A doubly whammy this week as Gaia author Lovelock rails against windfarms and environmentalists, and climate sensitivity has been scaled back. From Dr. Benny Peiser at The GWPF:
Global warming is likely to be less extreme than claimed, researchers said yesterday. The most likely temperature rise will be 1.9C (3.4F) compared with the 3.5C predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Norwegian study says earlier predictions were based on rapid warming in the Nineties. But Oslo University’s department of geosciences included data since 2000 when temperature rises “levelled off nearly completely”. –John Ingham, Daily Express, 26 January 2013
The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the Nineties. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity. We are most likely witnessing natural fluctuations in the climate system – changes that can occur over several decades – and which are coming on top of a long-term warming. —-Professor Terje Berntsen, University of Oslo, 24 January 2013
These results are truly sensational. If confirmed by other studies, this could have far-reaching impacts on efforts to achieve the political targets for climate. –Caroline Leck, Stockholm University, 25 January 2013
This research confirms what we have been saying all along. The global warming standstill of the last 16 years is having a dramatic effect on climate models and predictions. The Met Office should now reassess its own, flawed computer models and tone down the alarmist pronouncements which are no longer trustworthy. –The Global Warming Policy Foundation, Daily Express, 26 January 2013
Even the previous IPCC imminent doom scenario completely failed to produce any serious action. With the recent gradual scientific acceptance – even among scientists who have spent their whole lives studying the subject – that global warming is simply much less significant than had been thought, the chance of anyone caring enough to take action is now even lower. — Lewis Page, The Register, 25 January 2013
I am James Lovelock, scientist and author, known as the originator of Gaia theory, a view of the Earth that sees it as a self-regulating entity that keeps the surface environment always fit for life… I am an environmentalist and founder member of the Greens but I bow my head in shame at the thought that our original good intentions should have been so misunderstood and misapplied. We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs. We need take care that the spinning windmills do not become like the statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilisation. – Bishop Hill, James Lovelock, 12 December 2012 (in a letter noted by Phillip Bratby)
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Related articles
- Team of Ex-NASA Scientists Concludes No Imminent Threat from Man-Made CO2 (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Yet another study shows lower climate sensitivity (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Environmental backpedalling picks up pace (dailymaverick.co.za)
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I’m sorry, I don’t trust it. It looks like a step back, but I don’t think that’s what it is. I think they are simply seeking more time. The threat will be presented as still there and slower, meaning: “Thank goodness, we all have ten years now (or twenty, or fifty, take your pick) to take action and stop the threat.”
Their constant “We’re running out of time” has run out of time – they’re looking for an extension. Saying it’s not as bad won’t stop them insisting that something must be done.
Lovelock is still very much in the warmist camp – in spite of this being in opposition to his self-regulating gaia theory which would demand the feedbacks be generally negative. However, he does have sensible views on windfarms lack of utility, as well as the utility of both nuclear and fracking in providing energy with little of the carbon dioxide emissions that he views as being a problem.
It’ll be interesting to see how the MSM juggles this hot potato.
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
Signs of commonsense being introduced into the warmist side of the science debate.
“mosomoso says:
January 26, 2013 at 7:53 am
I’d just like to share a few reflections on climate change, with reference to my part of NSW, since NSW has recently been used as a poster-child for CAGW. Remember how we were ablaze last week? There are still risks in some parts, but Oz has just done what it does best: it just changed its climate again.”
mosomoso, Australia stretches from latitude 10 S to 45 S. The climate on this continent varies from tropical rainforests to deserts and alpine snowfields. Two years after Queensland suffered devastating floods it’s happening again. That storm front is moving down to NSW. Meanwhile further south here in Victoria, The Prime Minister is visiting areas in Victoria where bushfires still burn.
These extreme events are happening with increasing frequency. The common factor in the extreme conditions is heat. Temperature records were broken across the continent a few weeks ago. In the tropics extra heat increases evaporation of the oceans and drives cyclonic winds. That is what is happening in Queensland this year, as it did two yaers ago.
What were once in a century events are happening with greater frequency. That is climate change.
You are looking at a too short period of the Earth history. NO Climate change that wasn’t predicted in 1899 to be happening within the next 120 years.
Remember John Muir. His heart was broken because he could not save the other Yosemite Valley (Hetch Hetchy). It was dammed for water for San Francisco. The Sierra Club always used to try to protect the environment from those who wanted the resources. It’s rather ironic that they now let renewable resources trump environment. Windmills are not green. The panic over saving the world causes people to lose their reason.
