011 will then be the 13th warmest, and 2008 is 22nd. So if things do not change here, three of the last five years will not even be in the top ten!
This thread has made my Christmas, It has renewed my hope that sense will one day prevail. However, I suspect that I may have to wait a while longer, but will rejoice that there are still those for whom rational argument remains the only way forward. Don’t give up, truth will out…!
richard verney says:
December 25, 2012 at 3:51 pm
“Lord Monckton accepts (at any rate for the purpose of argument) the general premis behind GW because to challenge that premise is considered to be a step too far. However, should CO2 emissions continue unabated and should temperatures not correspondingly rise, […]”
You are trying to make the case that if CO2 continues to rise yet temperatures stay constant, this would indicate that the radiative physics behind the CO2AGW theory are to be questioned. But that is not a necessary conclusion (and one I would dismiss).
The Earth’s climate has proven to be nearly perfectly homeostatic over millenia, with only tiny variations of average temperatures. This is strong indication for an abundance of negative feedbacks. A system with strong negative feedback would easily compensate the tiny influence of the pressure broadening of the absorption lines in the CO2 spectrum, and you would get no influence on temperatures while CO2 is rising – the IR would just be emitted through other frequencies – or cloudiness would rise, reflecting more short wave radiation into space.
So, that would be my explanation – the radiative physics are ok; but unimportant with regard to the average temperature.
Also, don’t forget: The natural carbon cycle exchanges way more CO2 than we produce; the derivative of CO2 concentrations looks nearly the same as the SST graph; CO2 levels are far more controlled by temperature than temperature is by CO2.
The climate models do not fail because the radiative physics are wrong. They fail because the modelers have denied the mathematical foundations that tell us that they must have zero predictive skill over longer time ranges. Weather models are far more precise than climate models; we all know they have 50% accuracy after 5 days.
The assumption that climate models can beat weather models has no basis in fact. Their predictive horizon is at most also 5 days. Not 100 years. This should be the default assumption for any rational human, otherwise, why would we not use climate models to tell us how warm next summer gets in our 50 times 50 km grid box, we don’t except for the British Met Office, and the Brits have lots of fun with it for years now.
Lord Monckton graciously mentioned my contribution about the real GHE. My estimate of ~9K is with respect to the Hansen 33 K which he claims, after Houghton, is via the moist lapse rate, their claimed cause of the GHE.
This is of course balderdash but to prove it you have to show there can be no CO2-AGW so no change of the moist lapse rate by CO2 change. This is quite easy to an engineer unencumbered with the Schuster-Schwarzchild two-stream approximation, which breaches Maxwell’s equations so can’t be true.
The interference of opposing plane waves at the surface means the weaker is annihilated, the origin of the S-B1 -S-B2 calculation. Unfortunately, silly people imagine two S-B equations mean two radiation streams. Until the net flux is created, the vector sum of the Poynting Vectors, no thermodynamic work can be done. (The PVs are the temperature signals so a pyrgeometer does not measure energy flow.)
It gets a bit more complex because the atmosphere is semi transparent and there is a hitherto unreported bit of physics for GHG bands in self-absorption which means a radiometer in the atmosphere measures a very different signal to one in a vacuum, hence the stupid belief that self-absorption of the thermal CO2 15 micron band at TOA proves absorption of surface-emitted CO2 IR in that band when there is none!
Basically, these climate people have made 7 mistakes in the physics and expect us to kow-tow to incompetents. The modellers are OK though, just badly led.
[pyrometer ? Mod]
It would be interesting to see a properly conducted and published study to support this claim. How do we know what the cost would be to prevent it, if we haven’t yet figured out what technology to use? How do we know the cost of adaption if we don’t yet know what the adverse consequences will be? It’s not obvious to me that a scheme for sequestering billions of tons of CO₂ and/or other greenhouse gases directly from the atmosphere would necessarily be more expensive than, say, moving hundreds of coastal cities inland as sea level rises.
(The PVs are the temperature signals so a pyrgeometer does not measure energy flow.)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
mods ~ this is classic Doug C*tton sl@yer sh*t. close to verbatim.
I see the fragrant JoBrighton is here telling us we are heating because the World has reached its highest temperature [since the MWP, the RWP and many prior to that]. The World is cooling as shown by the jet streams moving nearer the Equator and come 2015 we’ll start to really feel it.
There can be no CO2-AGW because the surface cannot emit that band IR. The real GHE is the rise in surface temperature because GHGs increase the impedance to heat surface transfer, most of which is convective/evapo-transpiration with the emitted water vapour side bands and the atmospheric window.
As for the real heating – last Century was a solar Grand Maximum, high solar magnetic field, low cloud cover. That has reversed now. The real AGW was Asian pollution reducing low level cloud albedo but that has no saturated.
In Australia, the “canary in the coal-mine*”, it is drought free after 10 years** and despite the highest levels of carbon (sic) in 15 million years***.
* [ http://www.homepagedaily.com/Pages/article6789-australia-faces-collapse-as-climate-change-kicks-in.aspx ]
** [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2012/may/11/weatherwatch-drought-australia-floods ]
*** [ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091008152242.htm ]
Like Monckton of Brenchley’s announcement in Doha, this great news is met with silence.
Note to Mod: Pyrometers calibrate the measured equilibrium temperature of the sensor, or it could be an energy flux, to the source temperature in the view angle. A pyrgeometer is a pyrometer with an IR filter calibrated in W./m^2 against a cavity black body.
However, that too is a temperature signal convolved with emissivity, what you should get with the S-B equation. But it gets more complicated because the atmospheric window AW means a pyrgeometer can never equilibrate radiatively with a clear sky — it would have to cool until the radiative energy entering the sensor outside the AW equals the radiative energy leaving in the AW and for 16 °C air temperature, it would cool to -13.5 °C.
What takes over is internal convection hence all the funny equations with thermistors at various places. Pyrgeometers can radiatively equilibrate with a cloudy sky because the AW radiative loss [difference of Poynting Vectors integrated over all wavelengths] is much lower. In short pyrgeometers measure something very different to that claimed and don’t do it very well!
HA Nice to see L. Monckton (sorry I have problems calling someone Lord, no offense meant) responding here 🙂
He’s a better man than I am I suspect.
If anyone desires he writes some good stuff on WND site.
Thank you sir for what you, and also everyone here, does.
Well, now
Any Christian might find himself offended at what he sees as public slurs against his religion posted on this day, of all days.
Not the smartest play in the playbook to make such a slur. Not the smartest play to defend such a slur. If the offender meant no offense, then he needs to explain himself. By the way, was Newton irreligious?
richard verney says:
>> One facet of the theory is that whenever there is a rise in CO2 concentrations temperatures must rise; they cannot stand steady, they canot fall.
I can never seem to find the step that takes me from CO2 is a greenhouse gas to temperatures must rise, can you point to that? Namely why temperatures must rise in a chaotic open system due to the addition of a greenhouse gas?
There is a Sun Tzu quote along the lines of (paraphrase), “always leave you enemy a line of retreat, otherwise you will have to massacre everyone of your enemy”.
I think this is a case where I want to massacre the lot.
Werner Brozek says, December 25, 2012 at 4:03 pm:
Greg House says:December 25, 2012 at 2:29 pm Politicians and journalists can save face only blaming “climate scientists”. “Climate scientists” have no one else to blame and will suffer face loss accordingly.
I believe this needs to be carried one step further. Who is it that pays climate scientists the huge amounts of money to come up with scary scenarios due to warming?
================================================================
I do not know exactly, how this machinery works. I do not think we can expect “climate scientists” to give up and denounce AGW, that is the point, no rat hole for them is possible.
But we can work with the press and politicians. We should, however, keep in mind what sort of education most of them have.
Once the impression is established that the AGW ship is about to start sinking, the first “climate rats” will start leaving it and others seeing that will follow.
JoBrighton says :
>> The last decade was of course the hottest decade since record keeping began”
A perfect example of how to use language to influence people’s thinking.
What, pray, is ‘hot’ about 14-15C ???
davidmhoffer, your analogy makes no sense in relation to the fact that 9 of the top 10 hottest years on record occurring in the last decade. As you’ll note in my post, I refer to the NOAA, which is the world’s leading global climate body as regards data gathering- as opposed to say the local historical records of monks. Furthermore, I note you say my points are refuted -for example on ice core data- but you didn’t elaborate which was refuted or why. Is there evidence in the ice core records CO2 higher in the past? Nope. Is there evidence it increased at any point in that record as fast as it has now? Nope..
Werner Brozek,
you say ” Now with regards to “ the hottest decade”, that is not relevant as far as NOAA is concerned. They are only interested in WARMING and not BEING WARM”
Actually, the NOAA makes a point of noting the last 3 decades on record are the warmest on record (with each subsequent one warmer than the previous one), because that’s indisputable evidence of a warming trend. If the next 3 decades on record are increasingly cooler, I’d say that was clear evidence of a cooling trend, but we both know that’s not going to happen. I’d happily take bets the current decade will be the warmest on record. Would this convince anyone who has yet to be convinced of a warming trend? Doubt it. The evidence is quite clear already, if you don’t want to accept it now, you’re not likely to in future.
This from the NOAA:
“For the first time, and in a single compelling comparison, the analysis brings together multiple observational records from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “The records come from many institutions worldwide. They use data collected from diverse sources, including satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, ships, buoys and field surveys. These independently produced lines of evidence all point to the same conclusion: our planet is warming,”
AlecM says:
December 25, 2012 at 4:36 pm
And the physics at an end extreme interglacial would be………
Just in case there are those of us still inclined to a Hoyle steady-state universe…..
Not that I am averse to your proposition
“[pyrometer ? Mod]”
Pyrgeometer I assume.
JoBrighton says: December 25, 2012 at 4:01 pm
“The evidence in so far shows the scientists have been too conservative in their estimates of how fast and strong those climate change impacts will be.”
==============================
What climate change impacts, pray tell? Perhaps you refer to the record ice accumulations in Anarctica.
Certainly you cannot mean the milder winters that AGW theory projects, so tell us please, what impacts? Do you refer to the panic talk of James Hansen et al, citing drought, flood, killer heat wave, etc.? Is this what you mean? Then you should read the second order draft of IPCC AR5, recently librated. This reports that the claims of Hansen et al has no basis and that extreme weather events have not increased.
Once again, instead of pushing science, you push the panic button. You talk evidence, but where is it?
DirkH says:
December 25, 2012 at 4:33 pm
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I would not disagree that the mere fact that life conditions have existed on planet Earth for approximately 4 billion years is in itself strong evidence for negative feedbacks. Indeed, I put that forward as one of my two prime candidates which may explain why temperatures have not risen as predicted.
However, there are reasons to suspect that the radiative model may not be correct. AlecM has alluded to some of this. Further there are potential question marks regarding DWLWIR and water. The absorption characteristics of LWIR in water means that approximately half of all LWIR is absorbed within the first 6 microns. If DWLWIR is of the magnitude suggested by K&T then this would mean that there is such an absorption of energy within the first few microns of the oceans that one would expect to see rapid and significant evaporation of the top layer of the ocean unless the energy could some how be disippated downwards to the deeper ocean below. However, there are problems in disippating that energy downwards to depth since the temperature gradiatent at the top layer is upwards (the very top few microns are cooler than the next 20 or so microns such that one would have to explain how heat can be conducted against the flow of the temperature gradient and I have yet to see a satisfactory mechanism put forward to do this), or unless the ocean overturns at a rate faster than the rate at which DWLWIR is being absorbed. Again there is a problem since ocean overturning is a mechanical process measured in many many hours whereas DWLWIR is being absorbed almost instantaneously (photonic energy being inputted effectively at light speed).
I would not be surprised to see a reexamination of the radiative physics model should temperatures remain static or fall over the course of the next decade. In expressing this view I am not saying that just because the temperature does not increase the radiative model is wrong. I am merely suggesting that in these circumstances question marks are raised.
Notwithstanding all the above.
IT IS NOT ABOUT FACTS
These members of the agw fraud cult care not one whit about 1 or 100,000 facts proven beyond a doubt.
Agenda, agenda, agenda.
Redistribution, revenge, wealth transfer, tax and spend, asset transfer by any means possible.
Media liars enable, rich descendants foolish guilt willingly transfering some of the wealth to feel good and the assistance of others of the feel good .
It is a cult.
They wish the current way of life dead and if we others have to go along to a mass gulag end of life so be it in their mad rush of selfdestruction.
It is not going to end with any hand shake and meeting of the minds on facts.
Sometimes the tongue in cheek quips of moderators eclipse the schooled and carefully writ words of Lords.
AlecM says:
December 25, 2012 at 4:46 pm
“There can be no CO2-AGW because the surface cannot emit that band IR.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wien%27s_displacement_law
“Radiation from mammals and the living human body: Mammals at roughly 300 K emit peak radiation at 3 thousand μm K / 300 K = 10 μm, in the far infrared. This is therefore the range of infrared wavelengths that pit viper snakes and passive IR cameras must sense.”
Given that CO2 has absorption lines around 15 micrometer I would say it has a chance of absorbing some IR produced by surface objects cooler than 37 deg C. But interestingly, a hot landscape at about 37 deg C would indeed have the IR radiation maximum at 10 mikrometer and those IR photons would not be affected by CO2’s absorption.
Jo(notso)Brighton;
Is there evidence in the ice core records CO2 higher in the past? Nope.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yep. Thousands of ppm in fact. Plant stomata studies from fossils show the exact same thing.
Jo(notso)Brighton;
Is there evidence it increased at any point in that record as fast as it has now? Nope.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The evidence is that it increased after temperature increases and that it dropped after temperature decreases, suggesting that CO2 follows temperature, not the other way around. Not only does the ice core record show the opposite of what you claim, even warmist scientists accept that this is true, though they come up with some rather convoluted explanations for it. Point being that you clearly are not familiar with the ice core data and haven’t a clue what it actually says. You’re making statements that are pure bluff in the hopes that the audience will take you at your word. FAIL.
There’s plenty of threads on this site regarding the ice core data. You may want to become familiar with the actual data before spouting off and making a fool of yourself.
icarus62 says:
December 25, 2012 at 4:42 pm
It’s not obvious to me that a scheme for sequestering billions of tons of CO₂ and/or other greenhouse gases directly from the atmosphere would necessarily be more expensive than, say, moving hundreds of coastal cities inland as sea level rises.
See: http://ukipscotland.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/longannet-carbon-capture-scheme-scrapped/
“Environment Canada wants to spend $6 billion to reduce the atmospheric concentration of a trace molecule by 0.01 ppmv, and assuming there is any advantage in doing so, supposedly cutting global temps by 0.0007°C. Just $84Trillion per degree”
When an oil company in our province asked for input for their carbon capture plan, I wrote about the huge costs for little gain. They thanked me for my input but it made no difference.
While I agree with many of the concepts and reality that lord monckton speaks of. One must also take a stand and say there is a line in the sand which you do not cross no matter the excuse. We drew that line one time by the rats who said “I was just following orders”.
When we look back at recent history we see both the population bomb and global cooling. They should be fresh in most minds. In both these cases we lets the rats run free and look at the plague they have brought us in global warming…
For the good of mankind clearly most of these rats must be caged and some put down so that other rats in the future understand. This is not some isolated incident anymore. If the rats are allowed to escape again they will be back… smarter, stronger and much more in numbers. They have tasted the cheese, in fact they have gouged upon it. They will never be able to live without that taste and feeling of fullness again. They will plot and scheme and be back.
We reap what we sow and we sowed into the very soul of ivory tower elites that they may rape and pillage across the land without punishment when they were given freebies for those last two events… we can not allow them to keep this idea. A line in the sand must be draw and if it cuts off a few rat heads along the way all the better.
@ Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
I’m afraid you have made a huge error in judgement. After being treated to such a thread we may have to form a secret ninja type squad to make sure you’re infected and isolated on a regular basis.
Truthseeker says: “… but it has the premise that these governments, bureaucrats and NGOs ultimately want to do the ‘right thing’ …” “The real problem is that the CAGW meme is just a justification for getting money …”
Not just money, but power and control. Whether that be to promote population control or exert power to control countries and their citizens. CAGW is a Cerberus, if not a Hydra.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
December 25, 2012 at 3:52 pm
Perhaps Mr. Brozek and I should get together to produce monthly updates to show just how long a period without warming there has now been.
Thank you for your response! I have actually done this on both WUWT and on Dr. Spencer’s site whenever the latest monthly UAH anomaly appears on each site.
Here is the latest:
On all data sets, the different times for a slope that is at least very slightly negative ranges from 8 years and 2 months to 15 years and 11 months.
1. UAH: since October 2004 or 8 years, 2 months (goes to November)
2. GISS: since May 2001 or 11 years, 7 months (goes to November)
3. Combination of 4 global temperatures: since December 2000 or 11 years, 9 months (goes to August)
4. HadCrut3: since May 1997 or 15 years, 7 months (goes to November)
5. Sea surface temperatures: since March 1997 or 15 years, 8 months (goes to October)
6. RSS: since January 1997 or 15 years, 11 months (goes to November) But see * below.
RSS is 192/204 or 94% of the way to Santer’s 17 years.
7. Hadcrut4: since December 2000 or an even 12 years (goes to November.)
See the graph below to show it all.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.33/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2001.33/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.0/trend/plot/wti/from:2000.9/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000.9/trend/plot/uah/from:2004.75/trend
*However in view of the significance of the 16 years lately, I would like to elaborate on RSS. The slope for 15 years and 11 months from January 1997 on RSS is -4.1 x 10^-4. But the slope for 16 years and 0 months from December 1996 is +1.3 x 10^-4. So since the magnitude of the negative slope since January 1997 is 3 times than the magnitude of the positive slope since December 1996, I believe I can say that since a quarter of the way through December 1996, in other words from December 8, 1996 to December 7, 2012, the slope is 0. This is 16 years.
Nobody will probably read this far, but rats display a curious feature in underground gold mines-they leave and head for the surface when they sense that things are wrong (such as danger of a cave in). They seemed to sense this before the old miners did, so miners in the old underground gold mines used to pay careful attention to the rats, because if they were heading up hill and towards the surface, it was time to down their tools and do the same thing. The rats also knew the fastest and best way out, so the miners used to just follow the rats.
Alarmists are fond of quoting ‘the canary in the coal mine’, who were sensitive to subtle changes in gases which might indicate trouble, but they don’t seem to quote ‘the rats in the gold mine’, who were sensitive to changes in ground and water conditions which might indicate trouble. Perhaps it is too close to their current situation.
JoBrighton says: “Actually, the NOAA makes a point of noting the last 3 decades on record are the warmest on record (with each subsequent one warmer than the previous one), because that’s indisputable evidence of a warming trend.”
Actually, that is disputable. Raw temperature records do not show any warming.
rgb recommends Richard Cox’s short treatise “The Algebra of Probable Reason” above.
It’s an excellent reference (which he probably gave from memory, the actual title is The Algebra of Probable Inference) and is available as a pdf at http://www.yaroslavvb.com/papers/cox-algebra.pdf .
JoBrighton says:
December 25, 2012 at 5:18 pm
If the next 3 decades on record are increasingly cooler, I’d say that was clear evidence of a cooling trend, but we both know that’s not going to happen.
I would suggest that you view the hour long video:
More WUWT.TV: Interview and presentation with Dr. Sebastian Lüning
He wrote “Die Kalte Sonne” (The cold sun) with Dr. Franz Vahrenholt
Then you may wish to comment on that thread and set Dr. Sebastian Lüning straight.
Group think always digresses to the lowest common denominator….and here we are. First,a civil statement, then a rebuttle, then a counter rebuttle, then the personal attack, followed by the counter rebuttle and consequent digression. ho hum…so goes the marraige of division.
When I see comments about how warm it is and expressed in a manner suggesting I should feel guilty about this because of my lifestyle, I bring up a report stored on my computer and re-read it. This report shows the northern Canadian treeline, or more specifically the extent of northward movement of the Canadian Boreal forest-tundra ecotone. After reading for a few minutes I remember why I do not feel guilty and why I intend to drive my car and heat my home. Others might like to try this exercise.
http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic29-1-38.pdf
The title and author:
Historical Aspects of the Northern Canadian Treeline
HARVEY NICHOLS [no date listed on this site]
It would indeed be a shame if Christopher Monckton and Robert Brown were at odds against each other. While Monckton is sometimes treated with disrespect, he almost always (always?) remains courteous himself. Accordingly, we should likely assume Monckton’s use of “ratduke” instead of “rgbatduke”, derived from Brown’s email address (hardly anonymous), was inadvertent. Further, Brown’s comments on WUWT, on both scientific and philosophic issues, are always well-argued, sincere, and kindly intended.
JoBrighton says: “I refer to the NOAA, which is the world’s leading global climate body as regards data gathering …”
If NOAA is the world’s leader, I would hate to see the world’s non-leaders.
Analysis of GHCN data maintained by NOAA has shown cherry-picking and lemon-picking of Weather station data. Weather stations in colder locations have been dropped from GHCN database in favor of Weather stations in warmer locations. The GHCN adjusted data, which AGW Alarmist use, was adjusted upward over the raw data. The exact opposite of what should happen when correcting for Urban Heat Island effect on Weather stations that were original located outside populated areas. Finally, NOAA GHCN data is not comparing Apples to Apples, in that over past three decades they have drastically reduced the number of Weather stations being recorded. Going from 5,996 in 1970 down to 211 by 2006. Except in 2010, when 367 Weather stations were added in for the record year of 2009. Thus when the GHCN data didn’t fit the AGW Alarmism, Weather stations were Lemon picked to fit the meme.
I am well aware of NOAA’s data records. I am also aware that you have no clue what you are talking about based on your responses to comments above. Please see Werner Brozek’s comment at December 25, 2012 at 6:26 pm above those are the temperature records you are actually talking about. even if you do not realize it.
Larry
Good article by Lord Monckton (though I would add to the article itself a link to data for any who have not seen it before, such as RSS satellite temperature measurements since the 1998 El Nino at
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1998/plot/rss/from:1998/trend ).
Taking the opportunity to comment:
The tiny drop in CO2 concentration would cut predicted temperature by 0.00006 Cº. This pathetic result would be achieved at a cost of $130 billion, which works out at $2 quadrillion/Cº.
That is a very illustrative example.*
And the impact of mathematical illiteracy extends to far more than CAGW alarmism alone. For instance, I could give some really good examples with radiation matters…
Lord Monckton wrote:
“Every student of the arts of diplomacy in the civil-service and staff colleges of the U.K. hears much about the rat-hole problem. How does one let the other side off some hook on which they have imprudently impaled themselves, while minimizing their loss of face?
A cornered rat will fight savagely, even against overwhelming odds, because it has no alternative. Give the rat a way out and it will instinctively take it.”
As a diplomatic insight in many circumstances, in many negotiations, that is often a superb observation, a very important and productive strategy no doubt.
But I can’t say I hope for such an out for the CAGW movement.
The best thing for the future of mankind is if they can’t retreat, if they end up continuing to claim warmest-ever temperatures right through much of a transition to a Little Ice Age perhaps later this century, if many core members get increasingly detached from the pulse of the public meanwhile in isolated self-reinforcing groupthink, if the final result is not smooth backpedaling but a severe crash ending in epic absurdities, mocking, and backlash. That is what is needed to indirectly tar a wide range of associated ideologies, political groups, and media outlets who had practically no qualms whatsoever about supporting the dishonesty, who are far too habitually dishonest on many other matters as well.
(As a distant loose analogy, what really most destroyed racism and forced eugenics in the Western world was probably the horror and crash of the Nazi regime, which had a rippling effect for decades afterwards, with few wanting to be associated with them afterwards).
That would not be bad for the credibility of real science and of science pursued in order to increase (not decrease) mankind’s material capabilities, but it would often take away the blinders of uncritically believing anything slapped by one or more anonymous guys with the label “peer reviewed” and of the false belief that environmentalist groups (with 100% of their finances and success directly dependent on selling memes) are generally any more trustworthy than producers in industry (who sell products of physical value, being only partially rather than predominately meme-sellers, and, due to their association with real-world engineering which has to actually work, often at least have people with a habit of mathematical literacy).
“the appreciable decline in solar activity since the Grand Maximum that peaked in 1960”
The picture of solar activity and temperatures can be seen in http://s10.postimage.org/l9gokvp09/composite.jpg (click to enlarge). I understand your wording there was just a tiny excerpt of a larger article in context. However, without being misleading to a hypothetical uninformed reader, the earliest one could meaningfully say the Grand Maximum ended (or started to end) would be the 1990s, as solar cycles 21-22 (1976-1996) were quite intense.
After warming up through the mid 20th century which was particularly strong, there was then a downturn in solar activity with cycle 20, which coincided with the global cooling scare. The cooling was quite substantial in the data and articles of the time, such as http://tinyurl.com/cxo4d3l , before history was rewritten much later (to make next to nil temperature downturn in revisionist temperature data, as if the global cooling scare occurred for no reason without a cause!). Then there were high-activity cycles 21 and 22 (1976-1996), during which time the world’s troposphere
warmed up until and through the 1998 El Nino. The 1998 El Nino was an echo effect presumably, releasing into the atmosphere some of the heat previously absorbed by the oceans. There is a partial lag time, a little like a pot of water does not reach maximum temperature the moment the stove’s dial is first on max. From the late 1990s onwards, both solar activity and temperatures have been more declining than not.
Overall, the 20th century had much higher solar activity than the prior century. There are propagandist attempts to hide that, but, to use an example of a metric which can’t readily be fudged, if one understands that shorter cycles tend to be more intense, the average solar cycle length over 1901 to 1996 was 10.5 years, compared to the slower weaker cycles averaging 11.5 years each over the prior century from 1798 to 1901 ( ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SUNSPOT_NUMBERS/docs/maxmin.new ).
Also see http://s13.postimage.org/ka0rmuwgn/gcrclouds.gif as well as the http://s10.postimage.org/l9gokvp09/composite.jpg illustration.
Anyway, the CAGW movement deserves no credit for natural influences stopping the claimed temperature rises. Although the giant IPCC document itself has a few partial admissions of solar influence (quantitatively wrong) mixed in, the real message which the core of the CAGW movement aims to convey to the public is and always has been that solar variation has no effect, conveyed through the traditional propagandist strategy of the Big L** — sheer shameless repetition — famous in other contexts since WWII and before.
The history of the CAGW movement and its spread teaches an enormous amount about the average honesty and intelligence levels of huge segments of the population, of how easily GIGO style over substance tactics allow abusing the mantle of science & “peer review” in media portrayal, and of what kind of people (the worst kind of no-lifers & enviroreligionists) tend to gravitate towards and rise within bodies ranging from Wikipedia to environmental studies institutions to most democratic governments.
Most of those observations are highly negative, but that is reality (not to detract from happier thoughts on this pleasant day on other things).
That does not always necessarily mean there is any better alternative available to present institutional structures. For instance, regarding governments, Churchill’s famous quote on how “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried” can often apply.
But it can be kept in mind. (For example, in principle, a future version of something like Wikipedia could be created in a manner less vulnerable to small teams of ideologues and less susceptible to deletionists rising to power; a system in which admins tend to be people who make thousands of edits leads to problems, since people don’t tend to make that many edits predominately through major constructive additions).
The lessons which can be drawn from the most almost-fully global dishonesty movement in human history must not be swept under the rug. To do so and miss the lessons of history would be no more appropriate than to delete mention of all 20th-century genocides and related regimes from history books. (There has already been too much of that with the first powerful watermelon, the envirocommie Pol Pot).
I hope many save examples of CAGW false predictions, of “97% consensus” claims (based on misleading trick questions including if any temperature rise since the LIA but them not reporting that), and much else.
While there are some hangers-on just motivated by money (an ordinary corruption not quite as potentially destructive as ideology) and many naive casuals just misled, the ideology of the core of the CAGW movement will remain after it: a pseudoreligion with an emotional heart which believes mankind’s energy usage is inherently excessive (as if human energy waste really compared to trillions of terawatts dissipated into empty space by each star), that mankind’s destiny both is and should be to stay on this planet until dying out, and which seeks to shackle mankind, giving feelings of penitence for man’s enviro-sins while transferring the penance to involuntary recipients (like harming hated SUV owners) to leave a personal feeling of self-righteousness. Some believe in CAGW while not being part of that pseudoreligion, like those who do so while wanting massive expansion of nuclear power plants; but those are more likely to be misled casuals as opposed to the core group immune to conventional rational counterargument.
In prior history, at least almost all regimes did not have reducing the energy and material consumption (prosperity) of their subjects as an intentional ideological goal in itself. This new evil, very dangerous if the safeguard of competition between nations was successfully stopped by international regimes, is not to be underestimated as a potential threat, even though there appears a high chance of enough future global cooling to destroy at least the CAGW head of its hydra (and maybe, maybe set part of the rest of it back decades).
* (though even that, by being generous for the sake of argument by using their figures for CO2’s effect, even itself does not fully convey the sheer absurdity, versus such as the extreme lack of CO2-temperature correlation seen in http://tinyurl.com/3d4mrbt for the past 200-11000 years and explained in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/11/does-co2-correlate-with-temperature-history-a-look-at-multiple-timescales-in-the-context-of-the-shakun-et-al-paper/ — and the major relative net harm to
plants from not having as much CO2).
icarus62 says:
December 25, 2012 at 4:42 pm
It’s not obvious to me that a scheme for sequestering billions of tons of CO₂ and/or other greenhouse gases directly from the atmosphere would necessarily be more expensive than, say, moving hundreds of coastal cities inland as sea level rises.
Therefore in a full-blown panic, you’d move “hundreds” of whole cities for a stable x 100+ yr., 3.1 mm SLR/yr.? What cities have been moved so far or even impacted at all? Your words do not align with reality. Your thinking is in the realm of pure fantasy. Stop being victimized by the unhinged verbiage and fear-mongering of the AGW scam!
JoBrighton says:December 25, 2012 at 4:01 pm
“…We’re now 333 months where every single month globally has recorded a temperature above the global 20th Century average. Every single month….”
While not disputing that the world is warming slightly, I’d be interested to see how many of those months recorded a temperature below the global 20th Century average……
JoBrighton says: December 25, 2012 at 5:18 pm
“if the next 3 decades on record are increasingly cooler, I’d say that was clear evidence of a cooling trend”
=======================================
Well, now JoBrighton, let us examine that statement. If you add thirty years of cooling to the last ten years of cooling, you will have a forty year cooling trend. Forty years of cooling would be the longest trend on record and you say that would be “evidence” of cooling? You are jesting, I think.
As far as quoting Jane Lubchenco, she is a political appointee and is known here and elsewhere as Jane Lysenko. The data sources that she cites show the opposite of what she claims, i.e., the last sixteen years show no warming by any index. If you had any sense, you would not quote such rubbish. If you had any sense.
ocker says: December 25, 2012 at 5:12 pm
“…There is a Sun Tzu quote along the lines of (paraphrase), “always leave your enemy a line of retreat, otherwise you will have to massacre everyone of your enemy”….”
Ah. Sorry; outdated philosophy. In those days it was all manual labour, arm strength, swords and spears, etc.
Now that the process is fully mechanized and largely automated that policy can safely be changed.
Thank you Lord M, for that gracious Christmas message. I agree with you as well. When I became aware of the lack of evidence behind the global warming I’d been scared of, I was at first, disbelieving, then angry, then determined to discover the “truth” of the issue. As many posters here have said before me, the truth is out there, but we don’t have it all here yet! I understand where people like Icarus are coming from. From their viewpoint, this is a terrible plague upon us and we need to do something NOW! How can you just stand there and say we don’t know enough?
Even poor old Icarus is forced to paint his evidence in the most impressive way to make the point. Checking out his posts in sodahead which seem to inform him for his comments here.
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/global-warming-proceeding-as-fast-as-predicted-global-sea-level-rise-faster-than-predicted/question-3362387/
Foster and Rahmstof results which attempts to adjust for ENSO rather than one of the standard temperature records. Sea level graphs that stop before 2010 when the sea levels dropped with the La Nina. and the seriously dodgy 0-2000m heat content numbers (hint: check the graph with error bars).
People like Icarus need a welcome to come out of the cold. They need to be able to look at all the data in the WUWT Reference pages, check the sources themselves rather than just taking the food they’re given by the likes of Skeptical Science and desmogblog.
If Icarus had a look at the reference pages here, he could find unbiased information to choose from, he could see that the temperatures have been lower these last few years, that sea level are decelerating if anything. But while they think we’re evil, and we think they’re evil it won’t happen. We are all human, we all care for the planet and our continued life on it.
Merry Christmas and thank you to the Lord M, Anthony, and all contributors and mods. Merry Christmas to all, including Icarus.
I hear them gentle voices calling….
poor old Jo!
I don’t think they will give up easily and there is no reputation-saving out that they will take.
There are at least 20,000 scientists and 500 million followers who have staked their personal reputations and inner belief system on this theory. $100 billion was spent on Climate Change by the top ten economies in 2011. The 20,000 scientists probably directly received up to $3 billion of these funds.
It is an industry, (egotistical) reputations are on the line and 500 million followers is bigger than almost all religions.
But let’s say temperatures stay flat or even go down for the next 10 years. They will have to reinvent another “aerosols” explanation or come up with some other excuse or re-write all the records once again.
Which is more likely – give up or reinvent.
It takes a long, long time to stamp-out a movement. Terrorist organizations, gangs, cults, any movement does not just go away. A concerted effort over decades is usually required. This is just the way it goes in human history.
Jo Brighton,
I notice that you have ignored Lord Monckton’s dismantling of your original premise that statistically insignificant is somehow significant, and instead keep on repeating the same talking points. There is a description for this mindset: confirmation bias.
[Bolding mine – _Jim]
Geoff, indeed, and I will spot you that more and more of this takes place today on any given internet forum, whether it’s regarding banking/the origin of banking (where con-spiracy theories abound), business and the origins of some of the larger companies (more tall tales of so-called robber-barons when in actuality they economized production through larger-scale operations), or something as seeming innocent as an ‘End of the World’ prediction (according to ‘interpretations’ of a Mayan calendar.)
Well, let’s face it, all of this, on many, many fronts is as Walter E, Williams kinda puts it, vis-a-vis:
We’ve got to keep “… pushing back the frontiers of ignorance …” in order to survive as a civilization rather than making our way back into the caves, believing in a cadre of behind-the-scenes and all-powerful bogey-men, believing ourselves to be utterly helpless …
.
But, Dirk, the thermal energy spectra from that warm ground is a curve, not a discrete spectral line at 10 um … so a correct ‘tally’ of total energy would be integration under the entire Planck curve … of course, you knew that <grin> …
.
Bill Illis says: December 25, 2012 at 8:02 pm
“…There are at least 20,000 scientists and 500 million followers who have staked their personal reputations and inner belief system on this theory. $100 billion was spent on Climate Change by the top ten economies in 2011. The 20,000 scientists probably directly received up to $3 billion of these funds….”
Bill, great data – I have been looking for a summary of this whenever anyone talks about “evil oil funding”. Do you have any citations for us? This is pretty powerful stuff.
Geoff Sherrington says: December 25, 2012 at 4:17 am
“…. cut and paste stolen wisdom into a narrative for the ordinary man and woman.It matters little if opinion is right or wrong, because people become comfortable following a few reporters whose opinions they come to value….”
Very true words. The message is decided first. The facts are then selected and highlighted to sell the concept.
Marketing at its finest.
We’re going to have a bigger problem than this soon everyone. The world shall be Bankrupted by the stupid policies of nearly all governments worldwide! In Australia for instance, between ’96 and 2007 Mr Howard paid off all government debt he inherited from the scumbags before him, got the budget back into Surplus and made a Future fund with, I think, ~$50 billion in it. From there, the Labor party got into Power and, as all Socialists do, they spent the F.F, loosened off the taxes and made some of their pet projects and now, just 5 years later, we have Budget Deficits and Debts of $250 billion!!! Do they think of fixing it, NO they never will. Generally, Socialist-type Guv’s spend more than they tax because they do it from some need to spend our taxes on us so that we’ll re-elect them and to Hell with the Banks and other Countries (if possible) who lend to us to keep the gravy train rolling. 2013 will be very interesting and painful for a lot of investors. It’s not Outlook, it’s Lookout. (old microsoft joke). Get into Gold and Silver People!! HFTC.
JoBrighton says:
December 25, 2012 at 4:01 pm
According to the NOAA, the top 3 hottest decades in the last 16 have been the last 3.
But the slope of the temperature change was no greater for a 30 year period 70 years ago than now. So where does CO2 fit into any of this?
See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1900/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1912/to:1942/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1983/to:2013/trend
Yep, that’s the fly in the ointment – they’re rats, not just people driven by ego. Not that they don’t have overinflated egos to begin with but schmoozing them to admit defeat does nothing to keep food on their table, rats have to eat.
Government is practically the only employer of alarmist climate scientists, so I think they are more worried about where their next meal comes from when this farce is over than how to swallow their pride, (and I doubt many of them have much pride left by now, assuming they had some to begin with).
Given that and the certainty of economic disaster in pursuing CAGW mitigation, perhaps it would be a real bargain to buy-out the cabal’s ring leaders? Say ‘we’ had $20 million and offer the first of their ilk $10M to publicly admit the fraud and go away; the second gets $5; the third $2 and $500K to next six rats to jump ship. I wonder who would be mann enough to be first in line?
“The overriding difficulty in attempting to model the climate is that it behaves as a chaotic object.”
=====
Precisely. If those who model the climate are so confident in their ability to model chaotic systems, why haven’t they modeled the stock market and gotten filthy rich by now?
My guess is that if they tried to model the stock market, they would be outed as frauds within days or hours of the attempt and their careers would be over. However, with climate it takes years or decades to debunk a forecast. By then the modelers will have revised their algorithms and moved on to “new and improved” models. They will then offer an updated forecast that will require another decade or two to discredit. It may remind some of a prediction from ancient times about people who are “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
JoBrighton says:
December 25, 2012 at 4:01 pm
We’re now 333 months where every single month globally has recorded a temperature above the global 20th Century average. Every single month.
And your point is?
I am 63 years old. We’re now 516 months where every single month my height was above the average for the last half of the last century. Every single month.
Lord Monckton is correct in sensing that something is wrong with the IPCC’s argument. However, he is incorrect in his diagnosis of what it is that is wrong. What’s wrong is that no statistical population underlies the IPCC-referenced climate models. In lieu of this statistical population the IPCC-referenced study of global warming is scientific and logical nonsense.
Isaiah 24:20 NIV
The earth reels like a drunkard, it sways like a hut in the wind; so heavy upon it is the guilt of its rebellion that it falls–never to rise again.
Process engineers building electronic circuits, who invented feedback mathematics, tell us any loop gain much above zero is too near the singularity – at a loop gain of 1 – in the feedback-amplification equation. At a gain as high as is implicit in the models’ climate-sensitivity estimates, the geological record would show violent oscillations between extremes of warming and cooling.
———–
I seem to remember this story started at a dinner party discussion between Christopher and a lecturer at monash university.
Seems this particular lecturer is under the impression that the climate is a linear system. It’s definitely not.
I have previously pointed out that real control systems, even if linear, have to deal with saturation effects. Linearity is a idealization after all.
Willis also pointed out the obvious. Most temperature dependent effects are themselves intrinsically non-linear. This applies to the vapour pressure of water, chemical reaction rates and a whole lot of stuff affecting climate. Many of these depend on an exponential relationship.
All this has been explained to Christopher before. But he still repeats the same dubious idea as if it’s a proven fact.
Homeostasis, then, is what we should expect, and it is what we get.
———
If there was homeostasis there would be no ice ages. There are ice ages so homeostasis is disproved.
Consider the sheer subltety of the effect that causes the oscillation between glaciers and interglacial. It’s a barely discernible change in solar insolation. This causes a change that would freeze our civilisations. It will take an equally subtle effect to fry it.
As long as CO2 continues to climb they’ll shriek how harmful it is in some way or another. If GW falls apart then Ocean Acidification will gain prominence. If we then dismantle Ocean Acidification they’ll come up with some other disastrous outcome from increasing CO2. Personally, I hope Beck was right but I’m not holding my breath. If only we could somehow familiarize the general public with carbon to the extent that when someone said carbon pollution it meant there’s some contaminant in the carbon the same way water pollution and air pollution mean there’s a contaminant in the water or air.
The much-feted “modelers” had written in 2008 that their much-cited “simulations” ruled out, to 95% confidence, intervals of 15 years or more without global warming.
——-
That’s odd. Because I recollect model paper which predicted temporary changes in the warming rate, similar to what is observed. Apparently changes in ocean circulation, all those swirling currents you see, can change the rate at which warm surface waters are replaced with cooler water from the deeps.
The modelers have tried to overcome this constraint by saying that the models are all we have, so we must make the best of them. But it is self-evidently illogical to use models when reliable, very-long-term weather forecasting is not available by any method.
——
You would think after all this time Christopher would understand that the model runs are used to produce averages over time and space that allow the chaotic behavior of individual runs to be ignored. The grand constraint of energy conservation limits the chaotic trajectories to a range of accessible states.
“””””…..Icarus62 says:
December 25, 2012 at 1:15 am
In reality, every measure we have of global temperature shows that the warming trend continues unabated. Every study of climate sensitivity shows that our no-feedback warming will be amplified by at least a factor of 2 in the short term, and much more than that if we allow slow climate feedbacks to kick in before trying to arrest the warming. It’s time to accept the evidence and look for solutions……”””””
Well for once Icarus62, it is possible you could be right; or correct; your choice. But then we’ll never know, since we have NO measure of the global Temperature, to which we can apply your criterion. We might have meaures of local Temperature; VERY local Temperature; say within mm of actual Thermometers. From there, it is largely guesswork, as to how much larger a local area, may be validly represented Temperature wise, by the declaration of that thermometer. Dr Hansen seems to believe it is the same Temperature 1200 km away from that thermometer.
Then there’s the slight inconvenience of the lack of simultaneity. A simultaneous difference in Temperature, between adjacent points, must result in a flow of “heat” between those locations, and lacking simultaneous recording of Temperatures, prohibits the computation of those heating and cooling flows, so there is no way to account for the simple fact that the earth rotates under the solar blow torch of 1362 W/m^2 power level, so that input energy has to spread out from the point of application, and that spreading determines the Temperature map around the present input region. Lacking that spreading function, prevents calculation of the thermal radiative cooling, and also the “heat” flow cooling by conduction, convection, and phase change (melting and evaporation).
Earth weather and climate is determined by hundreds or thousands of physical, chemical, or bilogical processes (at least), and a good fraction, if not all of those processes are subject the le Chatalier principle of inate resistance to change. To argue that we can model all of that accurately, is simply absurd. And even if we could, how would we calibrate that model, when we have no valid two variable (time and location) Temperature map of the planet; let alone a continuous record of that over a climatically significant length of time.
He told His audience the parable of the prodigal son, who had squandered his inheritance but was nevertheless welcomed by his father with a fatted calf when he returned and said he was sorry.
———-
Rather apt since Christopher is encouraging people to squander their inheritance.
In the real world if you squander your inheritance that’s it, there is no more money. Father is dead and buried and has no more money to give.
Interesting:
“On an objection about Luke, Quirinius, and Herods:”
http://christianthinktank.com/quirinius.html
Could I choose if so compelled between language being a creation of man or product of ongoing evolution?
No, I don’t think I could nor should. Creation and evolution are not mutually exclusive.
Should I proclaim all those that came before me that didn’t speak a modern language to be unintelligent for creating useless words and evolutionary dead ends?
No, I don’t think I should or would. All the extinct words and languages had a purpose at one time.
“””””…..AlecM says:
December 25, 2012 at 2:06 am
………………………………
The basic principle of the Maxwellian electromagnetic treatment of optical waves is that only the net vector from opposing wave fronts can do thermodynamic work. Because the CO2 GHG IR band thermal emission is the same amplitude as that emission from the surface, they mutually annihilate at the surface. This means there can be no CO2-AGW and no interaction via the water cycle with the moist part of lapse rate warming, the basis of the climate models……””””
Better hit the books again Alec, or google wikigoodluck, or however you get youe EM theory.
You are endowing totally incoherent sources of EM radiation with properties that are available ONLY to coherent sources of EM radiation. You can only get cancellation by adding amplitudes of coherent wave trains. Incoherent source interract only in the summation of the sqare of the amplitude, and since real world squares are positive, no cancellation can occur. You don’t even have congruence of frequency; let alone phase coherence.
LazyTeenager @ 12:31 pm
With apologies to Hemingway, “ask not for whom the Lord drills rat-holes, he drills them for thee.”
Richard Verney/DirkH: I do not deny there is a temperature signal in the electromagnetic continuum for every object above absolute zero and that for the Earth’s surface it peaks at about 10 microns.
However, when it comes to doing thermodynamic work on the atmosphere with which the surface is in equilibrium you go to different physics, that of radiative equilibrium. A sensor signal is a different beast. this is because sensors work by blocking off radiation for the other direction.
All pyrometers work by having a radiation shield behind the detector so it only detects the Poynting vectors from the required view angle. Put two back to back in zero temperature gradient in air and they measure net zero signal!
To get radiative equilibrium, you look at the difference between the S-B equations, then at the differential of those, the Planck Irradiance Function for a wavelength by wavelength net sum. For a collimated beam, the amplitude of the PIF at any wavelength/waveband is the Poynting Vector.
This means there is no net 15 micron CO2 band IR emission from the surface to or from the atmosphere in radiative equilibrium because it cancels out. Climate Science claims there is an up and down radiation flow which does work. That cannot be the case because only net energy flow can do thermodynamic work. A radiometer detects those individual flows by blocking off the other, a subtlety that has been completely missed by Houghton et. al.
“””””…..Bill H says:
December 25, 2012 at 9:00 am
Pamela Gray says:
December 25, 2012 at 7:54 am
Got everything right except the Sun part. The direct solar influence on temperature waxes and wanes with the solar cycle producing only a smidgen of temperature difference here on Earth that cannot be seen or deducted from the temperature record. It can only be mathematically construed it is so small. The indirect variable components of the sun’s interaction with Earth (cosmic rays, magnetic influence etc) produce far less temperature-forcing capability and cannot even be remotely considered as an agent in the past century’s warming record.
The sun can be considered, in comparison with Earth’s significant intrinsic variability, to be a constant. It is Earth itself which produces warming trends, cooling trends, and nada trends in the temperature record we debate.
=====================================
The total output of the solar fusion reaction is indeed fairly constant. However, that is only 1/2 the story. It is the Infrared bands of light/heat hitting the earth which have the warming effect on fm earth. Depending on which band happens to be passing from the suns reaction in strength as measured on the surface of the earth it can indeed have major control over earths systems.
Lower UV bands carry less energy/heat and are reflected by sea water tension or absorbed by the air and particulate matter. Higher UV bands pass these barriers (much like the difference between FM-108mhz line of sight and 2ghz or higher frequencies which will pass through solid objects) which then pass through surface tension of earth oceans and warm the upper layers.
While the suns total radiance and total output changes little, its that subtle change in strength within certain bands which have major effects on the earths surface……”””””
Where do you get such “information” Bill?
Pamela makes a perfectly reasonable observation of a position often cited by Dr Svaalgard, that cyclic variations in TSI cause very little change in earth Temperature (maybe 70mdeg C) from SB considerations. TSI is a measure of total incident power density, including frequencies which don’t survive a trip through the atmosphere. That still results in atmospheric heating, if not surface heating. Surface tension of water has nothing whatsoever to do with either reflectance or transmittance.
