By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
To those of us who have dared to question on scientific and economic grounds the official story on global warming, it is a continuing surprise that there is so little concern about whether or not that story is objectively true among the many who have swallowed it hook, Party Line and sinker.
For the true-believers, the Party Line is socially convenient, politically expedient, and financially profitable. Above all, it is the Party Line. For those who think as herds or hives, it is safe. It is a grimy security blanket. It is the dismal safety in numbers that is the hallmark of the unreasoning mob.
But is it true? The herd and the hive do not care. Or, rather, they do care. They care very much if anyone dares to ask the question “But is it true?” They are offended, shocked, outraged. They vent their venom and their spleen and their fury on those of us who ask, however politely, “But is it true?”
Their reaction is scarcely distinguishable from the behavior of the adherents of some primitive superstitious cult on learning that someone has questioned some egregiously, self-evidently barmy aspect of the dogma that the high priests have handed down.
They have gotten religion, but they call it science. They have gotten religion, but they do not know they have gotten religion. They have gotten religion, but they have not gotten the point of religion, which, like the point of science, is objective truth.
The question arises: can science function properly or at all in the absence of true religion and of its insistence upon morality? For science, in searching for the truth, is pursuing what is – or very much ought to be – a profoundly moral quest.
Yet what if a handful of bad scientists wilfully tamper with data, fabricate results, and demand assent to assertions for which there is no real scientific justification? And what if the vast majority of their colleagues cravenly look the other way and do nothing about their bent colleagues? What you get is the global warming scare.
As every theologian knows, the simplest and usually the clearest of all tests for the presence of a moral sense is whether or not the truth is being told. The true-believers in the New Superstition are not telling the truth. On any objective test, they are lying, and are profiteering by lying, and are doing so at your expense and mine, and are bidding fair to bring down the Age of Enlightenment and Reason, flinging us back into the dumb, inspissate cheerlessness of a new Dark Age.
Nothing is done about the many lies, of course, because the many lies are the Party Line, and no one ever went to jail who safely parroted the Party Line.
“The Science Is Settled! There’s A Consensus! A 97.1% Consensus! Doubters Are As Bad As Holocaust Deniers! Global Temperature Is Rising Dangerously! It Is Warmer Now Than For 1400 Years! Well, 400 Years, Anyway! Tree-Rings Reliably Tell Us So! The Rate Of Global Warming Is Getting Ever Faster! Global Warming Caused Superstorm Sandy! And Typhoon Haiyan! And 1000 Other Disasters! Arctic Sea Ice Will All Be Gone By 2013! OK, By 2015! Or Maybe 2030! Santa Claus Will Have Nowhere To Live! Cuddly Polar Bears Are Facing Extinction! Starving Polar Bears Will Start Eating Penguins! Himalayan Glaciers Will All Melt By 2035! Er, Make That 2350! Millions Of Species Will Become Extinct! Well, Dozens, Anyway! Sea Level Is Rising Dangerously! It Will Rise 3 Feet! No, 20 Feet! No, 246 Feet! There Will Be 50 Million Climate Refugees From Rising Seas By 2010! OK, Make That 2020! The Oceans Will Acidify! Corals Will Die! Global Warming Kills! There Is A One In Ten Chance Global Warming Will End The World By 2100! We Know What We’re Talking About! We Know Best! We Are The Experts! You Can Trust Us! Our Computer Models Are Correct! The Science Is Settled! There’s A Consensus!”
And so, round and round, ad nauseam, ad ignorantiam, ad infinitum.
Every one of those exclamatory, declamatory statements about the climate is in substance untrue. Most were first uttered by scientists working for once-respected universities and government bodies. For instance, the notion that there is a 1 in 10 chance the world will end by 2100 is the fundamentally fatuous assumption in Lord Stern’s 2006 report on climate economics, written by a team at the U.K. Treasury for the then Socialist Government, which got the answer it wanted but did not get the truth, for it did not want the truth.
Previously, you could count on getting nothing but the truth from the men in white coats with leaky Biros in the front pocket. Now, particularly if the subject is global warming, you can count on getting little but profitable nonsense from your friendly local university science lab. They make the profits: you get the nonsense.
The central reason why what Professor Niklas Mörner has called “the greatest lie ever told” is damaging to civilization arises not from the staggering cost, soon to be $1 billion a day worldwide. Not from the direct threat to the West posed by the avowedly anti-democratic, anti-libertarian policies of the UN, the IPCC, and the costly alphabet-soup of unelected busybody agencies of predatory government that live off the taxpayer’s involuntary generosity. Not from the dire environmental damage caused by windmills and other equally medieval measures intended to make non-existent global warming go away.
