By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
This time last year, as the honorary delegate from Burma, I had the honor of speaking truth to power at the Doha climate conference by drawing the attention of 193 nations to the then almost unknown fact that global warming had not happened for 16 years.
The UN edited the tape of my polite 45-second intervention by cutting out the furious howls and hisses of my supposedly grown-up fellow delegates. They were less than pleased that their carbon-spewing gravy-train had just tipped into the gulch.
The climate-extremist news media were incandescent. How could I have Interrupted The Sermon In Church? They only reported what I said because they had become so uncritical in swallowing the official story-line that they did not know there had really been no global warming at all for 16 years. They sneered that I was talking nonsense – and unwittingly played into our hands by spreading the truth they had for so long denied and concealed.
Several delegations decided to check with the IPCC. Had the Burmese delegate been correct? He had sounded as though he knew what he was talking about. Two months later, Railroad Engineer Pachauri, climate-science chairman of the IPCC, was compelled to announce in Melbourne that there had indeed been no global warming for 17 years. He even hinted that perhaps the skeptics ought to be listened to after all.
At this year’s UN Warsaw climate gagfest, Marc Morano of Climate Depot told the CFACT press conference that the usual suspects had successively tried to attribute The Pause to the alleged success of the Montreal Protocol in mending the ozone layer; to China burning coal (a nice irony there: Burn Coal And Save The Planet From – er – Burning Coal); and now, just in time for the conference, by trying to pretend that The Pause has not happened after all.
As David Whitehouse recently revealed, the paper by Cowtan & Way in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society used statistical prestidigitation to vanish The Pause.
Dr. Whitehouse’s elegant argument used a technique in which Socrates delighted. He stood on the authors’ own ground, accepted for the sake of argument that they had used various techniques to fill in missing data from the Arctic, where few temperature measurements are taken, and still demonstrated that their premises did not validly entail their conclusion.
However, the central error in Cowtan & Way’s paper is a fundamental one and, as far as I know, it has not yet been pointed out. So here goes.
As Dr. Whitehouse said, HadCRUTt4 already takes into account the missing data in its monthly estimates of coverage uncertainty. For good measure and good measurement, it also includes estimates for measurement uncertainty and bias uncertainty.
Taking into account these three sources of uncertainty in measuring global mean surface temperature, the error bars are an impressive 0.15 Cº – almost a sixth of a Celsius degree – either side of the central estimate.
The fundamental conceptual error that Cowtan & Way had made lay in their failure to realize that large uncertainties do not reduce the length of The Pause: they actually increase it.
Cowtan & Way’s proposed changes to the HadCRUt4 dataset, intended to trounce the skeptics by eliminating The Pause, were so small that the trend calculated on the basis of their amendments still fell within the combined uncertainties.
In short, even if their imaginative data reconstructions were justifiable (which, as Dr. Whitehouse indicated, they were not), they made nothing like enough difference to allow us to be 95% confident that any global warming at all had occurred during The Pause.
If one takes no account of the error bars and confines the analysis to the central estimates of the temperature anomalies, the HadCRUt4 dataset shows no global warming at all for nigh on 13 years (above).
However, if one displays the 2 σ uncertainty region, the least-squares linear-regression trend falls wholly within that region for 17 years 9 months (below).
The true duration of The Pause, based on the HadCRUT4 dataset approaches 18 years. Therefore, the question Cowtan & Way should have addressed, but did not address, is whether the patchwork of infills and extrapolations and krigings they used in their attempt to deny The Pause was at all likely to constrain the wide uncertainties in the dataset, rather than adding to them.
Publication of papers such as Cowtan & Way, which really ought not to have passed peer review, does indicate the growing desperation of institutions such as the Royal Meteorological Society, which, like every institution that has profiteered by global warming, does not want the flood of taxpayer dollars to become a drought.
Those driving the scare have by now so utterly abandoned the search for truth that is the end and object of science that they are incapable of thinking straight. They have lost the knack.
Had they but realized it, they did not need to deploy ingenious statistical dodges to make The Pause go away. All they had to do was wait for the next El Niño.
These sudden warmings of the equatorial eastern Pacific, for which the vaunted models are still unable to account, occur on average every three or four years. Before long, therefore, another El Niño will arrive, the wind and the thermohaline circulation will carry the warmth around the world, and The Pause – at least for a time – will be over.
It is understandable that skeptics should draw attention to The Pause, for its existence stands as a simple, powerful, and instantly comprehensible refutation of much of the nonsense talked in Warsaw this week.