Your response to Pamela, is best described as “gobbledegook”. All solar EM radiation energy contributes to warming the earth; not just infrared, and any similarity between UV and FM radio, is limited to the fact that both are EM radiations. But one is a coherent source, while the other is not.
OOoops! I got my “a”s all scrambled. For “Svaalgard” read “Svalgaard”. Sorry Leif, or please fix Chasmod.
JoBrighton, you say:
“Actually, the NOAA makes a point of noting the last 3 decades on record are the warmest on record (with each subsequent one warmer than the previous one), because that’s indisputable evidence of a warming trend. If the next 3 decades on record are increasingly cooler, I’d say that was clear evidence of a cooling trend, but we both know that’s not going to happen”
We don’t need a cooling trend to falsify the IPCC prognosis. And I get tired of people claiming “the hottest decade” etc. Even if in the next three decades the tempratures stay level those alarmists will claim that the last four decades were the warmest on record, forgetting that the issue at hand is the trend rather than actual temperatures.
JoBrighton says:
December 25, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Larry, I suggest you familiarise yourself with the work of the NOAA, we’ve got pretty good global temperature records going back the 1850′s and detailed country records well before that.
===============================================
No, you don’t. Anyone believing that is demonstrating a very tenuous grasp of history. In 1850 most of the northern hemisphere had no temp readings. A very small percentage of the southern hemisphere had temp readings. That’s even allowing for an obscene radius for each thermometer. Not that a global temp average means anything, it doesn’t, but even if we were to pretend that it does, we shouldn’t pretend thermometers preceded western civilization in much of the world. Then, of course, calibration, standardization, siting, etc….. using thermometers, one can not reasonably get even a good land only global coverage until about 1930s or 1940s.
Sorry if I sound curt, but, it’s a sore spot for me.
highflight56433 refers to “a Requiem nam Rattus”.
A Requiem, on the other hand, the rat? Latin does not work by finding a word for “for” and affixing a word for “rat” thereafter—and, anyway, nam is a conjunction, not a preposition; Latin is an inflected language, and “for a rat” is ratto.
L. (December 26, 2012 at 12:37 am), your apologies ought to go to John Donne, the author of “Meditation 17” of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and not to Hemingway, who merely appropriated some of Donne’s words for a title.
LazyTeenager writes (December 25, 2012 at 11:46 pm):
“Christopher is encouraging people to squander their inheritance.”
Really? Where exactly in his words above, and how, is Lord Monckton encouraging people to squander that combined inheritance?
I had the impression that, contrariwise, Lord Monckton prefers that people utilise, preserve and perpetuate our shared heritage of civilisation, science and reason.
The circuit feedback analogy reminds me of dampening in harmonics, as well as airplane stability, both of which I have studied, the first from a multi-year daily calculus study and the second by taking flying lessons.
An example of the math for Critically Damped Simple Harmonic Motion:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CriticallyDampedSimpleHarmonicMotion.html
george e smith: you have a good point and I have anticipated it and am following it up.
Conservation of energy trumps all. When you predict net energy transfer by the difference between two S-B equations, you are also implying the by wavelength or wavenumber interaction of the derivative of S-B, the Planck Irradiance Function. Therefore you calculate the difference of energy between UP and DOWN powers in wavelength intervals. For this not to occur would be a breach of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
Thank you, Lord M. and Anthony, for a thrilling posting, leading on to a comprehensive and educational feast of comments – though we need to be careful about discarding the harmful bones.
Lord Monckton
Sorry I was impolite but I knew you could handle it. Your impoliteness loopback amplifier seems to have a closed-loop amplification of at least 3 so we should be about even.
So, Bony et al made it up, not you. (no, they are probably referencing something referencing some…) It looks more like a sensitivity amplifier than a forcing amplifier so I had to ask.
Since the atmosphere returns about 60% of the surface LW, this would be better: G=1/(1-0.6)=2.5
3.7 W/m2 at TAO x 2.5 = 9.25 W/m2 at the surface, which gives a 1.7 K temp rise, with all feedbacks included.
Jo Brighton wrote “Larry, I suggest you familiarise yourself with the work of the NOAA, we’ve got pretty good global temperature records going back the 1850′s and detailed country records well before that”
Not ‘we’ Jo, just NOAA.
You are also aware the the data from the 1930’s was ‘corrected’ by Hansen as this has been pointed out to you elsewhere, at the same ‘elsewhere’ where you denigrated this site so often. 14 is the new 15
@jobrighton: David Rose (of The Mail on Sunday), Phil Jones (of UEA) and the Met Office all agree that there has been no statistically significant warming in the last fifteen (16, 17??) years and that this has tends to falsify the hypothesis that human activity significantly alters the climate, based on IPCC projections (Scenario A, B or C). Phil Jones agrees that the data reported by GISS/Hansen is significantly at variance from reality, but he does not attribute this to the CAGW fraud,preferring to consider it a non-deliberate error. Few in the UK population now take CAGW seriously, not because they understand the scientific and economic aspects of the fraud, but because the trust that Daily Mail readers have in “climate scientists” ranks somewhere below that of UK politicians, environmental activists in the BBC, environmental correspondents of The Guardian. The Met Office is a special case: while it has for decades been the butt of a thousand friendly jokes, largely unfairly, over its inability to forecast the weather for the British Isles, its decision to become part of the climate fraud rendered it justifiably open to opprobrium rather than teasing. At least it is now modifying its previous message of “global warming” to mere “climate change” and dropped the “anthropogenic” attribution.
All that is now left of the CAGW scam in the UK are a few MPs milking the remaining few drops from the teat of state funding, Chris Huhne, a handful of outflanked hardline climate activists in the Departments of Education & Energy and Climate Change, the UKYCC, the BBC and the odd university newsletter. The general population has put the racket in the incinerator of history, though it will probably let off the perpetrators with nothing more than being told that they are just very naughty boys.
Monckton said “I shall be going to Australia and New Zealand on a three-month speaking tour from January to April, and I shall be saying exactly what I think of the carbon dioxide tax, whether Ms. Gillard likes it or not. ”
Can’t wait. Can’t wait!
In replying to a few more comments, I should like to thank most commenters for the thoughtful constructiveness of what they have had to say. I cannot thank all who have made helpful contributions that add light to the subject: but Werner Brozek’s facts and figures on the periods without any warming that are evident in the various temperature datasets are outstanding, and Henry Clark’s discussion of solar activity over the past couple of centuries is also illuminating.
M. Painter asks whether Newton was irreligious. Far from it. He spent much of the later part of his life in often acrimonious theological disputation.
Icarus62, having been corrected by many commenters on his lurid but unsoundly-founded fears of Thermageddon, asks – sensibly enough – to see a properly-conducted and published study to support my assertion that it is one or two orders of magnitude more cost-effective to adapt to any adverse consequences of warming the day after tomorrow than to spend trillions futilely trying to prevent it today. He should ask the World Federation of Scientists to let him have a copy of the hefty tome entitled “Annual Proceedings of the Seminars on Planetary Emergencies, 2012”. There he will find a paper by me, presented before Heads of State, Ambassadors and 250 of the world’s most eminent scientists in relevant disciplines, setting out the calculations mentioned in the head posting and explaining in great detail the origin of every equation, parameter and value.
My results combine, for the first time, the central equations of climate sensitivity, the IPCC’s predictions of 21st-century warming (accepted as normative ad argumentum), the Stern Review’s predictions of the cost of inaction in response to warming of that order, and the standard methods of intergenerational investment appraisal by discounting to present value. My results are in line with the vast majority of the economic literature on global warming mitigation, which concludes that it is cost-ineffective. If Icarus62 does science by “consensus”, that is the consensus in the learned literature on climate economics, to which my paper makes a small contribution.
David Hoffer takes me to task for describing the pseudonymous “Rgbatduke” more concisely as “Ratduke”. If people lack the courage or honesty to use their real names in public, they cannot complain if their pseudonyms are played with a little. Whoever Ratduke is, he mounted a pointless, impolite, off-topic attack on my religion on one of its holiest days, and then elaborately missed the scientific point that my posting made, which was that the modelers’ approach to the determination of climate sensitivity is illogical. You say Ratduke is a respected scientist: well, his comment did not merit respect and did not get it. Let him either reveal who he is, apologize for his needless incivility and then answer my scientific refutation of his comment, or retire from the field to reflect on the value of transparency and civility in scientific discourse.
If Ratduke were truly the eminent and respected scientist Mr. Hoffer says he is, he would know – as Mr. Hoffer should know – that, as Huxley said in 1860, “the improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such.” If the scientific argument that he advanced in his comment was unsound, his reputation – if he has one – will not rescue it. The argument from appeal to authority or reputation, which the medieval schoolmen called the argumentum ad verecundiam, is one of the dozen logical fallacies marked out 2350 years ago by Aristotle as among the commonest in human discourse, and Mr. Hoffer should really not still be clinging to it today.
The pseudonymous “Lazy Teenager” attempts – as he so often does, to deploy another of Aristotle’s fallacies, that of ignoratio elenchi, deploying a tedious series of random red herrings in the hope of confusing the issue, thereby demonstrating that he is ignorant of the manner of conducting a civilized argument and implying that he is also ignorant of the matter of the argument.
He says, on no evidence, that my knowledge of feedback mathematics originated with a discussion at a dinner party. No, it did not. It originated when I sat at the feet of a doctor of process engineering in 2007 and learned not only the elements of feedback theory but also the manner of its application to the climate object.
He appears never to have modeled an object to which feedbacks apply, or he would understand that it is precisely the non-linearities in the climate object that render the IPCC’s interval of closed-loop gains implausibly high. It is inherent in the feedback-amplification equation that the response curve is reflected about both axes once the singularity is crossed, which would lead to the oscillations of which my head posting spoke.
He also demonstrates his ignorance of the behavior of a coupled, non-linear, mathematically-chaotic object such as the climate by making the remarkably stupid assertion that “If there was [one presumes he means “were”] homeostasis there would be no ice ages.” He had (perhaps wilfully) ignored the statement in the head posting that the 3% fluctuation of absolute global temperature either side of the long-run mean over the past 64 million years was sufficient to allow ice ages at one moment and a hothouse Earth the next. But that small fluctuation, as the head posting also said, is far too small to be consistent with feedback loop gains on the interval [0.42, 0.74] that are implicit in the IPCC’s central estimates of climate sensitivity.
Next, he says he remembers a model paper which predicted periods of as long as 16 years without global warming. But he does not cite it, of course. And leading modelers writing for the NOAA, in its State of the Climate report for 2008, made it quite clear that the simulations rule out, to 95% confidence, intervals of 15 years or more without warming, and that an interval of that duration was needed to create a discrepancy between the models’ predictions and observed reality.
Finally, he again demonstrates his ignorance of the mathematics of objects that behave chaotically by saying that “model runs are used to produce averages over time and space that allow the chaotic behaviour of individual runs to be ignored”, waffling on to the effect that “the grand constraint of energy conservation limits the chaotic trajectories to a range of accessible states”. All of this, wherever he copied it from, is nothing but pompous mumbo-jumbo. Edward Lorenz, the father of numerical weather forecasting (i.e., attempting to make long-run climate predictions using computer models), spent much of his life attempting to overcome the constraint imposed by the chaoticity of the climate on the reliability of long-term climate predictions. But it cannot be done. Multiple runs all of which are derailed after a week or two by the obtrusion of chaos-induced, Sandyesqe bifurcations in the apparently steady-state evolution of the climate object cannot produce any useful improvement compared with a single run.
Yes, we can expect that some warming will result from adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere: Tyndale’s robust and oft-replicated experiments of 1859 at the Royal Institution in London, just down the road from me club, don’t y’know, demonstrate that beyond reasonable doubt. However, as IPeCaC itself says in its Third Assessment Report, echoing Lorenz’s landmark paper of 1963 (which is quite hard to find now, so if anyone wants a copy just let me know), that the climate is a coupled, non-linear, chaotic object and, therefore, the reliable, long-term prediction of future climate states is not available by any method.
IPeCaC goes on to try, futilely, to circumvent the Lorenz constraint by the use of probability-density functions in projecting future warming in response to a doubling of CO2 concentration. However, such functions require more, not less, information than simple central estimates flanked by error-whiskers. If the latter are not available by any method, nor – a fortiori – are the former.
Much of this has been explained to “Lazy Teenager” before. However he remains not merely incorrigible but irredentist. Since he is furtively pseudonymous, one is entitled to speculate on whether he is one of those who are paid to introduce deliberate obfuscations into discussions such as this, in the hope of keeping the global-warming profiteers’ gravy train rolling just a little longer before it tips into the gulch. And, if he will not use his real name on his postings, no protestations by him to the contrary will carry any weight.
If Lazy Teenager ever reads anything rather than recycling handouts from “Real”Climate and TheSmugBlog, he may care to read IPeCaC’s draft Fifth Assessment Report, which shows just how lamentably the predictions from much-touted models have exaggerated the warming of recent decades. The models are getting it wrong. Inferentially, one likely reason why they are getting it so very badly wrong is that they posit net-positive feedbacks altogether too large to be plausible.
No amount of flim-flam or mumbo-jumbo by paid (or unpaid) hacks of the wealthy profiteers who have done so well out of this collapsed scare will alter the increasing discrepancy between the absurd over-predictions of the models and the failure of the climate to warm at anything like the predicted rate or, in the past 16 years, at all.
OK, Jo Brighton, someone else repeated your silly meme of 333 months above the average over at Judy’s. What is ‘average’, and where are you getting all this babble?
==============
The rat hole is in fact that serious global cooling is about to happen and we need effective multi-national action to tackle this problem. The gravy train is still on the rails but the track has reached a bifurcation (if you get the point) and we are heading a new direction. OK they are still a net loss to the world economy but doing far less damage.
Jo Brighton wrote “Larry, I suggest you familiarise yourself with the work of the NOAA, we’ve got pretty good global temperature records going back the 1850′s and detailed country records well before that”
Not ‘we’ Jo, just NOAA.
You are also aware the the data from the 1930′s was ‘corrected’ by Hansen as this has been pointed out to you elsewhere, at the same ‘elsewhere’ where you denigrated this site so often. 14 is the new 15
Well, if we go back to the DDT case with which the climate issue has some similarities what are the learnings?
The medicine has been administered and DDT has been banned at the time. It is not easy to find to date a proper analysis even it is one of the biggest challenges to humans.
http://factsanddetails.com/world.php?itemid=2141&catid=57&subcatid=381#60
the following resolution is only 2 decades, but the death toll is clearly visible:
http://cmr.asm.org/content/15/4/564/T3.expansion
” One of the ironies about DDT use is that was used to eradicate malaria in many places in the developed world such as the United States and southern Europe but is now denied to the developing world which still suffers terrible from malaria. Africa in particular relies on Western donors to support its anti-Malaria programs and these donors have been reluctant to provide money for DDT. ”
The weapon that was used to eradicate malaria in some regions is denied the use in other regions.
I would assume this is why we have a difference in China where it was still used?
I know not enough about DDT and malaria, but what I learned is shocking.
If we are forgetting too fast we are doomed to repeat the same errors.
Who knows about Fred Soper?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Soper
“who according to some people saved more lives in the 20th century than any other single person. Soper’s idea was to eliminate the malaria-carrying mosquitos long enough so they could no longer carry the parasites. He had great success eradicating malaria from malaria- infested areas in Brazil by running a disciplined program with flag-carrying, uniformed workers who systematically reduced areas of standing water; sprayed homes and cars with insecticide; and set up road blocks to make sure malaria did not spread. ” (see above link facts_and_details)
So, from what point is it safe to let the rats escape?
What effect would had the full implementation of the climate-proposals wet dreams have had on the world? What is our responsibility?
I would rather have the science put right. A reinforcement of the scientific method. An enforcement of the open discussions and freedom of the internet which was one of the decisive factors. Let people see more options and judge for themselves. Do not make it too easy for the rats to escape, or at least for the false theories to survive.
we should make sure that the rat-hole we dig for their escape from their lavish folly is as commodious as possible.
==============
Sun Tzu said much the same in “The Art of War”. Leave your enemy a means of escape and they will not fight nearly as hard as when they have no escape.
AlecM says:
“To get radiative equilibrium, you look at the difference between the S-B equations, then at the differential of those, the Planck Irradiance Function for a wavelength by wavelength net sum. For a collimated beam, the amplitude of the PIF at any wavelength/waveband is the Poynting Vector.
This means there is no net 15 micron CO2 band IR emission from the surface to or from the atmosphere in radiative equilibrium because it cancels out. ”
I don’t know whether it cancels out completely.
But you brought up an interesting aspect. I said, well there will be some 15 micrometer photons if our own bodily IR radiation peaks at 10 micrometer – obviously the lower frequencies must be present.
I never thought about the optimal radiation temperature to be absorbed by CO2 and it seems to be 200K or about -75 deg C or about 2/3 of our body temperature. That’s the temperature where the peak of the Planck radiation spectrum coincides with the middle of the lower CO2 absorption band at 1.5 micrometer(and then we have another higher CO2 absorption band at 4.3 micrometer, that corresponds to a Planck temperature of about 600K or 440 deg C – that one is obviously only relevant for operating a coal forge or the likes).
As we know by the SB-Law, an object at -75 deg C or 200K or three quarters of our absolute body temperature will not radiate all that much IR anyway; only 16/27ths of what our bodies radiate per area unit – and there are not that many areas with a radiation peak at -75 deg C anyway, and they could use some warming.
Long story short: The CO2 absorption in fact seem to be mostly irrelevant to the IR radiation surface objects emit – one is too high and one is too low to make a difference.
And that is an important bit of knowledge for which I thank you, Alec.
rgbatduke says: December 25, 2012 at 1:36 pm
quote
…you might consider separating a good rant on poor philosophy, logic and evidence-based reason from de facto affirmation of a worldview that has long be proven to be indefensible on the grounds of all three. I’m just saying.
unquote
I always think that it’s a mistake for blogs dealing with the real world to get involved with politics or religion. Believers won’t be persuaded otherwise, those who think that logic is the answer to life and everything don’t understand, and mutual antagonism results, even between people who are, in other matters, natural allies.
Be that as it may…
Dr Brown, you were kind enough to further my education on another thread about oil smoothing and the amount of oil needed to smooth the world’s oceans. My calculation came out the same as yours and, in contrast to the true ethos of science, I accepted yours as correct. However, I find that I divided 1000 by 5 and got 20. Correcting this gives me an answer of 10 — that is, enough oil spill comes down the world’s rivers each year to smooth the ocean 10 times over. If we add to that all the other sources of oil deposition we have 20 times. Add a little surfactant smoothing and Voila!, we can amend my original statement to read
“enough oil and surfactant pollution comes down the world’s rivers and via other routes to smooth the entire ocean once a fortnight.”
if, that is, my calculations have not gone further awry. I put a plea for assistance on the original thread together with my workings, but no-one volunteered.
An oil smooth is, at the limit found by Franklin, 5*10^-10 m thick. You will be able to work out, I’m sure, why there are no interference fringes at that thickness. However, I was still surprised that you have never seen any smooths in Beaufort harbour, and so I resorted to Google. Please look at
http://marinas.com/view/inlet/1668_Beaufort_Harbor_Inlet_NC_United_States
and click on the second image. If you set it as your computer backdrop you will be able to study it at leisure and, if you still don’t see the effect, I’ll try to find the one of Oyster Bay which is even better.
Further reading:
http://i39.tinypic.com/2igd1mr.jpg
http://home.frognet.net/~ejcov/pockels.html (Interestingly enough Charles Tanford, in Ben Franklin Stilled the Waves, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 2004, claims that certain mineral oils would not produce the effect. I’d appreciate your thoughts on the matter. One wonders, without enough background understanding to make it anything other than idle musing, whether there is a synergistic effect when oil and surfactant are spilled together. A kitchen sink — literally — experiment shows that a mix of pure synthetic chainsaw oil and kitchen detergent exhibits the smoothing effect with startling speed. Next time you’re out fishing you could try it on the sea with half a litre or so of mixture. I’d be interested in your findings.)
JF
LazyTeenager says:
“encouraging people to squander their inheritance”
You’ve missed the point entirely. He’s encouraging people to welcome back those that have strayed from scientific rigor and reason. I agree to a certain extent but I’ll find it difficult indeed to forgive and forget those that crossed not only the scientific method line but also the line of rational by calling for trials and executions.
The spending on climate change by the top ten economies in 2010 of $100 billion is contained in this report.
Most of this spending would be on alternative energy subsidies while direct climate change research would be a small percentage. Some of my numbers are just educated guesses but I always think that we should be putting real numbers behind anything in climate change because everything is just anecdotal emotion-based statements. I’m not into that.
The html link is fairly complicated so I’m not sure if it will work.
http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Durban_dynamics_-_navigating_for_progress_on_climate_change/$FILE/Durban%20dynamics%20-%20navigating%20for%20progress%20on%20climate%20change.pdf
LazyTeenager says: December 25, 2012 at 11:23 pm
Homeostasis, then, is what we should expect, and it is what we get.
———
If there was homeostasis there would be no ice ages. There are ice ages so homeostasis is disproved.
Consider the sheer subltety of the effect that causes the oscillation between glaciers and interglacial. It’s a barely discernible change in solar insolation. This causes a change that would freeze our civilisations. It will take an equally subtle effect to fry it.
=================================
Surely we have homeostasis in the tropics. This principle, which has been convincingly demonstrated here by Willis Eschenbach, rings true; it seems self-evident.
Glaciation is still a big unknown. The rapidity of the warming is recorded in the ice cores with very high resolution. Scientists who study this emphasize that this occurred suddenly, with a rise in global temperature of 8-10 degrees C in only a few decades or so. The Milankovitch theory fails to account for such suddeness, and other theories are likewise unconvincing. We are still in the dark as to what event triggered the sudden warmth, but the scale of the transition seems to indicate something quite definite and hardly subtle.
If runaway warming were an aspect of the earth’s climate, as prescribed by CAGW theory, then this planet would have “fried” eons ago. You show the alarmism characteristic of the global warmers. You would do well to keep your finger off the alarm button when presenting your ideas at this blog. You would do even better to stay away from those who evince such alarmism, because it seems to be infectious. There seems to be a personality type associated with CAGW advocates. These types inevitably push the alarm button when they start to lose the debate and then off they go muttering imprecations against the grandchildern of their opponents. It is as comic as it is gratifying. Cheers, stay warm. mpainter
Ice core temperatures.
http://player
Newsflash: while gazillions of joules (10*22) sounds dramatic, what Levitus, et al, actually found was not. The actual change in ocean heat content and mean temperature for the 0-700 m layer for the world oceans and individual basins was 0.168 C during the entire 39 years from 1969-2008. Let’s round it off: 0.17 C in nearly 40 years. That’s a 1/3 degree Fahrenheit in four decades.
kelvin. Or, if you must add a decimal, do it honestly, 
or more likely 
. Personally I think the latter is — perhaps — about right for a 95% confidence interval.
kelvin, a.k.a. “no statistically discernible warming” over that interval, where I am generously assuming that our knowledge of the ocean’s temperature profile on the 100 or more surface areas that are over twice as large as the land surface corresponding to the set of “layers” in some sort of temperature profile at depth is only five to ten times larger than our uncertainty in the temperature averaged over one land surface area, which is at least 0.1 degree kelvin and is portrayed as such (astoundingly) in figure 1.4 leaked from AR5.
It’s rather worse than this. Even with ARGO, as Monckton has pointed out, we have an absolutely pitiful sampling of oceanic temperatures at depth, and that for only a handful of years. What Levitus found, if there were honest in their assessment of errors, is nothing at all because the probable errors in their study likely exceeded the warming by close to an order of magnitude.
Let’s put this in perspective. We cannot seem to agree on the land surface temperature to within less than a degree over the last 30 years — witness the bogus “error bars” on the “warming” graph prominently displayed here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/19/an-animated-analysis-of-the-ipcc-ar5-graph-shows-ipcc-analysis-methodology-and-computer-models-are-seriously-flawed/ (where the error bars are clearly just drawn in by hand to be large enough to embrace all three temperature estimates posted). This data is drawn from a relatively huge number of sampling stations over a long period of time, and it is constantly being revised to move the temperatures up or down because it is so unreliable and various thumbs are being applied to the scales. Nte well that the situation with this data is far worse than even this suggests, because while we have comparatively dense surface station readings (at least in some heavily oversampled regions like the US and Europe) the surface area of the Earth is 70% Ocean and our knowledge of that 70% sucks, especially in the era preceding the satellite record (which started to give us accurate SSTs).
If there were an honest human being working in climate science today, they would stop posting two decimal points — for example, 287.16 — for the Earth’s mean temperature. They would stop posting one decimal point — 287.2. They would post no decimals at all, and they would add a confidence interval such that it is e.g. 95% likely that the true “mean temperature” of the Earth’s surface (averaged over God knows what for God knows how long, given that it is a coarse grained average in space and time and not a relevant measure for dynamic energy balance — for that one would like the fourth-root-T-to-the-fourth “average”) lies within the confidence interval, or otherwise post a meaningful error bar.
In the latter case, an honest statement might well be that the Earth’s mean surface temperature is
However poor our knowledge of the Earth’s actual mean temperature might be to scale, it is surely much, much worse for the top kilometer of the ocean, from the surface down through the thermocline. ARGO is starting to give us actual systematic data at and through this depth, on a pitifully inadequate grid that is still far, far better than anything we have ever had before. Over forty years, however, we have nothing that would justify an estimate to within a degree C of the variation of temperature to depth. Note well that now whatever problems one has with the surface temperature (and there are many, as the increasing but artificial divergence between LTT and surface temperature has demonstrated, a divergence that makes it essentially impossible for the keepers of the land records to reweight the scales once again lest they blow the whole game on the spot) one has to the three-halves power in the ocean, because it has depth. The SST can vary by a degree over a year or two in various places — why not? — and have almost no effect on the ocean temperature at depth for decades because the timescales of mixing to depth are decades to centuries. So SST is a lousy predictor of anything but SST.
Now we can see through the nonsense of posting 0.169 C as the increase over 39 years. Note two things — first, the result is posted to three presumably significant figures! This is rule one when trying to convince people that you have a knowledge that you don’t really have — not “no resolvable warming” (which is the truth). Not even 0.2 C, the sort-of-honest way the mean surface temperature of the Earth is presented that at least gives you only the marginally uncertain decimal. No, 0.169 C. We know the ocean’s 40 year temperature volumetrically averaged mean temperature rise more accurately and precisely (which?) than we know my own body temperature while actually reading a thermometer shoved up my ass in real-time! That’s a neat trick!
It’s a lie. 0.17C would be a lie. Asserting that we know the baseline mean temperature of the ocean to 700 meters now to 2 or 3 significant figures is a lie. An honest statement of the result — presuming that it is produced in the best of faith using real data (where of the latter, at least, I have little doubt) it would be something like:
rgb
I meant 0.168, not 0.169, sorry. Can’t keep things in my head long enough, and clearly my own brain is uncertain within 0.001 C. 🙂
Icarus62 says:
December 25, 2012 at 1:15 am
In reality, every measure we have of global temperature shows that the warming trend continues unabated. ….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Looking for that Mousetrap are we?
GISS Land-Ocean Temperature Anomalies (10 years mean ,deg. Celsius)
1962-71….-0.0284C
72-81……..0.0049C
82-91……..0.2159C
92-2001….0.3429C
2002-2011…0.5587C
source:”Woodfortrees.org”(LOTI + from1962 +compress 120)
The planet is warming.
***
Pamela Gray says:
December 25, 2012 at 7:54 am
The sun can be considered, in comparison with Earth’s significant intrinsic variability, to be a constant. It is Earth itself which produces warming trends, cooling trends, and nada trends in the temperature record we debate.
***
Exactly, Pam. Note the change in local summer insolation (following the 20k yr precession cycle) that cycles the vast Sahara/Saudi areas from bone-dry desert to tropical dry-forests & savannah (w/rivers & lakes), all without any change in total TSI. Not to mention the vast continental NH glaciers following the ~100k yr eccentricity cycle (and at one time following the ~41k yr obliquity cycle).
klem says:
December 25, 2012 at 3:25 am
Thanks for this. Monckton is right, you must give the rats a way out, a way to save face. Otherwise this battle will continue for decades more…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Oh, I am sure the politicians will save face. It is the academics, especially those who were most vocal who will be come the scapegoats, always assuming they can not continue to perpetuate the hoax.
The best part of the hoax is the general public is starting to realize scientist LIE and so does the media. This is why the UN wants to censor the internet.
@Christopher Monckton:
Any chance that you would be interested in taking a leadership role in organizing common folks into widespread climate science education campaign? One that isn’t dependent on mainstream media exposure?
The problem with the blogosphere is that, even while being expansive, it’s simultaneously very self-limiting. Meanwhile, there are warnings of secret carbon tax negotiations going on in Washington, D.C. (as per Senator Vitter, e.g.). Creating yet more economic incentive for perpetuating a climate pseudo-reality is not a road I want to go down. Also, people who we might dismiss as clowns, like Parncutt, might become harbingers of real repression, if we leave their propagandistic underpinnings unchecked.
I have sketched out what such a program, which leverages blogosphere readers to transcend the blogosphere, looks like here at WUWT. Please see my challenge at: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/23/climate-ugliness-goes-nuclear/
@M’Lord Monckton (and with snide asides to LazyT – who near as I can tell doesn’t read things anyway):
I hope you find this useful in seeing how ‘stability’ works in the climate system of Earth.
in this article:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/d-o-ride-my-see-saw-mr-bond/
I explore some of the oscillatory events in our climate history. Along the way, I found a paper that points out some rather interesting things. In particular, it bears heavily on the question of “Tipping points” and stability. (homeostasis vs instability vs hysteresis or ‘bi-stable’ oscillator).
In fact, the climate undergoes changes from a stable form, to a hysteresis form, and then onto a new nearly stable form. Unfortunately, it becomes less stable as you cool (from our present state), and more stable as you warm (from our present state). Cool enough from our present state, you end in the only really stable mode available; an Ice Age Glacial.
I say ‘unfortunately’, because at the resent levels of insolation, we are now leaving the hysteresis stage where we can be ‘flipped’ to either the warm side, or the cold side. As we are already at the limit case of the “warm side”, the only climate catastrophe we can have is a flip to the cold side. That is, we can fall off the Holocene warmth and back into a glacial. (In a glacial, you become highly stable in cold, only occasionally meta-stable with a warm spike, then fall back to cold).
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Nature/rapid.pdf
I’ll translate for LazyT:
That says that the glacial OMG Cold and frozen state is the only stable one. BUT, sometimes, you can get a bit of a kick into a warmer state (like we are having now). The warmth just is not very stable, and the “tipping point” is back to cold.
(The orbital mechanics that make it possible to have an interglacial are rare, only happening about once every 100,000 years. We are now exiting that regime and the present W/m^2 above 65 N or so is below that which leads to stable warmth. )
The basic driver for the D.O. warming events still exists. Notice that Greenland gets a bit warmer in a few decades, then over a long period of time things cool? That it can plunge back to the only really stable state, a cold “stadial” (LazyT: that means glacial ice and frozen as in Ice Age frozen) conditions.
So what have we had? A modest warming in Greenland and a sudden downturn in the sun, with the return of lots of snow over the N. Hemisphere. (We are now ‘coloring outside the lines’ of the climatology on the N.H. snow map from FSU.EDU here:
http://moe.met.fsu.edu/snow/
I looked at it a bit earlier here: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/about-that-snow-cover/
when it was about at the green ‘climatology’ line.
So where we are at is that the orbital mechanics have already left the very brief warm state that can cause an ‘inter-glacial’ excursion. We are now ‘on the cusp’ of a return of the glacial conditions. There is a single highly stable state, and that is glacial / frozen. There is no “tipping point” to the upside (only a hysteresis halt to warming overshoot via the water cycle) but there is a “tipping point” to the downside (as we are warm right now and the other end of the hysteresis is the cold end… the “light switch” can only be on, or off, and we’re presently “on”, so can only swap to “off”.)
Got that, LazyT? Holocene is STABLE to the upside and does not warm beyond present. Ice Age Glacial is STABLE, but it CAN have ocean oscillations that cause brief (Pleasant!) warming to near present state.
However, we are not at the beginning, nor even the middle, nor even the last 3/5 point of the Holocene. We’re in the final stages. The amount of ‘extra solar warmth’ available at the N. Pole is lower every century than the one before, and we’ve reached the point where a “tip” can happen. But not to the warmer side. Only to the cold and frozen side.
Look at the chart / graph here:
The 3rd line up from the bottom. The black one. Compare it to the two bottom lines (benthic forams and Vostok.
That black line is how much of the energy needed to cause a Holocene like interglacial is being handed to us. Now look at the peaks on the prior 3 interglacials. Notice interglacials are triggered to happen at a much higher level of the black line. Notice that the present level of the black line is completely compatible with the glacial state (there are cold glacial conditions at other times when the black line is at our present level). Look very carefully at the black line where the vertical ‘you are here’ crosses it…
We’ve left the peak energy state, we’ve dropped to the median, and we’re now able to plunge into a cold glacial at any time. But we can not go the other way. (Most obviously because we’re already in the warm mode, thermal limited by convection and thunderstorms; but secondly due to not enough warming far enough north any more. That black line says so.). Now look to the right on the black line. We get a small chance of coming out of the next glacial in about 100,000 years, but the only really good one is in 200,000 years.
Now the “good news” is that there are not a lot of ‘low going’ dips for the next 100,000 years either. If we are Really Really Lucky (and do some things to help keep the N. Hemisphere from freezing up, which triggers the glacial…) we have a small chance of holding off the cold plunge into the next glacial. We just barely dodged that bullet in the Little Ice Age.
That means any added warming we can get is a Very Good Thing. Because those periodic 1500 year ‘excursions’ still happen. And one ‘dip’ to the cold side ( or one giant volcanic event or one really big rock from space or…) and we go back to the stable glaciated state.
So despite my efforts to show Global Warming is a crock: I really do hope, with all my soul, that the Greenhouse Gas Theory is correct. If it isn’t, there is nothing much to stop New York going back under a mile of ice… (Germany and Sweden / Norway would not be very well treated either, nor would Scotland. Best polish up those Spanish Language skills if the snows come, and don’t leave fast.)
At any rate, the paper looks to be reasonably well done, and the historical data / context are well attested. Our orbital mechanics are about as solid and things can be. The ice cores and benthic forams record clearly what events happen, and in what order. This puzzle fits together “one way”. And it answers the question of climate stability.
Limited to the upside by increasing evaporation, thunderstorms, etc. at a Holocene Optimum like level. (About 2 C more than now, peak). Most stable in an Ice Age Glacial (but can have brief excursions to conditions like now – that are unstable). Only a specific set of orbital conditions let that unstable warm state last longer (an ‘interglacial’), and we’ve left that set of conditions behind.
The next flip to cold, switches us to the glacial regime, where we stay for at least 100,000 years; modulo the occasional Heinrich Event of incredibly short duration.
That is the nature of our climate ‘stability’. We are stable when frozen. Everything else is a short duration gift.
miker613 says:
December 25, 2012 at 5:24 am
“The much-feted “modelers” had written in 2008 that their much-cited “simulations” ruled out, to 95% confidence, intervals of 15 years or more without global warming. To them, 16 years without warming were as near impossible as makes no difference.” Is there a source for this? …
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
NOAA
The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf
——————————–
Santer, Mears, Doutriaux, Caldwell, Gleckler, Wigley, S. Solomon, Gillett, Ivanova, Karl, Lanzante, Meehl, Stott, Taylor, Thorne, Wehner,. Wentz
“A single decade of observational TLT data is therefore inadequate for identifying a slowly evolving anthropogenic warming signal. Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature. ”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011JD016263.shtml
We will be at the seventeen year mark in January.
Alexandriu Doru says:
December 26, 2012 at 8:22 am
The planet is warming.
Even on GISS, it stopped over a decade ago. There has been no warming on GISS since May 2001 or 11 years, 7 months (goes to November) See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2001.33/plot/gistemp/from:2001.33/trend
Well, no – we already have over 30 years of an unequivocal AGW trend, and no evidence of any reduction in that trend to date. Nor do we have any reason to expect such a reduction, barring a huge and long-lasting increase in explosive volcanism.
Christopher, I hope that you are cured of the virus you recently suffered.
But, now it’s no longer the season of false goodwill, let’s look at reality.
You rubbished rgbatduke for no good reason. You owe him an apology. In front of us all.
E.M.Smith says:
December 26, 2012 at 8:57 am
A bunch of very useful and interesting things, as long as one recognizes:
a) We cannot accurately hindcast the (apparent, as best we can tell from uncertain proxies) the pattern or values of global temperatures over geological time. Really, we can’t. We haven’t got a clue as to what really causes the transitions from completely stable warm temperatures to completely stable cold temperatures across regions of apparent bistability. The Milankovitch theory only goes so far, and only works so well, over only the Pliestocene, and only then if one accepts that we are really clueless about why the major variation occurs that is modulated by the Mil. dips into and out of glacials and interglacials in the overall ice age. There are completely unexplained dips into glaciation in the middle of warm eras over the last 65 million years or so.
b) We cannot forecast it either. We cannot assign a meaningful value to an “expected” temperature ten years, twenty years, fifty years, or a hundred years into the future, regardless of the claims of the modelers. Those models cannot explain the variability observed over the last 2000 years, let alone the variability observed over truly geological time. They assume “all things being equal” (and hence ignorable) except these (two, three, four) local variables in their attempt to extrapolate anomalies, but ignore the global variables completely and ignore the non-Markovian dynamics completely (simply because they cannot possibly integrate them). The nonlinear, chaotic, non-Markovian dynamics alone almost certainly produce variability several times larger than the total observed warming over the last century, and that is without accounting for the unknown functional contributions from e.g. Milankovitch-type variations.
This means that you are in no better shape than the climate modelers. They make excessively confident claims that the world will not only warm, but warm at thus and such a rate starting “now”. You appear to be making a claim that the world will not only cool, but will cool at thus and such a rate starting “now”.
How about the claim that we haven’t any friggin’ idea whether the Earth is about to warm, cool, remain about the same for years, decades, or centuries? I agree that we do have some reason to think that it will cool back into glaciation at some point in the future — unless the catastrophists are right and the CO_2 in the atmosphere will hang out for 1000 years or more and completely prevent a return to glaciation. Wait, that’s right back to “no idea”, isn’t it.
In general I like your arguments. The Earth is a multistable multivariate nonlinear chaotic open dynamical system consisting of multiple coupled subsystems with a dazzling array of characteristic times and internal mechanisms for absorbing, transporting, and ultimately losing energy while maintaining a nearly constant mean temperature. The entire range of temperature variation observed in the geological record is around 3-4% of the mean (10 kelvin or so) — and that is across ice ages and warm ages — where the warm age upward variation possible for the Earth as far as the past record is concerned appears to be capped at around 1% (2-3 plus kelvin). An honest plot of global temperatures in degrees kelvin over the last 2000 years — not the “anomaly”, the actual temperature — would look surprisingly like a straight line — if drawn with a three pixel wide line the variation would be unresolvable compared to the value in a 300 pixel high graph. That includes the Roman Warm, Medieval Warm, Modern Warm, and Little Ice Age variations. The variation over the entire Holocene would be barely resolvable to the eye, at scale (between 1 and 2%) although if you plotted it on back through the Younger Dryas and into the last glacial era it would be more like 3-4%.
But it is always good to admit our degree of ignorance. We cannot say with any certainty that it will continue to warm, or that it will cool. We can only wait, measure, learn and hope that eventually we’ll understand enough to do so.
rgb
… and:
Looks like your wish has been granted:
Recent Warming Reverses Long-Term Arctic Cooling
Darrell S. Kaufman1,*,
David P. Schneider2,
Nicholas P. McKay3,
Caspar M. Ammann2,
Raymond S. Bradley4,
Keith R. Briffa5,
Gifford H. Miller6,
Bette L. Otto-Bliesner2,
Jonathan T. Overpeck3,
Bo M. Vinther7,
Science 4 September 2009:
Vol. 325 no. 5945 pp. 1236-1239
DOI: 10.1126/science.1173983
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/325/5945/1236.short
garymount says:
December 25, 2012 at 5:34 am
When the late summer arctic sea ice returns to normal extent, this major icon of global warming / climate change, will be wiped out. I intend to heavily promote the statements made that the sea ice will be gone by 2015 compared to the actual trend from the low of this year. Sometime in the not to distant future, I will be shouting from the roof top that the skeptics were right all along.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes it is looking like the warming cycle in the Arctic has bottomed out.
Length of Arctic melt season
Hudson bay Ice is growing faster than normal: (Data from NOAA)
Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover – October (October will be most sensitive to cooling)
Then there is Alaska:
July 30, 2012: Summer so far at record cold levels – Lowest average high temperatures since May 1 on record
July 14, 2012: Record cold wave breaks 13 low temperature records
December 4, 2012: Fairbanks high temperature today barely rose above the previous record low.
Alaska can not afford to play ducks and drakes with their weather information. Neither can Russia for that matter and they are predicting colder weather ahead too. Astrophysicist Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov is predicting a 100 yrs of cooling. link
He is not the only Russian Scientist to blow a raspberry at the Global Warming hysteria.
Scientists Of The Russian Academy Of Science: “Global Warming Is Coming To An End – Return To Early 1980s Level”
Russian scientist Oleg Pokrovsky of the Main Geophysical Observatory says the world should expect cooling – and not warming
So are the Chinese.
Chinese Scientists Predict Imminent Global Cooling
Chinese 2,485 year tree ring study shows natural cycles control climate, temps may cool til 2068
Lin Zhen-Shan and Sun Xian of the Nanjing Normal University in China argue that the cooling in China is already well underway since 2000.
Given Russia and China are getting plastered with snow and low temperatures, I doubt they are going to listen to James Hansen of Michael Mann.
Listing of major winter weather link
(I figure we really should offset the very one-sided news reporting)
I was honestly surprised and disappointed that Monckton did not contritely apologize to Robert Brown for being “cute”. Brown (perhaps) has his equals on this site, but likely no clear superiors.
As for Brown using a pseudonym, his is rather semi-opaque, particularly among regular WUWT readers, unlike some that are totally invented. Perhaps he prefers to remain slightly under the radar as some skeptical academics (and others) need to, at least until they retire!
When a skeptic of global warming speaks up, especially locally, he/she is apt to be associated, without any intended justification, with a menu of at least a half-dozen “flat-earth” views which he/she may or may not (usually not) additionally embrace. The attacker, recognizing himself being far outclassed on anything actually scientific, resorts to a checklist of supposed political and religious issues (etc.) that the attacker feels he/she does personally understand, or better, issues which have no objective answers.
The Global Warming issue is highly political, and so at times, bringing up the political aspects of GW (and only those political issues) seems appropriate. Religion has no part in science, ever, although one may be excused for mentioning it as a reason for personal good will and/or charitability not otherwise warranted! Many of us, grading final exams at the end of fall term, just before Christmas vacation, gave a few extra “Christmas Points” as a general mood.
But leave out the non-AGW politics, and (most) all the religion. After all, that includes two of the canonical ill-advised subjects. In either case, if you do include them, you are at best “preaching to the choir” as a likely minority subset of readers. Assuming your science is sound, you can thereby only severely dilute that message.
In point of fact, with regard to even peripherally bringing in religion, a few will say and many more will think, in the continuing theme of the mascot of this thread, and in Monckton’s beloved Latin: “Non Gradus Anus Rodentum!” And as for the official titles of English nobility adding anything, Americans got over that a few hundred years ago – many history texts carry this information!
Until such time as we stick strictly only to science, we invite the taunts of “flat-earth” and fail to gain the support of the more general skeptical rationalists who too often consider climate-skeptics as just anti-science. Monckton essay was largely excellent. The title and timing was an unfortunate mistake.
Looking for face-saving escapes for alarmists is a generous gesture, even if calling such escapes ‘rat-holes’ is a little on the nippy side. As an admirer of the compassion and other good things found in the Christian religion, I have added a link to this post as a footnote to the seasonal greetings on my own blog.
I think the ‘blame the models’ escape route might work for some, but not all. There has been irresponsibility and groupthink on a global scale in recent decades on climate.
It was irresponsible of political leaders to defer to such as the IPCC and the Royal Society without, for something as important as this has become, calling for or commissioning more objective and penetrating analyses of climate behaviour and possible trends, as well as of the IPCC itself. Instead we saw such as the Stern Report, the details and origins of which would have fuelled an episode or two of ‘Yes Minister’. One just needs to see how many flaws in the scientific case, and in the IPCC itself, have been exposed thanks to free individuals working on their own initiatives. They deserve great praise, and perhaps one day they will get it when the current madness is over and all the escape routes have been widely deployed. Christopher Monckton is certainly one of them, as is Anthony Watts our host.
It was irresponsible of scientifically qualified campaigners to treat models as if they were evidence when it is clear that modern computing is quite unable to model adequately the climate system (and may never achieve a predictive skill for fundamental reasons) in general, and the role of carbon dioxide in particular. Something like that is admitted in the IPCC reports themselves, if not in the SPMs. Too many important phenomena, including the progress of CO2 from surface release onwards, have sub-grid scale aspects that the models necessarily gloss over. They do not ‘include CO2 in the models’. Instead the peculiar device of ‘external forcing’ is used. The overall impact of CO2 is not an output of the models, but rather is presumed as an input. They do not watch the models to see the impact of CO2 – an intimately internal part of the system. They watch the models to see the impact of an imposed ‘external forcing’.
It was irresponsible of teachers, campaigners, sundry organisations and ‘concerned’ individuals to make websites, write books, hold ‘events’, devise curricula aimed at children with the express purpose of using fear to persuade them to nag their parents into political and domestic ‘actions’. What inhumanity was and is there from zealots who would bring gloom and doom and premature responsibility into childhoods for the sake of their fashionable cause?
My past tense suggests this war of ideas is over, but I fear that is but wishful thinking encouraged perhaps by seasonal good cheer. I suspect not enough people in positions of power and influence have not yet sensed any need for an escape route from their past excesses. But wishful thinking is pleasant, as are Monckton’s sentiments in his post.
mpainter says:
December 25, 2012 at 6:59 am
…This called a drive by spitball, John Brooke, and it seems that you are good for nothing else.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Oh you should see him in action over at Jo Nova’s.
Well, butting in is hardly the best of manners.Who owes whom an apology? Perhaps you should demonstrate. Seems to be getting pretty complicated. It seems best to stick to climate science.
Alexandriu Doru says:
December 26, 2012 at 8:22 am
GISS Land-Ocean Temperature Anomalies (10 years mean ,deg. Celsius)
Doru, I do not find land temperature measurements, where one thermometer is to give information for hundreds of thousands of square kilometres, of any value.
Try to think at the location where you are and the temperature in locations all around in 1200 km distance. Can you by any means use your thermometer in your yard or balcony to give a value or any trend for those? That is the GISS data that you use.
Especially where we have a dynamic history in the respective data where past values are being modified over and over and over again. I find it not realistic to approximate the values within tens of degrees for the whole globe with that method.
Be aware that the ocean data is measured separately and has stable temperatures – see ocean data from satellite. The last decade:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/mid-december-2012-sea-surface-temperature-anomaly-update/
You can also search for last 3 decades on Bob’s site.
In addition, satellite data does not show the same trend over land, pls check both RSS and UHI.