The damage caused by the Great Lie arises from the fact that just about the entire global governing class has found it expedient or convenient or profitable to adopt the Great Lie, to peddle it, to parade it, to parrot it, to pass it on, regardless of whether anything that it says on the subject of the climate has any truth in it whatsoever.
The fundamental principle upon which Aristotle built the art and science of Logic is that every individual truth is consistent with every other individual truth. The truth is a seamless robe. Religion – or at any rate the Catholic presentation to which I inadequately subscribe (practising but not perfect) – is also built upon that fundamental principle of the oneness of all truth.
Science, too – or at any rate the classical scientific method adumbrated by Thales of Miletus and Al-Haytham and brought to fruition by Newton, Huxley, Einstein, and Popper – was also rooted in the understanding that there is only one truth, only one physical law, and that, therefore, every truth unearthed by the diligence of the curious and hard-working empiricist or theoretician must, if it be truly true, be consistent at every point and in every particular with every truth that had ever been discovered before, and with every truth yet to be discovered.
It is in the understanding of that central principle of the remarkable oneness and self-consistency of all truth that men of true religion and of true science ought to have become united. For there is an awesome beauty in the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. As Keats put it, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all.”
The beauty of the truth is sullied, the seamless robe rent in sunder, if not merely a few individual scientists but the entire classe politique not merely of a single nation but of the planet advantages itself, enriches the already rich and impoverishes the already poor by lying and lying and lying again in the name of Saving The Planet by offering costly and environmentally destructive non-solutions to what is proving to be a non-problem.
The very fabric of the Universe is distorted by so monstrous and so sullenly persistent a lie. Those scientists who have been caught out trampling the truth, and those universities in which it has become near-universally agreed that the best thing to keep the cash flowing is to say nothing about the Great Lie, are by their actions or inactions repudiating the very justification and raison-d’être of science: to seek the truth, to find it, to expound it, to expand it, and so to bring us all closer to answering the greatest of all questions: how came we and all around us to be here?
We who are not only men of science but also men of religion believe that the Answer to that question lay 2000 years ago in a manger in Bethlehem. The very human face of the very Divine was “perfectly God and perfectly Man”, as the Council of Chalcedon beautifully put it.
We cannot prove that a Nazarene made the Universe, or that any Divine agency takes the slightest interest in whether we tell the truth. But, for as long as there is no evidence to the contrary, we are free to believe it. And it is in our freedom to believe that which has not been proven false that the value of true religion to true science may yet come to be discerned. For our religion teaches us that truthfulness is right and wilful falsehood wrong. We cannot prove that that is so, but we believe it nonetheless.
Science, though, is not a matter of belief (unless you belong to Greenpeace or some other Marxist front organization masquerading as an environmental group). It is a matter of disciplined observation, careful theoretical deduction, and cautious expression of results. The true scientist does not say, “I believe”: but he ought, if there is any curiosity and awe in his soul, to say “I wonder …”. Those two words are the foundation of all genuine scientific enquiry.
Yet the global warming scare has shown how very dangerous is science without morality. The scientist, who takes no one’s word for anything (nullius in verba), does not accept a priori that there is any objectively valuable moral code. He does not necessarily consider himself under any moral obligation either to seek the truth or, once he has found it, to speak it.
Science, therefore, in too carelessly or callously rejecting any value in religion and in the great code of morality in which men of religion believe and which at least they try however stumblingly to follow, contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
Yea, truth faileth (Isaiah, 59:15). The Great Lie persists precisely because too many of the scientists who utter it no longer live in accordance with the moral yardstick that Christianity once provided, or any moral yardstick, so that they do not consider they have any moral obligation to tell the truth.
That being so, we should no longer consider ourselves as laboring under any obligation, moral or other, to pay any particular heed to scientists seeking to meddle in politics unless and until they have shown themselves once more willing to be what al-Haytham said they should be: seekers after truth.
Two hundred and forty-six feet of sea-level rise, Dr. Hansen? Oh, come off it!
A merry Christmas an’ a roarin’ Hogmanay to one and all.
Warren says: @ur momisugly December 26, 2013 at 6:29 am
….You can prove to me you’re not among those I’ve described by posting your 1000 peer reviewed anti-AGW papers
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Not necessary, Pop Tech already did so HERE. Again note that many of these have the AGW get out of jail free card that is needed to get funding and to get published. That means you have to read the actual papers.