Philip Shehan I have a brilliant solution to your problem.
Granted that Australia seems to be taking strain from the heat, and the devastating droughts and floods of the 18th and 19th centuries have reappeared, we round up all the whingeing Aussies and relocate them north of latitude 60 in places like Canada and Siberia where bush fires are unknown and the population density is only a tenth of the global average thanks to extreme cold making the region close to uninhabitable, but global warming will fix that.
Australia has a third of a per cent of the world’s population, and nutty climate activists are only a fraction of a per cent of that. The notion that this handful should attempt to promote their special needs over those of the remaining 7 billion humans and countless billion other animals, is simply laughable.
BTW I spent a few years in Oz and apart from southern Africa it’s as close to “God’s Own Country” as you can get and the people, most of them anyway, are fantastic.
PS Philip when you have been “raptured” to a climate better suited to your liking, please leave your house for all the perfectly satisfied Aussies to move into, and make sure the fridge is full of frosties too.
oldfossil:
What are you on about?
I like the climate here fine as it is. My concern is that future generations of Australians may find the results of anthropogenic climate change on this continent far less amenable.
Dear Philip, may I repeat in simple words what I said before.
Australia seems to be getting too hot for some of its population of 23 million.
But a warmer planet would be welcomed by not millions but billions who live at high latitudes.
Nevertheless that tiny percentage of the world’s population comprised of Australian climate activists insist that the whole world take action to cool Australia down.
Is this or is it not a logical disconnect?
oldfossil,
Disregard Shehan, his mind is made up and closed tighter than a drum. He parrots the usual alarmist lie: “These extreme events are happening with increasing frequency.” That is mendacious propaganda.
That is contradicted by reams of empirical data. The climate Null Hypothesis, which has never been falsified, shows unequivocally that current climate parameters have been routinely exceeded in the past. Therefore, what is happening now is neither unprecedented nor unusual — despite what prevaricators like Shehan falsely claim.
When actual scientific evidence is used, the conclusion is that nothing unusual is occurring. And as a matter of scientific fact, the past century and a half have been an exceedingly beneficial time for humanity and the biosphere, despite what mendacious propagandists assert.
D.B. Stealey,
What we are looking at for the moment is the same phenomena as the scientists from Galilei to Denis Diderot had to live thru when arguing with the Catholic Church……
oldfossil,
To suggest that “Australian climate activists” are the only people on the planet to understand the consequences of anthropogenic global warming for populations and economies all over the world is nonsense. I am an Australian but not a climate activist. I am a scientist and therefore a professional skeptic who was persuaded on the basis of mounting evidence that AGW is real and constitutes a major problem.
Your attitude that because some may see a benefit in changing conditions they should have no concerns for how this adversely affects others certainly contains no element of logical disconnect whatsoever. It is merely a demonstration of one of the more regretable sides of human nature.
As for DB Stealey:
He took this plot:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:2010/trend/offset
and added a host of irrelevant camouflage, in particular the horizontal yellow line at 9 on the y-scale, to flatten the plot in order to try to claim that the temperature was “unequivocally” fitted by a straight line.
http://tinyurl.com/bkoy8or
Watch how he goes bananas when I post this one:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png
Philip Shehan – re the AMTI graph you posted – what is it a graph of?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/21/what-sort-of-forecast-does-the-met-office-supercomputer-make/#comment-580030
Looks like it contains some model output, not just temperature measurements.
Pls can you find out and report back.
Mike Jonas, There is no “model output”
The figure is by Robert Way. The “All Method Temperature Index” is calculated from the following data sets as explained by Way:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/SummaryTable.png
“Each temperature dataset has their own individual caveats so it is difficult to assess which is the most reliable, but a purely unscientific way to look at this issue is to put all the datasets on the same baseline and to average them to create the All Method Temperature Index (AMTI). I have put all the Table 1 datasets on the 1990-2000 baseline (so we could include all) and have averaged them to create [the] Figure.”
The temperature data is fitted by an iterative program to a non linear function producing the best fit curve shown with a correlation coefficient r2 of 0.8412.
This is no different to the fitting of temperature data to a straight line commonly used for multidecadel data. Given the noisy nature of temperature data for short periods, a linear approximation is the best that can be hoped for. There is no reason to assume temperature data should match a straight line, and clearly for data going back centuries and millennia it does not.