Please check the web about GISS adjustments and where the data comes from, please check information over UHI or airports – see also the Watts at all 2012 paper from the link up on the page or here referring data quality:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/
@Icarus62:
We have “over 30 years” of a very much ‘equivocal’ warming ‘trend’, AND a 16+ year flat line trend.
The prior ‘warming’ is very much equivocal due to the way the temperature data have been cooked, re-fried, fermented, and homogenized. Most egregious are the TOBS adjustment applied to all stations, even those that do not deserve it, the ‘wrong way’ UHI ‘correction’ that warms stations, and the “MMTS” ‘adjustment’ for a ‘cooling bias’ that really locked in a false warming from Stevenson Screen aging. The “cooling bias” that was “corrected” out was in fact the correct result. It was the paint aging on Stevenson Screens (and swap from whitewash to latex) that was in error.
Oh, and homogenizing as done in GIStemp that spreads the false heat to places that show no warming.
You will also note I’ve left the A out of things. Your “30 years” just happen to land right on top of the warming half of the 60 year PDO cycle. You must have a 60 year POV at a minimum to avoid just detecting the completely normal and natural PDO / AMO cycles as ‘trend’ that isn’t a trend. Just like the folks in the ’60s and ’70s were frothing about “New Ice Age Coming” thanks to looking at only 30 years worth. It is one of the most basic deceptions in “Climate Science”: To claim that a 30 year average of weather is climate. It isn’t. It is only a 30 year average of weather; and that is just way too short. (There are longer cycles of weather too. At least a 180 year and what looks like a 1500 to 1800 year cycle. Your climate changes on geologic time scales and due to changes of geologic circumstances. Altitude, latitude, distance from water, land form.)
So you have found a false warming signal from looking at too short a chunk of data from a natural 60 (ish) year cycle that is not caused by people.
Now how does a 60 year sin wave look near a top? It has about a 30 year rise, and then as the cycle rolls over the top, you have a ‘high point’ looking back and not much drop yet. In fact, you would get a peak about 10 years back and have about a 15 year flat period average. Slowly as the descending part of the sin wave picks up, you will get ever longer ‘flat trend periods (and ever longer descending trend periods at the shorter end. ) What have we got now? Golly, looks just like that….
Now, with the N.H. snow extent outside the ‘climatology’ lines already, and with most of winter still ahead, we’re going to continue cooling / down trend for the rest of the year. And the next. And the next. And the next…. (May as well get used to it now. Sleepy sun is past peak of this sunspot cycle and we’re lined up for at least a decade of this…)
BTW, proforma reminder: The way you find the ‘interval of zero slope’ STARTS from NOW. Then you draw a flat line backwards in time. Now calculate the ‘trend’ from points in time ever further back in time. At the point where trend goes flat on the fit; that is your ‘zero trend since’ date. There is NO “cherry picking” that date. It is a consequence of the search, not a choice.
(Were I choosing a date, I’d be choosing any of 1934, 1720, MWP, Roman Optimum or even the Holocene Optimum. All of which were as warm or in many cases warmer than now, so you get zero trend to lower temperature trends. Now THAT would be cherry picking… though also more honest about our actual temperature trends. Slowly headed down over 8000 years.)
@neil:
Please don’t speak for me. I have no need to see any apology. You may want one, but that’s just you. (if the worst thing that happens to someone in comments is that their name gets ‘played with’, they are leading a sheltered life and ought to celebrate it …. IMHO)
On the whole ‘angels and pins’ thing of the DOB of Christ: I won’t go into it, but there’s pretty good evidence that we’re off by no more than 7 years and no less than 4. There are many lines of evidence, and not just ‘gospels’. The Roman histories are what tell us the present calendar is off a few years.
Not that it really matters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar
The Julian Calendar was in use from about 45 BC so not a lot of date conversion needed to cover the history from then or the records until you reach the 1500’s calendar shift to the current one.
That some guy named Christ existed, and was born within a few years of the present calendar year 1, is not in doubt. That he was anything special is an opinion (though one often strongly held) that is not subject to resolution by argument. So mostly I just don’t see the point behind complaining about it one way or the other…
So can we get back to climate and AGW issues….
ups, pls check both RSS and UAH (not UHI)…
@RGBatDuke:
I think you have read into my words something I did not say. I did not say “we start cooling now” into an ice age glacial. I said we COULD start cooling now into an ice age glacial. That the radiative status due to orbital mechanics allows it now, and that nothing holds us in the warm state. (But until something finishes pushing us out of the warm state, we’re not going to get much colder either, nor can we get much warmer either.)
I suspect that the ‘sleepy sun’ has a shot at tipping us to cold. But it might not make it that far. We could easily have a Dalton like event, maybe even a ‘year without a summer’, and then come right back to ‘near now’ conditions.
The major assertion I make about “now” and change, is just that we can’t get significantly warmer. 2 C is all we’ve got (based on prior interglacials and the Holocene Optimum).
There is a minor subtext assertion that the longer term trend is colder (and it is). We’ve rounded over the high point of the Holocene Optimum. We’re cooling “now”. But the rate of cooling is so shallow that the 1500 – 1800 year weather cycles move us up and down more than the slope of the Holocene rollover. So the ‘trend line’ from 8 kya to 110,000 AD is down. Period. Full stop. But, on that trend line, back near ‘now’, is a cycle that goes wider on each side of that trend for the last / next 3000 years than the slope of that trend line. Significantly.
In fact, as it takes 100,000 years for the full on ice cap to form, I’ve often pointed out that we could be already in the start phase of the Ice Age Glacial and just not notice. The ice advances about 800 horizontal FEET per year; yet the 1500 year weather cycle moves the ice edge back and forth by tens of miles (perhaps even hundreds of miles, given historic ice at Constantinople). So unless we have a 3000 year ice record of high precision, we’d never notice that 800 foot ‘advance’… (Do we really notice that the sea level was higher a few thousand years ago, and that the “ice has advanced” since then? It clearly has… )
So to say that we’re on the warm side, and it’s a lot more stable to the bottom, and we ARE going to that bottom, as soon as the first big cold pushes us past the hysteresis barrier, well, it just is NOT saying “And that is happening now!”… It could be, but we won’t know for 100 years…. or not…
We do know from prior interglacials that we don’t get more than 2 C warmer then things ‘spike down’ hard. (On a 100,000 year time scale it is a ‘spike down’. On a human life time scale it is likely not measurable…)
BTW, the key thing that the referenced paper adds, IMHO, is an explanation of just those ‘we can not know why’ things you mention. Millankovich no longer has to carry the whole burden. Now he just “sets the table” for what is able to happen; then ocean changes / oscillations “serve the meal” when the timing is right.
IMHO there are at least 4 more things needed to cover all the details, but they mostly will be ‘trigger events’ to the ocean changes.
1) Lunar tidal cycle of 1500 – 1800 years.
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/8/3814.full
2) Solar cycling ( Grand Minimum and potential longer cycles; up to 5000 years).
3) Volcanic cycling (perhaps coordinated with #1 and #2 via tidal forces.
4) Rock falls from space (also with potential ‘coordination’ via orbital resonance effects.)
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/lunar-resonance-and-taurid-storms/
There’s about another half dozen things that IMHO are contributory, but at much lower levels of effect or are consequences of one of the above. (Like cosmic rays or magnetic changes).
So yes, we can’t predict all those things so we can never know what tomorrow will bring. Could be an extinction level event rock fall and a “Nuclear Winter”, or could be a sudden solar brightening to a new level and a “Tropical Antarctica”. But we can say that the trends in “the other stuff” strongly favor cooling and that in the next 20,000 years we’re pretty much guaranteed to be in the next Glacial. Heck, even that it is more likely than not that we are clearly in the start of the next glacial inside 2000 years. And it is ‘reasonable’ to speculate that the next “big cold excursion” is not recoverable (with an implied ‘without a large hot excursion’, even though we don’t have any driver for a hot excursion…)
In short: I’d bet hard money we drop into a clear ‘start of the glacial’ inside 700 years. Orbital dynamics make it possible and the historic rate of large rock falls from space and volcanoes make it very unlikely we will have no trigger events for cold. Unfortunately, there’s no one who can be trusted to hold the bet purse for that long 😉
@icarus62:
The problem with that is the time period. Too short. The long cycle that we know of is 5000 years. Inside that, the next one is 1800 (or sometimes looks like 1500) years. A 2000 year trend can be wrong due to that 5000 year cycle and it can give a ‘false flat’ for an 1800 year cycle.
There were forests at the arctic ocean edge 8000 ya. There are none now. We’re still in a “cooling trend” on the longer time scale baseline. And precession and obliquity and all continue to move against us…
So we’re going into the next glacial. CO2 can’t stop it (we’ve had glacials in the past with much higher CO2 levels… a few thousand ppm…) The only questions, really, are date of onset and rapidity of decent. My ‘best guess’ is about 300 years. My fear is ’30 years’. My hope is ‘3000 years’. All are possible. (though beyond 300 years is a very remote possibility.)
FWIW, look at that lunar / tidal paper. It also finds a 23,000 year cycle. In the last couple of thousand years, we’ve climbed to the peak on that one. So right now we’ve got BOTH the 5000 and 23,000 year cycles peaking. Even with all that, we are colder than 8 kya. In the next 300 years we fall off both those high points of cycles. While the insolation level is too low to keep us in an interglacial.
So the best ‘fit’ to the known data is that we’ve got a non-CO2 cyclicallity that gave us our present warmth out of the L.I.A., and it’s ending now. A bit of a dip over the next 30 years (hopefully not enough for a new LIA) then a larger dip over 300 years (that is likely to trigger a LIA, but hopefully not a full on I.A. Glacial) then the inevitable as the orbital mechanics just move too far for natural cycles on earth to counter it.
Icarus62 says:
December 26, 2012 at 9:20 am
Gail Combs says:
We will be at the seventeen year mark in January.
Well, no – we already have over 30 years of an unequivocal AGW trend, and no evidence of any reduction in that trend to date. Nor do we have any reason to expect such a reduction, barring a huge and long-lasting increase in explosive volcanism.
So tell us in your own words; what have temperatures done for the last 16 years?
I’ll even include a graph to help you:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/13/report-global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago/
Bonus points question: What does that tell you about your much-vaunted GCMs?
Take your time. We know how math and science-challenged you people can be.
cosmic says: @ December 25, 2012 at 8:05 am
….An interesting way of looking at things Christopher, but unfortunately, I don’t believe the nonsense will end without a lot of people being hurt as the consequences of the policies which have been enacted are felt.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
People are already being hurt/killed.
UK – National Energy Action estimates that 5.5 million households will have plunged into fuel poverty by early next year due to price rises.
UK – Some 7,800 people die during winter because they can’t afford to heat their homes properly, says fuel poverty expert Professor Christine Liddell of the University of Ulster. That works out at 65 deaths a day.
Hundreds die from the cold in eastern Europe
In the USA Smart Meters are going to be used to shut off electric to homes and small businesses as Coal plants are shut down and ‘replaced’ by green energy. This is straight from an Texas energy provider.
Given the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ crowd is not know for their ‘conservatism’ or restraint, I would not want to be standing at ground zero when someone starts taking the goodies away from these people who have been insulated from reality. Even worse try taking away the goodies from the inner city welfare types.
A large ‘explosion’ is coming if Obama succeeds in closing down even more of the coal plants who generated 52.8% in 1997. (It is now down to ~45%) especially when more than 1,000 New Coal Plants [are] Planned Worldwide
And it is not just your electricity bill. Increasing the cost of energy will increase the cost of EVERYTHING.
richard verney:
To place the satellite record in perspective, the period of 33 years corresponds to at least 0 and at most 1 observed event of 30 year duration. Whether it is 0 or 1 cannot be determined because the climatologists have not yet seen fit to tell us the starting and ending times of climatological events. A single event ( or none at all ) cannot tell us anything of significance about the relationship, if any, between the CO2 level and the outcomes of climatological events.
Some inattentive and ill-informed person stated:
“David Hoffer takes me to task for describing the pseudonymous “Rgbatduke” more concisely as “Ratduke”. If people lack the courage or honesty to use their real names in public, they cannot complain if their pseudonyms are played with a little.”
How’s that? Does he know what a pseudonym is? Can “Lard Monkey” be properly characterized as a pseudonym?
He adds: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s Christmas. My rule is to try to do the kind and gentle thing first” even as he challenges connollEy for mendacity.
Transparent attempts to manipulate a crowd by appeals to divine authority, puerile ad hom in the form of puns on a person’s name, false accusations and displays of disrespect are the hallmarks of a fraud backed into a corner (while he appeals for a rat hole).
One is what one does.
I shall reflect on this as I consider the origin of the meme ‘carbon pollution’ as a political device.
@Gail Combs:
Good points…
BTW, the result will not be as the Green Fanatics expect.
As I’m in California, and we’re “living that dream” faster than most, we’ve already had the “rolling blackouts” experience. Now, with some spectacular (and rising fast) electric rates, some other things are starting to happen too.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/camping-at-home-is-cheaper/
First off, it’s now cheaper for me to BBQ (with charcoal or propane). So any time the weather is OK, cooking is done outdoors over crude fires in stead of indoors in my all electric kitchen.
Next summer, the project is to build in a better outdoor kitchen with a better oven. Oh, and I have a gas stove top to replace the electric one that I’m needing to install.
Under Democratic Governor Grey (out) Davis (who was recalled due to bungling electric rates… something the political class ought to contemplate…. in California even… folks willing to roast a Democrat…) we had rolling blackouts. I put small computer type UPS boxes on the important things (lights, communications center) and bought a generator. On outages, I’d fire up the generator after 10 minutes or so.
Now keeping all those batteries float charged wasted some power, increasing total demand. Not what they wanted, but hey, not my problem they can’t connect cause and effect… And running a gasoline generator without smog controls isn’t nearly as clean as modern coal plants, but hey, not my problem…
I bought the parts for a battery box and a couple of kW inverter (going to just put the core of the house on a giant UPS…) when The Gov got flushed. Still have the parts.
So when “things get bad enough”, I’ll just finish that project. At that point, the “smart meter” becomes an irrelevant thing. I can charge my home battery pile from the gasoline generator, from my Diesel car, or from ‘whatever’. Whichever fuel is cheapest. Whenever I want. Even while I’m cooking on the patio over a pile of wood and making smoke like a coal fired locomotive… The future is waiting for you now… and it looks a lot like the 1800s…
I’ve even got the parts to make a ‘rocket stove’ and will be trying it this summer (using yard clippings for fuel). Just to be ready for when our “leaders” get us moved back to 3rd World levels of technology…
Video of how to make ersatz stoves including camping stoves and rocket stove here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/beer-cans-will-save-the-world/
I’m sure my neighbors will get used to the smell of chicken drippings burning on bamboo chunks… and the smoke…
(It will also be fun to watch the folks who buy electric cars discovering what happens when the power is cut and quadruples in price when it is available…)
Werner Brozek says:
“There is zero trend on GISS temperatures if you start on 2001.33”
Yes, but if you start only 2 years earlier, in1999 , you get 1.2celsius /century.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/gistemp/from:1999/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2001.33/trend
This shows that your approach is not robust.
On contrary the 10 years mean may be started in any year and gives the same result:more than 0.2 celsius for the last decade
The earth is warming.
@Gnomish:
Get over it. We’ve moved on.
Konrad says: December 25, 2012 at 2:58 pm
=============================
You have put your finger on the very nub of the problem, I think. Without greenhouse gases there would be no convective cooling, which means no cooling. Adding greenhouse gas to the atmosphere enhances convective cooling. This is what the AGW theory ignores and has to ignore if it is to be articulated with any conviction. If one grasps this principle, the absurdity of AGW theory becomes apparent.
OT @ Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
I think you may have jumped to a conclusion about RGBatDuke. His identity is well known to us here at WUWT, RGB is his initials and Duke University is where he is a professor. Typically he links his name to his home page. While I do agree with you that to criticize Christians on Christmas day is bad form, my faith and I suspect yours is not so fragile as not to be able to turn the other cheek. I have found RGB to be an especially lucid and logical commenter here and consider him an asset to our cause as I do you.
(A box of cigars to anyone who can convincingly argue that language is either created (by man) or the product of an evolutionary process but not both.)
rgbatduke:
While Bayes’s theorem is logically flawless, the approach to drawing inferences that is called “Bayesian” is generally logically flawed. The existence of a prior probability densitity function (prior PDF) is a premise to the Bayesian argument but there are generally many prior PDFs with consequential violation of law of non-contradiction.
There is an exception to the rule that the Bayesian argument is logically flawed. Under this exception, falsifiability is satisfied. Thus, those inferences that are made by our brains that are Bayesian and logical are also falsifiable.
By the way, In drawing inferences from temperature time series, climatologists use the Bayesian approach in circumstances in which there are many prior PDFs. In following this approach, these climatologists violate the law of non-contradiction. That non-contradiction is violated is one of the dirty secrets that are covered up by the IPCC in editing its periodic assessment reports.
Many years ago, a lovely training lady at Telenet named Lisa Ushman had the unfortunate email
handle Lushman. I vowed to, in creating my own network, never to allow for such unfortunate accidents.
Frankly, I missed this real identify of “Rat Duke,” although I most certainly would not have done so had he been RGB at Duke
…Lady in Red
@Gail Combs,
@E.M. Smith,
This is the kind of nut/trougher that we have calling the shots on energy policy in the UK
http://order-order.com/tag/tim-yeo/
http://www.timyeo.org.uk/news/embrace-electricity-market-20-or-fossilize-our-economy
“Super efficient solar cells, anaerobic digestion, wind power, new nuclear reactors, wave and tidal power and carbon capture and storage – these are the technologies of the future!
Smart meters, new grid technology and increased interconnection across the continent will lead to a new ‘energy internet’….
…decentralizing electricity generation, giving consumers much more control of their use of energy, and empowering people and businesses, both large and small, to produce and sell electricity back to the grid themselves.”
We have to have a smart grid and increased interconnection to give consumers more choice. It’s going to empower us. No mention of the fact that intermittent renewable energy necessitates this (at vast expense) to keep the grid stable.
This is David Cameron, the P.M.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/9656311/We-need-more-windfarms-to-power-electric-cars-says-David-Cameron.html
We need more windfarms to supply the juice for electric cars.
It’s part of a fiendishly clever plan.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9668782/David-Cameron-backs-the-EUs-grand-design-for-energy.html
Electric cars, of which we have approximately none, because no one wants them, are to be charged overnight to stabilise the grid.
It seems as if a collective insanity has infected many of the politicians in the Western world.
There’s so much political capital been sunk, and so many rackets and sinecures depending on it, that as I say, I don’t see it ending without large numbers of people being hurt.
phlogiston says: @ December 25, 2012 at 3:02 pm
…..Politically, skeptics need to step back from a position that appears to say that nothing humans do can harm the earth’s ecosystem or climate. We can harm it. This apparent complacency is what enrages activists on the other side….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is as much a tall-tale as the “skeptics are well funded by the oil companies” lie is. However those lies and the rest of the mud slinging is used to make sure those covered in mud are not heard. The fact that mud-slinging is used is a BIG CLUE that CAGW is not about the climate but about money.
The other big two clues are:
the IPCC mandate:
It was never about determining what factors control the climate. Mankind had already been judged guilty by the UN before the IPCC was formed.
The IPCC was always about money. That is why Robert T. Watson of the World Bank was head of the IPCC before Patchy. That is why the ‘Danish Text’ at Copenhagen handed control of the carbon trade over to the World Bank.
It is also why the real rats are untouchable as always. They know better than to come out into the light of day. It is the scientists and possibly the politicians and media who will end up tried and hung in the court of public opinion while the behind the scene movers and shakers move on to the next big bubble. From the looks of it that bubble is going to be food….
Lary.P
1.Your objection over the quality of global temperature data is not valid
When using a single thermometer to evaluate the trend on a 1200 km radius there is an error DELTA.
When using 10000 thermometers on the whole globe to do the same thing,the error is DELTA/100
(100=SQRT(10000)).
When you suggest that all the 6 main temperature series have wrong error bars, you must give strong
arguments ,else…..
2.All the 6 main temperature series show 0.15…0.22celsius of warming of the last decade versus the precedent one(BEST gives 0.3354celsius warming over the land)
The earth is warming
icarus says:
“…we already have over 30 years of an unequivocal AGW trend…”
“Unequivocal”?? Sorry, icarus, that is nothing but a conjecture. An opinion. And it is wrong. You have zero testable scientific evidence showing that AGW even exists. It may. But there is no falsifiable evidence proving that AGW exists, and even if it does, it is only a minor, third order forcing that can be disregarded as trivial. All you are doing is displaying your belief system.
Jo Brighton and Alexandriu Doru claim that the planet is warming. They are wrong. The planet has stopped warming. It may resume warming, but for the time being warming has stalled.
When folks like Jo, Alex and icarus insist on believing something that is provably untrue, they are commenting as True Believers, and nothing we say can penetrate their cognitive dissonance.
John West says: December 26, 2012 at 1:04 pm
(A box of cigars to anyone who can convincingly argue that language is either created (by man) or the product of an evolutionary process but not both.)
================================
no cigar. Evolution is predicated on and follows behaviour i.e., our speech development follows our efforts to speak, otherwise, wherefore natural selection?
gnomish says: @ December 25, 2012 at 3:54 pm
….The ONLY valid ethical considerations are RIGHTS and DAMAGE, after all.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Agreed.
If CAGW had stopped before the EU and now Australia went carbon trading happy, before governments started closing down power plants replacing them with useless, expensive boondoggles like windmill, I would have agreed with Lord Monckton. Now that thousands are dying and millions are living in poverty while the climate scam pushers take home $104,000 a year or more I find I am far less willing to act like a rug. (Females and grizzlies and all that.)
Lary.P
To be more specific ,here are the warmings of the 2001-2010 decade versus the 1991-2000 decade
RSS………0.17903C
UAH………0.23037C
HADCRU…0.20749C
GISS……..0.22742C
BEST……..0.3354C
http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/rss/from:1991/compress:120/plot/uah/from:1991/compress:120/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1991/compress:120/plot/gistemp/from:1991/compress:120
Alexandriu Doru,
Let’s look at a graph of the Wood For Trees HadCRUT database:
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/HadCrut3Global.jpg
Clearly, you are wrong. The planet has stopped warming. Not that it matters; warming is beneficial. More is better. It is cold that kills.
I can provide more WFT graphs showing that warming has stalled, if you like. Just ask. You can learn a lot at WUWT. Conversely, if you try to pass off bogus propaganda here, you will be called on it.
D Böehm:
In the Friends of Science plot, the straight line does not represent reality but rather a model of reality. Thus, that the slope of this line is negative does not support your conclusion that “the planet has stopped warming.” According to the observational data, the global temperature fluctuated.
D Böehm: The evidence shows no reduction in the global warming trend. We have ocean heat content data showing the planet gaining heat during the last decade at twice the rate of the two previous decades. We have global sea level rise still accelerating. We have Arctic sea ice in yet another record minimum, plus continuing ice mass loss on the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps. This is all occurring *despite* the recent unusually deep and prolonged solar minimum. If you recall, the planet is accumulating heat at a rate equivalent to around 430,000 Hiroshima explosions every single day. It’s clearly incorrect to claim that there has been any lessening of the global warming trend. The anthropogenically enhanced greenhouse effect is completely overwhelming natural cooling influences such as the multi-decade decline in solar irradiance, the small negative forcing from orbital cycles and a small negative forcing from increased volcanic stratospheric aerosols. It would be reckless to just sit back and hope that some large, prolonged and as-yet-unanticipated natural cooling influence is going to manifest itself and counteract our very large climate forcing. We really need to be looking at viable ways of sequestering hundreds of billions of tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere in order to reduce the now very large planetary energy imbalance and slow down global warming.
icarus62:
Your conclusion that “the anthropogenically enhanced greenhouse effect is completely overwhelming natural cooling influences” is necessarily unsupported by predictive models, for there are no such models.
Alexandriu Doru says, December 26, 2012 at 1:33 pm: “When using a single thermometer to evaluate the trend on a 1200 km radius there is an error DELTA.”
===========================================================
Is it not what warmists do?
icarus62 says:
December 26, 2012 at 2:21 pm
“We really need to be looking at viable ways of sequestering hundreds of billions of tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere in order to reduce the now very large planetary energy imbalance and slow down global warming.”
Well then go and plant a tree you dolt.
JoBrighton says:
December 25, 2012 at 4:01 pm
…. I suggest you familiarise yourself with the work of the NOAA….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The rest of us have and we take the LONG view, not Hansen’s apocalyptic rantings.
graph
graph
graph
graph
graph
And the real killer graph
The only real energy input into the earth’s climate system is that big bright ball up there in the sky. The Milancovitch theory is proving solid especially since Gerald Roe’s new paper (second easy to read link )
The amount of sun’s energy is diminishing NO ONE disputes that!
As many skeptics keep saying, it is not warming that is the danger it is COOLING and what it does to agricuture. The Koppen climate classification based on plants shows just how much the cooling of the 1970 decade effected US agriculture. graph Zoom in and look at the bottom graph. The vegetation zone dropped 3/4 of the whole width of Kansas in a DECADE! Also notice except for 1910 which was also cooler, the rest of the decades are all clustered around the same area.
Then look at the Koppen World Map. Most of the land mass is in the north of the northern hemisphere.
Based on agriculture I rather have 2C warmer rather than 2C cooler. History tells us it is cooler that means famine and revolution and civilization collapse.
icarus62,
You are wrong about the sea level. It is not accelerating. In fact, sea level rise is decelerating.
Next, the alarmist prediction was that polar ice would decline — both Arctic and Antarctic ice. However, only Arctic ice is declining. Antarctic ice is growing. Therefore, the prediction is falsified, just like all the other alarmist predictions. You cannot cherry-pick one pole, and claim you were right. In fact, you were wrong.
Next, you continue to post your alarming sounding “Hiroshima” nonsense. You were called on it up-thread. Stop it. It is completely bogus, and the planet itself is falsifying your scare stories.
Next, you are wrong about global warming. Global warming has stopped, despite your false assertion.
Next, your “anthropogenically enhanced greenhouse effect” is nothing but a baseless assertion. You have no empirical, testable evidence proving that AGW exists. It may. But that still does not make your statement anything other than an evidence-free assertion.
Finally, your statement: “We really need to be looking at viable ways of sequestering hundreds of billions of tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere in order to reduce the now very large planetary energy imbalance and slow down global warming” is foolish nonsense. As shown above, global warming has stopped. Furthermore, CO2 is completely harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. More is better. You cannot show any testable, empirical evidence of global harm due to the rise in CO2. But there is irrefutable evidence that more CO2 increases agricultural productivity.
Everything in your comment stems from your misguided belief system. Neither science nor the scientific method have anything to do with your mistaken beliefs. You are a captive of incessant anti-“carbon” propaganda, and you can no longer think objectively.
Nothing unprecedented is happening. Global temperatures have been much higher, and much lower during the Holocene, when CO2 was very low; therefore CO2 has nothing measurable to do with global temperature. You have been frightened by a pseudo-science clique pushing an agenda. What is unusual about your comment is not that you have posted ‘facts’ that are not true; but that everything in your comment is wrong. You need to get a grip.
Alexandriu Doru says:
December 26, 2012 at 12:23 pm
Yes, but if you start only 2 years earlier, in1999 , you get 1.2celsius /century.
Different data sets give different results over different time periods. However even IF we go by this result, we still have 100 years to reach 2 C since we have apparently gone up 0.8 C so far. And much can change over the next 100 years technology wise. Recall that a hundred years ago someone calculated that all roads would under many feet of horse manure by now. Of course the car changed all that. We could well have nuclear fusion in a decade so the presumed issue with CO2 will not be relevant. Either way, it is not worth it to spend billions on carbon capture and the like for what may be a non problem. We may even have cooling soon according to Dr. Luning. See
More WUWT.TV: Interview and presentation with Dr. Sebastian Lüning
He wrote “Die Kalte Sonne” (The cold sun) with Dr. Franz Vahrenholt
On contrary the 10 years mean may be started in any year and gives the same result:more than 0.2 celsius for the last decade
This is quite a bit more than the “1.2celsius /century” you mentioned above. Please give me a single data set that goes to November 2012 and that goes back between 10 and 16 years from November 2012 and which shows a slope of “more than 0.2 celsius for the last decade”.
icarus62 says:
December 26, 2012 at 2:21 pm
D Böehm: The evidence shows no reduction in the global warming trend. We have ocean heat content data showing the planet gaining heat during the last decade at twice the rate of the two previous decades.
==================================================
my bold
Good Heavens! What is it about the warmista here?
Icarus, you don’t have, no one has, any such data. That’s a falsehood that even a 10 y/o could see. If you’ve been following the conversation, we’ve already discussed the Argo buoys. When were they deployed? Was there any comparable system in place prior to this inadequate amount of data gathering? No, of course not. Pretending we have any useful OHC data prior to this century is as stupid as pretending we knew what the global temp average was in 1850.
I don’t know what’s worse. The unfathomable ignorance displayed or the insult of the warmista believing people here don’t already know these are blatant falsehoods.
That’s nice. I’ve planted four, as it happens, but since the entire terrestrial biosphere is only absorbing about a quarter of our annual emissions, we’ll never be able to grow enough extra biomass to sequester enough by that method alone. We’re clearly going to need a technological solution – presumably one that hasn’t been invented yet – and of course a huge and zero-carbon energy source to power it. I’d say that’s a pretty big predicament we’ve got ourselves into.
E.M.Smith: The whole point of a rocket stove is that it doesn’t make any smoke (if you’ve built it right) because it all gets burnt on its way up the chimney. All you will see above the stove is the heat shimmer.
Alexandriu Doru says:
December 26, 2012 at 2:06 pm
To be more specific ,here are the warmings of the 2001-2010 decade versus the 1991-2000 decade
RSS………0.17903C
UAH………0.23037C
HADCRU…0.20749C
GISS……..0.22742C
BEST……..0.3354C
Please explain how you (think) you calculated those values. Seems like you averaged one decade of RISING temperatures, then subtracted the average of one decade of not-rising temperatures ….
NO database shows RISING temperatures the past 10, 12, 14, or 16 years.
James Sexton: The OHC data is consistent with the accelerating sea level rise, the accelerating loss of Arctic sea ice (over 80% decline in summer minimum ice volume in just the last 30 years), the rapidly accelerating melting of the Greenland ice cap, the accelerating loss of glacier mass worldwide, the accelerating Antarctic ice mass loss… it’s really completely implausible to suggest that the world is *not* warming rapidly, given the weight of evidence. Real-world observations trump unsupported assertions every time.
William McClenney says:
December 25, 2012 at 5:26 pm
AlecM says:
December 25, 2012 at 4:36 pm
And the physics at an end extreme interglacial would be………
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..
Well one paper came up with the bi-polar seesaw that we are now seeing in the Arctic/Antarctic Can we predict the duration of an interglacial? Another thread by a California Licensed Professional Geologist and former Certified Environmental Auditor has a lot of references to peer-reviewed papers: The End Holocene, or How to Make Out Like a ‘Madoff’ Climate Change Insurer
He says
Doesn’t exactly leave one with the warm fuzzies does it?
Monckton of Brenchley;
The argument from appeal to authority or reputation, which the medieval schoolmen called the argumentum ad verecundiam, is one of the dozen logical fallacies marked out 2350 years ago by Aristotle as among the commonest in human discourse, and Mr. Hoffer should really not still be clinging to it today.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I’m clinging to nothing but my own opinion as informed by my own observations from a background in science and many years of participating in this forum. You sir, are missing an opportunity.
richardscourtney and I disagree vehemently on matters of politics and religion, despite which we can frequently be found in this forum supporting each other in explaining the science to those who ask questions and debating those who misrepresent the science in order to set the record straight. As much as I was surprised by rgbatduke’s rebuke, the fact of the matter is that you opened the door by injecting religion into the discussion in the first place. Had you been anyone but the highly respected and well known figure that you are, I doubt that his would have been the only one.
At day’s end, I don’t care one bit what his religious beliefs are, or yours, provided that neither of you attempt to cram them down my throat. What I do care about is that climate science has become unbelievably corrupted in a manner that is detrimental to us all and could easily go from bad to worse, far worse. rgbatduke is a knowledgeable, credible and articulate man who is not only a comrade in arms, but could potentially serve as a valuable resource to you.
It would be to the benefit of us all if you were to set aside your ire and recognize a valuable ally. It isn’t as if we skeptics have an over abundance. I’m certain that a man who could brazenly doff his hat to a crowd of angry coal miners and coax them into a local pub for a pint can find within himself the same diplomacy to set aside differences on things that matter not to the climate science debate and focus on the things that do, much as richardscourtney and I have.
Terry Oldberg,
If you didn’t like that last chart, here is another similar chart. And another one.
My point is that global warming has stopped. It may resume. Or not. We don’t know. But the assertion that CO2 is the cause of global warming becomes more questionable every day.
Oh please… A running average ( 10 year mean ) is used to hide short term changes AND is known to effectively lag by the period of the mean so hides inflections in the end.
You can only reasonably say from such a series “the earth HAD warmed” and can’t say anything about the last 10 years.
So take a 30 year warming 1/2 cycle and put a 10 year running average on it is going to give you 40 years duration to stretch it out and hide the inflection at the end. If your purpose is to lie with averages, it’s a great technique. If your purpose is to find inflection points, it’s a lousy “exactly wrong” one.
In stock charting / trading this is well known. What can be used is a “MACD – Moving Average Convergence / Divergence” where two moving averages (one much shorter than the other) are used and the difference between them plotted. THAT shows the inflection point while still allowing some smoothing of the data.
Now I’ve looked at a few hundred thousand stock charts over the last years and I’ve gotten my brain trained to where I can see the pattern out of the chaotic movements pretty clearly even without doing the formal MACD (et. al.) plotting. The present temperature chart just screams “Inflection after a blow-off-top”. Frequently there will be a big ‘last hurrah’ on an ending trend / run. That was 1998. Then there will be an attempt to match it that fails. That is the “failure to advance” and last call to bail out. We’ve had that too. Then starts the long slow trend in the other direction. The sure fire way to lose your shirt is to use a long period moving average and completely miss the inflections.
(Stock and weather are remarkably similar, from a mathematics point of view. Both chaotic. Both with a solar cycle component, but not a dominant one. Both with modestly dirty data subject to manipulation. Both benefit from using the same analytical tools. etc. etc.)
So your use of a 10 year moving average says one of two things:
1) You are ignorant of the profound limitation and that it hides inflections and masks the end of the data for the averaging period.
2) You are well aware of that and using it “for effect”.
Ignorant or deceptive.
I’d suggest using another technique if that is not the message you wish folks to receive….
@John West:
Language evolved. Listen to animals. They speak. The language varies in complexity by species, but it is there. I’ve learned to speak poor “Bunnish” with my rabbits. They have a series of grunts and ‘rupt rupt’ sounds and teeth chatters. A slightly too ‘tight’ and loud ‘rupt rupt rupt” becomes the “Warning!! Predatory Bird!” sentence of “RRUPT RRUPT RUUPT!!” and they all scatter to the warren. ( I learned this in my yard of ‘free range bunnies’ by accidentally doing the ‘I’m just grazing rupt rupt rupt” with too much tension and vigor… it’s reliable and repeatable, BTW. Oh, and a ‘tooth chatter’ quiet and gentle is “I’m really happy.”)
Looks at wolves. A variety of howls, growls, yips and whimpers. and all that is before you even start to get to whales and dolphins et. al.
So language evolved. Over many species and a billion years or so. We’re just a bit more complex about it than others (and so arrogant as to think the sounds and postures other species use isn’t a language…)
Oh, and as Sign Language also uses the language centers of the brain, it, too, is a language. (Historically hearing folks often tried to deride it as ‘just gestures’…) So things like a facial expression can convey a word. This, then, means that facial expressions in dogs and bears, and even things like tail position and fur bristle can be seen as a language. Can anyone really look at a sideways cat, back arched, fur puffed, hissing and NOT think “that cat is saying to leave me alone.”?
As apes can learn 100 words or so of sign language, they clearly have the brain structures for language (just more limited than ours). I suspect that if we tried, we could learn to speak their hoots and hollers language. (Or construct an artificial spoken language suited to their vocal hardware for us to share.)
So language evolved. In some species more than in others, and in many species with a significant non-verbal form.
While all human languages are created in the specifics, the hardware and stickyware evolved and the processing of languages with it. All forms of languages. That we now can create artificial languages, and that people are skilled at many languages, does not denigrate that the other beings on this planet have some level of languages too. (Put calves on a truck to haul them away and the cows will be bawling in a way that is unmistakably saying “Stop, bring back my calf!” Spank a bull and hear the snort of derision… Look at the faces of each and they, too, are saying different things. No, none of them will write a novel. Yet “They speak!”… if you will only learn to listen…)
@icarus62, Your so-called “real-world observations” are in fact nothing more than unsupported assertions, aka lies. BTW, have you been able to figure out yet what temps have done the past 16 years, and what that says about the GCMs, or do you need more time?
One Cosmic Custard Pie Coming up!
(Courtesy of the Pranksters on Olympus)
icarus62 says:
December 26, 2012 at 2:59 pm
Ok. Not bad for a start.
Now:
a) Plant more.
b) Protect your trees from ever being used for firewood or any other use, and from getting eaten by fungi. Remember that the big coal deposits developed before fungi found a way to crack the lignin.
Oh, BTW, why was there never a thermal runaway in the history of the Earth?
John West says: @ December 25, 2012 at 11:28 pm
…..If only we could somehow familiarize the general public with carbon….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I would love to have several leading skeptics challenge the leading CAGW catastorphists as Petr Beckmann challenged the nuclear phobes (He would eat a gram of plutonium if they ate a gram of caffeine)
The challenge would be skeptics would spend a day in a sealed room at 2000ppm CO2 while catastrophists stayed in a sealed room with a CO2 absorbent ( Sodalime) at 0.0 ppm CO2. (Ambulance at the ready for the catastrophists)
[snip]
LazyTeenager says: @ December 25, 2012 at 11:46 pm
Rather apt since Christopher is encouraging people to squander their inheritance….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
ROTFLMAO, that is rich coming from someone who wants to steal the inheritance of western culture from the ENTIRE WORLD!
No amount of statistical manipulation and averaging can remove SYSTEMATIC error. Only the RANDOM error portion can be so removed. So a systematic error of, say, 1/2 C from “adjusting” badly will NEVER be removed. A systematic error from treating a bogus warming via paint aging on Stevenson screens as a ‘cooling bias’ in the MMTS that replaced them can never be removed by statistical averaging of the means.
That you put any faith at all in 1/10 Celsius data out of whole degree F data (and the early data were collected in F, especially in the USA, in whole degrees) demonstrates a profound failure of understanding what can actually be done with the original data while remaining honest to science and accuracy.
Here’s what you must do to achieve that 1/10 C precision: prove that there is exactly zero systematic error in all the data collected. As it is trivially demonstrated that the stuff is chock full of systematic errors, that is an impossible task.
No, the temperature records are “warming”. We get to watch it every couple of years as they cool the past data…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/v1vsv3/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/ghcn-v1-vs-v3-special-alignments/
This graph is especially fun:
http://chiefio.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/ghcn-v1-vs-v3-1990-all-data-alignment.png
Remember, this is supposedly the same data set. Just different ages. It is aligned on the same ‘end date’ so this is NOT an effect from the newer data in V3, this is just how the old data was made more, um, “trendy”…
So the OTHER thing you must do to say reality is warming, is you must prove it is not just an artifact of such “data manipulation games’…
(BTW, I’m going to go after that “the earth is warming” tag line every time I see it. You might want to consider how much of a platform you wish to offer me…)
@DIrkH:
Yup! Or even just bamboo. It sucks out more CO2 than in all the air above it. That’s WHY we ended up at near starvation levels of CO2 for plants.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/got-wood/
Even a single corn stalk sucks dry the square foot above it.
Frankly, given that phone books in a dry landfill don’t decay, we could all just go back to giant paper phone books, each year to be landfilled, and do it to “save the planet”….
@icarus62:
You’ve got the basic facts wrong. Antarctic ice is INCREASING, not decreasing. Sea level rise has stagnated too. It certainly isn’t accelerating (well, other than if you call decelerating a negative acceleration). As the ocean temps at the arctic have about an 18 year lag from the equator, the peak from 1998 will be reflected there about 2016, then it’s ever more frozen ever faster for the next 18 years. (Perhaps even sooner, given what freeze rates are doing this year).
Could you please just do some basic “fact checks” before spouting that kind of crud? There’s a “Sea Ice” page on the right with the (government supplied) graphs of just about anything you need. It really makes you look, um, “inexperienced” when you can’t even get clarity on the basics.
OH, and right NOW what I have is an open pit BBQ: It smokes plenty. In the future I’m going to build a ‘rocket stove’ but while I have the parts, I’ve not built it yet. Yes, they make LESS smoke, but if you think burning wood sticks in a pipe makes no smoke, well, I suggest some quality time with a pile of sticks and a, pipe… Especially at first ignition and at shutdown they can be mighty smoky. Oh, and when the chicken fat drips down the pipe from the grill too…. (Of course, for the best smoke, I have to fire up the smoker as it is designed to make smoke. Bought it as part of the “abandon electricity” motivation too. Works really well… Smoke, it’s what’s for dinner 😉
Oh, and do see the “got wood” posting to see just how completely wrong you are about needing an un-invented sequestration technology. Eucalyptus trees can suck down about 50 tons / acre wet, or about 25 tons / acre dry. Now convert that to CO2 and bury it in an old coal mine. (Or just build log houses out of it and in 100 years decide if it really needs the burying.) Here’s a hint for you: The CO2 over a patch of dirt is far far less than the mass of the air. The WOOD over a patch of dirt, is far far heavier than the mass of the air in total.
See if you can do the math. BTW, algae can grow at 10 x that rate. They are limited by the rate at which CO2 can be sucked into their pond… they rapidly deplete the CO2 available in the air and it helps to bubble new air into them… I can’t imagine a more efficient CO2 scrubber. Solar powered too…
So please: Are you a high school kid, new to all this? Fresh recruit to Greenpeace with a Social Studies major at the local college? Perhaps you ought to try taking an agronomy class or even a history class… Anything would help your ‘game’, which, as it stands, is mostly parroting things that are demonstrably false, and being too out of touch to realize it. It just doesn’t look good for your side.
E.M.Smith says:
December 26, 2012 at 12:18 pm
@Gail Combs:
Good points…
BTW, the result will not be as the Green Fanatics expect.
… The future is waiting for you now… and it looks a lot like the 1800s…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It certainly does. The EU is talking about cutting CO2 by 80% without nuclear that puts us back to ~ 1700’s. I did the analysis a while back. People do not realize just how much energy was used in the 1800’s
Just for starters
The average for the USA is 335.9 million BTUs per person. http://www.nuicc.info/?page_id=1467
(Total population: 246,081,000)
In 1949, U.S. energy use per person stood at 215 million Btu. http://epb.lbl.gov
The U.S. in 1800 had a per-capita energy consumption of about 90 million Btu. http://www.bu.edu/pardee/files/2010/11/12-PP-Nov2010.pdf
(Total population: 5,308,483)
If the USA reduces its energy consumption by 80% it equals 45.18 million Btu. per person IF THE POPULATION WAS THE SAME. And in 1840 Farmers made up 69% of labor force
I doubt John Brookes, Icarus, Mike, LazyTeenager or JoBrighton would really enjoy following the north end of a south facing mule while trying to keep a plow digging in and the &*#(@% mule moving in a straight line. It is the reason a friend of mine got his Phd. That and the wood stove and outhouse in good ole West Virginee.
Alexandriu Doru says:
December 26, 2012 at 12:23 pm
Werner Brozek says:
“There is zero trend on GISS temperatures if you start on 2001.33″
Yes, but if you start only 2 years earlier, in1999 , you get 1.2celsius /century.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/gistemp/from:1999/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2001.33/trend
This shows that your approach is not robust….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You are missing the point.
NOAA stated:
And Santer, Mears, Doutriaux, Caldwell, Gleckler, Wigley, S. Solomon, Gillett, Ivanova, Karl, Lanzante, Meehl, Stott, Taylor, Thorne, Wehner,and Wentz stated:
So the determination of what will show CAGW to be disproved was set by NOAA and the named Climate Scientists and not by skeptics.
Don’t blame us for picking the interval since we did not.
Gail Combs:
With partial accuracy you state that “the determination of what will show CAGW to be disproved was set by NOAA and the named Climate Scientists and not by skeptics” but those “scientists” are pseudo-scientists and CAGW is a pseudo-scientific theory. Should we place pseudo-scientists in charge of the determination of whether a pseudo-scientific theory is falsified by the evidence when this theory is insusceptible to falsification under the pseudo-scientific methodology of the study that has been designed by the pseudo-scientists? Obviously not.
A far more pertinent question is how we sceptics give ourselves a way out. Yes, we were and are right, but the reality is that no religion ever ended because someone proved it was wrong. So, how do we extract ourselves from a fight we have clearly won … when the other side refuses to give up?
How can we do better than being right? How can going on and on and on highlighting the same basic facts … global warming is a load of codswallop … achieve anything?
There will always be people who believe in flying saucers in holistic medicine, that talking to flowers makes them grow and in global warming. It cannot be our role in life to stop idiots being idiots! And yes … many of those idiots who believe in global warming are and will continue to be academics. It’s a religion .., you can’t stop religion by giving them the facts. No Christian ever stopped being a Christian by pointing out that you can’t walk on water!
“How can we do better than being right? How can going on and on and on highlighting the same basic facts … global warming is a load of codswallop … achieve anything?”
We just chalk up the small victories over those parts of the cargo cult which affect us directly; much the same as we would do with any other religion that sought to impose itself upon us.
Farmerbraun is very proud of his new certificate:
CONFIRMATION: Emission Trading Scheme Participant Deregistration
20 December 2012
Dear**********,
Deregistration as a participant from the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) under the Climate Change Response Act 2002
Thank you for confirming that ******* Limited will satisfy the exemption criteria for dairy processing of milk or colostrum (introduced by the recent amendments to the Climate Change Response Act 2002). As such, the Environmental Protection Authority notifies you that they have been deregistered as a participant from the ETS for the activity of dairy processing of milk or colostrum.
These are the details that have been removed from the participant register:
Participant name
*******
Sector
Schedule 3 – Subpart 3 of Part 5 Agriculture
Activity description
Dairy processing of milk or colostrum
The holding account NZ-9240 in the NZEUR will remain open. If you wish to close this account or have any questions, please call 0800 CLIMATE (0800 254 628) within New Zealand, or +64 3 962 6257 internationally.
If the account holder’s circumstances change and they no longer meet the exemption criteria attached in any calendar year, they will need to register again as a participant in the ETS.
On behalf of the Registrar
New Zealand Emission Unit Register
rgbatduke said:
“We cannot assign a meaningful value to an “expected” temperature ten years, twenty years, fifty years, or a hundred years into the future, regardless of the claims of the modelers. Those models cannot explain the variability observed over the last 2000 years..”
Well really you should not make predictions then if you have nothing to base them on:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/03/on-certainty-truth-is-the-daughter-of-time/#comment-1171207
p.s. Christ, according to Jewish records was born close to the third conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter that year, which occurred ~5th December 7 BC (that’s with no zero year).