On the use of theAGW get out of jail free card to get funding and to get published issue you only have to look at what happen to a well known and internationally respected scientist, Dr. Jaworowski.
It is getting rather sad when you see something like this attached to a paper by JOEL M. KAUFFMAN, Emeritus, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, PA
The paper is Climate Change Reexamined in The Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 723–749, 2007
I suggest you read it.
As soon as Powell’s paper came out, I posted the following comment on one of the sites that hosted it:
Strawman. The claim is not that skeptics are 100% “prevented” from being published, but that that it is difficult (and hence rare) to get them published, or to get them published without being watered down, as I hinted above.
==========
IOW, an article will be classified as skeptical only if it presents hard evidence. BUT an article will be counted accepting/endorsing even if it presents no hard evidence, but merely implicit opinion:
Denial must be explicit, but acceptance may be implicit. This double standard biases the results of this article. By how much is unknown. For that, the author should have indicated how many fall into the “implicitly accepting” category.
==========
But the weakness of the warmist case isn’t in the “hard evidence” so much as in the inferences drawn from that evidence, the selectivity applied in deciding which evidence is the most relevant, the inferences drawn from those relevant bits of evidence, the assumptions made, etc. It is at those matters where the main thrust of skepticism has been directed.
But journals want to publish “findings.” This biases them against publishing wide-ranging, argumentative critiques. (To be fair, they rarely publish similar argumentative essays from the warmist side either.) They have a just-the-facts attitude. But the facts don’t speak for themselves. Argumentation has therefore moved to other venues.
What’s needed is an online venue where viewpoints can be argued among credentialed scientists, with the peanut gallery roped off into a separate section where their comments won’t disrupt the discussion, but can be drawn upon by the participants if desired. (Seen but not heard, IOW.) This is what has finally gotten underway with the establishment this month of the Climate Dialogue site, at http://www.climatedialogue.org/
==========
So what? (Irrelevant thesis.) Skeptics don’t deny that. What they deny is that this warming will continue at its current pace; that it would be very harmful if it did so—or even harmful on balance at all; and that there are amplifying factors that will accelerate the current trend. The alarmists’ case rests on the assumptions of strong positive feedbacks and the absence or weakness of negative feedbacks. That’s where their case is weakest.
Hmm . . . There’s nothing in that list by the following skeptical scientists, at least half of whom have presumably published papers properly classified as skeptical:
Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Claude Allègre, John Christy, David Douglass, Don Easterbrook, William M. Gray, Richard Lindzen, Nils-Axel Mörner, Fred Singer, and Roy Spencer.
I took their names from Wikipedia’s “List of [35] scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
Here are four other names, half of whom I presume wrote articles that were missed: Zbigniew Jaworowski, Augusto Mangini, Nathan Paldor, and Richard Tol.
Incidentally, four years ago Powell offered to bet that five years hence (i.e., one year from now) “global temperatures will be higher than they’ve been.” Well, they haven’t been so far, so pretty soon the bell will be tolling for him.
Ya think?
It is claimed (2009 K-T Energy Budget) that 157.5 W/m^2 IR energy ** is absorbed and thermalised by the atmosphere within the absorption depth, c. 30 m, adjacent the Earth’s surface.
That thermalisation would, if true, cause the lower atmosphere to expand using its own heat. In thermodynamics’ terms, a Perpetual Motion Machine of the 2nd Kind. Look it up.
**The ‘Clear Sky Atmospheric Greenhouse Factor’. In reality, there is no net surface IR emission in the wavelength ranges of self-absorbed atmospheric GHG bands; standard radiative physics.
AlecM says:
December 26, 2013 at 10:54 am
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sigh. You are debunking a claim that isn’t being made. The GHE has nothing, nada, zip, to do with thermalisation of IR. If you want to debunk the theory, start with what the theory actually says.
“Warren” continues to found his case upon a supposed “consensus”, when Legates et al. have shown that only 0.3% of 11,944 papers on climate published since 1981 say they agree with the IPCC’s version of “consensus”, which is to the effect that most of the global warming since 1950 is manmade. If most of the warming since 1950 is not manmade – and the literature tells us little about this either way, and there is certainly no consensus on it – then the warming caused by our emissions of greenhouse gases is not serious enough to be worth worrying about. He also insists that only peer-reviewed evidence should be cited. Well, Legates et al. was peer-reviewed. However, the IPCC, which he cites, was not peer-reviewed in any accepted or acceptable sense. Its reports are partisan propaganda, not peer-reviewed science.