For instance, the most straightforward and unassailable argument against those at the U.N. who directly contradict the IPCC’s own science by trying to blame Typhoon Haiyan on global warming is that there has not been any for just about 18 years.
In logic, that which has occurred cannot legitimately be attributed to that which has not.
However, the world continues to add CO2 to the atmosphere and, all other things being equal, some warming can be expected to resume one day.
It is vital, therefore, to lay stress not so much on The Pause itself, useful though it is, as on the steadily growing discrepancy between the rate of global warming predicted by the models and the rate that actually occurs.
The IPCC, in its 2013 Assessment Report, runs its global warming predictions from January 2005. It seems not to have noticed that January 2005 happened more than eight and a half years before the Fifth Assessment Report was published.
Startlingly, its predictions of what has already happened are wrong. And not just a bit wrong. Very wrong. No prizes for guessing in which direction the discrepancy between modeled “prediction” and observed reality runs. Yup, you guessed it. They exaggerated.
The left panel shows the models’ predictions to 2050. The right panel shows the discrepancy of half a Celsius degree between “prediction” and reality since 2005.
On top of this discrepancy, the trends in observed temperature compared with the models’ predictions since January 2005 continue inexorably to diverge:
Here, 34 models’ projections of global warming since January 2005 in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report are shown an orange region. The IPCC’s central projection, the thick red line, shows the world should have warmed by 0.20 Cº over the period (equivalent to 2.33 Cº/century). The 18 ppmv (201 ppmv/century) rise in the trend on the gray dogtooth CO2 concentration curve, plus other ghg increases, should have caused 0.1 Cº warming, with the remaining 0.1 ºC from previous CO2 increases.
Yet the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite measurements, in dark blue over the bright blue trend-line, shows global cooling of 0.01 Cº (–0.15 Cº/century). The models have thus already over-predicted warming by 0.22 Cº (2.48 Cº/century).
This continuing credibility gap between prediction and observation is the real canary in the coal-mine. It is not just The Pause that matters: it is the Gap that matters, and the Gap that will continue to matter, and to widen, long after The Pause has gone. The Pause deniers will eventually have their day: but the Gap deniers will look ever stupider as the century unfolds.
While passing time on a conference call, I took a peek at some of this authors background in climate. Hummm, wait a minute, there is none for Cowtan. A list of papers from the supporting information section from Wiley linked below. Way had only the paper referenced in this post.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/advanced/search/results?searchRowCriteria%5B0%5D.queryString=“Kevin Cowtan”&searchRowCriteria[0].fieldName=author&start=1&resultsPerPage=20
WUWT?
Perhaps I am missing the link between chemistry and geography (which are the fields these two are in) …….. and climate studies and temperature records.
Why did they do this paper and who paid them to do so?
Nick Stokes says:
November 20, 2013 at 2:10 am
But AGW isn’t deduced from the temperature record, so isn’t dependent on rejecting a null hypothesis of zero warming.
=========================
So what your saying is that a failed prediction of AGW (increased warming with increased CO2) cannot falsify AGW because AGW was not deduced from the temperature record.
Nick, that is utter nonsense. That is like saying the Relativity cannot be falsified by time dilation because it was not deduced by time dilation. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Scientific theory takes what is know from observation and from this predicts what is yet unknown. If the prediction fails, then the theory fails. Relativity correctly predicted time dilation in the GPS navigation system. At the time GPS was implemented there was a great deal of disbelief in time dilation. There was large number of time dilation deniers in the scientific community.
So much so, that when GPS was first turned on the correction for time dilation was not enabled. And the system proved inaccurate. When the correction for time dilation was enabled, the accuracy improved considerably.
So, if AGW is correct, then we should see a similar effect in temperature predictions. Temperate predictions should be more accurate with AGW corrections in the climate models than if the AGW corrections are removed. However, that is not the case. Temperature predictions are more accurate if we remove the AGW corrections, which strongly suggests that AGW is a failed theory.
Hyperthermania says:
November 20, 2013 at 1:30 am
Oh, it’s not so bad, I think a prestidigator is magician or forecaster. Perhaps the term fell out of use as gypsies were run out of town.
Lessee, Google says “magic tricks performed as entertainment.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleight_of_hand says “Sleight of hand, also known as prestidigitation (“quick fingers”) or léger de main, is the set of techniques used by a magician (or card sharp) to manipulate objects such as cards and coins secretly.”
Well, half right, and precisely what Lord Monkton wanted to say, as usual. Perhaps it’s been subsumed by “illusionist.” Oh rats, I forgot to record the David Blaine special last night.