Ulric Lyons,
This may interest you:
http://www.american.com/archive/2012/december/the-politically-correct-calendar
@ E.M. Smith
You make some excellent points on climate. I think this part especially bears repeating: “Millankovich no longer has to carry the whole burden. Now he just “sets the table” for what is able to happen; then ocean changes / oscillations “serve the meal” when the timing is right.”
That dynamic heat sink that is the ocean is a huge wildcard in the grand scheme of climate.
OT: You’ve won a box of cigars, on a technicallity. After I hit post I noticed I forgot to put (human) after language, since I had put (by man) after creation that was absolutely necessary. Yes, language evolved but it was also created by each species that uses it. The same relationship arises for any species that uses a language of sorts like whales, dogs, cats, birds, etc. The challenge I meant is to separate the creation of any particular species’ language from being created by that species and the languages’ evolution. Note that the intelligence of the species correlates to the rate of change of its language. The broader point being that if one can’t separate creation from evolution of language then perhaps it’s not mutually exclusive that something be a product of either evolution or creation but may be the result of both.
I say the reason we are infested with rats is the societies we see as vibrant and strong are actually gangrenous wrecks, stumbling their last few steps before the final collapse. It is we, the decent, productive people of the world, who need the ratholes – then, with their source of food removed, let the starving rats feast on each other.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/climategate/id386480628
Gail Combs says:
December 26, 2012 at 5:41 pm
“I doubt John Brookes, Icarus, Mike, LazyTeenager or JoBrighton would really enjoy following the north end of a south facing mule [..]”
Beautifully phrased! Thanks, Gail!
john west-
animals perform semiotics, not language.
organs have evolved for this purpose- the tail of the peacock, for example- signifies things to other peacocks but it is not language.
language is composed of words. the distinguishing characteristic of a word is that it has a definition.
therein lies the distinction.
the great virtue of language is that it can be used to perform logic – which, indeed, has adaptive significance only to the human for whom reason is his means of survival.
Chiefio is correct that animals communicate with signs but they do not use words and therefore not language. Your box of cigars has not been won yet.
The pseudonymous “Ratduke” gets picky about the date of birth of the Lord of Life, but – as I had already pointed out – I am no expert on that. He worries that the Gospels are “not reliable witnesses”: yet the considerable quantity of independent, verifying documentation from other sources gives us an excellent idea of the stunning power of what Anglican theologians splendidly call the “Christ-Event”. Ratduke may like to read “Jesus, an Experiment in Christology” by Father Schillebeeckx for further details of what can be discerned of His life, death, resurrection and electrifying effect on the known world without relying upon any religious texts at all.
It isn’t a “pseudonym” — it is protection of my email address which is already one of the most hammered ones on the planet because (if you google up rgb at phy dot duke dot edu) I have a rather extensive and visible network presence that spam scrapers have been mining for years. Even with spamassassin and blacklisting, I get several hundred email messages a day, with a noise to signal level of roughly ten to one. rgbatduke is sufficient that you can find me easily and directly while not openly broadcasting my address to the spambot network, even though this is a barn door left open decades ago and unlikely to shut anytime soon on its own. And yes, the million or so hits on “rgb duke” are almost entirely me. I’m up to a respectable 81,000 hits on “rgb wuwt” as well at this point — not bad given that I hardly ever top post (although a number of my replies in thread have been promoted to top posts).
But either way, if you are having difficulty discerning my identity, it is “Robert G. Brown”, which is rather a lot to type as a user id, and with a last name as undistinguished as “Brown”, things like rbrown, in addition to usually being taken, are singularly uninformative. As you can see from my personal website (which is on track to get 11 million hits this year) I am a physicist, although I am also an entrepreneur with a patent pending on the application of Bayesian methods to permit the building of useful predictive models across databases with field overlap and external e.g. privacy constraints. I am something of an expert in beowulf-style parallel computing, teach or have taught physics at all levels from intro undergrad through graduate level E&M and Quantum, teach independent study courses in statistics and programming to selected students, am the primary author of the world’s only completely open source random number generator tester (and hence know more than a bit about both randomness and hypothesis testing). I write novels and poetry and am working on a book on the philosophical basis of knowledge, an early draft of which is very popular on my website (Axioms). I was a major in both physics and philosophy as an undergraduate (and actually completed enough upper level math that it would have counted as a major if I hadn’t skipped all of the required courses in between the two intro courses I took initially and the graduate level courses I took scattered across both undergrad and graduate school).
Climate “science” is more of a hobby than a profession for me — I have no dog in any race, and no current grant support of any kind. On WUWT, I tend to police the physics and to a lesser extent the statistical validity of the discussion, probably hammering skeptical ignoramuses slightly more often than I hammer warmists (probably because WUWT has a disproportionate sampling of the former compared to the latter). Based on what I’ve been able to learn so far, the best that can be said for climate science is that it is in its infancy and that it has been taken over completely by political and economic interests that almost completely obscure the science that is known to some extent. Indeed, my analysis of the science is rather congruent to yours — a well-founded and expected GHE from CO_2 only on the order of a degree kelvin ignoring all feedbacks, that could be anywhere from nearly completely cancelled to just about doubled by feedbacks, but IMO the current data makes greater than doubling (to as much as 2 to 2.4 kelvin) very unlikely.
It is almost certainly a mistake to assert that “there is no such thing as the GHE” or to make egregious claims for how small a role the GHE (or as one of my friends who actually does climate science puts it, the total “atmospheric warming effect” since components of the atmosphere warm, cool, and are neutral in a dazzling nonlinear coupled system of heat absorption, distribution and radiation) plays in making the planet habitable, at the same time that the reliable satellite record over the last 33 years at this point can fairly definitely rule out a climate sensitivity of three to five.
This by way of introduction. I’m pleased to meet you.
Regarding my being “anti-Christian” — I am a physicist. The only way to honestly be a Christian and a physicist is — well, there isn’t one. So yes, you would have to view me as being an apostatic ex-Christian. It isn’t particularly easy to be a scientist and honestly be religious at all, certainly not religious in any of the scriptural antique mythologies. I grew up in India. I would assume that you reject Hindu mythology, or Pagan mythology, or Norse mythology, without thinking about it for more than a second. They are, after all, all openly absurd, making non-falsifiable and contradictory claims for the origins of the Universe, the nature of God, a variety of “historical” events in which the hand of God (or hands of Gods) can be seen, and put forth as God-given truth ethical systems that are openly wicked and evil in countless places. You are — to the extent that you are a good Christian — atheistic with regard to those religions because you were not brainwashed into accepting them when you were too young to be able to think critically and of course it is easy to find reasons to reject them as plausible truth otherwise.
I am simply atheistic with respect to one more religion than you are.
Do not imagine for a moment that my active disbelief in Christianity or the entire Judeo-Christian-Moslem spectrum of Abrahamic faiths is ill-educated or casual. I have read the entire Bible, critically cover to cover not once, but many times at this point. I have similarly read the Q’uran cover to cover many times at this point. Some chapters/books/suras weren’t worthy of more than a skim; others I’ve read repeatedly. I have also read some very good historical analyses of the Bible — I would strongly suggest that you read (for example) Misquoting Jesus or any of Bart Ehrman’s other works. I think that they leave one with absolutely no way to defend any part of the New Testament as being a reliable witness to first century events. any more than the Old Testament (apparently accepted as “true” by Jesus, major fail for preternatural knowledge) is a reliable account of events prior to the sixth century BCE or the origins of the Universe.
The Old Testament, of course, fails from the first chapter on. There isn’t one word in the Book of Genesis that one can reasonably believe is true. There is almost certainly not a single word of Exodus that is true and describes actual events or people — at least there is absolutely no external corroboratory evidence that anything in Exodus actually took place, and the entire book is impossibly inconsistent in its dating and geneologies. Indeed, a sober study of the Old Testament such as the one discussed here:
http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320Hist&Civ/chapters/11OT.htm
reveals that the Old Testament itself is nothing like original scripture — it is a collage of fragments of a handful of texts that survived (quite possibly survived only in the memories and a short-term oral tradition within the priesthood) the first fall of the Temple in the sixth century BCE, stitched together by not one but several distinct and stylistically identifiable people in a series of rewrites before being copied and recopied in manuscript for hundreds of years before the oldest surviving fragments of any actual manuscript were written. There is the same substantial “drift” visible in the fragments of manuscript copies of copies of copies of manuscripts that have survived over centuries until the earliest complete intact manuscripts of the Old or New Testaments that we have today, and more drift still up to to the modern versions, generously laced with translation errors as the original languages in which these texts were written did not themselves survive the centuries.
The Pentateuch, the part of the Old Testament that for all practical purposes defines Judaism, is most definitely such a collage. I wrote an entire novel, The Book of Lilith, that addresses a 12th century midrash intended to explain one of the many contradictions in Genesis that occur as a result of the crudeness of the stitching and its back reference to earlier Sumerian and Mesopotamian mythologies. No God Incarnate with perfect knowledge could possibly take Genesis seriously and tell their followers to believe it (unless they were a liar with perfect knowledge, of course, or unless they were misquoted in the surviving manuscripts, both of which are de facto evidence against deity). You do not take Genesis seriously, not if you accept the network of physical science and observation that lay out the most probable natural history from the Big Bang through the birth of the Sun, formation of the Solar System, and evolution of life on Earth, a scientific narrative that is crucial to the objective analysis of the claims of current climate science among many other things.
Genesis describes a flat Earth, bounded above by a solid firmament hung with stars that can fall, floating on an ocean that preceded light itself in a stated order of creation that has flowering plants and bees preceding the Sun. It describes an absolutely absurd creation of humans — inconsistently and twice — leading to an “original sin”, temptation, and fall from grace that never happened. It is at best a metaphor — but if it is a metaphor, is it a good metaphor or a rather evil one?
Original sin portrays mankind as fallen from grace and hence in need of salvation, corrupted by willful acts on the part of our remote ancestors being punished by a Jealous and Angry God who thinks nothing of punishing people for generations for some real or imagined slight. Without original sin, our need for “salvation” vanishes, although of course our need to use reason and observation to improve our knowledge of the world and the empirical engineering of a functional social morality does not.
Evolution, in contrast portrays humanity as rising up from a series of inferior intellectual and physical forms, an animal among animals. Our lack of a perfect intrinsic moral sense is not in any conceivable sense our “fault” if evolution is correct, because our physical evolution has limited our moral co-evolution — we are not finished beings, “creation” is not done with us and never will be. Our moral evolution is itself memetic and limited by insight and experience and our lack of sound systems of semantics and reason. Only as they co-evolve with our languages, our mathematics, and our brains does our knowledge and morality improve. Humans don’t require a deliverer to intercede with a pissed-off God on our behalf if we evolved — not unless the God in question is even more insane than the Judeo-Christian-Muslim God — although they can always use more genius, more good ideas, more inspiration, more poetry, more capable brains, more secure and peaceful existence in which to pursue happiness as best they can in the brief period we all have before we die and our brains cease to function.
Whence “original sin” in this scenario? Whence sin in this scenario, where we fundamentally lack anything like a perfect ethos (something that in all probability has no objective existence in the first place, being a sociological semantic construct that is still co-evolving with our society, not a “God given” set of rules guaranteed by fiat to be the one perfect and eternal ruleset? According to the Bible we are cast down sinners needing salvation and it is All Our Fault, so God is justified in creating a Universe filled with pain and terminated by an absurd hell for unbelievers. According to nature, there is no evidence for the existence of a God, we are a species in the process of evolving both genetically and memetically up, into a state with less pain and suffering to the precise extent that we use our reason to ameliorate both (because nature, like Honey Badger, just don’t care). In an indifferent Universe, an impersonal God (at best) helps those that help themselves.
The rest of the Pentateuch gives one little reason to think that it contains any sort of God-given morality. By modern moral standards, the God-given rules are cruel, unethical, absurd, inconsistent, and often openly evil. The Old Testament endorses the treatment of one half of the human race as chattel at all times (sorry, ladies), the beating of slaves almost to death because they are your property, marriage by rape (plus a payment of fifty shekels to the father of the rapee, to compensate him for the lost labor of his chattel, the daughter), the enslavement of anyone you can get away with who isn’t Hebrew. It contains horror stories of genocidal femicidal infanticidal murder and open robbery and rape that at a level completely consistent with Hitler’s acts of genocide and robbery in World War II — carried out by Moses (see Numbers 31, for example, and sadly not even the only example). It describes the wholesale ritual slaughter of animals, the splattering of their blood on a hideous altar constructed for that purpose, and the burning of the animal remains, or the even more absurd “wave offerings” where the animal would be dismembered and its parts waved vaguely at the sky (where God lurked beyond the firmament overhead in this non-spherical world) to please God. How very, very bizarre, wouldn’t you say? It describes the causes of disease as being pretty much pissing God off, and the cure for disease as being the making of the aforementioned wholesale offerings and praying a lot.
It describes a world-spanning flood in page-spanning detail in which a rain that lasted forty days and forty nights covered the Earth to the top of the highest mountain (that would be roughly 9000 meters of rain in that period, or a rain of 5+ inches every minute on every square meter of the planet for the entire period) while all of the world’s species that would die in such an event — which is nearly all of them, millions of them in the ocean and on the land — were preserved in a wooden boat the size of a Wal-Mart ventilated through a single window less than one square meter in area (plus, presumably, a door, although no boat ever built would stay afloat in an inch of rain every ten to twelve seconds if there were any openings).
Nobody rational and educated could take the slightest bit of this seriously — unless they were taught to believe it without question before they were ever taught reason or fact otherwise.
But Jesus (apparently) did take it seriously. Repeatedly. He (reportedly) believed this nonsense. He references the flood and Noah as a real event and real person. He is supposed to have hung out on the mountaintop with Moses during the transfiguration. Right. Why not hang out with Hitler while he was at it? Moses didn’t bother with “abortion”, he just killed all the Midianite women (pregnant or not) and children, except for the rapable and enslavable virgin young girls, whom he gave to his soldiers as playtoys. Good message to the world, peace on Earth and all that, let me endorse a man who by modern standards would be a war criminal as a “saint” or “patriarch” beloved of God.
If, of course, you take the Gospels seriously, which you shouldn’t. If you read about their history, you quickly realize that we really don’t know what they originally said as all that we have are copies of copies of copies and there are more differences between these copies than there are words in the New Testament itself. If you subject then to a proper analysis of authorship along the way, you separate out the synoptics from John, and source the synoptics back to Mark (plus perhaps “Q” plus perhaps other verbal traditions) and date Mark to maybe 70-80 CE (no earlier than the fall of the temple) and Matthew and Luke to early second century.
Finally, you assert in your reply to me that there is all sort of “contemporary” evidence outside of Biblical and Church sources for the existence of Jesus. There is not. There is none.
The only first century non-biblical reference to Jesus is a single line in Josephus, written around 90-95 CE if it is authentic and not a second or third century insertion as seems rather likely to be the case from the way Josephus, a devout Jew reporting on the Jewish Rebellion, refers to him. The oldest credit-card sized fragment of one of the Gospels (from John) is second century. The oldest complete copies of some of the books of the New Testament come from the beginning of the third century. The oldest complete New Testament is fourth century. There are a handful of references to Christians existing by the second century, but the existence of Christians (especially Christians a hundred years later) by no means proves (or is particularly strong evidence for, under the circumstances) the existence of a human corresponding to Christ, nor does it prove that human to have been divine even if they did in fact exist.
We have no contemporary evidence for the existence of Jesus, not Biblical, not non-Biblical. None of the evidence we have would be admitted in a court of law; it is hearsay, not eyewitness, it is copies of copies of accounts with no reliable chain of evidence in between, not the accounts themselves. The preponderance of evidence is — perhaps — enough to support the assertion that it is “likely” that there is a historical human that corresponded to Jesus, that we know nothing whatsoever if this person’s origins, we haven’t the foggiest clue as to where he went, what he did, and when he did it. The Gospels themselves do not even particularly well agree here, in spite of two of them being derived from one of them. Our knowledge is entirely hearsay, and could as easily be a synthesis of legends and myths drawn from many contemporary apocalyptic preachers of the era with no single individual that can be identified as “Jesus”. This is made rather more likely by the discovery of the Gnostic Gospels that were long suppressed and which shatter the illusion of a uniform first and second century set of “authentically Christian” beliefs.
To some extent this is also made more likely by the very name Jesus, the Latin version of Yeshua, which means “Deliverer”. Christ, of course, is Greek for Messiah, which is Hebrew for Anointed, where for centuries Jews had used the term Messiah to refer to their expected (anointed) deliverer. So Jesus Christ the Messiah is redundant, and stands for Deliverer, the anointed deliverer anointed deliverer. Is this a name or assertion? I think there is little doubt that it is the latter. All that is certain is that Jesus was never called Emmanuel, and that Isaiah did not predict that a messiah named Emmanuel would be born of a virgin (as asserted by a mistranslation of Matthew) which of course never happened so that’s all right. (What Isaiah did predict in the chapter in question is actually a bit humorous, the more so when his one explicit prediction was explicitly falsified in Chronicles).
In skeptical discussions of Climate Science, we often refer to individuals who “believe” in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming as holding a religious belief, one that ignores evidence and refuses to listen to any arguments that contradict the accepted conclusion that it is all true, that human have ruined/are ruining the Earth with carbon dioxide. This is not said in a good way, as if religious belief is a good thing — it is said because religious belief is blind in critical ways, religious belief is founded upon an ongoing state of cognitive dissonance that makes up any story necessary to avoid looking at contrary evidence or the suggestion that perhaps our state of ignorance is high enough that we still just don’t know.
A scientific, objective analysis of the evidence associated with Christianity begins with Bayes theorem, and one of my favorite quotations of pure, scientific Bayesian reasoning applied to God and miracles comes from Thomas Paine:
“Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.”
In other words, if we use our certain knowledge that people lie all the time when it suits them (and are often mistaken in what they assert even when they are not deliberately lying) as a Bayesian prior, that prior should have the effect of substantially reducing our willingness to believe anything we are told, let alone a reported “miracle” that violates natural laws that we rather firmly believe in. This is the sort of everyday common sense that prevents people from buying the Brooklyn Bridge from a stranger, sending people from Nigeria who claim to want to send you millions of nearly-legal dollars your personal information and the account numbers of your bank accounts, or taking it for granted that just because Al Gore (or any other contemporary reporter of “climate events”) says that the number and violence of storms has increased in recent years that is necessarily the case that they have.
E. T. Jaynes makes almost precisely the same argument in his discussion of actual Bayesian reasoning in both science and everyday life in Probability Theory, the Logic of Science, a book I heartily recommend (especially to a Popperite). When we hear contemporary rumors of somebody that has “come back from the dead” or “healed someone of blindness by spitting into some mud and rubbing it into that person’s eyes” we don’t think twice about it — we reject this sort of thing as almost certainly false. We only seem to accept this sort of thing when it is reported in authoritative divinely inspired religious texts, as we learn to suspend our common sense when we examine such things critically, at least in the case of the faith we were raised in.
In the everyday/contemporary case we do so because we have a vast store of prior knowledge concerning actual biology and death — we understand things like the second law of thermodynamics, which would have to overwhelmingly “go out of its course” in order for the irreversible biological damage that accompanies actual death to be reversed.
We have never seen the second law of thermodynamics be violated in a macroscopic way, and we understand why we will — almost certainly — never observe such a violation. You are more likely to be the sole winner of the Powerball lottery ten times in a row than observe a macroscopic violation of the second law. At least in the former case one can actually compute the (small) probability and write it down.
Similarly, we understand something of the actual causes of real blindness, and know that rubbing spit and mud into a blind person’s eyes might be some sort of scam or cruel joke but that it is far more likely to cause blindness than cure it, given the fact that the human mouth is the dirtiest part of the human body from a bacteriological point of view and the filthy roadside dirt of animal rich, bathroom poor first century Palestine was very likely some of the dirtiest mud one could have utilized for the purpose as well. We know that madness is not caused by devils, and we know that one cannot cast the devils out of a person and into a herd of pigs. This sort of thing is all cheap magic, the stagecraft of a scam artist creating belief in himself as part of the scam. Real “miracles” involve things like antibiotics and sterile surgery and are not so cheaply won.
I would be skeptical of any such “miracles” as are reported in the Bible if they were performed on a modern stage under controlled circumstances. To say that I, or any rational person, should be far more skeptical of second-century hearsay concerning alleged first century miracles associated with a religious figure when those claims violate both our scientific knowledge and our mere common sense is a vast understatement. To accuse CAGW “warmists” of religious belief in the same article where one openly espouses an actual religious belief such as this as truth is hypocrisy — or cognitive dissonance, self-delusion — beyond all reason.
The hypothesis that increased carbon dioxide will lead to substantially warmer global temperatures is, like it or not, a scientific hypothesis. There is a clear causal mechanism stated, and this mechanism is physically plausible. If the world indeed warms by 3 to 5 degrees kelvin over the next 88 years it is very doubtful that any laws of physics will be violated along the way — it will simply be strong evidence in favor of one (or possibly a set of several) out of many possible causal theories, quite probably ones involving carbon dioxide as a primary driver. This hypothesis can easily be falsified by the simple failure to observe the expected warming, or be falsified (more likely) much earlier by a convergence between theory and observation on a shorter time scale.
What possible proof can there be that Jesus is Lord? The second coming? Events that we can never verify that are supposed to occur after we die (where nobody alive can know for sure that they actually happen at all) and that make no possible ethical sense? Inconsistent and self-contradictory second and third and fourth century manuscript copies of copies of copies of hearsay and oral traditions concerning events that might have happened sometime in the first century? Really?
If you are, Mr. Monckton, fond of Popper’s criterion for meaning, then I suggest you apply it to the absolute all time number one non-falsifiable hypothesis, the religion(s) of your choice. While you do so, bear in mind that you haven’t the slightest difficulty applying reason to all of the other religions, the ones you were not by blind chance born into and brainwashed by for most of your developmental years. Or, by all means persist in your delusion if that suits you, just do not pretend then to being somehow better equipped to apply reason to complex scientific issues than “warmists”, accusing them of a religious belief in a scientific issue while you yourself persist in a religious belief in a religion, something that surely makes less sense than any scientific hypothesis, even an incorrect one.
Most Sincerely,
rgb, a.k.a. Robert G. Brown
p.s. Christ, according to Jewish records was born close to the third conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter that year, which occurred ~5th December 7 BC (that’s with no zero year).
According to “Jewish records”? Which records would those be? And while sure, if true (and you’ll have to give me a pretty solid reference on that one as this is the first time I’ve heard of it) that agrees better with Matthew, all that does is prove that Luke is mistaken, and hence the Gospels can be mistaken, and hence they are not divinely inspired truth, and hence have to be judged the same way any similar record is judged — as being very likely chock full of errors, lies, stories, fables.
But that is adequately proven regardless of whether Matthew, Luke, or neither one is correct, because it is already absolutely impossible for both of them to be correct.
rgb
While Bayes’s theorem is logically flawless, the approach to drawing inferences that is called “Bayesian” is generally logically flawed.
Well, as(IIRC) we’ve discussed previously, I somewhat disagree, although of course the devil is in the details of which particular “approach to drawing inferences that is called “Bayesian”” you mean. Personally I doubt that we fundamentally disagree here, as I think that we would both agree that positive evidence should both increase our degree of belief in theories for which it is positive and simultaneously decrease our degree of belief in theories that contradict or are logically distinct from those supported theories (and vice versa, in cases where the set of theories is closed and exhaustive). It is this “the more I believe in gravity as the cause of things falling the less I believe in invisible fairies as the cause of things falling” that maintains the consistency of the Bayesian network of beliefs that form science. What is a no-no is to observe an actual invisible fairy (don’t ask me how:-) and increase your degree of belief thereby that maybe they do make things fall without slightly decreasing your belief in non-fairy theories of gravitation.
Conservation of belief, as it were, is akin to the normalization of probabilities — one cannot think A is more probable without also thinking that all B that are exclusive of A are less probable. Or “plausible”, if you prefer a Jaynesian sort of log/decibel scale for plausibility.
As for the problem of priors — there really isn’t any fundamental solution. It requires non-falsifiable prior beliefs to falsify any scientific hypothesis. Hume was, after all, fundamentally correct — you cannot prove or disprove reason itself. The need for axioms is inescapable, and if they could be falsified, they wouldn’t be axioms. The best one can hope for is a kind of reasonable consistency between the axioms of inference, the data, and the inferences made from the data and each other.
This is why both logical positivism and falsifiability as a criterion for knowledge are rotten at the core. LP cannot be proven and hence is self-inconsistent. Falsifiability as a criterion for knowledge cannot be falsified (and hence is self-inconsistent too). Bayesian optimization of a network of evidence supported belief may be just as rotten (in the sense that it still requires unprovable assertions to bootstrap the process) but at least it is self aware in its rottenness, and doesn’t conceal them with a hand quicker than the eye or end up as self-inconsistent out of the gate. One can then discuss reasonable ways of arriving at posterior probabilities, joint and conditional probabilities, and use the network of these probabilities to make probable/plausible inferences in the context of science.
In the end, of course, it makes little difference as far as real conclusions are concerned, because real scientific reasoning is much sloppier than any theoretical metaphysical epistemology. It has to be lest it get sucked into the Pit of Existential Despair represented by the poles such as Solipsism and/or Brain in a Boxism (the Matrix) or Materialism or Idealism. It is filled with unstated things like “Assuming that my sensory perception of the Universe is in decent correspondence with the way things really are” which are not in and of themselves verifiable or falsifiable even in principle but without which nothing else much works…
rgb
A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of giving Lord Monckton a lift from his hotel in the capital of Perth to his presentation at the University of Western Australia, which I also enjoyed.
I’ve been a journalist since my teens and although he may not recall our 15 minute chat in the car, I expressed my view that much of the climate and many other critical social debates are governed by an increasingly ignorant and self-absorbed media.
I’m sure that with his literacy skills and resultant knowledge, Lord Monckton had already figured that out. I nevertheless take great pleasure in reading his expression of the point: “The media are not in the business of giving the facts or telling the truth any more”.
This applies to all complicated topics, not just climate news. It’s become lifestyle news with a light peppering of important issues by a small proportion of the media’s overall research and writing staff … i.e. the reporters whose time is mostly consumed by magazine issues. In the print media, sub-editing maintains a vestige of correct grammar and punctuation but that also is slipping.
It mostly harks back to poor literacy, Australia being a standout failure but many western countries suffering similar declines as a result of weak subject knowledge among teachers. Since the early 1990s I’ve been yelling into an empty room that our English teachers can barely read and write.
Reporters, or repeaters as they’ve been more accurately described, are the product of schools like everyone else. They all share an increasing lack of interest or ability to research written text. When they do, their source is often … the media, often television.
We live in an increasingly dumbed down society reliant on what an elite media of attractive presenters, often with poor language skills, filter through as interesting. The problem isn’t what the mainstream media reports, it’s what the media doesn’t report, and that is the vast majority of knowledge. Complexity has been crowded out by trivia.
Media critics shouldn’t just criticise the pitiful news standards of the modern media as a deliberate manipulation of society’s beliefs. They should criticise the teaching profession which for the past generation has produced a society and a media more reliant on emotive pictures than on reading comprehension.
Lord Monckton, please keep pointing out the media failure, reference the literacy cause and, to draw your attention, let me point out a gaff in your quote re the media not “telling the truth any more”. Correct spelling should be “anymore”, as in “I don’t read anymore because I don’t have any more books, thanks to my TV”. I’m being pedantic because that’s what teachers should be.
If you disagree or are now dubious about ever again letting me give you a lift, be aware that I totally agree with your point that the sun has something to do with delayed temperatures. For example, a few days ago I rough charted the solar cycle, global SST, land temps and Australian sea levels (Jan-Nov annuals) from 1992 to 2012 … http://www.waclimate.net/imgs/ipcc-land-temperatures-sst-tides-2012.gif
Nothing noteworthy but an amusing way to visualise trends and I agree with others that were it not for Pinatubo, land temperature anomalies would have averaged about 0.4C from 1991/92 to 1998, which would have flatlined temp trends for almost 20 years and ruled the IPCC models invalid.
Worth brushing up on the dynamics of global temperature via David Stockwell … http://vixra.org/pdf/1108.0004v1.pdf
@John West:
Hey, a win is a win… Now, about that box of cigars: I would ask that you donate them to that cigar smoker whom you know would enjoy them the most (and that may be yourself). As I don’t smoke, they are of little use to me other than the satisfaction of knowing someone else can enjoy them (which is plenty for me… I rather like that kind of thing more than personal consumption… )
FWIW, IMHO, behavioral changes lead to evolutionary changes lead to behavior changes lead … so a pig, stuck on an island, starts to find food in the water. THAT pig had a behavior change. Now that leads to a selective path that has flatter wider hooves and longer legs and snout. Which leads to more success in water that leads to a preference shift… Not a hypothetical, BTW. That actually has started on one island. Some folks discovered a bunch of feral pigs that have become semi-aquatic. They are now being studied. Had the same pigs decided to eat cactus instead, they might well have begun a path to tougher mouths and shorter snouts…
FWIW, I’ve been highly interested in language for about 40 years. Linguistics classes and several languages and all… Bird languages are more “set” and inherited firmware. Mammals are more flexible, but still a lot is in firmware. There’s pretty good evidence for the basic structure of human language being a set inheritance as well, yet we have much more flexibility on context / specifics. Yet, by the time one is looking at “humans”, there’s many millions of years of language evolution in the pre-human ancestors. So one could not really say that ‘language evolved in humans’. It was already evolved in earlier primates. We just extended it… rather a lot 😉
So things like the vocal chord mechanism and the patch of brain that maps nouns onto visual / auditory symbols evolved. SOME sound maps are in the firmware ( like laughs and screams and maybe even imitative sound words like “pop” and “snort”…) but many more were created over more thousands or millions of years. Most of us just learn it, like we learn to like spicy food or cream of wheat… Like walking is in firmware (infants move their legs in a walking pattern if touched) but we ‘create’ running sports and dancing…
The Gospels as divinely inspired truth? Which modern Christian sect holds that view?
Anyway farmerbraun invites you to consider the idea that christianity (small “c’) in the third millenium does not depend on a theistic framework, but is rather , stripped to its bones, essentially no more than a recipe for the peaceful co-existence of humanity, embracing diversity, tolerance and inclusion.
Just as , in earlier times, it was a rejection of conformity, privilege, elitism, exclusivity, and separatism. That rejection of course was heresy for the Judaistic tradition.
FB is simply suggesting that peace on earth and goodwill to all men fits quite comfortably with atheism, as well as being a useful basis for continuing human society in our “globalised” condition.
The major assertion I make about “now” and change, is just that we can’t get significantly warmer. 2 C is all we’ve got (based on prior interglacials and the Holocene Optimum).
There is a minor subtext assertion that the longer term trend is colder (and it is). We’ve rounded over the high point of the Holocene Optimum. We’re cooling “now”. But the rate of cooling is so shallow that the 1500 – 1800 year weather cycles move us up and down more than the slope of the Holocene rollover. So the ‘trend line’ from 8 kya to 110,000 AD is down. Period. Full stop. But, on that trend line, back near ‘now’, is a cycle that goes wider on each side of that trend for the last / next 3000 years than the slope of that trend line. Significantly.
Dearest E.M.S.
Now that you’ve stated it slightly more precisely, I agree, and have asserted both of these (based on looking at the data) myself on list at times. I do think that it is important to note that it isn’t that we can’t get more than 2 C warmer — if one goes back far enough in the climate record we could probably peg 1-2 C on top of that (admittedly with a completely different distribution of continents, but also with a slightly dimmer sun) — it is that it appears empirically unlikely that we can, because if there were runaway positive feedbacks in the system, surely we would never have left the Holocene optimum, or for that matter any of the warm eras over geological time. The Earth isn’t likely to turn into Venus anytime soon, no matter what nonsense Hansen spouts in that general direction. The Earth is nothing like Venus, and there is no plausible path to runaway feedback and boiling oceans or we would have done it long ago!
The same problem exists on the downhill trend line. I agree with you completely that we might have gotten close to the glacial tipping point in the LIA, but I have to leave it at might because I don’t have a convincing quantitative model. In the end, all arguments are basically handwaving. Maybe feedback from the growing ice sheet and CO_2 sequestration in the chilling ocean would coincide with increased tropical cloudiness and a quiet sun and the axial tilt and the orbital eccentricity and… bang, maybe we drop down into cold phase. Maybe the CO_2 we’ve added to the atmosphere was miraculously exactly what we needed to precisely prevent this and leave the climate semi-stable in or near the Holocene median state for the next umpty-thousand years, preventing the next glacial era altogether. Maybe the stars and planets are in just the right conjunction for invisible fairies to tap the Earth with their invisible magic wands and make it warmer, or cooler, or just right Goldilocks-Porridge style.
The problem is that projecting the past into the future is a dicey thing to do with complex multivariate systems. Generally, I agree with you that these things are both likely to be true on the grounds of a rather arcane numerological argument, but I’d much prefer to think them true on the grounds of a less arcane physical argument. I just don’t think that we have the right physics yet and am not optimistic that we will have it all for some little time yet. I don’t think we have the instrumentation in place yet, or have used the instrumentation we do have in place for long enough yet, to set critical parameters in any sort of accurate physical model.
I would actually love to tackle the problem far more seriously myself, but sadly I have to eat and don’t feel like dining at the climate trough no matter how bountiful it may be to those that conform to its political requirements and say the magic words. And it is no higher than third or fourth in line should I suddenly end up wealthy and able to dispose of my time however I like.
I doubt we disagree on any of this, and you are right, I probably shouldn’t have commented on your original post to pick nits like this. I attribute it to runaway skepticism — I no longer believe much of anything where the climate is concerned. The more I look, the more I’m convinced that it is a damn bloody hard problem and that ANYONE claiming to have some sort of knowledge of where the climate is going based on any of the prevailing species of applied numerology is likely to be mistaken in their knowledge even if they choose the right direction by chance. The future short-to-medium term climate will go up, or down, or remain the same, and I’m feeling like one might as well roll dice to guess which one as rely on any argument.
rgb
rgbatduke says:
“Gospels can be mistaken, and hence they are not divinely inspired truth”
The Gospels are witness testimony, not supposed to be divinely inspired (not withstanding quotes from Jesus of course at least as far as they are accurate). There are numerous differences between the Gospels. If you heard four witnesses in a courtroom with absolutely identical stories would you not be suspicious? The differenses actual lend to credibility of the broader testimony. Also, Luke is not a single testimony but the result of an investigation, likely the author tried to combine several differing witness accounts into what he thought was the most credible at the time.
The Elohim account of creation would be an example of (supposedly) divine inspiration, a closer match to scientifically derived knowledge you will not find in the creation stories of any other religion (3 major religions share this accout). I’ve looked at all that I could get my hands on from around the world.
For someone who seems very sure of his conclusions you don’t seem to have done much research into the question. Some 20++ years ago as a young engineering student I was an atheist too(although not truely convinced either way). Out of respect for my hardly dumb Christian parents (mathematician and historian/educator) I decided to give it a fair shake after I had been out of school for a while. After researching religion for many years I decided on Christianity of a kind of preterist variety.
@Gnomish:
That same broken line of “thinking” has been used to claim deaf folks did not have language as they did not have words either. It’s a broken thought. A sign or a “mere gesture” is just as much a word and anything printed or spoken verbally.
I can say more, faster, in sign than in “mere words”. The very space is painted with meaning in motion. In fact, IMHO, it is the “merely verbal” folks who are lacking in depth and have a poor language. My spouse and I now occasionally “decorate” our verbal speech with bits of sign to fine tune it and enhance the depth of it.
And if you don’t think bared fangs have meaning, and say “come close and I will bite you”, I’ve got a mad dog for you to pet…
It’s folks with your broken belief who locked deaf folks in asylums and forbid them from using sign and called it ‘mere gestures’ and ‘not a language’. They were wrong, just as you are wrong; Completely, hopelessly, and utterly. (That last sentence can be done in one moving sign montage, with a specific facial expression, though with a better presentation of the ‘contempt’ axis that goes with it. Mere words fail in that regard… words are not a very good language…)
In particular, for my bunnies, I know I used the sound that was defined as “predatory bird” as they all, in unison, did the head tilt look up for predatory bird and then headed for cover. Bunnish is a subtle language and I’ve still not mastered it. It uses stress and tone in ways indo-european languages do not. It is also spoken very very softly Perhaps a native Chinese speaker would be better equipped to decode it. Oh, and do realize that bunnies are more closely related to primates than most of the other animal groups. We were on the same evolutionary path longer than most other non-primate animals.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/glires-and-euarchontoglires/
FWIW, my wife’s dog knew the words “cat” “car” “walk” and “Vet” (and more). Also “jelly bean”. I learned his words for “more / again”, “play”, “walk”, and “I want”. If you said “cat”, he would alert. If you said “get the cat” he would start searching for the cat… even if there was no cat in the house… He would not do that for “get the bat” or “eat the cat” or… Dogs, btw, are also trained in sign language. They typically get a several dozen word vocabulary, but it can be more. Including verbs, nouns, and even some adjectives and adverbs. It can be fairly complex. “Service Dogs” in particular. Even sentences like “open THAT door” and “pick up that pen” and “defend me” and “he is a friend” and so much more.
Elephants communicate in ‘infrasound’ over very long distances. They can call the herd together, warn of danger, or just ‘check in’. Ear position also communicates when in visual range. They have both verbal and sign in their language. They can also be taught the rules of soccer (football) and enjoy playing the game…
That you can’t see that common bond of language in all it’s forms with our animal friends means that you live in a very impoverished world. (hand inversion from face palm toward floor with dismissive facial expression … combining “bad” with dismissive look.)
These replies have rather gone off track. However I can only repeat what others have said much earlier. The only way to persuade the AGW believers back into the fold of normal science is via the pocket. But I think it needs to be their pockets not ours.
For someone who seems very sure of his conclusions you don’t seem to have done much research into the question. Some 20++ years ago as a young engineering student I was an atheist too(although not truely convinced either way). Out of respect for my hardly dumb Christian parents (mathematician and historian/educator) I decided to give it a fair shake after I had been out of school for a while. After researching religion for many years I decided on Christianity of a kind of preterist variety.
* How do you know how much research I’ve done into the question? How much research is really necessary to conclude that however lovely some carefully cherrypicked parts of Christianity are (parts that of course are equally lovely when cherrypicked and/or promoted in, say, Hinduism or any other religion or not-really-a-religion such as Buddhism), the set of assertions are fundamentally unbelievable and almost certainly false? I also suggest that you reconsider the issue with slightly more modern sources — I suggest starting with Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus. Ehrman is your exact opposite — he started out as a born-again Christian, went to graduate school to study the Bible in order to learn the word of God, and learned that there is no such thing (or if there is, we don’t know what that word is). He is now an agnostic/atheist. It would be very interesting to see you butt heads with him regarding “research into the question” as I doubt there are very many people alive who are more expert on the textual history of the Bible.
* You, like nearly all Christians alive today, would have been punished or killed in various horrible ways (like being burned alive) for asserting that books such as Genesis were not literally true. For example, you might read Saint Cardinal Bellarmine’s letter to Galileo, and meditate on his fate, or on the fate of Giordano Bruno, who in fact was burned at the stake on February 17th, 1600 — oh, wait, Mr. Monckton has enlightened me as to the resetting of the Julian calendar (which only occurred in 1752 in England, long after Newton had died) and imagines that such an event is retroactive so he should consider himself free to manage the eleven day offset as he pleases. The church suppressed heresy from Constantine right up to Martin Luther, usually violently, and of course you are a heretic, choosing what to believe and disbelieve as it pleases you instead of believing what you are told to believe. Many Christians do as you do — they worship the Jesus of their imagination, by picking verses and quotes and so on that represent the idea that they have of “the good”. But the verses you don’t like, the ones that don’t make sense, the ones that — if you stop to think about them at all — sound, well, evil or at least not terribly/perfectly good, they are all still there.
* If you are at all interested in a proper critical study of the Bible that does not begin with the presumption of truth or wisdom, you might visit:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/index.htm
and start reading anywhere you like. Maintain an open mind. Judge what you read quite seriously. For example, pulling a favorite example out of my poorly researched hat, dig into Acts 5, and the sad tale of Ananais and his wife Sapphira. Then fill in the following questionaire.
1) Based on your knowledge of the world, God, and human behavior, it is most likely that:
a) Luke (presumed author of Acts) is telling a story again — this never happened because God doesn’t actually strike people down, and Luke is lying about it to get people to donate more money to the church out of fear.
b) Peter spied on Ananais and — with the help of “the young men” — murdered him when he failed to donate all of the value of his land, and then murdered Sapphira in turn when she came in. This made it very clear to early followers of the Church who might have wanted to hold out some portion of their wealth because maybe they weren’t quite convinced that there was an apocalypse on the way or that all of this stuff they were told is true that if they did, they’d end up dead.
c) Peter and Sapphira just happened to die one after another out of sheer guilt and stress. Note well that this is basically an atheist answer (however unlikely) as if God exists there are no accidents.
d) God really-oh, truly-oh struck them both down dead. Welcome to free-will, early Christian style.
2) This (whatever answer you put down in question 1) isn’t morally reprehensible behavior because:
a) The ends justify the means.
b) Ananais and Sapphira’s sin was really, really great. Oh my, it was great. They absolutely deserved to die. They were obviously terrible people. They were even worse than apostatic rgb, who doesn’t give anything at all to any church ever, if he can help it, although sadly he cannot help but “donate” in the form of extra taxes he pays to compensate for the fact that religions own property, engage in commerce, have employees, and pay no taxes at all. So even if they WERE murdered by Peter or struck down by God, they should have known better.
c) I answered c), no moral consequence to a random act!
d) This is morally reprehensible. Ananais and Sapphira did not deserve to die, and we would not hesitate to infer that Peter in fact murdered them were they to similarly die under identical circumstances in some cult that relied on donations in a similar fashion today.
You can actually continue this game throughout the Bible, and play on with the Quran or my all-time favorite, the original American work of science fiction, The Book of Mormon. The annotations flag every verse for contradictions (with other verses elsewhere, violence on the part of God or disciples or holy men in this “peaceful” religion, absurdities, items that contradict matters of fact, and more. And to be quite fair, the commentator flag verses that contain ethically good content with a thumbs up, a place where something good is actually said, a moral principle is actually well-expressed.
There aren’t many.
rgb
@RGBatDuke:
I’m pretty sure that you took my statements as you did because they were not clear enough, so it’s on me to make them clearer.
(My spouse and friends have chided me for being ‘wordy’ and one boss, a lawyer, called me ‘prolix’, for my tendency to want things perfectly clear and precise… so I’ve been working on fewer words and a bit more folksy… perhaps a bit too far some times 😉 So still searching for the magic mean…)
I’m also pretty sure we agree on a heck of a lot more than the nits where we may not quite line up.
Per ‘headed for a glacial’: I think we can make pretty good statements about it, but only due to ‘existence proofs’ and ‘bounds’. The prior half dozen interglacials rocket up, whack into a hard lid, and head back down. This one is a bit flatted in comparison. I think the other ones pretty much show where huge ‘inertial’ to warmer on a ‘hard tipping point from cold’ whacks into the other end of the hysteresis… that I’m also pretty sure we can lay at the foot of the water cycle / thunderstorms. (At least for the ‘big bits’). Yeah, go back to the prior Ice Ages (not just glacials in this Ice Age) and you get more range; but that’s from different continents and likely very much different air quantities. So I likely ought to have added a “in the last million years” or some such range qualifier to the 2 C “lid”. (but then I’d also have to start listing things like: if we don’t have massive bombardment by comets and if we don’t…)
I think it’s also pretty clear that the bounds on the hysteresis are set by water. Evaporation / precipitation at the hot side; frozen dry air at the cold side. Maybe you could get 1/2 C of more range out of that with CO2, but it just doesn’t matter. It’s either frozen or it’s doing tropical storms…
But in the middle, we have instability and all the ‘you can’t predict squat’ comes into the fore. That paper / link about the shifting ocean currents and the stable Holocene vs stable Glacial vs metastable middle is, IMHO, well worth the read. It explains the ‘jerks’ back and forth at the entry and exit steps from Glacials / Optimums. As we’re now at an insolation level that does not support forced exit from a glacial, we are now in, or very very near, that unstable ‘flip / flop state’. That has some rather strong implications for our weather risks….
But what we do know is non-zero.
We know that the exit from a glacial to a stable “Holocene Like” regime is hard to have happen. It only happens when conditions are ‘just so’ and can melt the north polar ice. So all of the Milankovich things have to line up (and even then we sometimes ‘skip one’…)
We know that any ‘overshoot’ from cold to warm only happens at the very beginning of the (recent) interglacials, when the conditions are much more favorable than now.
We know that we’re below the W/m^2 that can turn back a glacial, and very comfortably at a level that is compatible with a stable glacial (after the entrance).
Connecting those, we know that a “cold whack” can put us into the start of the next glacial.
Yet we also know from looking at that map of orbital parameters that we skate just down the middle this time. Orbital stuff doesn’t give us a ‘cold whack’. Which means it must come from the sun, or volcanoes, or rocks from space or… all those non-predictable things. (Yet they have a statistical rate…)
So we’re one Big Cold Whack away from an entry to a glacial. And ‘odds are’ that will happen inside a few hundred to a 1000 years. (though it might not… we could get lucky…)
But my favorite thing, really, is just that a glacial arrival is so slow, we could be in it and not know. The cold can have rapid onset (like the L.I.A.) but the snow takes most of the glacial to pile up. You can literally outwalk the glacier leading edge on one weekend a year, and without much effort. Add that we’ve HAD a LIA event and similar, then the ‘rapid onset’ of cold is not distinguishable from ‘regular weather cycles’… (albeit the longer ones). And that gets back to your point: Flip a coin and you know as much… (Nobody knows why D.O. events happen, or Heinrich Events, or Bond Events… though there’s some decent speculation…)
Frankly, any ‘climate horror’ that has a 10,000 year ice build up with 1500 year cycles of back to warmer then colder is just not relevant at the human lifetime scale. So being able to say “It will be started inside 3000 years” (as some ‘cold whack’ statistically will happen – rock fall or volcano or…) is at most a mild entertainment and not very valuable. Even “Lunar Tidal forcing has a good chance at it in 300 years” isn’t very useful. Will there even BE a USA in 300 years? Or an EU? Or “Europeans”? (People are mixing at an amazing rate already. And compare English from 1700 to now. iPhone? Jump the shark? Dazzle me? Rippin? Jumbo Jet and radar? Whoever is speaking whatever in 300 years may not be able to read this… and certainly won’t care.
So what we do know, that matters, is that things are just not going to change much in my lifetime. Certainly not outside of historical norms. (That doesn’t limit it much though. LIA vs MWP was a pretty good swing…) And dumping or not dumping CO2 into the air won’t change that “not much” by very much either. (But the economic destruction of western civilization and the rise of radical powers are very likely to lead to a nuclear W.W.III and that would be a horror and likely not survivable by the global civilizations. (See “The Dark Ages” as a model, then realize we MUST have global trade or folks starve and die… we can not go back to local subsistence farming.)
I guess that’s what bothers me most. We have so much “stupid” being done, that is ‘exactly wrong’ from a ‘thrive without collapse and war’ goal state. It is as though our ‘leaders’ have a cultural death wish and want Billions to die. I can’t believe that there is that much ‘stupid’ in the world, but ‘malice’ knows no bounds too….