In any event, as “Warren” will eventually learn, scientific issues are not decided by any mere consensus, however venerable. Nor are they decided by – for instance – citing papers that claim water vapor in the atmosphere has increased, without also citing the papers that demonstrate it has fallen. And, rather than simply believing those papers that support a particular position, one should think a little before merely reciting the Party Line. How plausible is it, given that water vapor is not well mixed either latitudinally or altitudinally, that we can possibly measure changes in column water vapor with a reliability of a few percentage points? We cannot do that: accordingly it is not scientific to found an argument on the assumption that we can.
Besides, if water vapor has increased, and since we know that CO2 has increased (for it is a well-mixed gas, so we can measure its concentration quite reliably), why has there been no global warming at all for more than 17 years? One answer is that there are many other factors influencing the climate, such as the naturally-occurring recovery of global cloud-cover extent since late 2001 (see Pinker et al., 2005, or Monckton of Brenchley, 2010 for a discussion of this important issue), or the naturally-occurring decline in solar activity since the end of the Grand Maximum from 1925-1995, when the sun was more active than during almost any similar period in the last 11,400 years. Since these natural factors are easily and persistently canceling any forcing from CO2 and from water vapor, the conclusion is either that the natural factors are far bigger than the models had imagined (in which case the models are wrong) or that the effect of CO2, water vapor and other greenhouse gases is less than the models had imagined (in which case the models are wrong), or both (in which case the models are doubly wrong).
Perhaps “Warren” would benefit from studying just a little chaos theory. Then he would understand how impossible it is for models to make reliable climate predictions more than a couple of weeks ahead. He might also benefit from studying the mathematics of temperature feedbacks (for instance, he may like to read Roe, 2009), in which event he will discover that there is much that is wrong with the models’ treatment of the feedbacks that account for two-thirds of the warming supposedly (but not actually) driven by CO2.
It is simply not good enough to rretreat into “consensus” or into mere parroting of the Party Line. Independent, rational thought is necessary – and has been depressingly absent in most of “Warren’s” comments so far.
Finally “climateace” doesn’t know when to let go. He continues to refer to me as having claimed that I am a Nobel laureate. I have never made any such claim. I am no more (and, for that matter, no less) a Nobel Laureate than, say, Michael Mann. We both made conntributions to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, which won the Nobel Prize. His contribution has proven inaccurate: mine has proven accurate. “Climateace” should learn that the childish Saul Alinsky technique of relentlessly attacking the reputation of a political opponent of Communism when one cannot think up any credible arguments against the opponent’s scientific and economic case is regarded here – and by all civilized people – as unwelcome, pointless, and childish. He should grow up or go and play in someone else’s sandpit.
Warren says: @ur momisugly December 26, 2013 at 8:28 am
…It’s no wonder that we see no peer reviewed papers used as evidence on this site….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Good Grief! I have been throwing papers at you in several of my comments
What in heck do you call the papers in my comments at:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/24/monckton-of-meteorology-and-morality/#comment-1512686
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/24/monckton-of-meteorology-and-morality/#comment-1512748
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/24/monckton-of-meteorology-and-morality/#comment-1512876
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/24/monckton-of-meteorology-and-morality/#comment-1513177
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well folks, seems warren is only here to preach his religion as that comment proves. Horses and water or better yet the less clean version.
A C Osborn says: @ur momisugly December 26, 2013 at 9:22 am …
I will add to your list http://www.co2science.org/index.php
That website has a great deal of knowledge just waiting to be looked at.
ferdberple says
We are part of god.
The “universe” (god) itself is much older than 14 billion years. It is infinitely old. the big bang is simply a local event. the birth of a child universe from a parent universe. each universe gives rise to child universes at an exponential rate, through the process of black hole formation. over time this has led to and infinite number of child universes in which all possible outcomes are being played out.
It is this infinite number of child universes that gives rise to quantum mechanics, which is a necessary requirement for free will to exist. It is also what makes the “unfairness” of our universe “fair” in the infinity of time.
henry@ferdberple
actually, on Christmas Eve I became granddad for the first time….how is that for a Xmas present? As I looked at this miracle, this tiny little baby, I realized that as per God’s promise (e.g. John 3:16) there is eternity and a whole universe locked up in her…in fact Jesus implies that this applies to every person, even those that did not make it to earth….
in hindsight, this seems rather appropriate in the light of your comment.
science always confirms Truth
Oh Dear, still not got it yet?