My only complaint about Way’s graph is that he neglects to tell us what function he has used, although it looks like a second order polynomial or exponential function.
A similar looking fit is obtained using a third order polynomial function:
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/11901124/img/Anonymous/hadsst2-with-3rd-order-polynomial-fit.jpeg
And at the beginning of this month, Mark Lynas gave his Mea Culpa on his opposition to GM (genetically modified) foods. Is common sense beginning to break out?
DB Stealey has introduced a wrongly labeled graph in his 7:18 am post.
He writes:
‘Disregard Shehan, his mind is made up and closed tighter than a drum. He parrots the usual alarmist lie: “These extreme events are happening with increasing frequency.” That is mendacious propaganda. That is contradicted by reams of empirical data. ‘
Stealey’s reams of empirical data is this graph:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/extreme_wx_deaths.png
The y axis has been wrongly labeled as “average annual number of events” as can be seen by perusal of Figure 1 and Figure 2 presented side by side in the actual paper:
http://www.jpands.org/vol14no4/goklany.pdf
Figure 1: The y axis is the real average annual number of extreme weather events per year by decade and shows an exponential rise over the century, exactly as the “mendacious propaganda” says.
Figure 2: The y-axis is the number of deaths and death rates for these events.
Philip Shenan,
you on the other hand show lack of basic knowledge in Science theory in regards of using two graphs that aren’t shown to be related, and isn’t, Please read Huff’s How to lie with statistics. There is same type of unscientific usage of graphs that can’t be used to be used to present a conclusion.
But that’s worse than that. You haven’t analysed the figures behind the graphs. If they aren’t correct, [then] your ‘conclusion’ falls no matter what.
And they aren’t.
In graph 1 the numbers of event for period 1910-19 is presented as three. Which is as false as can be. (If you aren’t familiar with why then I can explain later on) During season 1910 there were 5 (five) such events in the western Atlantic:
Tropical storm 1, Tropical storm 2, San Zacarias Hurricane, Hurricane four and Hurricane five.
in 1911:
Tropical storm One, Hurricane Two, Hurricane Three, Hurricane Four, Tropical Storm Five, Tropical Storm Six not to mention the Tropical depressions.
Do I need to proceed? And that was only in the Western Atlantic…..
Yes LarryD, Mark Lynas has retracted his opposition to GM foods:
“So I guess you’ll be wondering—what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.”
His honest assessment of his heretofore poor understanding of the issue continues for almost 5,000 words—and it’s a must-read for anyone who has ever hesitated over conventional produce. To vilify GMOs is to be as anti-science as climate-change [D word excised to avoid the snip], he says.
Inger E.
Yes you do need to explain further.
Stealey claims (D.B. Stealey says: January 28, 2013 at 7:18 am) that I am parroting an alarmist lie that extreme weather events are increasing, and that this mendacious propaganda is contradicted by this graph which he claims is a plot of the average number of extreme weather events per year for each decade since the 1900s.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/extreme_wx_deaths.png
The problem is that it shows nothing of the sort, as demonstrated by looking at the actual paper.
http://www.jpands.org/vol14no4/goklany.pdf
The y-axis of this Figure 2 is not the number of extreme weather events. To quote from the paper:
“Figure 2 shows the average annual deaths and death rates from all
weather-related extreme events for each “decade” starting in 1900
through the nine-year period from 2000–2008.”
It is Figure 1 which shows the number of extreme weather events, which is what Stealey is talking about. And completely contradict his assertions.
Again to quote from the paper:
“Figure 1 shows the average annual number of events recorded in
the EM-DAT database for each “decade” since the 1900s.
(Technically, the first decade of the 1900s actually started in 1901,
and the last bar represents a 9-year period.) This figure shows that the
average number of records (i.e., events) increased from 2.5 per year
in the 1900s to 8.5 per year in the 1940s, after which the numbers
escalated rapidly, reaching 354 per year in the 2000s.”
If you have a problem with the data in the paper or these Figures, take it up with the author, or in the case of Figure 2, with Stealey who accepts it at face value while failing to understand what it is actually showing. And I do not claim the graphs are related. That is not the point.
The point is that if Stealey wants to use data and graphs to hurl abuse, he had better make sure he has got it right. In this case he is using the wrong Figure. The right Figure totally contradicts his case.