Ah, well, I’m starting to ramble. Probably time to end…
Oh, one point on the religion thing:
Yes, much of the Bible is bits of left overs stitched together. Yet it does have some good wisdom in it. It is worth the effort to dig out the good bits. Also, there have been many great scientists who were quite religious. The two need not be in conflict. From Newton to Einstein to even Darwin (who’s first copy had a dedication to God in it…) Yes, dogmatic literalism is in conflict, but isn’t it in conflict even within the Sciences?…
With that, I’d recommend a couple of good books.
“Is God a Mathematician?” Makes in interesting set of numerical observations about what things have to be ‘just so’ for the universe to work…
http://www.amazon.com/Is-God-Mathematician-Mario-Livio/dp/074329405X
Then there is a rather interesting book that takes Genesis and basically says “If we use a relativistic clock calibrated to the moment of the Big Bang, how does Genesis stack up” and finds a remarkable alignment of the events in Genesis and our scientific schedule of events. Basically, don’t use a ‘day’ today, use a ‘day’ as measured from a universe exploding into existence out of a white hole… I’ve read it, and it does line up fairly well.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0553354132
So perhaps a bit more allowance for folks a couple of thousand years ago not being all that swift at getting the idea of ‘relativity’ down in their copy and one could still find some truth in the old book… (Much of the Bible does read like someone trying to put into words things they were being taught that were beyond their understanding. My speculation is that they garbled their ‘Cliff Notes’ from what was being taught… but much of the original knowledge was correct.)
The author has a Ph.D from MIT, btw, so it’s readable, but not a lightweight book / idea.
Religion has it’s issues (a big one being religious folks who think they have read it right as literal when they have not…) but being in fundamental conflict with science isn’t one of them, IMHO. Who’s to say that evolution isn’t the WAY a creator God would choose to create life? Heck, were I doing it, I’d create a bacteria programmed to evolve and turn it loose in a primordial soup… it would be much more interesting that way… (And we are nearing the point where I could, in fact, do that… “Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from Magic.”… or, perhaps, religion…
FWIW, I’m not trying to convince anyone or ‘convert’ anyone. ( I’m still not sure exactly what I believe anyway…) I just found them very interesting and thought provoking books…
RGB
———–
There is a vast difference between theological understanding and true (mystical) understanding of the real message of religion.
Only when a religious aspirant understands that the reality of God/Tao/Nirvana/Brahman/etc.,is non-dual from the ‘perspective of Itself, will the delusion of imagining human mind dualistic conceptualization can apprehend that reality fall away effortlessly,
Atheists and Theists are just another pair of complementary opposite perspectives on absolute reality, which like the Tao, remains forever at peace while the differentiated complementary opposite aspects of ying and yang perform their eternal dance to maintain that transcendent balance.
The Tao that is conceived of, is not the Eternal Tao. The human brain mind can never apprehend the reality represented by the concept of God. Understand that and the path to self realization presents itself. Thought must eventually cease, as mental constructs representing reality is maya/delusion,in the context of true religious aspiration, only the direct apprehension of non-duality brings about the ending of a dualistic universe conceptually divided into two,…me and the Universe
Please note, my comments re non-duality are only in the context of religion, conceptual thinking is essential for science and everyday life.
Gail Coombs says
I doubt John Brookes, Icarus, Mike, LazyTeenager or JoBrighton would really enjoy following the north end of a south facing mule while trying to keep a plow digging in and the &*#(@% mule moving in a straight line.
————
You are right about that. Its why I am arguing with you.
I hope someone reads this far down – I’m afraid it’s taken me this long to mull over the general tenor of Lord M’s thoughtful piece, get through all the side issues people have raised, and back onto the main track.
I think we should create an institution which measures the performance of scientists. The metrics would be public and as objective as possible, ie not opinion or consensus based (unlike the nuclear scientists ‘minutes to midnight’ risk of Armageddon clock). They would examine the output of individuals, teams or institutions and be combined to produce overall ratings which could be reduced to traffic-light RAG as used and widely understood throughout corporate institutions. The ratings would propagate to any future output from those individuals, groups or institutions and serve as ‘health warnings’ easily understood by journalists and the public. Scientists would look up their quality index and if unsatisfied could do something about it.
There are all sorts of practical and theoretical difficulties with this, I’m sure, but I think it would be worth trying to sort them out, for the sake of an easily propagated indicator whose basis of validation was in the public domain. I would like to hear people’s ideas on measures that could be included in the aggregated scoring, but the biggest fly in the ointment that I can see is – who could be trusted by all (most) parties to do the assessment – and I do have one suggestion about the process. Since the peer review system has come under some criticism lately as being susceptible to various influences which can reduce its effectiveness, why not use an amended version to assess ratings?
Instead of reviewing scientific output directly, why not apply the peer review process instead to criticisms of that output? In the context of a scientific paper, instead of focussing on the paper itself, assess its critical responses in terms of their falsifiability / falsification status.
It has always been an open issue for me whether the internet propagates lies faster/better than it propagates truth. This would be a first attempt to ‘tag’ openly propagated assertions and their proponents with a quality metric, while avoiding the complementary evils of crony-ism on the one hand, and mob rule on the other.
Gail Coombs says
ROTFLMAO, that is rich coming from someone who wants to steal the inheritance of western culture from the ENTIRE WORLD!
————
Wow!!! another WUWT-er whose omniscience extends to mind reading. You got me dead to right there Gail. My entire evil purpose is to obliterate western civilization. Hee-hee-hee he says raising his little pinkey to the side of his grinning lips.
Now if only you had warned us all about the GFC so we could have avoided that. But you kept it secret. Shame in you.
AlecM says
A sensor signal is a different beast. this is because sensors work by blocking off radiation for the other direction.
————
No sensors do not work that way. Restricting their acceptance angle is incidental to their principles of operation.
A sensor that behaves by absorbing IR radiation, converting the energy into heat and thereby producing an electrical signal can absorb IR radiation from any direction, if for some reason non-directionality was required.
Richard Verney says
Again there is a problem since ocean overturning is a mechanical process measured in many many hours
————
I would not have thought so since surface wave action is supposed to be associated with circulate motion of the water. So the time scales to move surface water 10s of metres down are 10s of seconds.
The whole film theory idea also seems to neglect thermal conduction. Although the temperature gradient at the surface is in the wrong direction as you’ve said, the heating effect of the IR radiation reduces that temperature gradient and so reduces the rate of heat transfer from the bulk water to the atmosphere.
“to stop the warming and buy us time to work on alternative, zero-carbon technologies. Instead of disputing the evidence, wouldn’t it be smart to start proposing mechanisms to actually achieve that?”
I propose as a start that you cease exhaling CO2. I suggest that all those who believe CO2 is a problem do the same. As an initial move towards that end wearing a gas mask that absorbs CO2 would be a good beginning.
sorry, Chiefio – words are symbols which have definitions.
the word ‘definition’ also has a definition – you should look that up.
it has nothing to do with deafness, as i am typing to you.
and you will find yourself in a quagmire if you attempt to refute my words with nothing more than grunts.
snickers, sneers, grunts and groans may carry meaning but they are not words and do not perform the function of logic.
messy tools make for a messy job.
precise thinking requires precise cognitive tools.
if you have a problem with the dictionary but wish to communicate reliably you’ll have to define your idiosyncratic terms – otherwise you can claim no more meaning than an animal grunt.
Mike Haseler says:
December 26, 2012 at 6:07 pm
….There will always be people who believe in flying saucers, in holistic medicine, that talking to flowers makes them grow and in global warming. It cannot be our role in life to stop idiots being idiots!….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
ERRRrrr, Talking to flowers does make them grow.
According to WIKI -RespiratorySystem in an average resting adult, the lungs take up about 250ml of oxygen every minute while excreting about 200ml of carbon dioxide and the plants just eat it right up. According to another Source
So talking to plants baths the leaves in an airflow rich in CO2. Also a person introduces eddies and currents that stir up stagnant air. Since the earth is a carbon starved environment this will have a positive effect on the plants. If all other requirements are met CO2 becomes the limiting factor on plant growth and anyone who talks to their plants will make sure those requirements are met.
Another Reference:
Carbon starvation in glacial trees recovered from the La Brea tar pits, southern California
Per ‘headed for a glacial’: I think we can make pretty good statements about it, but only due to ‘existence proofs’ and ‘bounds’. The prior half dozen interglacials rocket up, whack into a hard lid, and head back down. This one is a bit flatted in comparison. I think the other ones pretty much show where huge ‘inertial’ to warmer on a ‘hard tipping point from cold’ whacks into the other end of the hysteresis…
Good point. In fact, excellent point and one that did not occur to me. I tend to think in terms of something called a “fluctuation-dissipation theorem” if you know what that is. It is basically a consistency relation associated with Langevin equations. Langevin equations, in turn, are stochastic differential equations of the sort that describe (for example) Brownian motion, things like directed diffusion or random walks, but — and this is crucial — Langevin-type equations also arise in the context of bistability in physics, for example absorptive optical bistability.
If you look up/google:
“Lecture 3: Brownian Motion and The Langevin Equation 3.1”
it has a lovely summary of the topic, as well as a classical statement of the theorem itself:
Fluctuation-Dissipation (Langevin) Theorem: The equilibrium is brought about by a dissipation force (“friction”) between the particle and the reservoir. Whatever the mechanism of the dissipation, it is the same process that produces the random, fluctuating force on the particle. Moreover, both processes are uniquely determined by the statistical nature of the microscopic forces (by “statistical nature” is meant such things as the probability distribution and so on. The relevant statistical function which determines the fluctuation and dissipation will be discussed later).
I don’t think Climate Scientists appreciate how strongly this theorem constrains climate science, or how it is an instrument from which both insight and quantitative information can be obtained. Basically, it tells you that by watching the spectrum of the fluctuations around the mean, you can determine a whole lot of information about the processes that equilibrate a system to the mean. Spencer used a weak version of the theorem as an argument in his book on climate blunders to suggest bounds on the climate sensitivity. IIRC I suggested to him a long time ago that he consider using the theorem straight up for that purpose as it would provide more information than a slightly handwaving argument.
Your argument is, again, tightly linked to this theorem. If one thinks very crudely of the “dynamic equilibrium” of the climate as being the bottom of a wide differentially sloping gully that gets gradually inclined by long term drivers such as Mil. cycles and “state” as being a soccer ball rolling around in the gully that periodically gets “kicked” by a demented child in some random direction, you get one possible picture. If the child kicks the ball towards the side walls, it goes some ways up and then rolls down. From the way it rolls down, one can infer a number of things about the walls, from the way it overshoots and oscillates back and forth until it approaches the bottom of the gully one can learn more. From the way it rolls back when kicked along the gully there
is still more to be learned. If the gully is more like a river delta with multiple relatively shallow stream bottoms that lie roughly parallel but at different heights on the gradually sloping bottom up towards the wall you can get really complex behavior — a gentle kick might cause oscillation around one stream bottom that slowly damps down again but a stronger kick might kick you over into the NEXT stream bottom and you’d oscillate/damp down into IT.
Only a hard kick teaches you much about the walls. We have both independently noted that the bistable glaciation cycle (all things being equal, last 2.5 million or so years) places strong limits on the width of the gully itself and indeed on the shape of the gully bottom(s), which (as we also both agree) is split, with one whole streambed lying well below the other, connected by multiple points where the main streambed bifurcates and separated by a hill in between. Every hundred thousand years or so, the long axis tips to where a good hard kick will carry you over the barrier from the lower bed to the upper one, often overshooting the mark and getting knocked back from the wall. Every now and then the demented kid will deliver such a kick, or series of kicks in rapid succession, and knock the ball all the way to the wall as well.
I hadn’t thought about the wall. The rapidity of the return to the warm phase equilibrium after such a kick in the earlier interglacials does indeed place a strong limit on the forces that restore equilibrium and the feedbacks associated with those forces. I had thought about the fact that the return itself (plus the longer term climate data) does provide very strong evidence that there is no third gully bottom on the warm side to which our current bottom is a locally stable intermediary, which is basically the assertion of Hansen and the tipping point extremists. Rather than simply shifting one or two stream bottoms (so to speak) to the warm side and then resume fluctuating around more or less normally, the tipping point catastrophists are asserting that a completely new state develops uphill that completely closes off all downhill pathways and becomes “permanently” stable, stable on the sequestration time for CO_2, which according to the Bern model is basically forever, geological time.
But they are neglecting the evidence that not only has the system never even so much as sampled such a state in around three million years, but that there is a hard wall on the uphill side that some damn strong kicks in the past have helplessly bounced off of.
Very good point indeed. A lot of this metaphor can actually be made quantitative, I think, withing the context of a generalized Langevin (or master) equation approach to the dynamical equilibrium. I’ll have to think about it some more.
rgb
rgbatduke asks:
“How do you know how much research I’ve done into the question?”
I don’t “know”, but you seem to be throwing out the same arguments I had about a quarter the way into the issue.
“1) Based on your knowledge of the world, God, and human behavior, it is most likely that:”
e) The story is a parable about dishonesty for glory, their “sin” was not about whether or not they gave to the church but we’re attempting to gain accolades dishonestly. If they would have said we’re selling this land and giving 1/1000th to the church then that’d been ok.
“2) This (whatever answer you put down in question 1) isn’t morally reprehensible behavior because:”
e) It’s a parable.
I actually agree quite a bit with Bart Ehrman, but unlike him I realize we have the advantage of science to help us determine the proper way to read any particular part of the Bible and determine what are insertions, parables, and opinions. For example whenever a story ends with “and that’s why we have XYZ” its probably a myth, whether it’s in the Bible or not. Also, one should look out for gnostic phrasing in the Gospels, especially John.
BTW, I have read the skeptics annotated Bible. If you really know the Bible and it’s history and aren’t determined to read the Bible like it’s a science book then it’s good for nearly endless belly roll laughs.
Realize that most of what we have left today has come to us through the Catholic Church, the dead sea scrolls being a notable exception. Before the Catholic Church assimulated (yes, in Borg like fashion) most everything there was a great deal of Christian diversity of thought.
Well, I must say I’ve enjoyed this foray into way OT, I think the Mods have given us a lot of slack on this thread and I’d like to thank them and our host. I promise to get back on topic.
Terry Oldberg says:
December 26, 2012 at 6:58 pm
….Should we place pseudo-scientists in charge of the determination of whether a pseudo-scientific theory is falsified by the evidence when this theory is insusceptible to falsification under the pseudo-scientific methodology of the study that has been designed by the pseudo-scientists? Obviously not.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It is THEIR crappy theory so if they setup a method of falsifying it then skeptics should take advantage of it.
This is a propaganda war and always has been. It was never about science which is why skeptics are right but keep losing. Why, since they handed us a weapon should we not use it?
The IPCC mandate states:
Humans were tried and found guilty BEFORE the IPCC ever looked at a scientific fact. The IPCC mandate is not to figure out what factors effect the climate but to dig up the facts needed to hang the human race. The IPCC assumes the role of prosecution and and the skeptics defence but the judge (aka the media) refuses to allow the defence council into the court room.
At this point we have moved to the point where authorities are making sure that no appeal is ever made possible.
In other words we lost because the whole set up was rigged from the get go.
Gail Combs says:
“If all other requirements are met CO2 becomes the limiting factor on plant growth and anyone who talks to their plants will make sure those requirements are met.”
Now Gail, surely you must know that only temperature affects tree growth. /sarc
LOL.
The paper Combining the Sources of Temperature Change ties natural and manmade events and processes to temperature change. This is a curve relationship study. I am using existing data: the numbers gathered by accountants, and scientists that work in diverse fields. I combine these diverse data to ‘reflect’ the shape of the temperature anomaly curve. With time and additional data, I hope they will be shown to ‘drive’ the temperature curve.
http://www.modelsw.com/papers/gwarm/CombiningTheSources.html
E.M.Smith says: @ December 26, 2012 at 3:46 pm
@John West:
Language evolved. Listen to animals. They speak….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If animals did not have the ability to communicate we would never be able to train them. A trainer who can not understand the animals language will never be any good. A trainer who can not ‘speak’ the animal’s language will never be any good.
I am delighted to make Professor Brown’s acquaintance, and I very much hope that he and others here who lurk behind pseudonyms will in future have the courage and forthrightness to use the simple facility in WordPress to give their names. It takes only a few seconds. Thereafter, all subsequent postings will show their names (however long) automatically. Pseudonyms, though, are fair game, indicating an unwillingness – for whatever reason – to back up one’s opinions with one’s own name. From time to time, therefore, I am tempted to play with them a little. Now that I know who he is, I shall not need to call him “Ratduke” again.
I am fascinated by the time the Professor has devoted to the study of religion – which, however, is off topic here except to the extent that, in a few lines at the end of a long posting, I had rooted my suggestion of giving the usual suspects an escape-route from their error in the seasonal spirit of Christmas goodwill. The Professor may like to recall the distinction between the allegorical tone of much of the Old Testament (in particular) and the down-to-earth, businesslike, demotic language of the three synoptic Gospels. The discrepancies between the accounts are much what one would expect: matters would indeed be suspicious if they tallied at all points.
I say again that the difference between my religious belief in Christianity and the climate-extremists’ quasi-religious immersion in catastrophic anthropogenic climate alarm (CACA) is that, ,unlike the extremists, I acknowledge that my belief in Christianity, not being Popper-falsifiable, is not science. The laws of physics as we have them now did not obtain at or before the instant of the Big Bang, so they cannot tell us what (or Who) caused the moment of creation, or how it was caused. Therefore, Christian belief that an all-knowing, all-powerful deity was directly or indirectly responsible for the Big Bang is not contrary to the laws of physics. Eminent physicists from Newton to Kelvin were Christians: unlike Professor Brown, they found nothing incompatible with Christianity in its laws.
However, the climate extremists, though for the reasons outlined in the head posting their belief in CACA is no more Popper-falsifiable than my belief in Christianity, pretend that their belief in Thermageddon is founded in science rather than in religion. They are not honest enough to admit that their New Religion is not scientific. Instead, they tell us, over and over again, that their belief is rooted in a “scientific consensus”, as though their deployment of that long-condemned logical fallacy were some sort of scientific argument rather than a pusillanimous and illogical demonstration of a willfully anti-scientific approach. On that much, if not on the value of the Christian religion, I am sure the Professor and I can agree.
rgbatduke says:
December 27, 2012 at 6:34 am
Very good point indeed. A lot of this metaphor can actually be made quantitative, I think, withing the context of a generalized Langevin (or master) equation approach to the dynamical equilibrium. I’ll have to think about it some more.
And that, my dear sir, is why we are here. To provide you a “blank whiteboard” available to discuss things in the open market. Though always subject to the eraser in the talented hands of the moderators, of course. 8<)
Gail Combs says:
“The IPCC assumes the role of prosecution and and the skeptics defence but the judge (aka the media) refuses to allow the defence council into the court room.”
Nicely put! Just for those that haven’t been in this long:
John Christy says:
“Widely publicized consensus reports by “thousands” of scientists are misrepresentative
of climate science, containing overstated confidence in their assertions of high climate
sensitivity. They rarely represent the range of scientific opinion that attends our
relatively murky field of climate research. Funding resources are recommended for “Red
Teams” of credentialed, independent investigators, who already study low climate
sensitivity and the role of natural variability. Policymakers need to be aware of the full
range of scientific views, especially when it appears that one-sided-science is the basis
for promoting significant increases to the cost of energy for the citizens.”
http://nsstc.uah.edu/essc/docs/ChristyJR_SenateEPW_120801.pdf
BTW: I speak dog quite well, I never intended to imply that language was exclusive of humans just that with respect to current human language one cannot say it wasn’t created by humans nor can one say that it didn’t evolve.
Yes, much of the Bible is bits of left overs stitched together. Yet it does have some good wisdom in it. It is worth the effort to dig out the good bits. Also, there have been many great scientists who were quite religious. The two need not be in conflict. From Newton to Einstein to even Darwin (who’s first copy had a dedication to God in it…) Yes, dogmatic literalism is in conflict, but isn’t it in conflict even within the Sciences?…
I completely agree with the former, and commend:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/good/long.html
as an itemized list. This skeptical reviewer, at least, finds 505 verses — in the entire Bible, old and new Testament, and many of these are rather short, saying things like “God is love” (which to me is as much an absurdity as a fond hope or “good” claim, given the problem of theodicy). The signal to noise ratio is extreme, but it is worse than this because he also lists things like:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/science/long.html
(404 verses in direct conflict with scientific truth).
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html
(1310 verses that portray God and virtue as being the direct, naked application of violence) or
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/abs/long.htm
(a whopping 2211 verses that portray absurdities, claims for miracles or things that just plain make no sense).
I would gently remind you that humans have a natural tendency to practice cognitive dissonance and gloss over the negative evidence to concentrate on the positive, or to twist things around so that a system of beliefs can persist, unthreatened. It is a form of confirmation bias. There is a lovely book on Cognitive Dissonance by Joel Cooper that I found well worth the buying and the read, filled with specific examples of how it has been observed and studied in clinical settings and how it “works” in everyday human affairs to defend belief systems. It is worthwhile understanding it if only to see how it is in play in climate science, actually.
But if one can open one’s mind, one can treat the Bible with the same objectivity that one can treat the Bhagvad-Geeta, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Puranas, the Eddas, the Q’uran, or other “sacred” texts. In that case it isn’t a matter of “dogmatic literalism” that forces the rejection of the Bible’s core assertions, it is that one could reduce the entire moral content of the Bible to a few pages of prose text, one can immediately reject almost all of its religious arguments as absurd and illogical even as theories of God, and if it weren’t for the fear induced by the threats of violence that permeate the Bible, outweighing the “good stuff” by far more than two to one, nobody that wasn’t brainwashed into believe as a child would believe any of this stuff. And they don’t — personally I find a lot more worthwhile moral content and wisdom in both Buddhism and Hinduism than one can find in the entire Bible, and in the case of Buddhism it is relatively accessible and concentrated and laid out in a fairly short, simple, and compelling argument.
And that doesn’t mean that their mythology is worth believing either. Our moral sense, the thing that tells us “these words are sweet”, is rather divorced from the question of whether or not God exists, perfect justice exists, God performs miracles or inflicts punishments and so on. The latter, to the extent that they are claims about the actual Universe in which we live, have to be answered using the same process of reason we use to answer any such claims. God doesn’t get a “bye” as an unreasonable proposition we should just accept without evidence, or on the basis of weak, inconsistent, scripture based arguments, or by invoking various versions of the Anthropic Principle. But nobody reads Hume any more, any more than Christians typically study their own Bible or pay it the scant courtesy of actually reading the damn thing cover to cover one time in their entire adult life.
It is indeed true that many great scientists of the past were religious — Newton himself being a moderately heretical case in point. Not that in many cases they had any choice (you need to appreciate the way the threat of imprisonment, torture, social ostracism, and a horrible death can focus the mind), not that we have certain knowledge that many of them were religious. Thomas Jefferson, for example, is still considered by many people to have been a good Christian, although we now know that he wrote The Jefferson Bible:
http://www.beliefnet.com/resourcelib/docs/62/The_Jefferson_Bible_The_Life__Morals_of_Jesus_of_Nazareth_1.html
where it is made rather clear that he was not a Christian, he merely admired Jesus as a philosopher (and then only by literally scissoring out all of the absurdity in the Gospels). So do I, although I would not put him anywhere close to first on the list of Admirable Philosophers past or present.
That does not make arguments in favor of religion, whether conducted by great men or not, correct. To claim such is an argument from authority, which our thread host Mr. Monckton will tell you is a logical fallacy. One has to decide whether or not things like the assertion of an eternal hell in which humans are tortured for the sin of failing to believe in an absurd set of assertions without evidence in the very best of faith make sense to you and are supported by evidence. I have every respect for Wigner, I appreciate his argument for the Strong Anthropic Fallacy, sorry, I meant “Principle”, a.k.a. “Intelligent Design”, or more properly known as the Teleological Argument:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleological_argument
The teleological argument is religion, not science, and furthermore is “one big series of logical fallacies contradicted, where one looks closely, by science. In the end, it is a return to the God of the Gaps argument — we’ve squeezed down all of the original gaps in our understanding of the Universe that used to be occupied by God to the point where all that is left are things like why the Universe appears to be mathematically consistent and have natural laws that are mathematically structured and stable in time, why the Universe has fundamental constants that permit life to occur, all things that can be equally well answered by “God” or “Just Because” as long as you leave God out of the Universe in question because if you don’t, you’re always back to “Just Because”.
One essential problem with the ancient arguments concerning God along these lines or worse, the ontological argument, and with most modern arguments as well, is that they ignore what we have learned about logical and mathematical systems in general in the last century and a half. They are “classical” arguments and hence logically flawed in numerous places. They bandy about terms or concepts like “eternal”, “all powerful”, “all-knowing”, “creator of the Universe” without either defining those terms or examining the logical consequences of their arguments. We can do much better now.
You might — or might not — enjoy reading one such argument concerning God here:
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Philosophy/god_theorem.php
This result was discussed extensively on one of the philosophy forums last year, and I’ve got a few people that are nagging me to actually publish it in a real “philosophy journal”. In a nutshell, the application of information theory, representation theory, and clear definitions for terms such as “Universe” that preclude hand-is-quicker-than-the-eye switches in meaning halfway through an argument allow the derivation of an actual theorem concerning God: if an omniscient God exists, then God must equal the Universe. If one adds in Landauer’s Principle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann-Landauer_limit
(generalized to accommodate at least a broad class of potential logical mechanisms for “knowledge”, “thinking” or “sentience” that might describe a self aware pandeity) one ends up with strong constraints on the kind of “infinite Universe/deity” that might be capable of sustaining self-awareness, ones that frankly seem a bit unlikely. The best case that can be made for God, one that is entirely consistent with observation, is that the Universe is God, God is the Universe, and both are utterly impersonal and not in any meaningful sense “volitional” as volition/mentation/free will seems to require the generation of information entropy and entropy contradicts omniscience.
Really it is probably worse than even that — allowing for entropy that somehow didn’t violate omniscience — might restore volition in a sense, but only by making it arbitrarily whimsical, playing dice with itself/the Universe as it were, which also seems to violate both omniscience and sentience.
So forget scripture — the logical problem of God as an abstract proposition is a serious one, and one that is amenable to attack using reason. Applying reason to the question instantly rejects almost all of the scriptural faiths. Not so much Hinduism, though, as Vedantic Hinduism is at heart a monist pandeism, Atman equals Brahman equals all things, the Universe is indeed God playing games with Itself, and we as projective chips off of the old block are the Universe becoming aware of Itself. Heinlein’s Thou Art God was forthrightly stolen from this.
Not that I’d defend Hinduism either. The point isn’t so much that its core principles could be correct without contradiction of some aspect of the definition of the concept we call “God”, it is we don’t have any evidence that it is correct even as a consistent proposition. Something can be non-contradictory, make sense, and be false, or not be supported by evidence sufficient to conclude that it is (probably) true.
rgb
LazyTeenager; ‘No sensors do not work that way. Restricting their acceptance angle is incidental to their principles of operation.’
I can prove my point very easily: http://www.kippzonen.com/?product/16132/CGR+3.aspx
‘Two CGR 3s can form a net pyrgeometer’ [Near the bottom].
These people, genuine physicists who make pyrgeometers know the truth which is that a single device measures a temperature signal, the artefact of the shield behind the sensor blocking off temperature signal(s) from the other direction.
This temperature signal can do no thermodynamic work unless it combines vectorially with a reverse EM field from another radiator. This reverse EM signal in space is the cosmic microwave background.
The proof is to put two devices back to back in zero temperature gradient – net signal = zero. Then take one device away – the signal suddenly jumps to the S-B level for isolated emission into absolute zero.
This has been a 50 year long experimental error by climate science, originating from meteorology. There is no ‘back radiation’. It does not exist,. It is zilch, zero, nada, a form of scientific mass hysteria by true believers of the Carbon Dioxide religion desperate to clutch at straws so they can take money from taxation by false pretences.and con the public.
Do you gather that I am not very impressed by your comment….:0)
LazyTeenager says:
December 27, 2012 at 2:39 am
“Gail Coombs says
I doubt John Brookes, Icarus, Mike, LazyTeenager or JoBrighton would really enjoy following the north end of a south facing mule while trying to keep a plow digging in and the &*#(@% mule moving in a straight line.
————
You are right about that. Its why I am arguing with you.”
Why don’t you warmists just occupy some wasteland and demonstrate to us how easy it is to build up a civilisation using the solar panels and wind turbines you can build using no raw materials nor fossil fuels. We’ll follow your glorious example as soon as you have managed to maintain a bureaucratic class this way that devours half your output.
LazyTeenager says: @ December 27, 2012 at 3:01 am
Gail Coombs says
ROTFLMAO, that is rich coming from someone who wants to steal the inheritance of western culture from the ENTIRE WORLD!
————
Wow!!! another WUWT-er whose omniscience extends to mind reading….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Not mind reading just observing the cold hard facts.
1. You have been on WUWT pedaling CAGW. Plenty of evidence right on this thread.
2. The EU has stated the goal:
3. Australia is falling in line with the EU
4. New Zealand aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.
5. The USA falling in line if Obama gets his way.
The only Western Country who has not agreed to or is not working on this suicide pact is Canada
The rest of the world is not so dumb. In China there is 2,000 – The number of coal-fired power plants located in China. (One new power plant goes into operation every 4 to 7 days in China). and India is poised to contend with China as the globe’s top consumer of coal, with 455 power plants preparing to come online
6. More than 1,000 New Coal Plants Planned Worldwide
World Bank Graph
Obama has already made it clear he WILL shut down all the coal plants in the USA. Obama Makes Good on Promise to Bankrupt the Coal Industry and it is already happening In 2000, the country got 52 percent of its electricity from coal. In 2010, that dropped to 45 percent but that does NOT mean that US coal will not be mined and burned. One Tokyo shipping company, Daiichi Chuo Kisen Kaisha, says that U.S. coal exports could double in the next three or four years. In Washington state, coal companies are proposing two large export terminals that would help ship tens of millions of tons of coal from the Powder River Basin to countries like China.
What is worrying is that the coal plants are closing much faster than anticipated by the EPA. EPA calculated that only 9.5 GW of electrical generating capacity would close as a result of its rules. But the reality is that over 35 GW of power generating capacity will likely close—over three times the amount predicted by EPA modeling. Worse, as utilities continue to assess how to comply with EPA’s finalized Utility MACT rule and CSAPR, there will likely be further plant closure announcements in the coming weeks and months. This also means the rate paid for energy is skyrocketing. PJM Interconnection held its Future Capacity Auction for 2014/2015, the first to incorporate Utility MACT requirements. During that Auction, future capacity prices in the RTO increased by an incredible 350 percent.
After the World Trade Agreement and Clinton’s bring China into the WTO, US jobs walked. Growing U.S. trade deficit with China cost more than 2.7 million jobs between 2001 and 2011, with job losses in every state,… over 2.1 million of which (76.9 percent) were in manufacturing. These lost manufacturing jobs account for more than half of all U.S. manufacturing jobs lost or displaced between 2001 and 2011. Competition with third world workers has driven down wages for workers in U.S. The affected population includes essentially all workers with less than a four-year college degree—roughly 70 percent of the workforce,… for a typical full-time median-wage earner, earnings losses due to globalization totaled approximately $1,400 per year as of 2006 (Bivens 2008a). For a typical household with two earners, the annual cost is more than $2,500
Despite the government fudging the numbers, the real US unemployment figures are around 23% and have risen slightly. The top five employers in the USA are the Federal Government, Walmart, Kelly temps, McDonald’s and UPS. In other words, bureaucratic and office drones, clerks and burger flippers NONE of WHOM CREATE WEALTH or TRADE GOODS!
There are only three methods of creating wealth Mining, Forestry/Agriculture or Manufacturing. All three need energy whether it is from the historic methods of slaves and animals or more modern methods such as coal/nuclear/hydro powered electrical plants.
Take away the methods of providing RELIABLE and CHEAP power and you mortally cripple the country in its competition with other countries.
Q.E.D.
e) The story is a parable about dishonesty for glory, their “sin” was not about whether or not they gave to the church but we’re attempting to gain accolades dishonestly. If they would have said we’re selling this land and giving 1/1000th to the church then that’d been ok.
Ah, so the correct answer is a) (a deliberate lie, a.k.a. “a parable”) then? And of course we all agree that the proper punishment for any sort of dishonesty (whether or not it involves you own property, your own choices, hedging your bets, seeking “glory” that somehow isn’t mentioned in the text) is death. The punishment for everything in the Bible is death, often accompanied with a lot of suffering.
I would fondly commend to you:
5:11 And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.
as well. I would argue that this was the only point of the parable. Not about gaining accolades dishonestly, not about lying about how much they were giving (it’s their money, and they can lie if they want to). It was all about the fear.
BTW, I’m certain that you are familiar with Mark:
4:11 And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:
4:12 That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.
Mark tells his apostles that he preaches in parables (rather than speaking plainly) so that they will not be converted or forgiven. Thanks, Jesus! Only those who get the secret decoder ring for parables are going to be forgiven, and God predestines this as a “gift” so why worry?
You, sir, are clearly an advocate of Hermeneutics and Exegesis, the process of constructive cognitive dissonance wherein it is impossible to find any evidence that the Bible is not correct in the Bible because if you find it, you just interpret it away! Apologetics R Us.
But why? When I write a physics textbook, do I deliberately hide the reasoning process in a mountain of first and second century metaphor? Do I sit around with my TAs and say to them “unto you it is given to understand the mystery of physics, but I’m going into the classroom and tell them that force is rather like a carrot just to confuse the hell out of them so that I can flunk everybody that isn’t predestined to pass by virtue of having learned F = ma in some other more reasonably taught class”?
Why do I need you, for example, to “correctly” interpret Acts 5 1-10 for me? It isn’t presented as a parable — it is presented in Acts of the Apostles, a history. Is the whole thing just a bunch of parables, so that none of it really happened? Where are the labels that let you identify the parables and differentiate them from the presumed matters of fact, like locks miraculously opening and Peter raising people from the dead and or the people being factually and actually filled with fear by a fearsome story told as fact — er, sorry, threatening lie, that is, a parable?
Could it be that you read a story, decide whether or not it portrays the actors in the light you would like them to have because you’ve already concluded that e.g. Luke and Peter are honest and godly apostles and you already have a pretty good idea of what is good and what is bad, and if it portrays Luke and/or Peter and/or God as being clearly bad, you make up anything you like to justify your continuing belief by rejecting this as negative evidence? Welcome to the world of Cognitive Dissonance. And thus it always ends. One cannot argue with a Christian, because they have an infinite well of Cognitive Dissonance with which to defend their beliefs; nothing is capable of falsifying them or even counting as evidence against them!
Matthew and Luke disagree concerning the birthday of Jesus by 15 years and the wrong Herod? Just the sort of variation of in the story one expects from different witnesses, no problem. I claim that I witnessed the murder on Tuesday, you claim that you witnessed the same murder on two weeks earlier on a Sunday, this makes us the jury more certain that there was an actual murder because the supposed eyewitnesses disagree. Wow. If they actually agreed about something like this, that would be very suspicious.
I actually agree quite a bit with Bart Ehrman, but unlike him I realize we have the advantage of science to help us determine the proper way to read any particular part of the Bible and determine what are insertions, parables, and opinions. For example whenever a story ends with “and that’s why we have XYZ” its probably a myth, whether it’s in the Bible or not. Also, one should look out for gnostic phrasing in the Gospels, especially John.
Again, the “science” you take advantage of explains the similarity between the synoptics as Matthew rewriting Mark to portray Jesus as a good Jew because Matthew was a good Jew, where Mark was a good Greek who didn’t even get gross features of the geography of Palestine correct and certainly never met Jesus, and Luke rewriting Mark yet again and completely changing the character of Jesus along the way, and unknown second century apologetics rewriting Mark itself to add the bit at the end about the resurrection as the original (sorry, “the oldest copies” since who knows how the original ended) ended with the empty tomb, the last 16 verses of Mark were missing.
Now if three non-eyewitnesses A, B and C all tell the same story because of collusion, because B and C basically copied but embellished A, does that reduce our belief that the witnesses are reliable? Are we getting three witnesses or one? Are we getting the actual words of that witness, or the heavily edited words given to the jury by the DA, who has a strong interest in the case being decided a certain way?
John, of course, is the odd one out, but John disagrees with all three synoptics from top to bottom, a fact that never seems to bother anyone. Different history, different time, different Jesus, different dates, different conclusions, different miracles. Almost as if they are describing a different person, or a second century mixture of several people. What day of the week was Jesus crucified on? You won’t learn the answer from the Bible. But you can make up any answer that is convenient to you, and you can find something to support nearly any assertion — God loves slavery, God hates slavery. Take your pick. Jesus promised to return in the lifetime of his followers to usher in the kingdom of heaven — Jesus said he’d come back whenever, don’t wait up for me, like a thief in the night (and with a lot of teeth-gnashing and wailing, just you watch). It can’t be falsified, it is slipperier than the Mayan Apocalypse.
At least the Mayans had the good grace to give us a specific date so we could just wait until that date (last week) and when it passed go “Wow, looks like the Mayan Apocalypse was a false proposition!” and move on. The authors of the Bible, on the other hand, were kind enough to hedge their bets to the point where its apocalypse cannot ever be falsified — if it hasn’t already been falsified by at least nineteen centuries:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/says_about/end.html
Of course this is all good for nothing but a belly laugh to you, because if the Bible prophecies A, B and C (which are not the same thing) and A and B are proven false by events, there is always C! And C is — fortunately — written in a way that cannot ever be disproven. The Sun could be burning out and the distant descendants of Christianity will still be arguing that this, at last, is the End Times foretold by at least those books in the Bible written when it was already pretty clear that Jesus wasn’t coming back anytime soon, in spite of how he was quoted in the actual Gospels.
And in a few billion years if not sooner and from other events, I’d even agree!
rgb
Sorry, I meant “Jesus told his apostles in Mark”.
Wow!!! another WUWT-er whose omniscience extends to mind reading. You got me dead to right there Gail. My entire evil purpose is to obliterate western civilization. Hee-hee-hee he says raising his little pinkey to the side of his grinning lips.
But (given that the Mayans were wrong) does it involve sharks with frickin’ laser beams? I gotta know…
rgb said:
“The more I look, the more I’m convinced that it is a damn bloody hard problem and that ANYONE claiming to have some sort of knowledge of where the climate is going based on any of the prevailing species of applied numerology is likely to be mistaken in their knowledge even if they choose the right direction by chance.”
Rightly so, as it requires applied astronomy. The technique maps short term solar changes that drives temperature and teleconnection changes at near daily scales. At this scale, we get not only highly accurate, but also deterministic weather forecasts at a great distance ahead, and a far more meaningful understanding of climatic impacts, as from knowing in which months the deviations will occur, we can gauge the hydrological impacts too.
rgbatduke says:
December 27, 2012 at 6:34 am
….Very good point indeed. A lot of this metaphor can actually be made quantitative, I think, withing the context of a generalized Langevin (or master) equation approach to the dynamical equilibrium. I’ll have to think about it some more.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Oh what a lovely ‘sound’ that is.
An excellent scientific paper in the making I hope.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
December 27, 2012 at 7:46 am
I am delighted to make Professor Brown’s acquaintance, and I very much hope that he and others here who lurk behind pseudonyms …
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dr. Brown originally used his full name. It is only lately he has shortened it. That is why us WUWT addicts know who he is at a glance.
Monckton
“their belief in CACA is no more Popper-falsifiable than my belief in Christianity”
What? Stronger greenhouse effect would decrease the outgoing LW at TOA so you just go and measure the OLR, and hey, it’s been done since 1985 and oops! it failed the test. Increased instead of decreased. http://virakkraft.com/OLR.png
OLR follows surface temperature, i.e. it is not ghg-driven.
rgbatduke:
Thank you for taking the time to reply. Earlier in this thread, I pointed out that there is an exception to the rule that there is a multiplicity of priors. It turns out that this exception supports a complete solution to the problem of induction. This was shown by Ronald Christensen and colleagues of his, including me, circa 1975. Christensen calls the solution that he found “entropy minimax.”
The exception occurs in an experiment that is a sequence of Bernoulli trials. In a single trial of an experiment, it is a fact that the relative frequency with which a specified outcome will be observed will be 0 or 1. In two trials, the relative frequency will be 0 or 1/2 or 1. In N trials, the relative frequency will be 0 or 1/N or 2/N or…1. Note that the experiment partitions the interval between 0 and 1 into subintervals and that each such subinterval is of length 1/N. Each relative frequency possibility is a way in which the relative frequency can occur.
Now, let N increase without limit. The relative frequency becomes known as the “limiting relative frequency.”
Suppose that we have not conducted the experiment but wish to infer the limiting relative frequency. We can realize our wish through invocation of the principle of entropy maximization. In accordance with this principle, we maximize the entropy of the N+1 ways in which the relative frequency can occur. Maximization of the entropy assigns equal numerical values to the probabilities of the various ways in which the outcome can occurred.
Associated with each probability value is a probability density value that is the probability value divided by 1/N. Note that the probability density is uniform. We have constructed a uniform probability density function and it is unique.In the construction of a posterior PDF, this PDF may be placed in the role which is called an “uninformative prior” without violation of the law of non-contradiction in view of the uniqueness.
Climatologists use Bayesian parameter estimation with uninformative prior PDFs in extracting posterior PDFs over the equilibrium climate sensitivity (TECS) from global temperature time series. AR4 explains that a uniform prior PDF is often used but this choice is arbitrary, for uninformative prior PDFs are of infinite number. Each uninformative prior PDF over TECS generates a different posterior PDF over TECS with consequential violation of the law of non-contradiction.
DirkH says:
December 27, 2012 at 8:31 am
….Why don’t you warmists just occupy some wasteland and demonstrate to us how easy it is to build up a civilisation using the solar panels and wind turbines you can build using no raw materials nor fossil fuels. We’ll follow your glorious example as soon as you have managed to maintain a bureaucratic class this way that devours half your output.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Slight correction it is more like ~ 70 to 80% of our output. Don’t forget the 151 taxes on a simple loaf of bread that makes up more than half it’s cost. (And that was in the 1980’s) link
If citizens had to fork over the entire amount on April 15th there would be open rebellion on April 16th.
My rough calculation is about 25% of those of working age are supporting everyone else if you include the salaries for bureaucrats, government linked jobs, unemployed…. It is darn frightening and Obama is Hades Bent on making it MUCH MUCH worse.
Some people may be interested in Hugh Ross’ site at
http://www.reasons.org/about/our-creation-model-approach
Their belief:
“We believe God’s two revelations (Scripture and nature) will agree when properly interpreted. When apparent contradictions arise, we reexamine the data—both biblical and scientific—recognizing that our understanding is incomplete. Sometimes the scientific data seems an unclear or awkward fit with the biblical data. But we see such instances as an opportunity to study both of God’s revelations more deeply.”
About Hugh Ross:
“With the help of a provincial scholarship and a National Research Council (NRC) of Canada fellowship, he completed his undergraduate degree in physics (University of British Columbia) and graduate degrees in astronomy (University of Toronto). The NRC also sent him to the United States for postdoctoral studies. At Caltech he researched quasi-stellar objects, or “quasars,” some of the most distant and ancient objects in the universe.
Not all of Hugh’s discoveries involved astrophysics. Prompted by curiosity, he studied the world’s religions and “holy books” and found only one book that proved scientifically and historically accurate: the Bible. Hugh started at religious “ground zero” and through scientific and historical reality-testing became convinced that the Bible is truly the Word of God! When he went on to describe for others his journey to faith in Jesus Christ, he was surprised to discover how many people believed or disbelieved without checking the evidence.”
Someone check the time stamps on its post, could be it post on paid time.
Could be an infraction of some sort.
rgbatduke says, December 26, 2012 at 10:24 pm: “I am a physicist […]On WUWT, I tend to police the physics …”
==========================================================
As far as I can see it, on WUWT you distort physics thus supporting, consciously or not, an anti-human agenda, and you use the opportunity also to promote such radical views as “the US should have fought on the side of the North-Vietnamese communists”.
Or look at this one: “It contains horror stories of genocidal femicidal infanticidal murder and open robbery and rape that at a level completely consistent with Hit*er’s acts of genocide and robbery in World War II — carried out by Moses”. I do not see why anyone who is not an anti-Semite would make such a comparison.
(This is getting too far off topic.)
Some people may be interested in Hugh Ross’ site at
http://www.reasons.org/about/our-creation-model-approach
ROTFL. Seriously.
Cognitive Dissonance, they name is legion…
rgb
I got here very late. Lots of talk about the Bible. I used to feel obligated to get into “verse wars” with those who didn’t believe it and used verses, usually with a bit of a twist, to just argue about it. I don’t get into verse wars anymore.
(Amplified Bible) 1Co 2:14 But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him; and he is incapable of knowing them [of progressively recognizing, understanding, and becoming better acquainted with them] because they are spiritually discerned and estimated and appreciated.
I don’t mean that and I’m not directing that as a “put down” to anybody. But until someone accepts that there is something greater than they are and that they need that something, then they are left with only what they can perceive with the 5 senses. Spiritual matters are beyond the 5 senses.
One other thing, people tend to judge God by human standards. It’s the other way around. God didn’t and doesn’t owe Man anything. But one of His qualities is love and another is that He is just. That’s why, even though he wasn’t born Dec. 25, I’m thankful that God gave His only begotten son to satisfy the “legal” requirement none of us could pay for ourselves. (Read Romans 5 & 6 sometime.)
rgbatduke says
quote
On WUWT, I tend to police the physics and to a lesser extent the statistical validity of the discussion,
unquote
Any chance you could extend your remit? Please check
http://marinas.com/view/inlet/1668_Beaufort_Harbor_Inlet_NC_United_States
and admire the second image. Do you see it yet?
JF
Monckton of Brenchley says:December 27, 2012 at 7:46 am
quote
I am delighted to make Professor Brown’s acquaintance…[]
unquote
My lord,
While I do not approve of Dr Brown’s habit of making /ex cathedra/ statements and then refusing to engage with any contrary views, I find that even in his case the best policy is politeness — even, if necessary, excessive politeness. It sometimes works: on Open Mind (possibly the most inappropriately-named blog on the web) I managed to get Tamino to calculate the CO2 forcings for the 1910 to 1940 and 1970 to 2000 warming periods. The latter was 8 times the former, but he would not then engage in any discussion of the curious fact that the two periods warmed in an identical fashion.
It would be nice if Dr Brown could admit error, but that might be asking too much, for even when he states that he has never seen an oil/surfactant smoothed surface on the coast of North Carolina and I post pictures showing just such a phenomenon, he simply ignores the facts so that he can adhere to his pre-prepared world view. This attitude would be understandable in a layman, but is reprehensible in someone claiming to ‘police the physics’. Still, slowly slowly catchee monkey. He’ll look at
http://marinas.com/view/inlet/1668_Beaufort_Harbor_Inlet_NC_United_States
in the end and either mentally suppress the second image or suffer a change of heart. In the meantime there is no need to be rude. Think of it as educating a stubborn little boy.
JF
@ rgbatduke
On your Treatise on religion, I have only just begun (my wife “made” me take her to a Japanese steakhouse for lunch and then shopping), but I promise to read it in its entirety. Sadly though, I’m not impressed with what I’ve read so far.
I don’t agree with one of your early premises, not only do I not know the nature of God, I doubt it’s knowable.