Pronouncing it isn’t too bad, I’ve seen worse words in early 20th century grade school readers. Start with presto – digit – nation and tweak.
In my opinion, the single most important point made in Monckton’s post was this:
“Before long, therefore, another El Niño will arrive, the wind and the thermohaline circulation will carry the warmth around the world, and The Pause – at least for a time – will be over.”
Similarly, pick whichever cycle you want (AMO, PDO, solar, etc.) it will soon enough enter a warm phase, and the pendulum of pointless arguments will swing the other way, with alarmists pointing at the recent temperature record as evidence of catastrophe, and skeptics arguing that the recent movements are merely noise.
So, do yourselves a favour and forget about counting how many years and months “The Pause” can be measured… The long run trend remains the only thing that matters.
(And in the long run, we’re all dead.)
It seems my link is broken that was posted. The path to the same information is on this page.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/suppinfo
Prestidigitation is very common – at least to us older folks. It is the word you use to humorously dramaticize supposed magic being performed. it adds more humor, mixed with disdain or scorn, than does “sleight-of-hand.”
Intellectual honesty is essential to true science. Mr. Stokes would earn more respect if he conceded that the discrepancy between what was predicted and what is observed is material, and that, if it persists, the skeptics he so excoriates will have been proven right.
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Well said, actually.
After all, it is nothing more than the truth, and furthermore, a truth that was specifically excised from the AR5 SPM between the leaked draft and the published report. If you look at the CMIP5 model results and the actual GASTA points and squint a bit, you can perhaps convince yourself that the “models have not yet failed” provided that you pretend that the models are somehow independent and identically distributed samples whose mean and variation are meaningful quantities. If you instead look at the model results individually, it is impossible not to conclude that some of them have failed — the models that are predicting 3.3C+ warming/century, for example, that are not well over 0.5C warmer than observations and that do not ever descend to the level of the observations even over many runs with many perturbations of their initial conditions.
But it is difficult to deny the central tenet of science itself — if GASTA does indeed stubbornly refuse to rise, or rises at a rate that is substantially below any of the continuing model predictions, as some point any honest scientist will concede that many — quite possibly all, eventually — of the models have failed.
In between it is a matter of degree. In my opinion, it is perfectly evident that some of the models have failed badly enough to warrant their removal from a Summary for Policy Makers, where the only reason for their inclusion is to politically increase the degree of alarm generated by a figure supposedly showing runaway warming predictions. Continuing to include them in analyses of CMIP5 results that judges whether or not any of these models have yet diverged enough to be safely rejected is perfectly good science (especially if that analysis rejects the ones that should be rejected!)
Including failed models in a figure intended to influence policy is dishonest. Refusing to critically analyze model predictions by comparing them to the actual data that they failed to predict (while weaseling around by calling the predictions “projections” to hedge the substantial risk that those projections turn out to be wrong and to make the model non-falsifiable) is dishonest. Constantly altering the climate record methodology to discover “more warming” to avoid having the model results falsified is blatent confirmation bias at work and dishonest. Using the temperature anomaly without substantial error bars, presented on a scale that exaggerates the variation, and without acknowledging that we don’t actually know the Global Average Surface Temperature itself within a range of rough two whole degrees C (while purporting to know its deviation within a range far less than this) is if not dishonest highly suspect. Calling every single climate observation concerning the present “unprecedented” in spite of the fact that they are in fact precedented repeatedly over any sufficiently long time scale within the resolution of our ability to tell is dishonest. Claiming that we fully understand the physics and that all of the model predictions are physics based (and hence trustworthy) when the models themselves (in spite of presumably being based on the same underlying physics differ by a range of over 2 C in their end-of-century predictions, in spite of the fact that when models are compared head to head on toy problems with none of the complexity of the Earth’s climate system they differ substantially in their outcome is dishonest.
The big question is: Can we model the climate accurately at all yet?
I think that there are very good reasons to think that the answer is “no”. With substantial disagreement between models, and even more substantial disagreement between models and reality, differences in many dimensions and not just GASTA, with GASTA itself constantly being tweaked because (one supposes) we didn’t know it or compute it correctly in the past, it is difficult to gain much confidence in them. It’s not like they are working perfectly, after all.