I am a scientist with a PhD, over three decades of research experience with additional post graduate qualifications in the history of science and the nature of scientific knowledge.
What exactly qualifies you to lecture me about my alleged lack of basic knowledge in science theory?
My background in these type of science discussions goes back 40 years when last I had to educate those who should have known better in the Academic world trying to imply same as you. One of the worst fallacies in Theories of science is someone trying to use a title, academic or not, as a proof of knowing better….
I started of as a systemprogrammer in 1971 after studying Math and Mathematic Statistic before. Later on I studied other things side by working full time and during the 70’s also being active in the Liberal Party’s youth as well as in the mother party’s regional group here in a town close to Gothenburg. One of the things I did then was ‘introducing’ Humanecology here in Sweden side by three friends of mine. The systemprogrammer knowledge I use in 1992-93 due to having to establish correct waterlevels in open Sea (Atlantic) from peak Stone Age to 1000 AD. That was needed in order to have correct facts for landrise as well which had affected what we today call the Baltic Sea. I needed the correct information in order to do what I had to do analysing the Waterways from the Baltic Sea to Lake Roxen, close to Linköping eastern Sweden. I used 43 different variables from nature. More than 20 of the most essential premisses needed to be correctly confirmed never ever been used in any of the so called datamodels of today. I wouldn’t have tried to do such a bad program as everyone in that field done.
I participated as a nine year old for the first time in biological and chemical sampling together with sampling of temperatures close to ground, 1 resp 3 meters up when groundlevel was land completed with down in water when ground was water. My father was one of the first to work full time with the air and waterproblem including all from emissions to air and water such as gases and pollution. I participated at least once a year several years after I had moved to Gothenburg, where I was born, in 1971. There aren’t many documents, studies and dissertations in this field I haven’t read over the years. No matter if written in English, Swedish, German, French, Norwegian, Danish or Dutch.
Later on in life when studying for the third time I became teacher of History, Geography, Religion and Social Studies. Forgot to tell you that I have had to study Theories of Science in seven academic courses. I am known to eat those who forget what they should have learnt re. Theories of Science for breakfast…..
Inger E(norah4you) says:
“Philip Shenan,
you on the other hand show lack of basic knowledge in Science theory in regards of using two graphs that aren’t shown to be related…”
Shehan is either deluded or thoroughly dishonest. I suspect the latter, because shehan continues to post a fabricated chart with no provenance, which purportedly shows rapidly accelerating global warming. This is my only real issue with Shehan: he is deliberately lying about accelerating global warming, which has, in fact, stopped for the past 10 years despite the continued rise in harmless and beneficial CO2. If Shehan has a problem with Dr Goklany’s thorough analysis, he needs to take it up with the author. Impotently sniping at Dr Goklany here shows that Shehan is afraid to engage with the original expert source.
There are mountains of verifiable data showing that there has been no acceleration of global warming. Shehan feels compelled to lie about it, because if he admitted the truth his entire argument would collapse. If Shehan simply admitted the truth — that global warming is not accelerating — I would leave him alone in his alarmist delusion. But liars need to be called to account.
Shehan tries to discredit Dr Goklany’s chart showing that extreme weather events have been steadily declining. But looking at Dr Goklany’s original article, we see that Shehan is once again wrong. As shown in numerous other charts, severe weather is declining.
Shehan says: “What exactly qualifies you to lecture me about my alleged lack of basic knowledge in science theory?”
Anyone is qualified to point out that Shehan is lying about global warming accelerating. It doesn’t take a PhD to expose dishonesty.
No it doesn’t….. but he also forgot that experience in discussing these questions and “eating” so called experts last time they tried back in late 70’s to present same non-valid arguments, is better than studying something up to Ph.D without learning by heart….
Philip Shehan:
At January 29, 2013 at 4:53 am you ask Inger E.
As an interested observer, let me give you an answer.
It is not relevant what you or she states as being academic qualifications in the matter (although I note that she claims superior qualifications to those you claim). Competence in knowledge of science is all that matters.
Inger E is qualified to lecture you on your ignorance of basic knowledge in science theory because she – like me – observes it in your posts on WUWT, and she has provided you with the correct interpretation of the information which you provided in this thread but failed to understand.
Richard
To the critics
The point here is not knowledge of science. It is of simple comprehension.
Are you all so wilfully deluded that you cannot understand the very simple point here?