”Vedantic Hinduism is organized monistic pandeism and acknowledges up front that its scriptures aremyths and legends to be mined for parabolic insight, not “divinely inspired truth””
I guess you’ve never heard the old Jewish saying (paraphrasing): “The Scriptures are True, and some of them may have actually happened.”
I suggest something can be both a myth and True.
“We begin at the beginning, with Genesis, a book common to all the Abrahamic faiths, a book that is essential to the rationale of salvation put forth in Christianity”
Genesis essential? Since when? Nobody told me. The Bible as we know it is a construct of the Catholic Church.
Ok enough exact quoting; suffice it to say you tear apart the story of a literal reading of Noah. That’s new. Imagine you’re back in high school and you did a similar critic of “Animal Farm”, would your teacher not have asked something like did you not get it wasn’t really about a farm? And yes there are clues in the scriptures that Noah isn’t to be taken literally. It mentions Nephilim being around in those days and afterward, yet no mention of Nephilim on board the ark. Hmmm. How’d that happen? Perhaps it’s not literal. From a satellite view of Noah: There was a great flood that greatly reduced human population at a time in human history when there were similar creatures as humans walking the Earth that weren’t human. From a satellite view from science: There was a great volcanic eruption that greatly reduced human population at a time in human history when other hominids were also present. Hmmm. Sounds pretty similar. Wonder if there was even a word for volcanic eruption in 3000 BC Hebrew. I can only imagine what wonders could be unlocked from the Bible if an intellect such as yourself read it like it was a great literary work instead of reading it like a science book gone astray.
Going back to Acts, it’s clear from the text that the couple conspired to gain the same fame the preceding couple had received by selling land and giving all the proceeds to the church but without actually giving the money they claimed to be giving as a percentage of proceeds. I agree that there have been insertions/interpretations for the purpose of political control by instilling fear, unfortunate indeed.
On the gospel of John, well, the modern comparison IMO would be an IPCC report. Hardly a glowing review, I know. John I’m afraid was written with a political objective in mind.
On the inconsistencies of the gospels, remember that CNN wasn’t on the scene and the gospels as we see them were put together from scraps of earlier writings and vetted through an IPCC like Catholic Church. For example, the gospel of Mathew was derived from “The Passion” which ended without even a resurrection. To continue your analogy we both remember different days the murder took place but we’re both being asked about it 20 years after the occurrence, so yes not surprising at all that we could both be credibly asserting we witnessed a murder but mistaken on which day 20 years ago we witnessed it.
On the end of the world, I’m a Preterist. The end of the (Temple Judaism) world has already happened. IMO, there are no Biblical predictions to wait for save the one about mankind making his nest among the stars. That’s the one I’m sure we agree needs to happen over the next few tens of thousands of years or so just in case something really bad happens to this planet. IMO, Revelations is not just symbolic; it’s in code, a micro bible written in disguise from oppressors (pre-Catholic Church rise to dominance). A critical piece of evidence: the number of Nero’s name is 666 or 661 depending upon which source language version of Revelation you’re reading.
Consider for a moment that I realize you outmatch me on IQ by a wide margin such that entering a contrary position with someone of your intellect is rather intimidating and I wouldn’t have if not for what I believe to be a rational conclusion from a whole lot of research. No, I’m not saying I can prove God exists or that my conclusion is the only possible rational conclusion.
I’m sure we’ve worn out the OT welcome on this one: I suggest a change of venue.
so the spiritual masochism of cagw and co2 atavism is irrational because the invisible forces to which they attribute supernatural powers aren’t abrahamic?
why am i not laughing at the laughing stock?
Christopher says
Much of this has been explained to “Lazy Teenager” before. However he remains not merely incorrigible but irredentist. Since he is furtively pseudonymous, one is entitled to speculate on whether he is one of those who are paid to introduce deliberate obfuscations into discussions such as this, in the hope of keeping the global-warming profiteers’ gravy train rolling just a little longer before it tips into the gulch. And, if he will not use his real name on his postings, no protestations by him to the contrary will carry any weight.
————
You are an expert debater Christopher. I can do a Google and find a nice listing of all the tricks. So I find your application of these things very educational.
I also get a little frisson of self-importance when a real live Lord has a go at ridiculing me. Is this one of those ad hominem attacks you keep latinising on about?
Alexandriu Doru says:
December 26, 2012 at 1:33 pm
…. warming
Repeating something does not make it true and does not bear an argument.
You have not answered anything from my post.
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Nature/rapid.pdf
———–
Thanks E.E. Smith.
Haven’t read it yet but looks interesting. Not unexpected though.
The interesting questions though are:
1. What climate sensitivity does this modelling express?
2. What degree of positive feedback is needed to cause the climate to flip from one state to the other at the observed speed?
What Christopher doesn’t want to accept is that all of the rich behavior expressed by the climate including rapid transitions from one one leg of a bistable state to another, supposed oscillations and chaotic behavior require fairly high gain/climate sensitivity and lashings of positive feedback.
The only question is what is the minimum necessary.
ha ha – see, Lazy – you ARE good for somethihg.
you’ve got a niche and you know how to scratch it!
fact is, without some kind of kicking dog, a title such as ‘lord’ would have the same significance as calling oneself ‘reverend doctor’ in the ghetto- i call it ‘the mascara mustache effect’, because it merely reveals the pretensions of the individual and his inadequate fakery.
Climatologists use Bayesian parameter estimation with uninformative prior PDFs in extracting posterior PDFs over the equilibrium climate sensitivity (TECS) from global temperature time series. AR4 explains that a uniform prior PDF is often used but this choice is arbitrary, for uninformative prior PDFs are of infinite number. Each uninformative prior PDF over TECS generates a different posterior PDF over TECS with consequential violation of the law of non-contradiction.
Sure.
I noted that they were claiming to use Bayesian methods to estimate their probabilities (which could be a good thing, if done well) but haven’t read into what they actually do in any detail.
rgb
Gunga Din says:
December 27, 2012 at 2:01 pm
I got here very late. Lots of talk about the Bible. I used to feel obligated to get into “verse wars” with those who didn’t believe it and used verses, usually with a bit of a twist, to just argue about it. I don’t get into verse wars anymore.
He he, yes indeed an interesting parallel-thread-line being created here. Maybe Anthony could elevate at a certain time one comment to a post to allow for the discussion to be channelled on a separate thread, but that is an entirely different discussion, and people could get emotionally involved, we have enough religion in climate change already even without involving official religions.
Monckton of Brenchley says: December 25, 2012 at 4:07 pm: “The argumentum ad hominem – the logical fallacy of attacking the man and not his argument – is a shoddy sub-species of the argumentum ad ignorationem elenchi, the fallacy of introducing an extraneous consideration or red herring to the discussion, demonstrating that one is ignorant of the manner of conducting a rational argument, and implying that one is ignorant of its matter as well.”
Monckton of Brenchley says: “The pseudonymous “Icarus62””; “The pseudonymous “lgl””; “The pseudonymous “Ratduke””; “The pseudonymous “Lazy Teenager””; “he and others here who lurk behind pseudonyms”; “Pseudonyms, though, are fair game, indicating an unwillingness – for whatever reason – to back up one’s opinions with one’s own name”
===============================================================
Yeah, about that. Referring to people as “pseudonymous” is that very ad hominem, attacking the man and not his argument. Criticising ad hominem and using it at the same time is even worse.
About “back up one’s opinions with one’s own name”, I do not see, how a name can back up an opinion in a scientific debate. Considering a name important is a logical fallacy called “appeal to authority” (argumentum ad verecundiam). If a person is right, Christopher, it does not matter what his name is. Besides, some people have good reasons to not tell the “climate rats” their real names. It is different, however, if a person supports the main “climate rats” concept about “man made global warming”, this person should not be afraid of them, in the first place because they have no reason to be afraid of him/her.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/25/bethlehem-and-the-rat-hole-problem/#comment-1182949
Lord Monckton:
Thanks and you’re welcome.
Likely you have already seen the following before, but, just in case, some other info I’ve found exceptionally helpful is looking at arctic ice as an annual average instead of the overhyped single month post-storm.
As an annual average, seen in http://www.webcitation.org/6AKKakUIo (which was up on the U.K. government site before deletion from its original host), the last couple years had an average arctic ice extent far more similar to the mid-1990s than one would guess from common misleading reports.
Such is particularly striking in combination with how http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif illustrates that the arctic was not warmer in the mid-1990s than in the late 1930s.
Figures 2 and 3 in http://nwpi.krc.karelia.ru/e/climas/Ice/Ice_no_sat/XX_Arctic.htm fit with the preceding, by showing how arctic ice extent in the 1990s was not very exceptional at all compared to the years near 1940.
In a way, the preceding is partially off-topic, including since arctic temperatures are not the same as global temperatures. However, the arctic is the capstone of CAGW claims, and hyping arctic ice decline is one of the top alarmist methods to dispute or distract from how there has been nil net additional global temperature rise in about a decade-and-a-half.
Smoothed HadCRUT3 says that the lack of warming only existed for
about 11 years:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/
Apply that smoothing to UAH, and the lack of warming was at-most for
12 years.
Greg House writes, “Criticising ad hominem and using it at the same time is even worse.”
An ad hominem attack—a form of rudeness—is very different from an ad hominem argument—a logical fallacy. Supposedly clever men too often confound the two; they should not be confounded. If I were to suggest, for instance, that far too many alleged journalists covering “climate science” are mendacious, proctoleichous propagandists, that would be contumelious (though, I submit, true) invective—an ad hominem—which does not necessarily invalidate any argument I might be making; if I were to say, however, that one can’t believe a single thing they say because they’re all willfully mischievous activists, that—an argumentum ad hominem—whether true or not, would invalidate the argument.
On pseudonyms, I don’t hide my real name, Informalthough some people, mirabile dictu, believe that my name is a pseudonym.
Readers might be interested in my previous posts where I pointed out that when you have a thermal emitter, the atmosphere, which acts as if it is a near black body in the GHG bands, in radiative thermal equilibrium with the near black body Earth’s surface, there is mutual annihilation of many of the GHG bands, the 15 micron CO2 band in particular.
I was then taken to task, correctly, for not having followed through the mathematics relating to the incoherency of the opposing waves. I have now done so and it’s all quite easy. When you have two coherent emitters in opposite directions of the same wavelength, you get a standing wave. This can transmit no energy. Introduce incoherency and the amplitudes of the nodes can vary about the normal 2 times individual wave amplitude.
However, the node positions do not change. Add in a difference in the amplitudes and there will be a net energy transmission. This is well known to anyone involved in radiative heat transfer calculations where you subtract S-B2 from S-B1 to get the net heat transfer. By going to the wavelength dependent version, the Planck Irradiation Function, you see how this varies by wavelength.
Thus the idea in the Trenberth et. al. Energy budget that ‘back radiation’, the temperature signal in the EM spectrum that travels from the atmosphere, transfers energy to the Earth’s surface so that the temperature signal of the surface then transmits energy back to the atmosphere, is totally wrong. There is no significant CO2-AGW or positive feedback by the water cycle. There will be an incoherent standing wave pushing some energy into the atmosphere, but on average it’s oscillatory about zero for equal temperatures.
It’s time the CO2-AGW myth is put into its coffin. it cannot exist except as a minor effect.
The pseudonymous “Lazy Teenager” continues to display a vexatious ignorance of the elementary mathematics both of feedback amplification and of chaos.
He asserts, on no evidence, that what he loosely describes as “rapid transitions from one leg of a bi-stable state to another, supposed oscillations and chaotic behavior require fairly high gain/climate sensitivity and lashings of positive feedback”.
The Earth does not exhibit a “bi-stable state”. Over the past 750 Ma, always subject to the formidable uncertainties of paleoclimate reconstructions, it exhibits a mode of temperature approximately 12 K above the present, with occasional declines (Scotese, 1999; Zachos+, 2005).
Nor does the mere 3% variation either side of the long-term mean over the past 750 Ma require any positive feedback at all. Forcing alone over sufficient timescales is all that is required. The failure of temperature to fluctuate by more than 3% over geological time is altogether inconsistent with the very high net-positive feedback loop gains on the interval [0.42, 0.74] that are implicit in the models’ central climate-sensitivity estimates on the interval [2.0, 4.5] K per CO2 doubling (and that interval, incidentally, is “the climate sensitivity the models express”, to answer another of Lazy Teenager’s questions)..
One reason is that many of the feedbacks posited by the modelers are non-linear, so that over geological timescales the probability of climate states with a gain >1 approaches unity. The oscillations (not “supposed oscillations: only someone altogether ignorant of feedback amplification would use such a qualifier) that would then occur would be extremely violent, and would occur over various timescales including the very short term, at intervals of days or even hours. Yet no such violent and rapid oscillations either side of the singularity at a loop gain of unity are observed or inferred.
Furthermore, no feedback at all is required to cause bifurcations in the evolution of the climate object. Its chaotic behaviour – deterministic but non-periodic – is sufficient on its own to trigger such Sandy-like bifurcations, on all timescales. It is inherent in the mathematics of chaos (Lorenz, 1963; Giorgi, 2005) that bifurcations, which – to dispel yet another fundamental misconception under which “Lazy Teenager” appears to labor – are not necessarily the same thing as oscillations, are no less likely to occur when the perturbation of the initial value at some t0 of a parameter such as global mean surface temperature is infinitesimal than when it is substantial.
“Lazy Teenager”, instead of actually reading the literature on feedbacks or on chaos, characteristically adopts an aprioristic stance known to theologians as “invincible ignorance”.
Talking of which, Mr., House, having repeatedly made an ass of himself by denying, on no evidence, the elementary physics of radiative transfer in a fluid medium, now makes a further ass of himself by purporting to understand the elements of formal logic, of which he is manifestly ignorant.
He asserts, erroneously, that my pointing out that several commenters here hide behind pseudonyms is an instance of the argumentum ad hominem, that sub-species of ignoratio elenchi that irrelevantly attacks the man and not his argument. My drawing attention to the pseudonyms that are too often used here is neither irrelevant nor an attack. It is a relevant observation.
For one thing, It is easier to understand the often obscurantist arguments presented by some commenters if one has some idea of who they are and can refer to their published literature (if any) for clarification. Many of the commenters here would either be considerably more careful with their science or considerably more polite, or both, if they did not have the freedom to post here even when they hide behind pseudonyms.
For this reason, Mr.House’s further assertion, to the effect that in wanting to know who the pseudonymous commenters are I am guilty of the argumentum ad verecundiam, the fallacy of appeal to authority, is also without foundation. Much of the nonsense peddled by trolls on websites such as this only appears here at all because the trolls can skulk behind pseudonyms.
I suspect that the quality of the discussion would be vastly improved if all pseudonymous contributions were filtered out and deleted. Whether Mr. House shares my opinion on this matter or not, I am free to assert it, and to draw attention to it by the use of the word “pseudonymous”, without offending against any of the canons of formal logic, which Mr. House appears never to have studied – not that that has deterred him from imprudently attempting to pronounce upon it.
Lord Monckton: the 12 K extra temperature in the past was from higher lapse rate warming due to the denser past atmosphere. The CO2-religionists hate this argument.
E.M.Smith says: @ December 26, 2012 at 11:51 pm
I can say more, faster, in sign than in “mere words”….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
After riding/training horses since childhood, I find I am very very frustrated when I talk to people over the phone because I can not ‘read’ the body language that goes with the words.
I have never tried ‘bunnish’ but after ‘horse’, ‘dog’ or ‘cat’ is very easy.
In the meantime there is no need to be rude. Think of it as educating a stubborn little boy.
Well said, Julian! Rarely have I seen such a perfect juxtaposition of contrasts!
Here, I’ll freely admit that I got carried away on the anti-religion thing, but that is one of my buttons and it got pressed. Bear in mind that I did restrain myself, on the comeback, from addressing to Loud Monkeyton of Benchmark, or anything equally childish, simply because there isn’t any real point in reacting to nonsense. I have a far thicker skin than that, and if anything, respect Mr. Monckton’s views and efforts on my behalf with the powers that be. I do think — quite seriously — that he would be more effective if he scaled back the pointless sarcasm (as opposed to the kind with some sort of point) and presented his arguments somewhat more objectively, but I also understand his frustration since that sort of argument is nearly as fruitless as the other kind so why not have fun?
Dear Mr. West,
To you I apologize as well. As I said, one of my buttons. Although you are a Christian heretic, the word heretic means (of course) choice and while you are projecting your own internal sense of morality onto the Bible rather than vice versa, at least you have the sense to avoid turning the whole thing into a moral club backed by naked violence (which it all too often has been, at least since Nicaea as you note). That doesn’t make it true in any sense of the word, as a myth, a legend, or actual history — but I have met many good Christians (and indeed am related to and descended from them — my niece is a Methodist minister, and my grandfather was a Methodist tent revivalist in Missouri in the first half of the last century). I have also met good Muslims, good Hindus, many good Buddhists (it is actually moderately difficult to encounter a bad Buddhist to my experience) and many, many good atheists. My conclusion is that how good or bad a person is, while somewhat correlated with their belief system, is really much more a function of that person’s brain and experience than it is anything else, and having raised three sons I’m not sure which of the two is more important but I suspect brain. We have a lot less free will than we think we do.
My only suggestion to you, and to Mr. Monckton, and to others who hold religious beliefs is this. Think carefully about what it is best to believe. Not what you were raised to believe, not what everybody around you believes, but what it is best in a logically defensible sense to believe. Be brutally honest about it (this is where it is all too easy to fail, as we are by nature inclined to lie to ourselves — see Feynman’s Cargo Cult address online to get a feel for what I mean).
And with this I will retire and plague this thread no more…:-)
rgb
What Christopher doesn’t want to accept is that all of the rich behavior expressed by the climate including rapid transitions from one one leg of a bistable state to another, supposed oscillations and chaotic behavior require fairly high gain/climate sensitivity and lashings of positive feedback.
Well, OK, I’ll plague it just one last time.:-)
LT, what you don’t seem to realize is that dynamical bistable behavior (as opposed to the sort of static bistability that occurs in ferromagnetism) requires a balance of positive and negative feedback to occur, and that when one is in (say) the upper branch of a bistable system that branch is defined by the cancellation of the negative feedback and positive feedback.
We could go on about cubics and coupled ODEs (and I would be happy to, having spent a decade or so studying this) at your convenience. That’s what EM and I are discussing. The uphill “way is closed” from the evidence of the historical data. CO_2 might tunnel out a completely new dynamical profile, but there is no a priori reason to expect it.
rgb
Donald L. Klipstein says:
December 27, 2012 at 10:07 pm
Smoothed HadCRUT3 says that the lack of warming only existed for about 11 years:
For HadCRUT3, the slope is 0 (-0.000387163 per year) since May 1997 or 15 years, 7 months (goes to November). See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.33/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.33/trend
RGBatDuke says:
”Think carefully about what it is best to believe.”
I think that’s true for any subject or issue; whether it be climate, religion, paleontology, or whatever. I know we talk about science not being about belief but when it comes right down to the individual decisions have to be made regarding particulars like weighting of evidence. These decisions are inherently subjective and open to individual point of view.
I am most definitely a heretic. Climate Heretic. Christian Heretic.
If you are not personally committed to literal interpretation of the Bible, I highly recommend reading RGB’s Theory on God. It has an amusing surprise in the middle that I won’t spoil but will say made me literally LOL. Also, the meat of it is an interesting concept and includes a nice summary of religions. There is a Biblical interpretation school of thought that would align quite easily with his theory. It is an interpretation scheme that I have not personally excluded but rather have been on the fence for several years on the central question involved. (Best not to get into that here.)
@RGB
No need for an apology, it takes two to tango as the saying goes.
The text surrounding your core theory could stand some improvement including a model that does align with Judeo-Christian “Sacred Texts”. I have not just read but studied and examined ALL the gospels and scriptures available (not just the ones in the Bible), the great philosophers’ apologetics and critiques, and various interpretation schemes. I have a decent understanding and have at least read the “Sacred Texts” of many other religions including the Quran (yawn ;)). If I can help just say the word.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
December 25, 2012 at 11:40 am
An example. During the Falklands conflict, British troops were trying to dislodge superior Argentinian forces from a strategically-crucial redoubt at Goose Green. H. Jones, the gung-ho, lead-from-the-front British commander on the spot, made the same mistake Wellington had made at Talavera: he led several unsuccessful uphill charges against enemy forces that had the advantage not only of height but also of ability to see into dead ground between them and the Brits. Jones and many of his men were killed.
His no. 2 found himself unexpectedly in command and decided to pray. (Did I say it was Christmas?) The answer came to him at once and he told his sparky to patch him through to the Argentinian commander.
“Now, look here, old boy,” he said in his most authoritative, cut-glass, public-school-and-Sandhurst drawl, “We both know how this is going to end. So what I’m going to suggest is this. You all lay down your arms like good chaps and come out with your hands up, and I’ll see to it that you get properly fed and watered, your wounded treated, and safe passage back to Argentina on the first boat. How about that?”
“Si, señor!” And, to everyone’s astonishment, 1500 Argentinians found they had surrendered to 200 Brits.
You had better hope that no one from 2 Para reads this nonsense! The most egregious error being your dating it at Christmas, actually the battle took place on the 28th May.
The actual surrender document was as follows:
“MILITARY OPTIONS
We have sent a PW to you under a white flag of truce to convey the following military options:
1. That you unconditionally surrender your force to us by leaving the township, forming up in a military manner, removing your helmets and laying down your weapons. You will give prior notice of this intention by returning the PW under a white flag with him briefed as to the formalities by no later than 0830 hrs local time.
2. You refuse in the first case to surrender and take the inevitable consequences. You will give prior notice of this intention by returning the PW without his flag (although his neutrality will be respected) no later than 0830 hrs local time.
3. In the event and in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Geneva Convention and Laws of War you will be held responsible for the fate of any civilians in Darwin and Goose Green and we in accordance with these terms do give notice of our intention to bombard Darwin and Goose Green.
C KEEBLE
Commander of British Forces”
This document was presented after the fighting at Goose Green airfield several hours after the ‘redoubt’ which H. Jones had attacked had been captured and the Argentinian forces defending the airfield surrendered the following morning!
Deadman says, December 27, 2012 at 10:38 pm: “Greg House writes, “Criticising ad hominem and using it at the same time is even worse.”
An ad hominem attack—a form of rudeness—is very different from an ad hominem argument—a logical fallacy. Supposedly clever men too often confound the two; they should not be confounded. If I were to suggest, for instance, that far too many alleged journalists covering “climate science” are mendacious, proctoleichous propagandists, that would be contumelious (though, I submit, true) invective—an ad hominem—which does not necessarily invalidate any argument I might be making; if I were to say, however, that one can’t believe a single thing they say because they’re all willfully mischievous activists, that—an argumentum ad hominem—whether true or not, would invalidate the argument.
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Ad hominem is not strictly an argument at all, it is a tactic designed to score points by diminishing the opponent, in order to make the public pay less attention to what the opponent says, or sometimes to provoke an emotional reaction from the opponent, etc. .
Usually employed by bad guys.
Exception: if the opponent is trying to score points by appealing to his own authority (by claiming himself to be an “expert”, e.g.), it is reasonable to look into that claim and find out, that e.g. an “expert reviewer for the IPCC ” is just how the IPCC call the unpaid voluntary readers of their draft reports. Then it is not ad homeninim in the bad sense.
and . . . .
= = = = = =
rgbatduke,
Regards your admission that you over reacted to Monckton concerning his religious views, I respect you for admitting that. I understand it is frustrating to pursue rational discussion with people of belief based views, e.g., religion. I understand the frustration because I am a person who does not find any rational basis for the belief in supernaturalism and superstition which I consider all religion to be. Patience and cold discourse is needed in rational discussion with people who believe the positions of religion. Having said that, science can be easily and rationally separated from religious belief . . . . even when, as is often the case, both occur in the same person.
Regards your observations about Popper’s falsifiability and [Logical] Positivist’s verifiability, Popper’s falsifiability has suffered the same fate as the Positivist’s verifiability. They both are logically contradicted within their own conception. Therefore both conceptions are of little scientific value.
In the early 1970’s I found an excellent treatment the logical problems in both the verifiability concept(s) of Logical Positivism and also in the falsifiability concept(s) of Popper. The treatment is in the book ‘Reason and Analysis’ by Brand Blanshard (Open Court Publishing Co, 1962/1964).
rgb, hope you have a happy holiday season.
John
Monckton of Brenchley says:
December 25, 2012 at 3:17 pm
Finally, since Ratduke seems to think today is Newton’s birthday, I shall be as picky with him as he has been with me on the matter of birthdays. As a result of the adjustment to the calendar in the 17th century, Newton turns out to have been born on January 4, 1643, not December 25, 1642. The deletion of 11 days from the calendar was not received kindly in all quarters: in Russia, peasants demonstrated under the slogan “Give us back our 11 days!” One imagines their descendants now write IPeCaC’s reports.
More historical errors. The deletion of 11 days was a result of an Act of Parliament in Britain in 1750, the peasants didn’t revolt, the “Give us back our 11 days!” arose from a placard in a Hogarth painting of an election scene! So Newton was born on Dec 25th.
The Russians didn’t adopt the new calendar until 1918, by which time 13 days were deleted.
“Popper’s falsifiability has suffered the same fate as the Positivist’s verifiability. They both are logically contradicted within their own conception.”
do you have an example of this you can post here?
“If all else fails, we can pray for them as He prayed looking down from the Cross on the world He had created.”
His Lordship is another Christian sceptic?
Now there’s and oxymoron.
Making that your final statement, M’ Lawd, in a supposedly scientific article, guts the whole essay.
“If all else fails, we can pray for them as He prayed looking down from the Cross on the world He had created.”
Moronic ending to a “scientific” article.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
December 26, 2012 at 4:58 am
And leading modelers writing for the NOAA, in its State of the Climate report for 2008, made it quite clear that the simulations rule out, to 95% confidence, intervals of 15 years or more without warming, and that an interval of that duration was needed to create a discrepancy between the models’ predictions and observed reality.
Actually they were more specific than that, they ran simulations without ENSO. Their results ruled out intervals of 15 years or more without warming in a temperature record from which the ENSO effects have been removed, i.e. ENSO adjusted data. So far there has been no discrepancy between those predictions and reality.
Could you just explain that in a little more depth, in slightly more agricultural terms?
Farmerbraun, looking out at the rain presently falling, in the middle of the twelfth cool wet summer since 1999, and having endured, in the same location, the predominantly hot, dry and frequently droughty summers between 1975 and 1998, could easily tend to the view that ENSO is climate , when viewed from the perspective of a single human life time. Mere milliseconds of course in the geological sense.
ENSO adjusted data surely can only be measured over > ~60 year time frames?
In the early 1970’s I found an excellent treatment the logical problems in both the verifiability concept(s) of Logical Positivism and also in the falsifiability concept(s) of Popper. The treatment is in the book ‘Reason and Analysis’ by Brand Blanshard (Open Court Publishing Co, 1962/1964).
for some small 
…;-)
Thanks for the reference, I’ll look for it. The history of LP (including Popper, who was part of the same anti-metaphysical group of philosophers) is interesting — there was a fair bit of interaction between Neurath and Frank and Carnap and Bohr (where Frank and Carnap, IIRC, were both trained in physics and philosophy). One could say that quantum mechanics had a strong influence on the development of LP, largely for mistaken reasons (remember, this was mid to late 30’s and QM was only about half “finished” at that point and there were only a handful of people who really understood that half).
Both verification and falsification as a basis for knowledge have some point, because we use both of them in everyday reasoning. However, they are also both part of a broader logic, the algebra of probability theory. George Boole had already shown (in a much neglected work on thought) that Laplace’s algebra of probability, properly developed, had what we would now call symbolic logic or Boolean logic — the logic of true/false analysis — as a limiting case. In practice, we use both falsification and verification as a criterion for knowledge, but in both cases in a probabilistic sense associated with plausible inference much more often than in any sort of Boolean sense.
Much of this goes all the way back to Laplace and Hume. You can drop a rock a thousand times and watch it fall down every time with an acceleration of g. While this experience does not verify a theory such as “rocks, dropped, fall down with acceleration g” because one cannot logically prove the hypothesis from the observation, only note an extended correlation, there are actually sound reasons to think that it is rather more likely that the rock, dropped the 1001st time, will fall down with acceleration g. Similarly, an observation on the 1001st time that the rock falls up, or floats, or falls with an acceleration g/2 doesn’t suffice to completely disprove the hypothesis that a rock, dropped, falls down with an acceleration g — it just makes it less likely that this will happen since you’ve observed a single rare exception in 1001 trials. Note that you haven’t “proven the hypothesis false” because it was never accepted as true in the first place — to say that it is true means that every rock ever dropped in the entire history of the Universe will fall down with acceleration g, and we can never verify this, any more than we can with certainty state that no falsification of e.g. mass-energy conservation has occurred ever in the history of the Universe, only that we haven’t observed one.
Well, observed one that lasted more than
Oops.
It wasn’t until 1946 that the correct axiomatic basis for the theory of knowledge as probable reason, the formal derivation of a theory of logical inference, was constructed by physicist Richard Cox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%27s_theorem
and expounded upon in considerable detail by E. T. Jaynes in the Mobil Lectures initially (in the 50’s) and much later in:
http://omega.albany.edu:8008/JaynesBook.html
Probability Theory, the Logic of Science, where the free/online book is the 1994 snapshot — I got my own snapshot, which received very widespread distribution in the physics community at least, back in the 80s after my graduate stat mech teacher, Richard Palmer, used Jaynes and Shannon’s Theorem as the axiomatic basis for statistical mechanics in physics.
Shannon’s theorem is a justly famous result on information redundancy and compressibility and introduces the concept of information entropy (which is trivially related to real entropy, hence the connection between Shannon’s theorem and stat mech). However, Cox’s result is more general and permits the trivial derivation of Shannon’s theorem as a special case (and stat mech as another special case, and Bayesian probability theory as a special normalization of the general case). Since it also precedes Shannon’s publication by two years, I usually advance it instead of Shannon’s theorem per se as the sound basis for a theory of practical empirical epistemology. Even this doesn’t do the result justice — its roots trace back through A Treatise on Probability by John Maynard Keynes (hence, IIRC, the notion of maximum entropy/ignorance) and back further still.
Its application is simple enough. Indeed, it in some sense is the direct practical application of Descartes program of systematic doubt, but with the doubt quantified and tied to both direct observations (which yield marginal probabilities, if you like) and a network of observation based and algebraic derived joint and conditional probabilities. Jaynes has numerous examples of how we use this reasoning in both our everyday lives and how it forms the proper basis for things like hypothesis testing and scientific reasoning in general.
Oh, one last reference (since I’ve written all of the above out — it is all explained and covered in a lot more detail in my book-in-writing, Axioms — David MacKay has written a mind-blowing book here:
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/itprnn/book.html
You can read it for free online or buy a hard copy — I did the latter as it is dense to read on screen and he deserves a reward for the hard work that went into it, but suit yourself. MacKay’s book is titled Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms (he’s a computational physicist, Cox was a physicists, Jaynes was a rather famous physicist, Shannon was a computer scientist who worked for Bell Labs back in the day when working for Bell Labs was more prestigious than a tenured professorship anywhere but — perhaps — three or four schools. I say perhaps, since one can walk down through an impressive list of Nobel Prizes (including Shannon’s) that came out of Bell Labs.
These guys were the real philosophers of the latter half of the 20th century, where Russell and Whitehead (and perhaps Godel, indirectly) were the real philosophers of the first half, and sadly the world still doesn’t appreciate (IMO) the monumental contribution they made to the theory of logic and knowledge.
It is in precisely this sense that I (gently, I hope) suggested that people honestly appraise their system of beliefs and try to choose the best one. Choosing the best one requires some actual work, and notions such as “best” imply an optimization process, an ordinal relationship, the notion that this is more/better equal/equivalent less/worse than that. These in turn require assumptions to be made — one cannot even define and understand the ordinal natural numbers without such notions and assumptions (look up the Peano axioms or power sets) — and one has to be careful to make one’s assumptions consistently in a way that is “Godel aware”, aware of the traps, temptations, and benefits of self-referential statements.
Here is a way one might analyze the dazzling array of religions. Suppose there are N of them, that they are mutually exclusive, and we’ll include in the list “none of the above are correct” (where N may not be known, but we can easily come up with a lower bound on N). Initially we might assume that we know nothing of the truth of any of these propositions. The principle of maximum ignorance/entropy would then suggest that the best we can do as an initial estimate of the probability that any of them are true is 1/N. This alone makes it unlikely that any particular religion in the list is true (assuming a large N) while at the same time one of them (including the possibility of the null hypothesis none of the above) is definitely true.
Note well — all names go into the hat! To quote Heinlein, it could turn out that Mumbo Jumbo, God of the Congo is the one true deity and all others are false! A priori we cannot prove one way or another, the best we can do is assess this possibility along with all of the others. So no fair restricting things only to “world religions”, or large denominations or branches or sects of major world religions. Personally I’d throw Cthulhu and the FSM in as well — if nothing else they can act as placeholders for the near-infinity of short lived cults and lost religions (you have to wait until later below to reject a religion based on the evidence that its God(s) were too slothful to maintain any worshippers).
Note well that if one applies empirical reason to this array of possibilities properly, it is not necessary that this initial estimate be optimal! A sound process will systematically converge on the best answer as evidence is accumulated. A poor initial estimate at worst makes this take longer. A useful metaphor might be a system of experiments to determine the probable weighting of a two-sided coin. You can start with a prior assumption of 50-50, 70-30, 100-0, or anything else you like, and then modify it in a Bayesian way as you accumulate observational data, and no matter where you start you’ll end up with a good (in fact the best given the priors) estimate of the coin’s weighting given the data and the priors. You can actually do this and watch the probabilities converge in R, BTW — you don’t even have to code it as it is a teaching example in a book on Bayesian Statistics in R.
One now has to decide what constitutes positive and negative “evidence” for the truth of any of the given religions. We might begin with consistency, since an inconsistent religion is a priori false, not empirically false (at least if you accept the rules of first order logic, which I would recommend or else I will prove that God is a Penguin:
http://www.coopertoons.com/merryhistory/biblestories/paulcolossalapostle/godisapenguin.html
— I can claim the original proof, BTW, note well at the bottom, although it is a joke demonstration of the importance of the Law of Contradiction and the problems with Godellian loops more than anything serious:-).
Of course, none of the religions with the possible exception of Buddhism (which isn’t really a religion, so perhaps we should exclude it) is particularly consistent if one takes them anything like literally, so one is thrust from the beginning into a Hermeneutic Haze that fuzzes out the contradictions. IMO one must charge the religion in some way for this fuzzing — lower its plausibility in some way proportional to how many contradictions one has to Exegesify “without contradiction” by means of broad or poetic interpretation of words that obviously mean something else entirely.
At the same time, one can strip out irrelevant information. Much of the Bible is a history, and the truth or falsehood of the history has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of the (postulated) religious principles in question. One might as well reduce those principles to simple statements, e.g. the Nicaean creed, the Eightfold Way and Four Noble Truths, whatever.
Then one has to compare the statements and claims that are essential to the religion in question to the real world, and apply brutal rules. If one tests one of those statements and they don’t pan out, you have to reduce your degree of provisional belief in the religion(s) that have that statement in common, and increase your degree of belief in all of the others that do not (to maintain normalization). Conversely, direct, reproducible positive evidence has to increase the degree of belief for all religions to which it pertains, decrease it in the rest.
This can force one to difficult decisions. For example, is it a postulate of your faith that “prayer works” in some measurable way? Risky business. Yet without something one can test, the “none of the above” (which goes up some with all null results that fail to provide direct evidence of divine action) will creep up steadily, or at the very least all of the religions will remain around 1/N, approximately zero, which is basically a de facto win for none of the above as well.
It also forces one to accept certain rules. At some point — and you’ll have to decide what that point is — twisting the words of scriptural verses (in any of the scriptures involved) around so that they appear to be “true” and consistent with things like scientific or historical observations just to avoid some particular scriptural religion from becoming downgraded to very, very implausible is permitting cognitive dissonance to dictate a distortion of the analysis, not reason:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
Note well the classic original study:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails
The failure of prophecy should (one would think) count as negative evidence for any religion that makes prophetic claims. Strongly negative evidence. So when Isaiah (in 7) prophecies that Ahaz will not lose to Syria, and 2 Chronicles 28 says that “the LORD his God delivered him (Ahaz) into the hand of the king of Syria; and they smote him, and carried away a great multitude of them captives, and brought them to Damascus. And he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter.” this has to count as a big problem for Isaiah, and all versions of all religions that rely on Isaiah being an actual prophet whose prophecies could be relied on.
But this is up to you. If you want to interpret the entire chapter of Isaiah 7 as a secret code foretelling the birth of Jesus where Ahaz is nothing more than a catspaw, window dressing, somebody the Lord had already decided to waste later , if you want to claim that the Lord told Isaiah to lie to Ahaz (which introduces consistency problems IMO), if you want to claim that the text lies to us (ditto) — these are all your decisions. However, don’t expect to convince others once your reasoning, driven by a wish to avoid dissonance, becomes too convoluted and requires too many special exceptions to make any sort of consistent sense.
This is really the last important rule. Special exceptions all have a cost (in plausibility). Not just ones that are associated with internal contradiction, all of them. This is Ockham’s Razor — if you make everything a special exception you can explain anything you like and understand nothing at all as you do so. For example, I can explain everything that has ever happened as being the work of invisible fairies. Who can disprove it? They’re invisible! Why do they make things appear to fall according to a law of gravitation? Because they want to, of course. They sit there with invisible fairy calculators to make sure it all comes our exactly right. You want proof that they exist? Drop any rock. You can’t see them directly, but we can see what they do (according to my hypothesis) and hence infer their existence.
Think this is crazy? Substitute the word “graviton” for “invisible fairy”. How crazy is it now?
But too many fairies spoil any theory! So explaining away Isaiah one way or another perhaps can be done, but not without cost in plausibility, because our common sense tells us that Isaiah’s prophecy in one place is contradicted by an account in another place, and they can’t both be true any usual way and any explanation outside of the text itself costs plausibility points as you’re gonna just make it up to avoid the problem.
Apply any variation of these rules — the same rules one might use to decide the probable truth of any proposition — to not just one religion, but all religions on an equal, unbiased footing, and see where you end up. I’m pretty sure it will be “None of the Above” or “Answer Cloudy, Try Again Later”.
rgb
rgbatduke says:
December 28, 2012 at 7:29 am
…..My only suggestion to you, and to Mr. Monckton, and to others who hold religious beliefs is this. Think carefully about what it is best to believe. Not what you were raised to believe, not what everybody around you believes, but what it is best in a logically defensible sense to believe. Be brutally honest about it (this is where it is all too easy to fail, as we are by nature inclined to lie to ourselves — see Feynman’s Cargo Cult address online to get a feel for what I mean).
And with this I will retire and plague this thread no more…:-)
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I appreciate what I think is your intent, to “help”. I was “brutally honest about it” 40+ years ago. I’m 58. I was not raised holding all the beliefs I now have. That brutal honesty led me to the cross and the empty tomb. I tell you that as my attempt to help.
= = = = = = =
gnomish,
It is nice to get a comment from you. Hope your holiday season is pleasant.
I can give you some basis/ examples. But, please be patient . . . . . I only have hard copy of critiques of Popper’s and LP’s concepts and overall logic (both of which, as rgbatduke properly identified, have common philosophical issues surrounding them). I will get a response to you . . . . but again be patient. It might be several days . . . . I wish I had the resource electronically instead of paper.
John
@Stuart B:
Well, I read this far 😉
I like the idea, but can’t see a practical method… yet…
@Gail:
I see LazyT continues to not know what end of the mule goes which way… and even uses non-sequitur to excess. I’m also left wondering why he doesn’t like the Global Fund for Children. Or perhaps he meant the Georgia Forestry Commission or the Great Firewall of China? Or maybe it is the use of Gel Filtration Chromatography that’s got his panties in a bunch? No, more likely it’s the Geelong Football Club…
At any rate, it is the fools who push hard for driving into the wall at full speed. as they do not understand it. that are the worst fools. LazyT doesn’t even realize he wants the death and destruction that will result from cutting fossil fuel use…
Oh, and no wonder my Dad was so good at training animals… He actually taught our English Setter to sneeze on command. Think about that. How do you get the concept of a sneeze (that dogs don’t do all that often anyway) connected to the word “sneeze” AND get them motivated enough to try doing it, and on command? Now THAT’S communication!
BTW, I have a natural “people reader”. Developed before hearing loss. Later I added lip reading… It’s horribly compromised by electronic communications. In a meeting around a table, I can pretty much tell you what everyone is doing / thinking in terms of attitude and direction. On one contract we were forced to use some Micro$oft computerized meeting thing. I was like trying to work in a gunny sack under a waterfall… Staring into a computer screen cut off 90% of my information flow. Peoples faces went slack. The postures froze. The non-verbal communications halted. Hell, IMHO.
Bunnish is harder / more complex than cat or dog. First, they use at least 3 modes. Tooth chatter, a scream, the ‘rupt rupt’ soft vocalizing. Being partly deaf, trying to pick up the subtle and soft vocalizing is very hard. They are deliberately at nearly sub-vocal so predators can’t hear normal ‘gossip’. It’s partly tone based, so the intensity and stress changes meaning (from “I’m enjoying this grazing” to “BIRD Predator!! stop grazing and run!” is a bit louder and ‘more tense’ RruuPT ruuPT!’ with slightly higher pitch I think.) It is specifically “BIRD” as they looked to the sky, not the fence. (I’ve not figured out how they say ‘cat’ yet…). The ‘tooth chatter’ is “I’m really happy and relaxed”. The “scream” is blood curdling and incredibly loud. It means “I think I’m about to die!” and warms everyone to escape, now. (It also startles the ‘predator’. I was sexing a young bunny and turned it on it’s back, so it screamed at me… I almost dropped it.) There’s more, but the basics are to realize the three modes and listen to variation inside them. Oh, and eyelid tension is a modifier. The eyes are very expressive / communicative. Ear position (for non-lops) also adds information.
@LazyT:
HINT: if you use an obscure acronym, define it.
Also, someone can be pointing out the inevitable result of your advocated policies without reading your mind as to why you want it. Then again, it’s not likely anyone can read your mind…
BTW: The Lord is isn’t doing an ad-hom on you, he is relating accurately the observed evidence and speculating about what it might mean…
OH, and it’s “E.M” not “E.E.” ( e.e. was the poet… 😉
So you have not read it, yet want to debate it by asking questions? Odd “style”…
1) There is NO one value for ‘climate sensitivity’. The value varies depending on your state. Hysteresis is like that. Positive at one end, negative at the other, metastable in between. By Definition. (Go to a light switch. Flip it. Flip it back. Must have up pressure at one end, down pressure at the other. Self limits in each direction. At the exact middle, it’s unstable.)
2) There is no ‘positive feedback’ needed. The insolation changes over the Milankovich cycle such that each “end” eventually becomes unstable and a ‘flip’ to the other end happens. During the Glacial stage, things are a bit less stable and short term excursions toward warm can happen, but they decay back to frozen when the stimulus ends.
Reading the paper would improve your questions…
As we are already leaving the “stable in warmth” end of Milanchovich, the only stability is to the cold side. We have insufficient Watts at 65N to get back to warm. So ANY cold excursion can send us to a stable Glacial State. And most importantly, NO amount of warm excursion can warm us more than the peak of the Holocene Optimum that happened under full acceleration out of the last glacial and when Watts/m^2 above 65N were far higher than now.
That’s what makes the IPCC, the AGW Paranoia, and all the rest so incredibly dumb.
They want to push, as hard as they can, in exactly the wrong direction.
We need to be continuing the warmth as much as possible as long as possible since once we start cooling, there is no coming back. And we ARE cooling. The 1500 year, 5000 year, and a probable 23,000 year cycles are all rolling off a top “now”. (Where “now” is somewhere between 30 and 300 years depending on cycle).
@Lord Monckton:
There are valid reasons to use a pseudonym. Ones that likely do not apply to a “Public Person” such as yourself. For example, some folks are employed at institutions that would likely fire them if their beliefs became known. Not being financially independent, that’s an unacceptable risk. ( I know at least 2 folks in that group.)
For others, if “the neighbors found out”, things like party invites drop off. I’ve already got a couple of family members who are ‘put off’…
Finally, there’s just the whole SPAM-bot and identity dredging that goes on. I have an email address specifically for public use that is never used to “real email”, precisely because it is a SPAM magnet. Now most folks don’t go that far. They have some work or telephone related account. Spoil it, and they are ‘toast’. (Especially if a work account). I learned this after I had to throw away my 3rd email address do to SPAM overloads…
So please don’t be too hard on folks with pseudonyms. Heck, if my proper name were not already the functional equivalent of Anonymous Anonymous I’d likely be using a pseudonym. As it is, we met at Chicago at the Heartland event, yet you likely would not remember me from E.M.Smith… but “Chiefio”, my ‘pseudonym’, clearly identifies me… (I think of it more as a ‘unique handle’ than pseudonym, yet it’s really both…)
@Gnomish:
The problem with your assertion is that congenitally deaf folks use language. There are no sounds involved, nor have there ever been. Sound, and verbal structures, are not needed for language, nor for cognition. VISUAL language, is still language, and still has definitions.
Similarly, the “tooth chatter” of a bunny has a specific meaning, a definition. As does a “rupt rupt rupt’ sound sequence, which, if ‘tightened’ slightly higher pitch, and louder has a quite different specific meaning and WILL cause the herd to do a specific action, which is a head tilt scan of the sky for predatory birds. They don’t just do that randomly, BTW.
That you are deaf to the intelligences all around you is a pity. They can communicate with you, but only if you learn to listen, and sometimes to listen visually…
BTW, Coco, the Gorilla who learned American Sign Language invented her own word for refrigerator. She combined “cold” with “box”. Oddly, I used that same term in my ASL class (we were asked to name a ‘fridge) and found that my instructor had ‘created it’ as a kid, but was then told by his parents what the ‘proper’ sign was. (It isn’t ‘cold-box’). So three intelligences all created the same compound word. One a hearing person (me). The other a congenitally deaf person. The third a Gorilla. They all used it to mean the same thing, and to communicate with others. Yet you assert that one is somehow different from the others, and that all of them are not language the way a spoken ‘refrigerator’ would be… besides, they are not found in a ‘dictionary’… (So one also presumes that from your POV there was no language prior to the invention of dictionaries … a rather recent innovation, BTW.)
A curious and limited world you live in.
@RBG:
I’ll be looking up “Langevin Equation” 😉 Thanks!
FWIW: It’s my opinion that the reason this interglacial is ‘flat topped’ is that we had an asteroid or meteor strike (that caused the Younger Dryas) and it ‘clipped the peak’ off the shoot ‘up the wall’. Leaving us in a more energy balanced state ‘at the top’. And now we’re just dropping in sync with insolation changes and ice build-up, not on a ‘rebound’ from too high up the ‘wall’.
Nice metaphor, BTW….