So the big question for Nick is: Just how long does the pause have to continue for you to reject, or modify, the null hypothesis that the models are accurate predictors of future climate? How are you using the actual data to modify the Bayesian priors of large climate sensitivity in a continuous fashion as reality continues well below the high sensitivity predictions? Is everything static for you, so that the models are right no matter what GASTA has done, or will do, or do you acknowledge that it is reasonable to think that the models are leaving out some important physics or failing to account sufficiently for natural variation as the pause continues?
It’s an important question right now. I have no strong opinion on whether or not a Maunder-type minimum will influence the climate — there is some correlation between solar state and climate state visible in the past but it is not sufficiently compelling to be anything like “certainty”. However, we don’t have any better explanation for the LIA, at least not one that I’m aware of, and solar scientists are saying that there is a good chance that we may be entering a Maunder-type minimum that will extend over 2-4 solar cycles, most of the rest of the century. If there is a causal connection between solar magnetic state and e.g. albedo, tiny variations in albedo can produce profound climate changes and there is some evidence that the mean planetary albedo has been changing and that GHG distributions have been shifting in ways that might be connected with solar state.
I’m of the opinion that we do not, in fact, fully understand all of the physics of the climate yet, and of the further opinion that the computational problem is enormously difficult even with the physics in hand, hence the substantial disagreements between distinct models. Even the best (most computationally intensive and detailed) models may well be inadequate. As Mr. Monckton points out, this isn’t about “denying” that a greenhouse effect exists — it is about reducing a nonlinear dynamical problem with an enormous dimensionality to a single partial derivative double derivative :
I’ll say it clearly. It is absurd to think that this quantity is even approximately a constant over the next 80 years, or that we know its value.
rgb
prestidigitation — i have seen this word used in articles about magic. It is generally considered to be a synonym for magic of all types.
Reading it here i assumed its specific purpose was to arouse thoughts of a particular type of magic in the reader’s mind (there are many types of magic) — that specific type being “hand magic” — magic perform by slight of hand with no props or helpers. Breaking the word down it sorta means — the use of quick fingers. The use of this word by his lordship seems meant to imply that that the authors of the discussed article were performing “paper and pencil magic” on data — hand magic. (I mean they actually measured nothing.)
By “magic”, out of thin air, they were claiming to create new “data”. And it is all “slight of hand”.
So my take on the word “prestidigitation” is that a word that has fallen into use as a general synonym for all magic is actually being taken back to its root meaning — hand magic — slight of hand. That is how you are suppose to read it.
Eugene WR Gallun
ossqss says:
November 20, 2013 at 6:31 am
That’s because they are members of the SkS team, see their request to “Help make our coverage bias paper free and open-access” by taking down the firewall at http://www.skepticalscience.com/open_access_cw2013.html
More background from http://www.skepticalscience.com/team.php :
Kevin C
Kevin is an interdisciplinary computational scientist of 20 years experience, based in the UK, although he has also spent two sabbaticals at San Diego Supercomputer Center. His first degree is in theoretical physics, his doctoral thesis was primarily computational, and he now teaches chemistry undergraduates and biology post-graduates. Most of his reasearch has been focussed on data processing and analysis. He is the author or co-author of a number of highly cited scientific software packages.
His climate investigations are conducted in the limited spare time available to a parent, and are currently focussed in two areas; coverage bias in the instrumental temperature record, and simple response-function climate models. He is also interested in philosophy of science and science communication.
robert way
Robert Way holds a BA in Geography, Minor Geomatics and Spatial Analysis and an M.Sc. in Physical Geography. He is currently a PHD student at the University of Ottawa. His current research focus is on modeling the distribution of permafrost in the eastern Canadian sub-Arctic. Previously his work examined the climatic sensitivity of small mountain glaciers in the Torngat Mountains of northern Labrador. Robert has also studied at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Oslo. He has participated in course and field work in Antarctica, Iceland, Labrador, Norway, Patagonia and Svalbard. As an Inuit descendent from a northern community, he has witnessed first hand how changing ice and snow conditions have impacted traditional hunting and travel routes, making climate change omnipresent in his life.
His graduate student profile can be found at the following url:
http://artsites.uottawa.ca/robert-way/en/background/
Shutting down coal and nuclear plants in the US is already underway (70% of generation in total) and nobody will notice until the lights go out or worse the AC goes off. Like Obamacare, then it will be too late, no healthcare, no power, same thing. You can’t rebuild generation within a year, so people will suffer cause they can not think more than one step ahead. That is precisely what they count on. Lie, destroy, apologize, but it’s all one-way.