Stealey has used as his “authority” a graph from a published paper to claim that extreme weather events are not increasing. OK he may (or may not) have been mislead by an incorrectly labelled Y-axis which someone has added to the graph on his link. And contrary to what Stealey asserts, I have no criticism whatsoever to make of Goklany. This sentence of his is complete nonsense “Shehan tries to discredit Dr Goklany’s chart showing that extreme weather events have been steadily declining. But looking at Dr Goklany’s original article..”
I have gone to the original article and found that the graph Stealey presents, Figure 2, IS THE WRONG GRAPH! (Yes, shouting)
The correct graph of the frequency of extreme weather events is Figure 1, and it shows the opposite of what Stealey asserts. If you wish to argue that Goklany has got it wrong go ahead. That is not the point. The point is that Stealey’s argument (and personal attack on me) is based on his use of the wrong graph.
I ask you all a direct question. Which graph shows the number of extreme weather events, Figure 1 or Figure 2?
You still don’t get it do you. I never thought I would have to tell a Ph.D to go back to his first books re. Theories of science.* But so be it:
Doesn’t matter if you or someone else use what you think to be logic graphs. If the facts behind the graph, any of the graphs you refer to, aren’t correct, then your argument falls.
Doesn’t matter how many non-correct, faked or ‘only’ corrected figures used in a graph.** If the figures involved in an science-paper, essay or diss., isn’t correct, then the graph is incorrect.
Had the figures involved been correct, you still wouldn’t have been able to use it to prove it’self.
* What you and other alarmist should look at in the first books re. Theories of Science is read the chapter with the example of how it’s possible to prove the moon to be eatable! That’s the level of your argumentation. It’s not possible even when each argument presented in itself is correct to use that sequence of arguments to prove that if A -> B and some B might -> C
under condition that C->D that it’s even likely that A ->D in any specific relevant analyse at all!
Please look at: When the fox counts the chickens, Norah4you page English text August 11 2010
** Buy or borrow Huff’s How to lie with statistics. You need to read it by heart.
Inger E
Your cv is very impressive.
However, let me specifically point out your failure to understand the graph you are commenting on. Contrary to Stealey’s assertions it is you not me who wants to argue the accuracy of Goklany’s data. That’s fine buy me. I am not here to critique his paper, only to make sure it is quoted correctly.
“In graph 1 the numbers of event for period 1910-19 is presented as three. Which is as false as can be.”
No. The text says:
“Figure 1 shows the average annual number of events recorded in
the EM-DAT database for each “decade” since the 1900s.”
Just so we are quite clear here, the number three refers to the annual number of events. For the entire decade you must multiply by 10. The number of events according to the graph for 1910-1919 is 30.
It’s that comprehension thing again.
Excuse me but it is 9:14 am here in Melbourne. Breakfast time.
Shehan says:
“To the critics… Are you all so wilfully deluded…”
Shehan might want to ask himself why everyone else disagrees with him. William of Ockham would say the obvious answer is that Shehan is simply wrong.
Shehan quibbles about one graph, so here is another that shows the same decline in extreme weather events. There are many other records that show past climate extremes were more severe than anything currently observed.
Finally, I don’t give a hoot about Shehan’s wild-eyed alarmist belief system. The only thing I am concerned with is Shehan’s misrepresentation, falsely alleging that global warming continues to accelerate. I don’t understand why he is promoting that lie, but as long as he does, I will follow up and point out that all the empirical data available shows that to be flat untrue.
Keeping it simple for the slow learners.
It is not my argument. It is the author’s. Specifically Figures 1 and 2 of this paper:
http://www.jpands.org/vol14no4/goklany.pdf
If IngerE wants to argue that Goklany has it wrong and Stealey wishes to defend him, go right ahead.
All of Stealey’s bluster and and irrelevant comment by others cannot hide this fact: He based one of his typically abusive comments on the wrong graph.
Bolkany claims via Figure 1 that extreme weather events have increased sharply over the century.
Bolkany claims via Figure 2 that since the 1920’s there has been a sharp decline are far fewer deaths from extreme events.
There is nothing contradictory in these arguments, but Stealey cannot use the graph about death rates to hurl abuse about the number of events when the correct graph contradicts his abusive argument.
The one who said it – is it. Slow learner is any person who can’t accept that real facts are hardware and all others aren’t possible to ‘wear’ at all in Science discussion…..