Oh, and while I’ve personally ‘run the gamut’ from dunk-in-the-tank Southern Baptist to hard core atheist (and part way back): I’ve encouraged my children to embrace religion, and I’m married to a hyper-religious sort. So I’m, in fact, encouraging them to ‘find their own way’ but also with a nudge toward something I have trouble fully embracing… So, you see, it’s not so much “how I was raised” as “where thought has led me”… (At this point, I’m more a syncretic quasi-Buddhist with Christian overtones who admires a lot in Sikhism…)
@John West:
And the Nag Hamadi library and the Gnostic Bible and the Nestorian and the Peshita… (Once you get out of the Approved Bible Rut there’s a lot of interesting variations…)
@DirkH:
Well done! I’ll join the All Green Commune after their 4th decade of operation at a western level of comfort…
@Julian Flood:
Who’s “little”? 😉
@Werner Brozek:
Note that Donald said “Smoothed”… common smoothing methods effectively hide the end of the data by the smoothing interval ( like the simple moving average does) so it is a kind of intellectual dodge to use a smoothed series to look at length of zero trend….
@farmerbraun:
Well put sir. Very well put! A lifetime indeed is needed.
k. i’ll keep aristotle’s pit bull in the corner for now.
maybe it would be a good topic more suitable for your own site?
timor domini principia sapientiae puts me off my lunch.
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rgbatduke,
Your comment was comprehensive . . . thanks.
I see you appreciate well that the issues of philosophy in Western Civilization do fundamentally bear on the science of physics. I do. The philosophy that supports science is very interesting.
I think much of Blandshard’s book will be familiar to you.
I think Kant is the main source of the philosophic tradition that became the ‘Analytical’ philosophic revolution starting in the late 19th century and which then strongly influenced LP and Popper. Yes, Popper and LP share some of epistemological and metaphysical conceptions and overall logic endemic to the ‘Analytical’ philosophic revolution.
I will highlight my criticism of Popper on this thread . . . . but I am much slower that you are . . . . how did you do that comment of yours so fast? Must be your book preparation has the info right on the top of your mind.
I look forward to your book! I will look up MacKay’s book which you recommended.
Regarding focusing on the discussion of religion as a subject of critical dialog, it is quite interesting . . . but I have found that Paul of Tarsus had identified the essence of religious basis; he inherently held that you first must make an act of pure unquestioning belief without the need for logical support or proof; he implied that nothing else is relevant to the religious view. When I have held extensive discussions it always has come down to what Paul observed about the religious situation.
My wife is from a family with a many century Buddhist heritage from China. She would agree with you that Buddhism is not a religion in the sense that Hindu, Islam, Jewish, Christian and most known religions are.
John
Hi Chiefio.
“Similarly, the “tooth chatter” of a bunny has a specific meaning, a definition.”
‘specific meaning’ is not the definition of definition. I already made that explicit.
for the purpose of this discussion i have defined ‘word’ as a ‘symbol with a definition’.
i also drew your attention to the fact that acoustical properties are not part of the definition. (as is self evident that we are typing)
i’ll be around when you finish your exuberant pursuit of that straw man, ok? But i’m not going to tire myself following you.
To persist in the refusal to draw the distinction between semiotics and language serves no logical purpose and i’m sure you ‘feel’ it, whether you possess the self discipline to do better or not.
it is, of course, an abuse of language to debase definitions or to attribute linguistic properties to a cock’s comb, mandrill’s ass or a dog’s smile. the very idea that tooth chattering is a part of speech and therefore an element of any linguistic structure is absurd. Let’s hope you won’t be granting linguistic powers to the mimosa just to be contrary.
To restrict the meanders, allow me to define ‘definition’ for you:
Definition: the set of distinguishing characteristics of an entity.
One other item – you said:
“That you are deaf to the intelligences all around you is a pity. They can communicate with you, but only if you learn to listen, and sometimes to listen visually (SIC)…”
you can improve your technique of personal attack by using conditionals and interrogatives.
for example, rephrasing ‘That you are deaf to…”, to “IF you are deaf to” rescues your falsehood from utter inanity and makes it a defensible, if not sublime truth.
(Your stab in the dark was fail. In fact, you would be amazed to see my work – but you have not earned and deserve to be deprived of the pleasure.)
Abuse of language such as you have demonstrated, after semantic analysis, carries about as much meaning as a dog’s growl. Granted that it has meaning, please tell me what part of speech that growl is? Is it a noun? Is it a verb? Please feel free to use language if you find further growling to be inadequate. In order to have an actual conversation, I’ll have to insist on it.
E.M.Smith says:
December 28, 2012 at 4:57 pm
Werner Brozek:
Note that Donald said “Smoothed”…
Thank you! I believe you mentioned this earlier in the thread so I was able to figure out what happened in the latest entry and comment on it.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/28/dana-nuccitellis-holiday-trick-for-sobering-up-quick-put-a-little-less-rum-in-your-egg-nog/
This is where an 11 year average was used.
Chiefio – i forgot to add this to my reply:
http://xkcd.com/169/
@RGBatDuke:
Oddly, I came to the conclusion that all ‘truth’ was probabilistic on my own, but not so formally. I have an abstract ‘truth strength’ assigned to most things I “believe”. A weighting. That, BTW, is why I’m willing to accept contradictory things as ‘both possible’ (just not always at the same time…) and find religion acceptable.
Basically, I don’t need to choose the “optimal” or “best”; I just need to see the probability map and realize that the strongest path is probably the more correct one, but maybe not 😉 And that often the apparent contradiction that says one ought to be ‘tossed out’ is just a reflection of my limits / error. Rather like that “Genesis and the Big Bang” book where if you calibrate a ‘day’ from the start of relativistic time, rather than our ‘already expanded’ end; the Genesis account matches our “Science Narrative”… THEY are not in conflict so much as MY broken understanding of ‘a day’… not including Einstein in the time axis…
So while I can’t even prove for certain that I exist, I can except that it is THE most likely path, and mostly apply that one when thinking about things. Yet I also know I might just be an imagination of some other dimensional construct… a fantasy of God, if you will. Similarly, while I’m fairly sure some old White Hair Guy didn’t speak the world into existence and doesn’t spend his time counting all the hairs on my head, it’s not impossible. (Oddly, I think that “most probable” is that an advanced race visited here long ago, and tried to teach us some things. We have a badly understood record of that in our ‘ancient great books’ and monuments. We called them Gods and Angels. I hope they visit again, preferably soon. Yes “Ancient Aliens”…) I have no problem, though, if it turns out that whatever God is, they don’t want to be seen as an “Ancient Alien”… or with the explanation that some old King in Mesopotamia slipped a ‘priest’ some gold to write up a good bit of fiction to flim-flam the rubes. All are possible until shown not… just very unlikely for some…
So given that the books were written by people, even if divinely inspired, I accept that they may have some bits confused. (And that it’s the Popes and Bishops and Cardinals and all who have it wrong in saying it is all literally true…)
@Gnomish:
You like absolutes and syllogisms and demand compliance. I look for truth. You want a world bounded by rules, of your making. I look for wisdom. You can play your word games, as you like, I have no need for your cartoons, verbal or otherwise.
You can insist on whatever you like, and enjoy the silence of one voice…
I would suggest that you look at the history of folks using exactly the arguments you have used, to forbid the use and teaching of non-verbal (i.e. sign language) modes to the deaf. It’s a “hot button” issue in the community; and with good cause. They were accused of exactly the same kind of lack of thinking and lack of intelligence that you wish to apply to other species, and in the same modes. We have an existence proof of the bankruptcy of that reasoning.
NO natural language requires a definition (though they can help). I’d even go so far as to say no natural language HAS full definition. ( I’ve used many fully defined languages, from symbolic logic to a variety of computer languages with defined constructive grammars). They have dramatic contrasts with natural languages largely based on the LACK of restrictive definition in natural languages. By design, natural languages are extensible and improvisational, and not constrained by formal definitions. That lets us say new things that have never been said nor thought before. Fully defined languages are dead and sterile in comparison.
Coco did that kind of language invention / extension when she asked for a specific piece of fruit from the ‘cold-box’. She created a new word, one never before defined to her, and used it in a grammatically correct way to get what she wanted. One not in ASL that she was being taught. Yet also one that was understood to her ASL speaking trainers. Not defined. Not in a dictionary. Yet it worked.
Coco speaks. She does so with “gestures” and facial expressions. Just like deaf humans.
When you denigrate gestures and expressions (and even the sporadic ‘grunts’ that some deaf folks use) you denigrate all language, and all intelligences.
From a Buddhist mantra: “Sentient beings in the universe are numberless. I vow to protect them.” Even if they say “I am happy, thank you.” with a tooth chatter and say “I’m watchfully grazing” with a “rupt rupt rupt”, and even if they say “BIRD! Run for cover!” with a raising of pitch and volume on that sound and lengthening of the vowel. People are only ‘special’ in their conceit and denigration of other living things.
Oh, and bunnies don’t “grunt”. That’s something people do…
Observing your limitations is not personal attack, btw, so I have no need to ‘improve it’. The improving runs the other way…
@Werner Brozek:
You are most welcome. It’s a common error and common trick to use a moving average so as to hide inflection points and shorten the period of ‘trend’. A 10 period moving average on ten periods of data is a single point. No trend. On a 20 period data set, it turns the last 10 periods into one point. Now your max period of trend is the first 10 +1 data points… Some folks know that and work around it. Some know it and use it ‘for effect’ (i.e. as a trick). Most folks don’t realize it.
My general rule of thumb is that “Averages are used to hide things.” Sometimes that is a desirable thing. (Like hiding the day to day variation in prices of a stock in a moving average) It can let you see an inner property a bit better by hiding a distraction. Much of the time the hiding is not desirable…. like using a 200 day moving average of stock prices to tell you when they have started going down. It tells you about 200 days too late that the inflection already happened… (Yet it is widely used… go figure…)
So anyone talking about a ‘short trend’ in an ‘average’ or ‘smoothed’ temperature series needs a very close inspection for ‘truthyness’ 😉
You are right that furred and feathered friends communicate by non English verbal sounds and may mimic human behaviour to communicate.They communicate by sound,behaviour, display and even pheromones.As such their communication includes language.I am touched by your interest in communicating with the deaf.
BTW I am sure you exist, even if I am not able to prove this fact.
Years ago I asked my father this question ‘How can I be sure that I exist”
He was sitting next to me and pinched me hard on the arm and asked me if I felt it.I did. Since then I have not been troubled by this question.
Chiefio… your ontological improvisations are silly.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
If you don’t think words have definitions, how can you expect anybody to credit your utterances with any more meaning than an animal grunt? Was that a loaded question?
For the third and last time: your obsession with deafness has no relevance to the nature of language. Is an idea too complex for you it it isn’t translated into bunny talk? I can’t be bothered, you know. Your ontological improv is not funneh.
Are you unclear that the word ‘denigrate’ does not have the same definition as the word ‘define’ or are you suggesting that comprehension devalues a concept?
Did you imagine that “conceit and denigration” of human beings made you a special bunny?
I understand both what you say and the motive for saying it. It is not pursuit of truth.
There is a word for it but there’s no way to translate it into Furry for you.
Thank you but you have something wrong. The Known negative feedbacks in the climate result in the direct impact of CO2 being reduced by about 80% ( EG Direct radiation of surface heat through the Atmospheric IR hole, and heat of evaporation/convective cooling etc) So after this negative feedback is applied the resulting magnification of 3 requires a positive feedback magnification of approximately 15 or a loop gain of about 0.95 – not 0.62 at all. This is not just improbable, it’s impossible.
One must also consider the feedback function. For example T/Co2 and T/H2O are logarithmic so the feedback function is a logarithm. This implies that the loop gain must be higher – Much higher, when CO2 is low and thus weather is much more unstable at low CO2 concentration.
One must also consider energy saturation. 85% of the energy available for interception has been intercepted and given conservation of energy no warming can occur beyond that. I believe there is a missapplication of the logarithmic relation here. I do not believe that CO2 will continue to follow a logarithmic function unless pressure is unconstrained – that is CO2 is added to the bulk of the atmosphere – IE if we constrain atmospheric pressure to 1 ATM or less then CO2 warming must saturate, the function in real life will not remain logarithmic – question is when? (Remembering here that each CO2 molecule produced by fossil fuels requires more than one O2 molecule to be removed from the atmosphere – taking acount of water produced in the reaction) – The Nett density of the atmosphere reduces with each quantum of fossil fuel burned all other things remaining equal.
The IPCC suggestion of 3.3 deg C per doubling implies that if we replaced our atmosphere with CO2 it would be over 100 deg C warmer and there would be no liquid water on earth rather than as the greenhouse effect so far shows a maximum of about 15/85 x 33 or 5.3 degrees increase based on extrapolating the point of energy saturation and ascribing all previous warming to CO2. 100 deg C is fanciful stuff.
The supposed history of the earth suggests the early earth atmosphere was mostly CO2 – It must then have been 100C hotter, how then pray-tell did we end up with 1.5 billion square km of water in our oceans? Surely 98% CO2 was past some tipping point or other ?
bobl:
The IPCC suggestion of 3.3 deg C per doubling has the additional shortcoming of being non-falsifibable. This conclusion folloows from the non-observability of the equilibrium temperature. The lower values of the equilibrium climate sensitivity (TECS) that have been suggested by people who include Lord Monckton have the same shortcoming. In view of the non-falsifiability, TECS is not a scientifically viable concept.
“Phil” says the model simulations that led their creators in 2008 to write that 15 years or more without warming would indicate a discrepancy between the models’ predictions and observed reality were adjusted to remove the effects of the El Nino Southern Oscillation. So they were: but the paper also points out that removing ENSO increases the discrepancy between predictions and observed reality.
He also quibbles about Newton’s birthday. However, by the Calendar Reform Act of 1751 (not 1750, since he is being picky about dates), 11 days were taken out of the calendar to conform with reforms that Catholic Europe had adopted a couple of centuries previously. Therefore Newton was not born on Christmas Day (though, at the time, his parents thought he was).
And he quibbles about what happened at Goose Green. My account comes directly from the 2IC in question.
Other commenters continue to whinge about my including a couple of sentences about the Christmas spirit at the end of the head posting. Yet there is no incompatibility between religious belief and science, which is why many eminent scientists (including Newton) were also Christians.
So, get over it! A roarin’ Hogmanay to one and all.
Monckton of Brenchley:
If you were to assist those of us who are in the scientific community by ceasing the practice of referencing the product of the IPCC climate models as “predictions” and to replace this term by “projections,” this would be of great benefit to the cause of bringing the scientific method to IPCC climatology. Conflation of the term “prediction” with the term “projection” is at the heart of an application of the equivocation fallacy by IPCC climatologists. As I point out in the peer reviewed article at http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/15/the-principles-of-reasoning-part-iii-logic-and-climatology/ , repeated applications of this fallacy play a major role in the argument that is made by IPCC climatologists against continuing CO2 emissions. When well-meaning people such as yourself use terms ambiguously this practice assists the pseudo-scientists of the IPCC in their pseudo-scientific mission.
OH, and it’s “E.M” not “E.E.” ( e.e. was the poet… 😉
E. E. “Doc” Smith was a science fiction author who wrote Universe-spanning space opera back in the 30’s through maybe the 50s or early 60s (can’t recall the exact dates, but his earliest pulp fiction stories are no longer in copyright). The two most famous series where the Skylark of Space series, and the Lensman series. His heroes all looked like J. “Bob” Dobbs — craggy and masculine with a pipe jammed between their teeth. His books featured a lot of nudity a la ER Burroughs (Martians in scanty “trappings”) with scantier trappings but of course, no sex. A lot of smoldering passion, though. His books were (and are!) great fun to read, but suffer from a tragic flaw at this point in time — the physics in them, Ph.D. or not, is unbelievably bad. It’s not just the lack of relativistic correctness or any attempt to respect the laws of thermodynamics, it is phrases like “the acceleration of many times the speed of light” that are ill-dimensioned that set one’s teeth on edge.
Still, worth a read. The Skylark series as originally published in Amazing Stories is IIRC available via Project Gutenberg, but the Lensman series is still in copyright. I don’t know how easy any of the books are to find in print — they do sometimes run them off again (as they still sell) but I haven’t seen one in a store for a decade or so at this point.
Just FYI.
rgb
Regarding focusing on the discussion of religion as a subject of critical dialog, it is quite interesting . . . but I have found that Paul of Tarsus had identified the essence of religious basis; he inherently held that you first must make an act of pure unquestioning belief without the need for logical support or proof; he implied that nothing else is relevant to the religious view. When I have held extensive discussions it always has come down to what Paul observed about the religious situation.
IIRC Paul went further and in one of his trips to Greece he grew so frustrated trying to convert people with a philosophical tradition of actual critical thought that he effectively cursed knowledge and learning as obstacles to that pure statement of faith. Sadly, although I know the NT pretty well at this point, I can’t recall the letter/chapter and am too lazy to go look it up (again).
But I agree — that is always the end point of a discussion with a religious person. As a reasoned conclusion religious belief is difficult to support. Impossible to support, if one goes to the extreme of Humian skepticism and demand infinite proof for an infinite claim lest one be fooled by sufficiently advanced space alien technology or the like (Clarke’s Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, or its converse, any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced:-).
Also, even in the brutally honest analysis category, the “best thing to believe” might well depend on the person. As far as I can tell, many people need to believe in God and perfect justice and a pleasant afterlife or even in hell and an unpleasant afterlife. It gives their life an illusion of “higher purpose” that allows them to cope with the fact that it has no higher purpose that they can actually discern in reality, or allows them to cope with the suffering in their lives by consoling themselves with the illusion that they will have a second life in which they will not suffer. It forms a functional “secondary superego” that — sometimes — allows them to kick alcoholism or drug dependence or a tendency to be violent and thus escape a living hell in this one life. And as has been hypothesized and I believe verified to some extent by experiment, we seem to have evolved with a susceptibility towards religious belief — there are receptors in our brains that are stimulated in a self-sustaining pleasure loop by “religious experiences” (or rather, the loop is the religious experience). This is not implausible as we are social animals and religion forms (and has formed over at least recorded history) a key component of the social glue for nearly any human society. Genetic/memetic co-evolution seems not unreasonable.
This does not make any religion “right”, but it may explain why some people make the unreasoned leap and others don’t (typically settling on a religion consistent with their local culture, of course). Life sucks — not all the time for most of us, but some of the time for all of us and all of the time for some of us and then you die. As the Buddha observed, suffering exists and is indeed a universal experience of all beings with a brain capable of experiencing. It isn’t fair. Life is not just. I’m relatively wealthy and comfortable by accident of birth, and in a heartbeat another accident could take it all away. In India, in Africa, in countries all over the world, there are children dying at this moment of starvation, disease, acts of war (often religious war), accident, all of it plain bad luck. Suffering.
We don’t need to look to an afterlife for hell — hell is with us everywhere we look, every day, in this one life. And no, there isn’t a shred of evidence that a second life or afterlife is going to make it all better, balance out the scales, ransom the suffering with some sort of reward, punish those fortunate enough not to suffer as much or who by their actions caused some of the suffering to add still more senseless suffering to an already intolerable total.
This is a stark existential landscape. The mind recoils, and invents something, anything to redeem it. Such as a redeemer. This allows people to overcome the fear and cope, to get out of bed one more day and go to their job as a Wal Mart greeter, or return to the garbage heaps of Delhi and scavenge whatever one can find that has enough value to hold onto life for another day and hope for better fortune tomorrow, or deal with the cancer eating at their guts that dictates that no matter what they would like, they have begun a spiral of misery that will terminate in a cessation of experience in a few short months.
This, I believe, is why theodicy has the problem backwards. We know perfectly well that an all-loving, all-powerful God, a God of compassion, would not create a Universe filled with suffering and random and capricious acts of violence. Yet we live in a Universe filled with suffering and random and capricious acts of violence, and can hardly avoid the evidence that this is the case as we suffer many of those random and capricious accidents, we cope with the fact that we aren’t Bill Gates and can’t by a yacht on a whim (and Bill gates copes with the fact that he is Bill Gates — do not imagine that wealth buys freedom from suffering), as we get horribly sick and recover, or do not, or lose our jobs, or have a car crash that kills one of our children, or…
…live life with some joy, much ennui, and some suffering, in every possible mixture.
This does not appear to be just. Of course, it actually is. It is perfectly just, if and only if it is totally impersonal, where it is literally blind chance or fate that decides, where your life history is decided for all practical purposes by rolls of invisible dice that occurred long before you were born (and which may be continuing, although a proper statement of physical theory including quantum mechanics does not allow for dice). But just or not — nobody can blame the dice for being random, and nobody had a choice about being in the game — people solve the problem of evil by inventing a just God.
Cognitive dissonance at its finest! We can now invert the argument! Life sucks, God loves us, therefore there must be something to redeem life, an afterlife. In the afterlife all of the obvious injustices, insults, and pain we suffer all of the time from our egocentric points of view as living sentient beings will be perfectly balanced by an infinite experience of life that is perfect, suffering free, where they can always have a yacht if they want it, where the bread always lands butter side up, where they experience the neurotransmitter-induced ecstasy of the religious drug-loop nonstop, a perpetual speedball high in the presence of God, where they are actually happy and bad things never happen.
Except to those people that were mean to them. All too often (since the hell meme was invented) we have been able to add to this already pleasant dream the dream of bad people getting their comeuppance. Being human, it isn’t enough for us even in our fantasies that our own hurts simply cease in the cessation of true death, we must have them improbably transformed to joy, and add to that joy the savage pleasure of imagining Big Jimmy who always stole our lunch money from us being caned in the Principle’s Office for eternity.
Theodicy has it completely backwards. If there were no suffering, nobody would bother inventing something invisible and posthumous to balance it out. The existence of God would be an abstract metaphysical question, unlikely on the face of it but open for discussion.
Buddha invented, or tried to invent, the perfect antidote to this sort of irrational belief. First of all, get over it. Suffering is here, it is real, and it is not redeemable. Even an eternity of imagined pleasure doesn’t truly eliminate the reality of the moments of pain, especially as we are experiencing them, any more than the memory of past pleasures does. Our experience is immediate — we are stuck on the moving cusp of Now, and are cursed and blessed with sentience that permits us to all-too-well extrapolate from our past sufferings to future ones and rob even our moments of pleasure of some of their savor. Also, if we are born again, we are born to suffering. “Heaven” is impossible — even the Gods, if the Gods exist, so powerful that any wish is instantly granted, must endure suffering and wonder why. If every wish is instantly granted, how long before one has no wishes? How long before all effort ceases? What we would claim to be heaven, instant gratification for eternity, is actually a horrible trap:
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Prose/lulea.php
(a short story that is also a Moral Tale, derived from Frank L. Baum’s Queen Zixi of Ix, available for free via Gutenberg IIRC, in case one wishes to read the “prequel”, but the short story stands alone, I think).
This is why Buddha advised his followers to not argue about God. God isn’t important — if God exists God has to deal with suffering too, and the only way to do so is to live with compassion. In truth this does not eliminate suffering. If you hit the Buddha on the head, he or she will suffer the pain. It does, however, establish the moral basis of a society that actively tries to minimize it, and thereby perhaps reduces suffering compared to one where people act in selfish and cruel ways.
Buddha was not any more a god than you or I — he made no claims of deity (rather the opposite). He did not found a religion. He invented a practical moral philosophy — not a “perfect” one by any means, and not a perfectly consistent one either as even his teachings are distorted by mistaken (or at least, unprovable and empirically unlikely) metaphysical assumptions.
That is the heart of Buddhism, reduced to two statements. Suffering exists, and we should probably collectively choose to act accepting this as true and living our life to minimize that suffering for the whole society in which we live as best we can. Belief in God(s), rituals associated with that belief, claims made by the purveyors and scriptures of the religions and so on are unimportant and can themselves be morally judged on the basis of suffering and rejected where they do not taste sweet. What matters is doing your best to avoid the obsessive attachments that lead to suffering in one’s self, and avoiding actions likely to lead to the suffering of self or others. Oh, and here are a few mental disciplines that might help you cope with some of the angst of human existence — live in the now, centered, so you do not relive past suffering or live in fear of future suffering. Learn to meditate to break the horrible loopback cycle of anxiety that our minds are prone to. Be excellent to each other (to quote George Carlin in Bill and Ted). So very simple.
It won’t work, of course, not perfectly. If you break your leg, you will suffer if you are the Buddha himself reborn. If your dog dies, you will suffer. If you walk through the poorer streets of Poona, or Mumbai, or Cairo, or New York, you will suffer. If you are trapped in war-torn Syria and endure watching your family torn apart by a bomb — “good” bomb or “bad” one as it might be labelled according to your “side” in the conflict — you will suffer. Your suffering cannot be redeemed as it is real and immediate — but it can be endured.
rgb
– – – – – – –
rgtatduke,
As a young person growing up near a small town in the USA, I was continuously wondering about what appeared to me to be the complete irrelevance of the sea of profound belief in the supernatural and in superstitions; belief in the supernatural and superstitions being what I find is the essence of religions. I realized that those beliefs were so embedded into history and current social institutions that one had to study subjects like Christianity in order to understand even the context of logic and science within our society and history.
Paul Johnson’s book ‘The History of Christianity’ was very helpful to me in that regard. He is quite critical and objective even though a devout Christian. To understand our society and history, similar critic and/or comparative histories of other religions are helpful for those finding irrelevant all supernatural and superstitious beliefs. Also, I found all of Joseph Campbell’s works on mythology and religion to be quite helpful in understanding the phenomena of belief in the supernatural and the superstitious.
NOTE WRT BUDDISM – Evidence that Buddhism is not a religion in the normal sense is also to be found in the number of people holding Buddhist values who also, at the same time, belong to religions like Christianity, Judism, etc.
John
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley:
I have returned to Falmouth for some hours because I was unable to obtain a locum for duties I am tasked to perform tomorrow morning. Having completed my travel home I visited WUWT to see what has been happening, and I found your excellent article which is both timely and needed.
I hope you are returning to good health so you can enjoy Hogmanay having missed the Christmas festivities.
I write to make two comments: one pertaining to your excellent article and the other on an unfortunate development which has happened in the resulting thread. Unfortunately, I will be returning to another activity which isolates me from communication immediately after my duties in the morning and, therefore, after this evening I will not be able to reply to any responses to this post for about a week.
I agree that a ‘rat hole’ escape is needed for AGW-advocates. Your post pertains to scientists – mostly academics – who have been promoting the AGW-scare, but they are merely purchased tools of politicians. It is the politicians who need to be given a ‘rat hole’. Indeed, the bureaucracies that operate the scare will continue to be established until the politicians withdraw from the scare.
When the politicians withdraw from the scare they will then stop funding the so-called scientists whom they are likely to blame for the scare. You suggest blaming the climate models, but people built the models, and only people can serve as scape goats.
This threatens the reputation of all science.
Importantly, politicians lose face – and, therefore, votes – if they reverse course, especially if they say they are abandoning a policy because it was wrong. They will not want to be seen to withdraw from the AGW-scare, and they will need to blame others for their mistaken AGW-policies of the past.
A decade ago Fred Singer organised a public meeting at an IPCC Meeting where he, Gerd Rainer-Weber and I were speakers. I said then,
I still see no reason to change that view.
So, in my opinion we need to give the politicians a way to stop active promotion of the scare while seeming to continue to support the scare as they let it fade away. And we need protect the reputation of science from the damage of the pseudoscience which the politicians have purchased from the climastrologists.
In August 2009 I foresaw the political demise that would occur at Copenhagen the following December. And I suggested a ‘rat hole’ for the politicians that was posted on WUWT at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/17/stopping-climate-change/
In that article I suggested research funding should be switched from climate modelling to research of geoengineering options that would only be implemented in the unlikely (I think impossible) elevation of global temperature by 2 K (which the climastrologists had said was the limit which should not be passed).
In that article I said
Unfortunately, as the following thread clearly demonstrates, few understood the ploy. People seemed to think I was advocating the geoengineering and seemed oblivious to the obvious impossibility of any country implementing such a scheme because that could be seen as an act of war (altering climate in one place also alters it elsewhere).
I still think the idea has merit because I have not found another ‘rat hole’ to offer the politicians.
That brings me to the unfortunate development which has happened in this thread.
Robert Brown (who signs himself as rgb) makes some good posts on WUWT. He has often made some very, very good posts which are among the very best ever seen on this blog. He provides an example of such an important post at December 26, 2012 at 9:44 am.
However, and unfortunately, some of rgb’s posts display two flaws. And on this thread he has displayed both. This distracts from the exceptional quality of much that he posts on WUWT and can induce unfortunate responses as has happened in this thread.
Firstly, rgb is prone to not admit an inadvertent error (and we all make them). This can result in unfortunate resentment over trivial side-issues, and an example of such resentment was expressed by Julian Flood at December 26, 2012 at 6:21 am. The overlooking of minor mistakes (usually overstatement of certainty) seems to be from the common assumption of academics that they are the fount of unassailable knowledge. Indeed, he stated this in his post at December 26, 2012 at 10:24 pm where he wrote
Actually, he rarely ‘polices’ anything but often provides interesting and insightful opinions based on epistemology. Others do much more ‘policing’ of “physics” and “statistical validity”, notably D Boehm, David M Hoffer, and – to a lesser extent – Willis Eschenbach.
Secondly, and very unfortunately, rgb takes any opportunity to ‘sell’ his religion. This can be disruptive of threads. And, as do most atheists, he fails to recognise that his religion is as faith-based as any other: agnosticism rejects faith but belief that no deity exists (i.e.atheism) is a religious faith of identical kind to belief in the existence of one or more deities (i.e. theism).
Also, rgb seems to think all religions except his own are akin to superstition, and this demonstrates his profound ignorance of religion (a coherent belief system logically constructed from tenets) and superstition (an incoherent mixture of beliefs deriving from fears). Hence, he denigrates all religions except his own.
There are reasons for posters on WUWT to mention their religion and their politics when that indicates the ‘world view’ of the poster. David M Hoffer expressed this in his post at December 26, 2012 at 3:25 pm where he states that it can be important to explain that the science is independent of such ‘world views’. But, as he also stated in that post, the diversity of ‘world views’ is a strength of WUWT. Hence, your article published on Christmas Day appropriately concluded saying
Those concluding statements were an explanation of the ‘world view’ which governs your suggestion that “we should make sure that the rat-hole we dig for their escape from their lavish folly is as commodious as possible”. They were not an invitation to discuss Christianity, atheism or any other religion in this thread except to mention that some other religions would not agree with your charitable assertion of what “we should” do.
There are blogs for discussion of religious ideas, but rgb and some others fail to recognise that WUWT is not one of them.
Again, thankyou for your excellent article and I hope it can lead to a useful cooperation between you and Robert Brown: you are both fine gentlemen.
Richard
The IPCC suggestion of 3.3 deg C per doubling has the additional shortcoming of being non-falsifibable. This conclusion folloows from the non-observability of the equilibrium temperature. The lower values of the equilibrium climate sensitivity (TECS) that have been suggested by people who include Lord Monckton have the same shortcoming. In view of the non-falsifiability, TECS is not a scientifically viable concept.
. As few as a hundred completely random sites would start yielding a halfway decent estimate of the instantaneous average temperature at points (say) 1 meter above the local ground level from a properly designed measurement station. By halfway decent I don’t mean accurate — I mean statistically well-founded — the average would start to satisfy the Central Limit Theorem, permitting us to make a quantitative estimate of the probable location of the actual average compared to the sample average.
This is not true, on many levels. First of all, one can measure temperature. Measuring an “average instantaneous temperature” for the planet is thereby entirely possible. In fact, I can do so by using a single thermometer. The problem isn’t making measurements and forming an instantaneous average, it is correctly and honestly estimating the probable error given a particular pattern of measurements. Using a single thermometer in my own back yard might yield and instantaneous estimate of the mean temperature of the planet, but my back yard isn’t a random site (it is selected on the basis of where people live, in turn where people feel comfortable, which lops of some 80% of the Earth’s surface from consideration, biased sample for sure). One might expect errors as large as the measurement itself, certainly of that order.
We’d do better using a (good) random number generator and dropping thermometers at randomly selected points on the surface of the Earth. This is actually a lot more difficult as it sounds because of the spherical polar coordinate Jacobean, but there are a few ways of generating unbiased random points in
Of course one would do better statistically with far more randomly selected sites. The actual number required to get an accurate estimate within a reasonably small probable error depends on the distribution of temperatures itself — places like Antarctica or the Sahara with relatively little surface area but extreme temperatures have to be independently adequately sampled. It is difficult for me to seat of the pants estimate how many sites would be required to obtain 0.1 C error bars (let’s choose a standard deviation of the data as an error bar, since I invoked the CLT above and the two go hand in hand) but if I did it anyway I’d take the max/min variation of some 100K, pretend that this is the variance (probably not, but it is an estimate of the variance, likely proportional to the variance), require 1/1000 of this as the SD, and hence would guestimate N = 10^6 as being a good number of samples to get there. One might make it with 10^5, as max-min overestimates the variance by at least a factor of 2 but probably less than 10, but I like to wear a belt and suspenders when dealing with a troublesome pair of pants and besides, the data itself will tell you when you have enough.
So let’s say order of a hundred thousand randomly sampled sites, properly measured, will yield an instantaneous average temperature that is likely to be accurate to within a tenth of a degree kelvin. Might make it with 30,000. Probably won’t make it with 10,000. And the sites must be randomly selected or else you are simply introducing a complex anthropic bias into the measurement process and your measurement and result is crap in an unknown way! Randomly selected from the entire sphere, too — no fair leaving out the oceans or places in the remote reaches of Tibet or Mongolia just because they are hard to reach! “Hard to reach” is a bias!
Given a soundly defined instantaneous average temperature, accurate to within 0.1 kelvin, from 100,000 or so sites, defining any of a number of coarse grained interval averaged temperatures is straightforward. A straightforward average over the previous 24 hours is one good one to generate, for example. Not (max – min)/2 — we don’t know a priori that instantaneous temperatures is uniformly or symmetrically distributed across the median or centroid — a true time average obtained by (say) sampling every minute, adding the previously defined instantaneous mean temperatures up, and dividing by 1440. For longer times, one could could generate an averaging kernel — personally I wouldn’t recommend the Heaviside function usually used, but any sort of gaussian or logistic kernel could weight “now” (say, the daily average) most heavily and average in temperatures from before and after that time with a smooth cutoff.
Again, the difficulty isn’t making the measurements and defining a process that leads to a well-defined average — it is computing a meaningful probable error. But this too can be done.
Finally, given any of these temperature series — and personally, I’d strongly recommend using the instantaneous local data sampled every minute before constructing any of these averages, one can do an analysis that gives a completely empirical estimate of the feedbacks on the basis of the analysis of the noise via the fluctuation-dissipation theorem.
The issue isn’t, therefore, whether or not one can measure a meaningful instantaneous mean global temperature to within some precision, or take the time series of both that value and/or the actual global data and analyze it further to obtain meaningful measurement-based estimates of dynamical parameters, it is that this has not been done! At least, not as far as I know. It would cost a lot of money, for one thing — imagine planting 70,000 ARGO buoys at fixed, completely randomly selected locations around the world’s oceans (only worse, as one has to sample the air one meter above the sea surface every minute so the buoys would have to be anchored and have a “permanent” above-the-sea presence at each point, in addition to a diving unit that sampled at depth if you wanted that data too). Imagine the difficulties locating stations in Antarctica or Tibet or in My Back Yard in the event that the dice so dictate. Even permitting a site to be moved by (say) up to a kilometer or two for “convenience” (which sadly will introduce a bias not unlike the one Anthony has documented associated with “convenient” locations for weather stations already) would leave you having to rent locations from arbitrary people in arbitrary cultures with arbitrary political systems. A tough (and expensive) problem.
Alternatively, one can make do — at lower precision — with satellite measurements. Still expensive, but it avoids rental and politics. It also doesn’t return true “surface temperature” measurements, or particularly accurate measurements per site, but it does give you a very large number of points and a fairly uniform/unbiased coverage.
So Terry, it isn’t can’t. It is won’t, can’t afford to, or haven’t (yet). It can be done but hasn’t. So the quantity itself is a perfectly valid scientific quantity, and it is reasonable to explore possible futures based on different values, and one can even contemplate making estimations of its value based on data, as long as one recognizes how terrible that data is, on its very best day.
In figure 1.4 of AR5 (discussed on other threads) the IPCC presents a cartoon graph with a measured temperature “error” estimated at roughly 0.1 kelvin. I doubt it. Perhaps for RSS (alone), but even there, I doubt it. The further back one goes, the larger this error estimate gets, until it properly should be order of a full degree K on up to several degrees K for geological data.
Everybody in climate science is pretending to a knowledge that is much greater than what we probably have, given the best of intentions and a couple hundred years of thermometric data from an enormously biased sampling of the Earth’s surface. Only for the last 33 years do we have anything like an unbiased global estimate of temperature, and it seriously bothers me that it is never given with probable error bars, only with whatever variance is visible in the “perfectly precise” e.g. RSS or UAH LTT. Even for these series, it makes determining (or estimating) what is statistical error in the measurement relative to variation in the quantity being measured almost impossible. The former can be done only with a complicated and directed meta-analysis because it is mixed with the natural variation, making signal and noise and error unresolvable.
Most of what is wrong with climate science could probably be fixed — by turning all the data over to somebody like the CDC, who employs professional statisticians who actually understand things like double blind results, Bayes theorem and the necessity for samples to be random and iid in order for them to yield a meaningful quantity and a meaningful standard error estimate from some statistical analysis of the data. In the meantime, bias (and not just confirmation bias or thumbs deliberately on scales — plenty of the bias is purely anthropic sampling bias like the difficult-to-determine UHI error that could be trivially eliminated by using random site selection instead of using the series we’ve got from thermometers placed near places that people live, or can easily get to).
Will it be fixed? Perhaps in a few decades. Satellite data is already fixing it, or limiting it, in some sense. At some point it is probable that people will invest what it costs to do this right — even a few thousand (say, 10,000) truly randomly selected sites (7000 in the oceans, 3000 on land, give or take) would work wonders by, among other things, providing a truly unbiased sanity check on the claims for “corrrections” of the biased surface data from biased sites that comes from a biased sampling procedure. It also might give us a simple, scalable path to more accurate measurements, as we can just add a few more sites every year at moderate cost until we make the mean instantaneous temperature measurement as accurate as we like.
rgb
rgbatduke:
You seem to have misread me. I do not dispute one’s ability to observe a temperature or to average temperatures observed at varying locations or times. I do dispute one’s ability to observe an equilibrium temperature. If you believe an equilibrium surface air temperature has been observed, please share with me a citation to this result.
NOTE WRT BUDDISM – Evidence that Buddhism is not a religion in the normal sense is also to be found in the number of people holding Buddhist values who also, at the same time, belong to religions like Christianity, Judism, etc.
Of the nominally Christian variants, the Society of Friends stands out as being nearly perfectly compatible with anything in the entire spectrum of belief while being totally respectful, indeed a near perfect rediscovery, of Buddha’s general philosophy. Absolute equality, rejection of scriptural dogma in a theory of “continuous personal revelation” compatible with the idea of incremental and systematic improvement of scientific knowledge, simple tenets. There are atheist Quakers, Buddhist quakers, and one good thing about Quakers is that you can be an atheist and for the most part be perfectly welcome. Your path is your path, and God speaks — or does not speak — to you, no fault no problem either way. But you’ll be happier if you avoid harming your neighbors and live in good fellowship with them.
As a number of people have pointed out, if you strip away the superstition, the myths, the legends, the absurd and prolix rules and rituals and the special interests of the priesthood, all religions end up being practically the same. The heart of all religion is (pick your favorite variant of the) Golden Rule. Personally I prefer the negative variant — Do not do unto your neighbor what you do not want your neighbor to do unto you. The positive variant leaves too much room for people to proselytize and threaten or impose religious tyranny, as they can argue that if they were lost sheep damned to hell they’d want somebody to threaten to burn them at the stake or convert — for your own good of course. But it is difficult to argue with being left pretty much alone as long as your actions do not directly harm others. And the best of all is a middle path — leaving people alone to make their own choices while still helping them out in a compassionate way.
One very interesting book that I can commend to those of you on spiritual journeys with the notion of God is this:
http://www.stillnessspeaks.com/sitehtml/unknown/impersonallife.pdf
This text is clearly of Christian origin, but the description of God it presents is pure Vedantic Hinduism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta
or pure monist pandeism, and the associated claim that the purpose of life and religious contemplation and study is to realize the union, nay, the essential identity, between Atman and Brahman, or Self and God. This is to be heavily contrasted with the strictly dualist interpretations of Christianity that of course “won” the war fought in Nicaea, in part because they were a more convenient state religion for a slaveholding global empire.
It is also worth pointing out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charvaka
or “Vedantic Atheism”, that anticipated and published Hume’s primary conclusions over 2000 years before Hume published them. Buddhism arose out of this same period when the Upanishads were written and Vedic priest-driven Hinduism was subjected to several hundred years of skeptical criticism and transformed from being a top-down religion run by the priests to a religion (or many religions) of personal growth and discovery, religions that ranged from pure Charvaka atheism through Buddhism towards Vedantic Hinduism wherein the notion of the Gods remained, with variations of the Trimurti or Mahavishnu representing Brahman, the ultimate Universal consciousness.
I present this for your information only — not as any sort of endorsement. When I subject the Universe to a rigorous mathematical analysis based on what we know of information theory, information entropy, consciousness, and mechanism, I can see very little hope that the Universe is in any sense alive and self-aware beyond our individual awarenesses (which are indeed a part of the Universe becoming self aware of the rest, however poorly and imperfectly). There is no real evidence that it is — the Universe does not behave like a sentient thing. There is no plausible mechanism for any hypothetical awareness — what we do know of it is that it requires an incredibly complex physical apparatus to exist at all and it goes away or is damaged irreparably by damage to that apparatus (or simple administration of drugs that block the electrophysiological processes of neural activity). Our knowledge may not be perfect, but it isn’t nothing, and nothing in our knowledge suggests the possibility of some sort of world-consciousness.
But still, some sort of extension of this concept is at least not logically or mathematically incompatible with the existence of God — and The Impersonal Life channels the outline of the sort-of Christian spiritual pandeist point of view rather perfectly. And as far as I can see, it is harmless. The organized scriptural religions with their dominating priesthood and dogmatic rules defining things like homosexuality as being “evil” and women as being “unclean” or portraying God as a vengeful demon — including Vedic Hinduism, to some extent — are far from harmless.
rgb
richardscourtney says:
” belief that no deity exists (i.e.atheism) is a religious faith of identical kind to belief in the existence of one or more deities ”
must nullify the null hypothesis, eh mastah richard?
i recognize this as the most favored argument of the creationist.
so did trenbreth.
it doesn’t work when somebody names your game.
agnosticism rejects faith but belief that no deity exists (i.e.atheism) is a religious faith of identical kind to belief in the existence of one or more deities (i.e. theism).
Not at all. Atheism is just what it says it is. The lack of belief in any god or gods. Not the active belief that there are no god or gods. Its simplest expression is: there is no evidence for the existence of a god or gods. No matter how “appealing” an argument for them might be on other grounds, I do not believe much in things for which there is no evidence.
I apply the same criterion to magnetic monopoles. There are lovely arguments for their existence. Seriously, physics itself would be apparently incomplete (as far as we know so far) without them. Yet we fail to find any. Lack of evidence is not positive evidence of lack, but it damn sure is lack of evidence.
This is a common mistake made (or tactic used) by people seeking to defend religious belief — the assertion that atheism is itself a “religious belief”.
It is not, any more than my lack of faith in the existence of a monopole is equivalent to a belief that none exist.
rgb
= = = = = =
richardscourtney,
A couple of comments wrt your comment.
It was I that introduced in this thread the definition of religion as profound belief in the supernatural and in superstitions. It was not rgbatduke. He and I were very civilly discussing that in context of this post on WUWT by Christopher Monckton who introduced us to an excellent scientific discussion and also to some very solemnly explicit religious statements. With Anthony’s and the moderator’s tolerance many commentors took Monckton’s lead in pursuing science topics and religious topics. You imply that is out-of-bounds even when Monckton served it up. If Anthony and the moderators say it is then it is.
The philosophy of science and the history of science is replete with these kind of discussions of what science is and by comparison what religion is. In fact that kind of discussion is very necessary to comprehensively talk about objectivity in knowledge and what reality is. That kind of historically important discussion is taking place here and predominately in a civil manner which is surprising considering that religious beliefs are critically discussed. That said, it is solely at the discretion of our host Anthony.
You might consider that the discussion necessarily turned to Hume, Kant, LP and Popper philosophies. The inclusion of religious versus science discussion forced us to those topics philosophies which are very relevant to the climate science dialog.
John
rgbatduke:
I see that at December 29, 2012 at 11:48 am you quote me in another of your deflections of this thread with yet another of your displays of ignorance concerning religion. Indeed, your posts have encouraged gnomish to display willful stupidity on the subject. I am answering this one point purely to state the degree of your error, and I will not reply to any other posts from you about religion on WUWT.
I wrote
You have replied with this nonsense
Nonsense!
Agnosticism is a rejection of belief concerning a deity or deities.
Atheism is the belief that there is no deity.
Theism is the belief that a deity or deities exist.
If you want to discus theology then I am willing to educate you but not on WUWT.
Richard
RichardSCourtney
I am not so sure that Agnosticism is a rejection of belief in a deity in all cases.The dictionary definition ‘A view that nothing is or can be known of a god or of anything but material phenomena’
only goes so far.When you talk to Agnostics though there is a wide variety of belief that is outside the bounds of dictionary definition.
Asking my agnostic father his belief gives the lie of the land.
Do you believe there is a god? Answer,’ I think there probably is, but I can’t be sure.’
Do you believe in life after death?
Answer ‘I very much doubt it, but will be interested to find out.”
John Whitman:
At December 29, 2012 at 12:20 pm you assert to me
There is NO “versus”. They are different and complimentary but absolutely NOT mutually exclusive.
If you want to promote your religion then do it on an appropriate blog. There are several but WUWT is not one of them.
Richard
John Whitman says:
December 29, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Farmerbraun says :
Amen.
= = = = = = =
richardscourtney,
Someone’s insistence of religion as true makes no obligation on someone who finds religion irrelevant to objective knowledge and reality. Let the religionists prove their claims true scientifically and others can do critical skeptical analysis. I have found in my 62 years that most religious people do understand their beliefs are fundamentally not in need of proof or logic or science to be true to themselves . . . . most are epistemologically honest about that. Most scientists have some religion, anyone can critically evaluate rather easily whether religious belief informs some scientific basis . . . . no problema in practice.
Also, the term atheist and agnostic and many such terms are religious sourced/created terms. I simply refuse to use such rigged terms. They can and should be avoided if we are to be objective about discussion of science, reality and religion.
John
@richard Courtney:
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.[1][2] In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.[3][4][5] Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist.[4][5][6][7] Atheism is contrasted with theism,[8][9] which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.[9][10]
See that ? Absence of belief. Not belief in absence.
Richard wrote: agnosticism rejects faith .
Agnosticism is more passive than active; it simply states “unknown and (apparently) unknowable”.
No rejection is involved; simply observation.
cheer up, poor richard – i have good news for you.
prepare for the revelation!
i think that you shall never see
a supernatural deity
and here’s what makes it so much fun-
you can’t prove there isn’t one!
so when i tell you ‘i made god’
you can’t tell me it’s a fraud.
for it is one of nature’s laws
that every thing requires a cause
so how can there be any doubt
once you reallly think it out –
for god to say ‘let there be light’
had and english teacher, right?
and thence ensues hilarity
for you can’t prove it wasn’t me.
for we all know that divine truth-
is not found in a polling booth…
but now draw near for a vital lesson.
and you shall hear my poor confession-
you can’t make a prince by kissing a frog.
nor trust the bark of a dyslexic dog.