I spoke to a friend in Europe once who is very Green and anti Corporations. She favored less electricity. So I put it to her: What do you think of the big banks? Hate ’em. Do you think the big banks in New York will keep the lights on somehow? Probably. How about some small factory owner in upstate or rural New York – how does he pay to keep the lights on, keep his factory running? Uhhhh, may not be able. So the world you’re creating is Big Banks in NYC with enough electricity to send out foreclosure notices to small companies, who are then bought out or replaced by big Corporations.
That’s the game.
Nick Stokes says:
November 20, 2013 at 2:55 am
But a model does not use as input any temperature record.
=============
That is a false statement. The models are backcast to the historical temperature record, and the parametric assumptions about aerosols and other factors are adjusted to improve the fit. This process happens by genetic selection – those parameters that do not fit well are not published – they are eliminated from further consideration.
So while the temperatures are not directly fed into the models, they are part of the decision making process of the model builders, in the setting of parameters. As such, temperatures are one of the inputs to the climate models.
The problem for model builders is that they continue to pretend that their models are solving for temperature. They are not. The model building process is solving for those combination of parameters that best meet the expectations of the model builders.
In other words the model do not show us the future, they show us what the model builders believe the future will look like. In this fashion the models are no different than the oracle of Delphi in the past, or modern day fortune tellers. People pay money to hear what they want to believe.
Nick Stokes says:
November 20, 2013 at 2:50 am
“AGW predicted that temperatures would rise, and they did. You can’t do better than that, whether or not the rise is “statistically significant”.
LOL, Much ado about nothing. Nick, the theory is CAGW, otherwise it is all academic. The “C” is missing in CAGW. Actually the C, the G and the W are all MIA, or at the bottom of the ocean, or hidden in the coolest summer on record in the artic, or….
The more they dig, the deeper the hole gets.
Nick Stokes said
“AGW has been around since 1896. Arrhenius then deduced that CO2 would impede the loss of heat through IR, and would cause temperatures to rise. There was no observed warming then. AGW is a consequence of what we know about the radiative properties of gases.
AGW predicted that temperatures would rise, and they did. You can’t do better than that, whether or not the rise is “statistically significant”.
Nick is referring to AGW theory, not AGW.
The deduction of AGW signal is made by argument from ignorance; “We don’t know what else could have caused it”.
I’m a big fan of Lord Monckton. I admire and appreciate the efforts he makes and courage he demonstrates in opposing global warming extremists. It is therefore with a certain nontrivial amount of unhappiness that I say I’d think twice about the argument here.
Lord Monckton says,
Is that what they were claiming. I haven’t read the paywalled paper. However, publicly available here:
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~kdc3/papers/coverage2013/background.html
is a background containing the following statement:
It is possible, perhaps likely, that I am simply naive. At Climate Audit (http://climateaudit.org/2013/11/18/cotwan-and-way-2013/) I read this:
which is not the sort of forum I’d expect objective scientists to participate in, nor the sort of PR strategizing I’d expect objective scientists to indulge in. This is a red flag in my heuristics. Still, this is not enough by itself for me in my ignorant inexperience to impugn Way’s motives.
I could certainly be wrong, it wouldn’t be the first or even the thousandth time. But my conscience requires me to suggest that Cowtan & Way’s work deserves a little more careful scrutiny before it is dismissed.
Maybe your misunderstanding lies with the EM energy which is radiated back and forth? Getting a ‘handle’ on EM (Electro-Magnetic) phenom is not for the faint of heart nor those who ‘feint’ on the subject either …
??? Can this be explained differently? On the ‘surface’ (without further elucidation) this would appear incorrect … (What does vectorial addition of propagated EM energy ‘waves’ have to do with IR emission from CO2 et al?)
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The Emperor “CAGW” a Hansen – Mann strode onto the parade to pan a tricked invisible costly cloak, so fine and regal his staff a crooked stick, carved from rare Yamal tree, but held upside down in trickery. A child declared he hasn’t got any clothes at all to see, he ducked an weaved and Curds and Way wove a new and finer cloak, Cooked up and tricked for all to see, but now the child’s all seeing eye saw right through the trick and lies, he’s still naked Lord for all to see and the laughter Stokes to a high degree, time to leave CAG(w) as our sides ache, and your naked lies are full of fake!!
Nick Stokes says:
November 20, 2013 at 2:50 am
AGW predicted that temperatures would rise, and they did. You can’t do better than that, whether or not the rise is “statistically significant”.
======================
AGW predicted temperatures would continue to rise, which they did not. So of course you can do better.
In contrast to AGW there were many climate predictions in the past that said that climate moved in natural cycles of warming and cooling. And that the cooling trend of the 50’s and 60’s would be followed naturally by a warming trend in the 80’s and 90’s.