The IPCC’s claims the atmosphere adjacent the surface is heated by absorbing and thermalising surface IR. About half the extra thermal IR emission from the hotter atmosphere returns to the surface as ‘back radiation and warms the surface a bit more. That incremental warming causes more evaporation of water vapour, giving more ‘trapping’ of surface IR.
Ultimately, so it is claimed, from the ice ball planet all present GHE is caused by the CO2 in the atmosphere causing ‘positive feedback’ via the water cycle.
In reality, real net surface IR absorbed by the atmosphere is (1/6.85) of that claimed by the 2009 Energy Budget. None of this energy can be thermalised in the atmosphere – it travels to clouds or Space before that can happen. There is no such thing as ‘back radiation’ defined as doing thermodynamic work.
The failure to understand the real nature of Tyndall’\s Experiment is a monument to sloppy science.
AlecM says:
December 26, 2013 at 11:17 am
Oh Dear, still not got it yet?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You’ve got the exact same problem as Warren. You’re all hyped up about what you think the science says instead of what it actually says. You’ve got some correct facts mixed in with a load of garbage.
I’m not going to teach a course in radiative physics in a blog post. I will attempt to give you a brief explanation and point you to some further reading.
Stefan-Boltzmann Law requires that the temperature of a black body be proportional to the 4th root of the absorbed energy flux. Since doubling of CO2 changes the absorbed energy flux by zero, the effective black body temperature of earth similarly changes by zero. HOWEVER:
The earth doesn’t radiate to space from a surface. It radiates varying amounts from varying altitudes. The average of these is the Effective Radiating Layer. What doubling of CO2 does is change the ALTITUDE at which energy flux in the absorption spectrum of CO2 is, on average, radiated to space. Nothing to do with thermalisation at all.
Now we could from here get into a rather complicated discussion, but the bottom line is that though the effective black body temperature of earth has changed by precisely zero, the fact remains that for the average temperature from top to bottom of the atmospheric column to remain the same, temps below the ERL must rise and temps above must fall.
This can most easily be visualized with a physical analogy of a teeter-totter. Start the t-t level. Then push one end down six inches. The other end goes up by six inches. But the average height of the t-t is exactly the same as it was before. The analogy however breaks down when we consider water vapour. While CO2 has a linear distribution in the atmospheric air column, water vapour does not, it is highly biased toward lower altitudes and lower latitudes. Is the feedback positive or negative? I haven’t a clue, and even if I knew the answer to that question with certainty, there are thousands of other feedback loops in the climate system that nobody has a grip on yet (hence the abject failure of the climate models to even get close to reality).
For further reading on what the theory actually says instead of what you think it says, I suggest:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/20/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-a-physical-analogy/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/28/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-atmospheric-windows/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-emission-spectra/
AlecM says: @ur momisugly December 26, 2013 at 9:54 am
@ur momisuglyGail Combs: There has never been any experimental proof of the IPCC’s claimed thermalisation of absorbed IR energy above that needed for ‘Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium’ in the gas phase….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
First CO2 is not well mixed. (See Dr. Jeffrey A. Glassman essaylink) That is one of the great myths of CAGW used to validate Callendar’s getting rid of the high readings from early chemical analysis. ( link to blog article on Ernest Beck’s PEER-REVIEWED paper )
Second CO2 can and does intercept long wave radiation from the earth’s surface. What is left out is the speed (Time) at which it re-radiates that energy.
Third, the claim that the sun has no real effect on climate is also dependent on leaving out time. The oceans can act as a giant accumulator of net solar energy or they can discharge that accumulated energy.
The PEER-REVIEWED paper In defense of Milankovitch by Gerard Roe shows just how important including time is when talking about solar factors that effect the climate.
His Lordship twice cites Legates (Science and Education 2013) as evidence that the concensus is supported by a vanishingly small fraction of papers. However he fails to mention the response published in the same journal which in turn found that the Legates paper contained serious misrepresentations, and it is the number of papers that reject the consensus that is small. A free preprint of the response can be found here
The IPCC reports are amongst the most reviewed documents on the planet, going through several rounds of public review. Indeed as his Lordship provided his services as an Expert Reviewer it is slightly odd that he now regards the reports as not having been reviewed in ‘any accepted or acceptable sense.’.