John Whitman:
I am replying to your post at December 29, 2012 at 12:46 pm.
Please inform me what that has to do with the subject of this thread: i.e.
the proposals by Lord Monckton that
(a) a ‘rat hole’ be provided to allow AGW-alarmists to escape from their alarmism,
(b) the ‘rat hole’ could be the failure of climate models, and
(c) “we should make sure that the rat-hole we dig for their escape from their lavish folly is as commodious as possible”.
The religious references used by Lord Monckton were the parable of the ‘prodigal son’ as an illustration of how he thought we should be “commodious” and his clear statements of the religious philosophy which induces him to suggest being “commodious”.
You would be reasonably discussing the subject of the thread if you were pointing out that other religious philosophies do not concur with the suggestion I list as (c); e.g. primitive Judaism would require retribution not forgiveness. But you are wanting to promote your religion to the exclusion of the subject.
I repeat, how does anything in your post addressed to me have any relevance to the subject of this thread?
Richard
farmerbraun:
re your posts addressed to me.
Please see my post at December 29, 2012 at 1:11 pm which is addressed to John Whitman.
I fail to see how your promotion of your religion has any relevance to the subject of this thread.
Richard
= = = = = = =
richardscourtney,
Thank you for maintain this thread’s dialog.
I think I identify your fundamental position wrt to religion. It looks to me that you are saying that it is a metaphysical precondition of human beings as such to be religious. To me you are saying ‘a priori’ that we are all religious by our nature; whether we recognize it or not. You imply that if one says one has no religious views then he is falsely rejecting his true metaphysical nature; you say not endorsing a religious view is a religion. N’est ce pas? What evidence do you have that we are all religious and maybe even by metaphysic necessity?
Although Monckton promoted (benignly) his religion in a solemn statement in the lead post, it does not exclude llikewise statements and discussions? It is up to Anthony and the moderators discretions and I respect their decisions.
“versus” means there is a reasonable question of there being a difference between science and religion . There is reasonable cause to compare and contrast. Science does not equal religion prima fascia. So we dialog on the differences so we entitle the argument “versus”. There is in the history of philosophy and the history of science an ample tradition in the discussion. Compatibility is part of dialog that is a reasonable topic; it also has a fine tradition.
I hope you are enjoying the holidays.
John
mr. courtenay has provided good definitions for the terms he’s using. it’s no problem to do logic with them. one may as well focus the argument on whether he’s speaking proper english or not- but that’s such a diversion from a simple topic.
as mr. whitman observed but did not make explicit, the terms are inventions that assume theism as the absolute and the negation of that is signified by the prefix attached ‘a-‘
it’s a common exploit to assert an agenda as an absolute in order to define skeptics as heretics.
but it’s also a lot of work to get anybody to learn an idiosyncratic form of a common language- for example, the word ‘theist’ could well be replaced by a term equivalent of ‘denier of objective causality’ by accepting reality as the absolute. why it hasn’t is because reality is not a parasite’s agenda, of course.
whitman, old boy- how about getting your site up and running? there are only a couple of individuals here who will be able to make sense of any discussion at this level. i’m not going to get any return on investment.
gnomish:
Please stop your fatuous and off-topic posts. Your ridiculous post at December 29, 2012 at 1:09 pm is NOT a “revelation”: it is merely an expression of your lack of a religious experience.
Many people, including me, have such experience which we interpret to be religious. Does that fact give you a revelation? If not then ponder on why I think your post is ridiculous.
Richard
gee, mr. courtenay – can you please make up your mind?
a moment ago you were holding forth that atheism was a religious experience.
the supreme consolence of sublime ignorance is a fragile flower.
you really should not attempt to mix reason with faith – it trammels the bliss.
logic is a pollutant to faith. you must purify your mind.
gnomish:
I repeat. Please desist from posting your ludicrous and off-topic nonsense. For example, your latest post (at December 29, 2012 at 2:54 pm ) is unmitigated twaddle that contains this gem of abject stupidity
No! Logic is necessary to faith.
Superstition is a denial of logic as your posts demonstrate.
Richard
John Whitman and Lewis P Buckingham:
I am replying to your two posts addressed to me at December 29, 2012 at 1:40 pm and December 29, 2012 at 2:40 pm. I intend no disrespect by addressing them both in this single reply but I am pressed for time and my answer to each of you is the same.
I appreciate that your posts do attempt a serious theological debate (which differs from some other recent posts in this thread). But, again, you are way off-topic.
The subject of this thread is important but has been completely usurped by people attempting to turn WUWT into a religious blog. There are appropriate places for such debates on the web but WUWT is not one of them. WUWT has an important function.
I am saddened that the important subject of this thread has been completely lost. And I consider it to be fortunate that I must now leave and will be unable to again get back to communications for about a week. Perhaps upon my return I shall then see some discussion of the thread’s subject has happened.
Richard
“Superstition is a denial of logic as your posts demonstrate.”
thanks! you’re making great progress! it was very courageous of you to make that concession.
only 11 more steps to go. good luck.
richardscourtney says:
December 29, 2012 at 3:18 pm
gnomish:
I repeat. Please desist from posting your ludicrous and off-topic nonsense. For example, your latest post (at December 29, 2012 at 2:54 pm ) is unmitigated twaddle that contains this gem of abject stupidity
logic is a pollutant to faith.
No! Logic is necessary to faith.
Superstition is a denial of logic as your posts demonstrate.
Richard
=============
(I’m about at the limit of what my PC can handle on this thread.)
I quoteed this earlier:
“(Amplified Bible) 1Co 2:14 But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him; and he is incapable of knowing them [of progressively recognizing, understanding, and becoming better acquainted with them] because they are spiritually discerned and estimated and appreciated.”
Now I’ll quote this:
KJV Romans 6:11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The word “reckon” is the Greek word that means “to logically conclude”.
(I’m about to be “dumped on” and my PC’s slowness will make a response unlikely even if I was inclined to, but) Some just don’t want to know or don’t think they need to know.
“The image of God” is spirit. That’s what Adam lost, what “died”. Adam’s first son was in Adam’s image, not God’s. He had it on a conditional basis. Jesus the Christ came to make it available on an unconditional basis. The choice to accept is still up to us.
– – – – – – –
gnomish,
Actually, the slowness in actively starting some posting and moderating of comments is caused by my lack of knowledge / experience with WP blog process and commands. Content of posts is not the critical path for getting my blog active.
At some point I may need to reach out for help from some experienced WP site bloggers / moderators who are very familiar with managing WP blogs . . . . .
John
– – – – – – – –
Richardscourtney,
Whether Christopher Monckton’s religious statements in his lead post were sufficient justification for follow-on comments on religion is the decision of Anthony and the moderators.
I differ to Anthony’s and the moderator’s decision.
I only note that the dialog was relatively civil as such discussions go.
John
J. Whitman:
it may be true that the hardest thing to do is something one’s never done before – but we’re talking about a glorified BBS!
swimming is easier once you jump in.
One last thing. (Really!) Someone mentioned the genealogies in Matthew and Luke are different. They are. Luke is Joseph’s lineage. Matthew is Mary’s. The word translated “husband” in “the husband of Mary” is the Greek word aner. In the NT it is mostly translated as “man”. The implication is a man of note. It’s used of John the Baptist. Context determines how it should be translated. “Father” could be a proper translation, depending on the context. Since the next verse says there were 14 generations from the carrying away unto Babylon and the Christ and if aner is translated “husband” you’d only have 13, then “father” is more accurate. Mary married a man who happened to have the same name as her Dad. In the Aramaic the word is “gbra” and has a similar usage.
No contradiction unless you want one.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
December 29, 2012 at 5:39 am
“Phil” says the model simulations that led their creators in 2008 to write that 15 years or more without warming would indicate a discrepancy between the models’ predictions and observed reality were adjusted to remove the effects of the El Nino Southern Oscillation.
Good grief didn’t you learn about commas?
So they were: but the paper also points out that removing ENSO increases the discrepancy between predictions and observed reality.
Actually what they said was:
“ENSO-adjusted warming in the three surface temperature datasets over the last 2–25 yr continually lies within the 90% range of all similar-length ENSO-adjusted temperature changes in these simulations (Fig. 2.8b).
He also quibbles about Newton’s birthday. However, by the Calendar Reform Act of 1751 (not 1750, since he is being picky about dates),
No, I pointed out the errors in your post concerning the ‘Calendar (New Style) Act 1750’ which as usual you don’t acknowledge!
The Act can be found in the National Archives: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/apgb/Geo2/24/23/contents
Its first implementation was in 1751 which may be what has confused you, as a result 1751 was 282 days long.
11 days were taken out of the calendar to conform with reforms that Catholic Europe had adopted a couple of centuries previously. Therefore Newton was not born on Christmas Day (though, at the time, his parents thought he was).
Since there is no provision in the Act to retroactively change the dates prior to the Act Newton was indeed born on Christmas day, and Christmas church services were held on the same day as his birthday. You’ll find that the Russian Revolution is referred to as the ‘October Revolution’ despite the fact that it took place on Nov 7th (NS).
And he quibbles about what happened at Goose Green. My account comes directly from the 2IC in question.
And you must have mis-remembered most of it since it bears little resemblance to what happened, except for the fact that he prayed before deciding what to do. The surrender at the ‘redoubt’ on Darwin Hill where H Jones was killed was occasioned by Corporal Abols direct hit on the command bunker with a 66mm rocket! Shortly thereafter the Argentine troops raised the white flag and surrendered, the speech you described didn’t take place since Keeble hadn’t even got there yet. The larger surrender at Goose Green the following day took place after the written ultimatum was delivered by Argentine PoWs.
heh- phil – you missed the motherlode of perfidy.
invite mr courtney to provide further guidance.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/29/margaret-thatcher-undermine-miners-union
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107817
a commodious rat hole should have purple velvet draperies and gold brocade…and a place to hang a bowler hat.
“Phil” fails to understand the NOAA State of the Climate report. Once the influences of ENSO (which artificially warmed the world somewhat their period of study) are removed, the discrepancy between the models’ predictions and observed reality is still greater than when ENSO is not allowed for. What the authors said was: “The trend after removing ENSO … is 0.0 K … implying much greater disagreement with anticipated global temperature rise.”
“Phil” also continues to quibble about whether Newton was born on Christmas Day, December 25. His parents thought he was, but, astronomically speaking, they were wrong, as the subsequent correction to the calendar made clear. Whether or not the Act of 1751 that corrected the calendar applied the astronomically-correct dates retrospectively, they remain the astronomically-correct dates. Inferentially, this off-topic quibbling is intended to divert attention from the main point of the piece, which is that gloibal warming is not happening at the predicted rate and is not at all likely to do so, wherefore those who had previously believed in the New Religion will need to be let down as gently as possible.
Finally, he continues to quibble – again off-topic – about who surrendered to whom during a battle in the Falklands. I prefer to adhere to the account of the commander on the spot.
Mr. Oldberg wonders whether an “equilibrium” temperature has been found, but does not define “equilibrium”. In the climate models, “equilibrium” is taken to mean settlement of the climate following a forcing at a point in time where no further warming is likely to arise as a result of the forcing. Solomon et al. (2009) find that the time to equilibrium is 1000-3000 years, from which – if true – it would self-evidently follow that the equilibrium temperature in response to our forcing of the climate has not yet come to pass and cannot, therefore, have been observed.
The question arises, therefore, whether any of the temperature feedbacks which, in the models, account for the difference between the instantaneous climate-sensitivity parameter 0.3 Kelvin per Watt per square meter and the equilibrium parameter 0.9 Kelvin per Watt per square meter can themselves be either observed and measured directly or inferred to a sufficient precision by any theoretical method. However, not one of the feedbacks posited by the IPCC can be observed or measured directly, or reliably inferred by any theoretical method, or distinguished empirically either from any other feedback or from the forcing that triggered it, or – to take up a point mentioned by Professor Brown – established to a sufficient precision by the use of any probability theory, including Bayesian probabilities. For this reason, the feedbacks – and consequently the magnitude of equilibrium warming – are not Popper-falsifiable. Therefore, they are not logic, and they are not science. They are guesswork – and, as the head posting demonstrated, uneducated guesswork at that.
Without the feedbacks, there is no basis for any alarm about the climate. The adherents of the New Religion, realizing this, pin their hopes on the water-vapor feedback, which, they say, must be strongly net-positive because the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, one of the few proven results in the slippery physics of climatology, mandates that the space occupied by an atmosphere can carry near-exponentially more water vapor as it warms. However, merely because the atmosphere can carry more water vapor that is no proof that it does so. At present, precisely because water vapor is not a well-mixed greenhouse gas occurring at near-uniform partial pressures at all altitudes and latitudes (as CO2 is), we have no reliable method of measuring to what extent, if any, the partial pressure of water vapor in the atmosphere has increased. There is some evidence, for instance, to suggest that what evaporates up tends to precipitate down, and that what convects up tends to subside down. This last point is particularly important, since it is only in the upper troposphere that any accumulation of additional water vapor can cause warming: below the mid-troposphere, adding water vapor does not make much difference, since the principal absorption bands are close to saturation already. However, the upper troposphere would be expected to warm far less than the lower troposphere, and it is not clear that the models have correctly represented this altitudinal distinction.
In any event, the water vapor feedback cannot be measured; the mean atmospheric partial pressure of water vapor cannot be measured; and there is, therefore, no empirical method of establishing whether an atmosphere that can hold more water vapor as it warms actually does so. Yet again, therefore, the assumptions made by the models are not Popper-falsifiable. Again, they are guesswork. And guesswork is not logic; nor, therefore, is it science. Since it is only guesswork, if there were a “consensus” in support of it then that “consensus” would be assenting to a guess. Fortunately, there is no such “consensus”, or climate science would be in an even worse state than it is. And in any event, argument from consensus is the logical fallacy of the argumentum ad populum, the head-count fallacy, and any such argument is unscientific a priori.
Monckton of Brenchley (Dec. 31, 2012 at 2:51 am):
Well said! It follows from the lack of observability of the equilibrium temperature and from conclusions reached in information theory that knowing the change in the logarithm of the CO2 concentration provides a policy maker with no information about the change in the equilibrium temperature. The existence of the equilibrium climate sensitivity (TECS) implies that knowing the change in the logarithm of the CO2 concentration provides a policy maker with perfect information but knowing it provides him or her with no information. By implying the existence of TECS, global warming climatologists have fabricated 100% of the information that policy makers think they have for the purpose of making policy.
Please stop your fatuous and off-topic posts. Your ridiculous post at December 29, 2012 at 1:09 pm is NOT a “revelation”: it is merely an expression of your lack of a religious experience.
I really was going to try to quit, but it is like crack cocaine — there is always the hope that the next time I try a bit of light will glimmer through.
The unequal distribution of religious experience among the human population is itself evidence that there is no such thing as a just God.
I’ve been watching the TV show Saving Grace rather avidly on Netflix over break. The thesis of the story is that a “Last Chance Angel” personally intervenes with Grace Hanadarko, a police lieutenant detective in the Oklahoma City police department. The angel “Earl” actually appears to Grace and a variety of others for whom he is a last chance angel, trying gently to turn Grace from her violent rejection of God (on the basis more of theodicy than simple lack of belief in God in the first place — she refuses to worship or ask for help from an apparently evil God who permits the horror she has lived and deals with in her job so that even having a manifestly real, verifiable angel isn’t enough to do the trick). On the good side, Earl is remarkably laid back about which God one worships — any of them will do — and even appears cool with honest atheism. On the bad side, some people get angels, some don’t, and even in this story there is the theme that one’s salvation is predestined and that some don’t make it.
Which is not just. Nor does it make the slightest bit of sense.
People do rationalize this in a wide variety of ways. None of the rationalizations really work, although the serial immortality of Hinduism or Buddhism has at least the possibility of being symmetrized, especially if one views it not as serial immortality but as simultaneous immortality, where you must live through every experience of life over all time (which amazingly enough, ends up being just).
rgb
And you must have mis-remembered most of it since it bears little resemblance to what happened, except for the fact that he prayed before deciding what to do.
In addition, this is not valid evidence of divine intervention. Indeed, it suggests that God is on the side of Englishmen — not the Argentines — as usual in countries with a nominal state religion. Do you think that the Argentinians failed to pray and that’s why they lost? Do you think that one side or the other has some sort of divinely sanctioned right to the Falklands (one of the things I hate most about religion is this ludicrous notion that God has given this group or that group some plot of land to the exclusion of all others)? Do you think that the Jews failed to pray for deliverance from Hitler? Do you think that the Iraqis of both sides failed to pray to Allah? Do you think that Oliver Cromwell failed to pray to God before he lost his head?
Or is it just no true scotsman — they didn’t really pray properly, because if they had it would have worked. This was used to brutal effect when my sister-in-law was dying of breast cancer at the age of 45, leaving behind two small children. Some of her most Christian of friends literally accused her of not having enough faith since her affliction was not going away.
To provide even weak evidence of intervention, one would have to perform double blind, placebo controlled experiments and observe some sort of statistical correlation between prayer and outcome not in the past (where the survivors write the history books and can always attribute their past success to God(s)) but in the future in specific circumstances. When such studies have been conducted by the medical profession in true double blind fashion (eliminating the placebo effect) they have consistently produced a null result.
I don’t have to remind you of the dangers of cherry picking and confirmation bias when looking at a favored solution to any hypothesis or question. God doesn’t get an ontological pass. Or rather he is often given one by those that wish to use cherrypicking and confirmation bias or appeal to personal experience (a.k.a. anecdotal evidence), usually of a purely mental and utterly non-verifiable sort, but It should not be given one. We don’t have two sets of rules for deciding probable truth — one for religion/god and one for matters of fact, not if one wishes to consider god a matter of fact as opposed to metaphor.
I am very fond of the notion of God as a mythopoeic metaphor, and view most religious scripture as such. Some of the metaphor is good, because it is embedded in entertaining teaching tales that convey some moral lesson. Saving Grace is wonderful in that regard. Earl the angel becomes a visible manifestation of an interior monologue (one that works a continuous string of improbable miracles, but that’s part of the “magic” of a story as opposed to reality where this never happens), working out the religious philosophy the authors of the show wish to convey, which is actually a surprisingly lovely one.
I can write this stuff too — The Book of Lilith is precisely such a religious/philosophical mythopoeic extended metaphor. In it God(dess) is presented essentially as Brahman, or the unifying sentient spirit of all things that is common to monist religions or monist interpretations of nominally non-monist religions. If there is a sentient Universal God, this is really the only thing that makes sense. This isn’t quite a solution to the problem of theodicy, but it comes as close as one can get — if nothing else God is every suffering being ane experiences first hand all the joy and pain of every additional life, and even cruelty becomes a single Dog biting its own tail.
It leaves a serious question as to why the Dog bites its own tail given that it presumably hurts. I attempt to answer that question, both in The Book of Lilith and in Lulea (linked above).
That doesn’t mean that I believe that even my own “explanations” in these metaphors is true — I can actually distinguish between probable truth and metaphor, even when I write the latter myself. I start the book out with the usual “This is a work of fiction, and all people and gods portrayed are strictly imaginary”. It doesn’t work! I still get people asking me if this part or that part is true. Many people want to believe so very much that they blur the cognitive line between fantasy and reality; myth, metaphor, magic and reality. Lying, lunacy and lordship are confused, the possibility of legend is ignored.
rgb
You seem to have misread me. I do not dispute one’s ability to observe a temperature or to average temperatures observed at varying locations or times. I do dispute one’s ability to observe an equilibrium temperature. If you believe an equilibrium surface air temperature has been observed, please share with me a citation to this result.
But this isn’t the relevant quantity, since the Earth is a non-equilibrium (open dynamical) chaotic system. It has an instantaneous state, as I pointed out, and various state variables — such as albedo, average surface temperature, lower tropospheric temperature, are observable and computable with statistical precision from measured data given a clear definition. Within the stochastic ordinary integrodifferential equations that describe the time evolution of this state (which is not an equilibrium as it is constantly moving around!) there are feedback terms. Your specific claim to which I took exception is that climate feedbacks are unknowable or not falsifiable, and this is not true. The lack of an observable equilibrium is irrelevant and obvious.
To put it in a way that you may or may not understand, we can measure/compute the instantaneous (and coarse grained averaged) values of a variety of climate state variables with meaningful error estimates. We can hypothesize dynamical systems of equations that produce, from a non-Markovian past history of those variable plus physics-based dynamical hypotheses. Those dynamical systems can produce (stochastic, because our knowledge of state and dynamics is imperfect) the local potential and by differentiation the forces that move the climate state variables around. The physical parameters of many of these dynamical open models include “feedbacks” from one aspect of state acting on another in a nonlinear manner.
In many cases those equations, in a mean field approximation, will have a corresponding global potential with minima along projections onto a state variable that can be interpreted as “equilbrium” of that variable, but since the shape of that surface is a nonlinear function of the state variables in toto, this is at best associated with a partial derivative in that variable and at worst as one changes that variable globally the entire hypersurface shifts. Plus noise!
Climate is a difficult problem. But not an “unknowable” or “unsolvable/unfalsifiable” one, provided that one is sufficiently precise in how one formulates the solution attempts that must be compared to future experience. A good, plausible climate model can be judge by the same criterion we use to judge any other similar stochastic integrodifferential system in physics — if it has modest predictive value (withing the bounds dictated by noise in the stochastic portions of the equations) then it isn’t verified or falsified, but it is plausible and reasonable and useful. The less predictive it is within these bounds, the more likely it is that some aspect of the model is incorrect. What is irrational or unscientific about that?
rgb
[As the math becomes more and more involved, would they not evolve into twisted spirally “integrowdifferential” equations? 8<) Mod]
rgbatduke:
In the record of this thread, I do not find a claim made by me that “climate feedbacks are unknowable or not falsifiable” and I do not believe such a claim to be true. I do claim that “The IPCC suggestion of 3.3 deg C per doubling has the additional shortcoming of being non-falsifiable. This conclusion follows from the non-observability of the equilibrium temperature.” I gather that we agree on the non-observability of the equilibrium temperature. I gather, then, that the source of disagreement is my claim that “This conclusion follows…”
If the “3.3 deg C” were an instantaneous or average temperature, then my conclusion would not follow from the non-observability of the equilibrium temperature; that the 3.3 deg C is an instantaneous or average temperature seems to be what you think. However, the IPCC defines the climate sensitivity (aka the equilibrium climate sensitivity) as “the equilibrium global mean surface temperature change following a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration” ( http://ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-6.html ). “3.3. C” is the change in the equilibrium temperature NOT the change in the instantaneous or average temperature ( http://ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-5.html#box-10-2 ). Thus, my claim that “This conclusion follows…” is true and your counterclaim is false.
Professor Brown, in his continuing, spectacularly muddled and rather tendentious campaign against Christianity, misinterprets my telling of the story of the British commander who prayed and then telephoned the Argentinians he was facing and invited them to surrender, which they did. The point of the story had nothing whatsoever to do with the “divine intervention” mentioned by the Professor: it was that one can win battles by diplomacy rather than by brute force, and diplomacy sometimes works. The point of the head posting was that we must let down the true-believers in the New Religion of global warming gently now that their credo has been proven defective.
Monckton of Brenchley says, December 31, 2012 at 1:27 pm: “Professor Brown, in his continuing, spectacularly muddled and rather tendentious campaign against Christianity, misinterprets my telling of the story of the British commander who prayed and then telephoned the Argentinians he was facing and invited them to surrender, which they did. The point of the story had nothing whatsoever to do with the “divine intervention” mentioned by the Professor: it was that one can win battles by diplomacy rather than by brute force, and diplomacy sometimes works….”
=======================================================
But Christopher, you clearly did imply “divine intervention”. Not everyone has a short memory. This is what you told us on this thread (December 25, 2012 at 11:40 am):
“His no. 2 found himself unexpectedly in command and decided to pray. (Did I say it was Christmas?) The answer came to him at once and he told his sparky to patch him through to the Argentinian commander.
“Now, look here, old boy,” he said in his most authoritative, cut-glass, public-school-and-Sandhurst drawl, “We both know how this is going to end. So what I’m going to suggest is this. You all lay down your arms like good chaps …”
Diplomacy is not a bad option when you’re outnumbered, low on ammo, haven’t slept for 60 hrs etc. worked spectacularly in that case!
– – – – – – –
Phil,
Not bad. Not bad at all. : )
And I always liked American Army General Anthony Clement “Nuts” McAuliffe’s reply to the German Army’s ultimatum that he surrender during The Battle of the Bulge campaign in WW2. He replied to the Germans in one word, “Nuts”.
Screw diplomacy when dichotomous principles are involved.
John
Monckton of Brenchley says:
December 31, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Professor Brown, in his continuing, spectacularly muddled and rather tendentious campaign against Christianity, misinterprets my telling of the story of the British commander who prayed and then telephoned the Argentinians he was facing and invited them to surrender, which they did. The point of the story had nothing whatsoever to do with the “divine intervention” mentioned by the Professor: it was that one can win battles by diplomacy rather than by brute force, and diplomacy sometimes works. The point of the head posting was that we must let down the true-believers in the New Religion of global warming gently now that their credo has been proven defective.
============================================
If you weren’t already aware of this, I thought you’d appreciate it along with some others here. Some won’t.
http://www.biblebelievers.com/fuchida1.html
of all possible topics a speaker could choose from the infinite number available, he selects what he does for a reason.
of all possible angles to take on the topic he has selected as more important than all the rest, he chooses his slant for a reason.
of all possible words he could use to express his take on the topic he selected from among all others and from among all perspectives, he chooses the vocabulary he employs for a reason.
application of semantic analysis reveals the matador behind the red cape and the culture behind the matador.
when a skunk sprays we could discuss how bad it smells – or we could note how well it works for the skunk. understanding that, we may find a defense. finding a defense, we might be protected. being protected, we might end the affliction.
J.W.- have you been doing Premise Detection & Analysis on this thread? I have. Do you see what I see?
Thus, my claim that “This conclusion follows…” is true and your counterclaim is false.
Given these definitions then, I concede. I would argue that the issue is sloppiness of language more than anything else, but you are quite correct that we have no way of knowing what the (dynamical) “equilibrium temperature” of the Earth is or should be with or without CO_2 changes. We can do things with derivatives, however, which do not depend on knowledge of the absolute magnitude of a quantity. I assume that what they are referring to is some sort of partial derivative of decadally averaged temperature with respect to atmospheric CO_2 concentration, which is a well defined quantity provided only that you specify how you are going to evaluate the decadally averaged temperature.
Whether it is well defined and relevant in a highly multvariate system is another matter.
rgb
rgbatduke:
I don’t believe that the IPCC’s choice of words is unusual. An article by Hegerel et al ( http://www-test.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/tcrowley/Hegerl_Nature_sensitivity.pdf ) provides a bit of evidence on usage in the climatological literature. According to the authors: “The commonly accepted range for the equilibrium global mean temperature change in response to a doubling of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, termed climate sensitivity, is 1.5-4.5 K.”
Everything I’ve read in the 3+ years since I began to poke around in the literature of climatology is consistent with the belief that by “the equilibrium global mean temperature change” climatologists mean exactly what they say. The authors of AR4 cover up key consequences from the unobservability of the equilibrium global mean temperature through applications of the equivocation fallacy, as I establish in the article at http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/15/the-principles-of-reasoning-part-iii-logic-and-climatology/ .
= = = = = =
gnomish,
It appears to me that almost everyone on this thread exhibits a yearning to do some serious premise detective work and premise analysis of Monckton’s post, whether they initially react for or against his original post’s thoughts on diplomacy, climate science and religion.
WRT your analogies, I suggest it is best to stay away from analogies. That applies to Monckton’s rat analogies in his diplomatic strategy considerations; rat analogies which he made in front of both parties who he suggests engage in diplomacy. That is bizarre behavior is if he was serious, a good piece of satire if he wasn’t serious.
Once again we see that dialogs on scientific basis compared to the basis of faith will evoke a valuable insight into the most fundamental premises involved in the human condition. Is the ~ 2,400 old dialog involving a comparison of Plato/Kant to Aristotle the prototype for the dialog of faith compared to science? I think it is. : )
PERSONAL NOTE: rgbatduke made a sincere gesture of diplomatic calming toward Christopher Monckton after rgb’s self-admitted unnecessarily exuberant words critical of religion. Yet Monckton made no such gesture after Monckton’s shocking emotion charged words toward rgbatduke. I have been for years a consistent avid supporter Christopher Monckton and his civility, which is why I now am troubled about what I think is his ungentlemanly behavior on this thread.
John
rgb: Do you think that Oliver Cromwell failed to pray to God before he lost his head?
Since we’ve been wandering all over the topical countryside, perhaps I can offer one more comment of questionable relevance… Oliver Cromwell was long dead when they dug up his corpse and cut off his head.
John Whitman says: January 1, 2013 at 10:35 am
===================================
Your note certainly was personal, and unnecessary to boot. Put that in your premise detector.
Since we’ve been wandering all over the topical countryside, perhaps I can offer one more comment of questionable relevance… Oliver Cromwell was long dead when they dug up his corpse and cut off his head.
Oops, sorry. I knew that. However, it is almost certain that he prayed, often, throughout his whole life, and I know of no reason to doubt his sincerity. He is reported to have believed (like many before him) that God was guiding his victories. Reportedly Charles I, whose head he helped cut off, felt that he had a divine right to his royal prerogatives and was of course the head of the English Church, so one has to assume that he also prayed. Charles II no doubt felt that God was on his side during the Restoration. James almost certainly felt the same way after Charles II. One simply cannot go down through the history of warfare and politics and see in it some sign of the hand of God, with God sparing this group because they are devout or casting down this group because they are not. In fact, the “bad guys” often won, and the suffering of the poor but devout has known no bounds throughout most of recorded history. I would review the history of Spain, the Spanish conquests in the New World, and the infamous Spanish Inquisition, but there is no real need.
You have to go back to the Old Testament to get to reports of “miraculous” victories due to the direct intervention of God, and while you are there you might as well take a turn by the equally credible and a lot more fun turn by the Mahabharata and Ramayana. If God is going to intervene in a battle, it is always best if God refuses to cast things like the Brahmastra or the astra Praswaapa, either of which would end the world. The battles on the fields of Kurukshetra read like nuclear war complete to doomsday weapons. Thanks, God!
In the real world, there is little correlation between any particular religion and military success beyond the rather natural correlation produced by the victors writing the histories (and therein attributing their successes to God) even as the losers did back when they were still winners.
As far as Christianity exerting a positive effect on war — one need go no further than the U. S. Civil War to have a smashing counterexample. Both sides were predominantly Christian, although Lincoln was reportedly an atheist, or at least a man who rejected scriptural religion and viewed all churches with considerable suspicion. A favorite quote:
“It is an established maxim and moral that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him.”
This makes liars out of all who claim a knowledge of God that cannot be soundly supported. There is no sound support for a knowledge of God, especially a knowledge derived from scripture. Again from Lincoln:
“My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.”
Christianity invoked the Bible on both sides of the line to justify the most brutal of slavery and to justify its rejection. The Old Testament, after all, explicitly permits slavery and indeed permits a slaveowner to beat a slave almost to death on any whim (but prohibits him from actually killing a slave, without any particularly onerous penalty if one should accidentally go to far). Jesus had numerous opportunities to speak out against slavery in the New Testament, but of course never did. If he had, Constantine would never have adopted Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire, with its vast slaveholdings. In the name of preserving “a way of life” that just happened to include vast economic wealth held by a small white minority sustained by the employment of unpaid human chattel, Christians on both sides fought one of the bloodiest wars of all time. Both sides of course thanked God for their victories, and God never voted any of the obvious ways available for one side over the other, such as pulling an Old Testament Let My People God on the Confederacy and wiping out all of the firstborn sons of the Confederacy overnight , raining frogs down on them, etc. I’d wager a plague of falling frogs and dead sons that struck only the owners of slaves would have gotten the message across very clearly.
But that never happens, because either God isn’t real, he’s imaginary, or God is real but doesn’t actually intervene in the world, so prayers requestion miracles and interventions are a waste of time, Jesus’s many assertions about prayer and faith being able to accomplish this or that are false, and evil and good both triumph on the strict basis of might (plus good luck, help from random factors and skill) makes right. “Treason doth never prosper; what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
So it is with religion.
rgb
– – – – – – – –
mpainter,
My note was not just personal, it very very personal.
Perhaps my personal note was just as unnecessary as Christopher Monckton’s personal remarks to rgbatduke which still stand unmitigated.
Yes, my premise that Christopher Monckton should be a gentleman in this thread based on his good track record of proper gentlemanly behavior in previous WUWT posts might be wrong. I had hoped he can follow rgbatduke’s diplomatic admission and regret of over-exuberance in critical expression.
So I admit the possibility of my personal note having an incorrect premise. We all learn from experience.
John
heh – you’re right.
analogies suck like tits on a duck.
but a quack is a quack is a quack.
whom it pleases to sell diseases
and then charge for fake remedies.
i was wondering if you noticed the curious incident of the rat barking in the night..
hard to communicate once the kids know how to spell and have mastered piglatin.
i guess i wait for your site to open.
John Whitman:
At December 29, 2012 at 3:33 pm I concluded my post to you and Lewis P Buckingham saying:
I am back, and I observe that my hope was forlorn. Your post at December 30, 2012 at 11:26 am explains why. It says;
Therein is the problem. In the absence of religion there is no ethical – so no moral – base: morality only consists of what can be tolerated within applied rules.
The Rules of WUWT permit much leeway and Moderators only block matters which are very off-topic. Hence, a reference or illustration can be deliberately used as an excuse to divert a thread from its topic, and this clearly happened in this thread.
Atheists use every excuse they can to promote their amoral religion, so what happened here could have been expected. And the result has been a complete disaster.
The important subject of this thread was consideration of how to enable escape from the AGW-scare. That subject has been completely avoided and has been replaced by ignorant anti-Christian twaddle only of interest to atheists.
Those responsible probably feel happy that they have evangelised their religion. But anybody who cares about ending the AGW-scare has abandoned the thread.
Richard
richard-
please do define ‘morality’ – i fear you have no clear understanding of the word.
i’ll define it for you, if that helps: morality is the science of choice on the basis of values.
richard – please define ‘ethics’ – i fear you have no clear understanding of the word.
i’ll define it for you, if that helps: ethics is the application of morality to relationships between individuals.
if you have some meaning in mind that differs from the definitions i provided, please elucidate them.
then, perhaps, you’d be so kind as to define ‘values’
i can do that for you, if you need help with that.
richardscourtney says:
January 3, 2013 at 1:55 pm
===============
You’re right. Sorry for responding here on WUWT to “Evangelical Athieism”. I would have emailed the link I posted in my last comment at December 31, 2012 at 7:38 pm but for the reason stated but I couldn’t.
When made his original post about what happened in Doha, I said something to the effect that it might have been the first time some of them had heard that. The pebble that starts an avalanche.
I believe point of this post, that he made with a Biblical reference, if some begin to wake up, give them a chance to open their eyes.
I doubt if the Manns and the Gores will be among that number but just maybe that “bossy young woman with messy blond hair” will be.
gnomish:
re your post addressed to me at January 3, 2013 at 2:15 pm.
If you were to post something you knew about or understood then I would be pleased to read it.
Richard
richardscourtney Thanks for inviting me to follow this discussion.
This is probably not the best place or time to discuss metaphysics, although I do find it interesting.
The rat hole ‘problem’ at once delineates the problem but denigrates those whose views it attempts to address as potential rats.
Some on this thread want to name and blame those who have entered the Dante world of the circles of Hell.Others ,such as the writer Lord Monkton, want to make sure that they are given a way out, a very British and may I dare say ,Christian thing to do.Something like what happened to Kim Philby when the errors of his way were discovered.He did not rush off and start a new movement.
The recent post that finds that there may be an Anthropogenic signature in the short [climate] term, which leads to some warming may be the way forward.
Increasingly, at least in Australia, the ruling parties are sticking to their guns on carbon, but the people are abandoning them.
The meme could be developed that allows more leading climate scientists, whoever they may be, to sign a memorandum that the CO2 signature has been found to be short lived and that natural technological innovation, unassisted by onerous green schemes and taxation will be the best way forward especially in the face of world recession.A few economists would also sign up.
As you may belong to a religion, it would be good to get on their site and debate the warmists there.
That’s what I do, and if an atheist passes by, have a conversation with him.
My late uncle was an atheist and a good man, for as it is written
‘Blessed are those that search for justice….
This is what the ‘AGW’ debate is really about.The access to empirical truth so that people including planners, politicians and voters can make conscientious decisions about their lives, informed by their beliefs.
This site allow a good mix from all scientific walks of life to publish and discuss empirical truth.
[snip – give it a rest – Anthony]
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richardscourtney,
Welcome back.
Christianity per se is irrelevant to all my comments on this thread. Go back and read them. What is relevant to me are the metaphysical and the epistemological differences between the essential basis of religion (all varieties) and the essential basis of modern era science. This is an honored and necessary dialog in philosophy since Ancient Greek times and especially so since the renaissance. To cast it pejoratively as an incorrect discussion as you do is simply prejudicial. Per the diplomatic, science and Christianity topics initiated by Christopher Monckton some commenters focused on general religion and some commenters specifically focused on Christianity but all are sustaining a ~2400 yr old dialog that I think will last thousands of yrs longer. Viva!
I think you are still maintaing a false philosophical position which I presented to you in a comment to you on December 29, 2012 at 1:40 pm:
Now I add an observation about what I think is another false philosophical position of yours, based on your view that the exclusive source any moral system is religion. On the contrary, one does not need a profound belief in the supernatural / superstitions (which I think religion is) to have a highly reasonable moral basis for living a life consistent with man’s nature as a rational being. How do you claim exclusivity of morality to religion?
For you to imply that whoever still is monitoring this thread (and that includes you) must not care ” . . . about ending the AGW-scare . . . ” seems to me to be an indirect insult their integrity and my integrity. Why do you think that kind of statement is civil?
Also, a juxtaposition of climate science and religion, like Christopher Monckton had done, leads to other areas like discussion of the religious nature of some ideological adherents to CAGW ‘science’. Pandora’s box and all that . . .
NOTE: ‘atheist’ is strictly a theological term. For someone like me those kind of terms terms misrepresent in the favor of religious views. I suggest we use strictly secular terminology.
John
[snip – give it a rest – Anthony]
all righty. 🙂
Lewis P Buckingham:
I agree all you say at January 3, 2013 at 6:29 pm.
For clarity, to declare a personal interest, and to demonstrate my sincerity in claiming that debate of religion is misplaced here, I respond to your saying to me
I am an Accredited Methodist Preacher operating in the Falmouth and Gwenap Circuit of the Methodist Church of England and Wales. My duties include proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ which I do at every appropriate opportunity and from the pulpit during my conduct of Worship on Sundays.
But “There is a time and a place for all things” and WUWT is not the place for promotion of any religion. Important work is conducted here and should not be disrupted.
There are many other times and places where promotion of religion would also be inappropriate because it is damaging to the proper conduct of important activity; e.g. in an aircraft cockpit during landing procedures.
Richard
richardscourtney re jan 4 2013 1.57am
Thanks Richard.
John Whitman:
At January 3, 2013 at 4:00 pm you ask me
I don’t care whether or not the statement is “civil”.
I am angry because it is clearly true.
You and others have destroyed this thread by your promotion of your religion. I don’t care about your amoral religion but I do care about the subject of this thread: I posted an article about this subject on WUWT in August 2009.
Richard
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richardscourtney,
Thank you for your insightful efforts in extending an interesting dialog initiated by Christopher Monckton who juxtaposed a witty satire on diplomacy, arguments of science and sincere statements of declaration his Christian religion.
I see that you are angry and it has absolutely no epistemological merit in rational philosophical discourse on the fundamental differences between science and religion.
Richard, if you do not care about being civil with me then I will not be uncivil to you in return.
Again you are assuming false philosophical positions as I have presented to you in my previous comments to you on this thread. Here aren’t previous comments to you:
Sincerely, I would appreciate having your rational explanations of what appear to me to be of your false philosophical positions.
Are you aware Paul of Tarsus’ firm view of the absolute necessity of founding early Christianity purely on faith alone? And are you aware of Augustine’s intentional accomplishments in fully integrating Christianity formally with Platonist philosophy in the areas of metaphysics, epistemology and morals? Also, are you aware of Thomas Aquinas’ intentional accomplishment, opposingAugustine, in realigning Christianity to be integrated with broad aspects of Aristotelian philosophy . Finally, are you aware, after Aquinas, of Kant’s self-affirmation that the purpose of his philosophical efforts was to restore the fundamental basis of Christian faith by intentionally gutting the philosophical basis of reason and of the basis of objective knowledge of mankind’s natural universe?
For you to be apparently prejudiced against the discussions in this thread that bring out the scientific essence in direct contrast with the religious essence contradicts prima facia the history of Christianity and the history of philosophy and the history of science.
Is there religious intolerance of this dialog that is contrasting scientific essence directly with the religious essence? If any religious intolerance exists then it would seems unreasonable when considering that this dialog on this thread is the intellectual gift that Christopher Monckton gave commenters when he provided the juxtaposition of diplomacy, science and his Christian religion. I sincerely thank him.
John
Oops!
I made a goofy mistake in my above comment @John Whitman on January 4, 2013 at 10:09 am addressed to richardscourtney.
(I fumbled up autocomplete).
Here is a corrected paragraph:
Sorry.
John
John Whitman:
Your recent posts addressed to me increase my righteous anger which I explained in my post addressed to you at January 4, 2013 at 2:05 am.
I will not play your silly games: you have become an insufferable pest.
Richard
I wish I could have emailed this to Moncton and Richard but I can’t. It’s about Fuchida, the [Japanese commander] that led the attack on Pearl Harbor. This is just the introduction to the booklet. In the context of CAGW, if you can’t give your enemy the chance to become your friend, then maybe you have something yet to learn.
http://www.biblebelievers.com/fuchida1.html
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Richardscourtney,
In this thread’s open and sincere discussion, which I find rather typical of sincere intellectual ones which have spanned millennia in the history of philosophy, history of science and the history of Christianity, you evoke a “righteous anger” and resort to name calling, e.g., names like; silly, games, insufferable, pests.
And still I will remain civil toward you. I do not have pity toward your words or actions and express my attitude toward you by these lines from a poem by D.H. Lawrence,
I suggest you should check your premises wrt the topics on this thread. All the issues on this thread are relevant to the phenomena surrounding the scientific cargo cult sect that promotes its ‘pseudo-science’ supporting CAGW.
John
Gunga Din:
re your post at January 4, 2013 at 3:05 pm.
Yes, I saw it when you first posted the link. I apologise that I failed to thank you for it then. Sorry.
As you say, it is a very good example of ‘making your enemy your friend’.
Richard
rgbatduke,
It is very late, but I realized just now that I had a Jan 2 response to a post of yours on Jan 1. I thought I had posted but forgot to.
Here it is.
John
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rgbatduke,
Thank you for continuing the highly informative contrast of religion to science sub-thread of this thread on diplomacy, science and religion that Christopher Monckton so eloquently initiated. I think it continues to be important to contrast science and religion in the areas of epistemology and metaphysics . . . the better to see what epistemology and metaphysics means to human beings as reasoning entities.
One can expand on your specific critiques of instances in the history of Christianity to the broader aspects of the history of religion in general. That is more interesting to me than specific discussion of Christianity. Christianity per se is merely one datum in the very large religious data set.
I think any action can be justified by fiat before an act and/or after an act by religious members claiming messages from the supernatural / superstitious realms. So it inherently is with religion. Religions who conveniently re-interpret ad hoc scriptures which they claim are god-sourced the same phenomena. Contrast that to science, there is a profound irrelevancy of one to the other.
Supernatural / superstitious justifications are not just endemic in the traditional major religions of our time, but also in: 1) secular religions based on the worship the State as an omniscient and all powerful entity that is believed to supernaturally greater than the sum of its citizens, such as in fascist and collectivist cultures, and in 2) neo-pagan religions such as those that worship Mother Gaia as re-created by ideological environmentalism.
Getting away from that aspect of religious behavior to the mythical content of religions, I see a possibly non-supernaturall element to religion . . . . like Joseph Campbell I see the possibility of a psycho-epistemologically required recurring story across all religions and cultures, both past and present. There may be a story that appears to need telling across all civilizations, peoples and time that does not require actual belief in the existence of supernatural realms / beings and superstitious elements.
Again, my comment is very late. I hope not too late to catch you on this thread.
John
John-
that necessary psychoepistemological element is a standard of values, without which, there is no consistent way of evaluating anything. you know about analogies. it’s not allegory but definition.
richardscourtney says:
January 4, 2013 at 1:57 am
I am an Accredited Methodist Preacher operating in the Falmouth and Gwenap Circuit of the Methodist Church of England and Wales.
Richard, I was interested to see this, when I left the UK for the USA in the early 80s I was under the impression that the Methodist church was merging with the C of E, I guess that fell through?
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gnomish,
I call it a ‘story’; Joseph Campbell calls it a monomyth. James Frazer had some conceptions that may or may not be similar. As you know, I steer away from analogy, likewise metaphor and allegory, etc. Therefore, without a better word I call it a ‘story’. Whatever it is there may be justification that it a human’s physiological necessity? Interesting things to consider. But what is important, to me at least, is that the discussion is a secular assessment of whatever it is; a supernatural / superstitious based assessment is irrelevant.
Note: Yeah, do not need to remind me that I am very slow on my statement to you that I will document some of the major epistemological / metaphysical critics of Karl Popper’s ‘demarcation’ position on falsifiability. But I will not forget. : )
John
Phil.:
re your off-topic question to me at January 5, 2013 at 4:15 pm.
Yes, the CofE and Methodist merger did fail. There were several problems, notably the Doctrine of Priesthood, and the Methodist Circuit system which does not have Bishops (although Methodist Bishops do exist e.g. in the USA where the Circuit system was never adopted).
We now have an agreement of understanding and work closely together in many ways and at all levels. Shared Services are common and are usually held according to either Methodist or CofE tradition depending on which building is used. This compromise maximises diversity so seems preferable to actual merger.
Richard
does this differ from what anton la vey calls ‘ritual’?
does it imply that identity is built on a foundation of role playing?
there’s a really cool trick i know about human nature… ask somebody to define it. if he gives an honest effort, what he tells you may or may not have anything to do with any other human, but will nicely project his view of himself.
richardscourtney says:
January 5, 2013 at 5:40 pm
Phil.:
re your off-topic question to me at January 5, 2013 at 4:15 pm.
Yes, the CofE and Methodist merger did fail. There were several problems, notably the Doctrine of Priesthood, and the Methodist Circuit system which does not have Bishops (although Methodist Bishops do exist e.g. in the USA where the Circuit system was never adopted).
We now have an agreement of understanding and work closely together in many ways and at all levels. Shared Services are common and are usually held according to either Methodist or CofE tradition depending on which building is used. This compromise maximises diversity so seems preferable to actual merger.
Thanks, I don’t know what happened in my home town since the Methodist church closed and the building no longer exists. At one time there were two, the Primitives and the Wesleyans.
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gnomish,
I do not recall having heard of ‘anton la vey’. I will Google.
By the way, I have never told you how much I have appreciated your long term dogged persistence in encouraging me to take my dormant WP website into active status. Thank you. I will work on it.
John