Which is what we saw. These same predictions of natural climate cycles said that this late 20th century warming would end in the next century, which it did.
So yes, one can do a whole lot better that the failed AGW predictions of continued warming. There were many climate scientists that predicted cycles of warming and cooling, before Hansen and Gore made their (now falsified) predictions of continued warming due to CO2.
The problem is that Gore and Hansen used politics to divert large sums of money slated for manned space exploration into climate science, and the results are evident. When the US wants to send someone into space, they have to hire the Russians. The Russians! But we know the temperature of the earth to 1/1000 of a degree, plus or minus 2 degrees.
Completely unsubstantiated at the “70%” value “of generation in total” cited; closing 70% of total generation would be catastrophic come the warm weather of spring …
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I will see your “differential temperatures” factor and raise you with a “divergent jet” overhead (in an affected area) … often we get HUGE swings in the nature of airmasses out here are the ‘great plains’ with LITTLE in the way of precip even …
Way off course? Yes.
Par for the course? Yes.
Change course? No.
Of course.
Damn the iceburgs,full speed ahead!
‘Grunt work’; veritable cannon fodder backing the Maginot Line constructed by CAGW forces …
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Nick Stokes’ selective swinging between convenient intellectual malleability and blind rigidity is a lesson in contradiction and immense hypocrisy.
One has to wonder why Mann, Schmidt, Hansen, Trenberth etc have not tried to play Nick’s new sleight of hand.
Stokes says,
“But AGW isn’t deduced from the temperature record,”
&
“The period of “no statistically significant increase” is a meaningless statistical test”.
Well then AGW is not supported by any actual temperature records and the previous period of 1979 to 1998 claimed warming is also a meaningless statistical test.
But Nick has set up a new temperatures don;t matter default going forward, forever, or at least till we are all dead.
By his new decree it will not matter how much longer the period of non warming grows beyond the previous period of warming. We can have 30, 40 50 or 60 years of no warming without AGW being discredited because AGW is not deduced from temperature records.
I presume Nick also believes ocean acidification is not deduced from alkalinity records?
Species extinction threats are not deduced from population records?
And so on?
Why all the costly measuring and monitoring of all things?
Monckton: “Mr. Stokes, in trying to suggest that the debate between skeptics and extremists centers on whether or not there is a greenhouse effect, is being disingenuous. ”
Define: greenhouse effect. As the AGW sophists like to use one of two incompatible notions as best serve their purposes. In the one case they mean ‘greenhouse effect’ to be that ‘atoms absorb and emit radiation in selective frequencies.’ Which isn’t a ‘greenhouse effect’ at all, by why green leaves are green, red sports cars are red, and whitewash is white. Which is the go-to position to argue against skeptics of the other case. But they cannot state that it is why things have color, as no one would attach hysterical moral dimensions to quantum physics otherwise.
In the another case, it is the idea that CO2 is the sole, sufficient cause for the Earth’s temperature being other than what a black body would be. And it is necessarily about a sole, sufficient cause as we cannot assign blame and hysterical moral dimensions to the quantum physics otherwise. It is this issue they deeply desire but cannot permit. For if we accept it, then known, uncontested, and replicated data acquisition refutes it. Which is not simply wrong, or that the hysterical moral dimensions are a slippery slope fallacy, but a counterfactual slippery slope fallacy.
In the other case, it is the idea that CO2 is not the sole, sufficient cause; but that there is a correlation. And while it is not a sole, sufficient cause they wish to treat it as one. Which is little more than accepting the last case out one side of their neck, and refuting it out the other side. This is, more often than not, the position professed by AGW sophists as an introductory premise. That we should be hysterical about CO2, precisely because there is no reason to be concerned.
In the last of these cases, it is the idea that CO2 is a necessary cause of the temperature being different. But then CO2 isn’t a quanta of black body unobtanium, but a completely normal bit of ‘star stuff,’ as Carl Sagan would have had it. But of course it is necessarily different from a black body, for it is not a black body.
These all cannot go together in one notion, or we would be hearing constantly about CO2 being the necessarily sole insufficient reason for why Ferrari’s are famously red. And no one could object to that at all, for necessarily CO2 has no causal relation to automotive colors. But this is fertile ground for the AGW sophist. For they wish never to state any manner of causal relationship, as to do so makes a claim that can be tested. Perhaps, falsified.
Robert Brown says:
November 20, 2013 at 6:46 am
well put