Another source given is the work of Dr Rachel Pinker, His Lordship does not see fit to mention that several climate scientists including Dr Pinker have several times disagreed with the interpretation Lord Monckton places on her work, see ‘assertion 7’ in this document for several examples:
Several have asked for an example of a model projection being accurate. Here’s one, the IPCC AR3 included projections baselined in 1990. For the 20-year period to 2010 under scenario A2 the prediction was for a rise of 0.35C or 0.175C/decade. Acccording to Woodfortrees the actual trend in HADCRUT4 was exactly that. This because, notwithstanding the recent slowdown in the global surface temperature rise, in the 15 years ending in 2005, the rate of increase was approximately double that predicted. Hence 15-17 years is clearly not long enough to draw conclusions about the long term trend. Nor is it correct to say that no models predict such hiatuses. Here’s one with a 21 year plateau…
I note that Warren tucked tail and ran after others here posted links to thousands of peer-reviewed papers debunking his “carbon” scare.
What say you, Warren? It was you who demanded evidence of such papers. But now that they have been posted, you tuck tail, run and hide.
Warren is a typical True Believer/climate alarmist, no? He cries about words that he can’t handle [“nonsense”, etc.]. But we see that Warren refuses to answer any questions put to him — while asking all manner of questions based on things that do not really matter, such as Pal Review, and always inaccurate computer climate models — not one of which was able to predict the current halt in global warming.
Warren fits the definition of a troll, because he is deliberately muddying the waters rather than having a science-based debate. That is because Warrren cannot debate based on empirical facts. If he did, he would immediately lose the argument.
So what say you, Warren? Is that wrong? If so, then post your empirical, testable facts right here. Show us your runaway global warming. Or any global warming, for that matter. We will be happy to discuss whatever scientific, real world, testable facts you can come up with.
PJ Clarke says:
For the 20-year period to 2010 under scenario A2 the prediction was for a rise of 0.35C or 0.175C/decade… the 15 years ending in 2005, the rate of increase was approximately double that predicted.
So? You are simply cherry-picking from 2005. The actual, long term recovery since the LIA has been ≈0.35º/century. And of course, global warming has now stopped. Inconvenient that fact, that… eh, PJ?
PJ continues:
15-17 years is clearly not long enough to draw conclusions about the long term trend. Nor is it correct to say that no models predict such hiatuses.
First off, you cannot label the halt in global warming as a “hiatus”, unless global warming resumes. So far, it has not: global warming has stopped. Words matter, PJ, and your climate alarmist spin does not go unnoticed. There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening. Nothing. Current global temperatures are boringly routine.
The models are all wrong. All of them.
And yes, 17 years is long enough to draw conclusions about the trend. You are just moving the goal posts, as you are with your “…21 year plateau.”
Face it, PJ, the real world is debunking your runaway global warming belief. It simply ain’t happening.
So far as I can tell, the entire premise of Monckton’s argument is the AGW is religion one and therefore scientists who study it should be more moral. Since I don’t buy the first premise and don’t see why the second one should apply to scientists while, apparently, not to some other people prone to dissimulation themselves, it becomes a frayed knot. Just doing the rhetorical equivalent of shouting does not make anything true.
By the way, which Huxley does he mean? Thomas Henry (Darwin’s bulldog), Julian (the eugenecist) or Sir Andrew (Nobel laureate and neuroscientist)? I presume he means the former. E second would be more in keeping with his theme of ideologically corrupted scientists.
Finally, the entire piece suffers from an irony failure.
davidmhoffer, why isn’t it that increased tropospheric CO2 increases the energy density of the troposphere. In order that the TOA radiant temperature remain constant, the ERL increases in altitude so as to proportionately increase the effective radiant surface area. The surface area increases just enough so that the radiant energy density remains constant. So, even though the TOA temperature and the energy density remain constant, the total radiated energy increases.
The approximately constant lapse rate then requires that the surface warm by the increase in altitude of the ERL.
This is the static picture, of course. Your point about feedbacks is exactly on-point. No one knows whether the tiny adjustments of climate — physical degrees of freedom — that could completely offset any tropospheric warming are in operation. The resolution of climate models is orders of magnitude too crude to predict or describe such feedbacks.
Pat Frank says:
December 26, 2013 at 12:54 pm
davidmhoffer, why isn’t it that increased tropospheric CO2 increases the energy density of the troposphere.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It does. But at (for example) pre-industrial of 280 ppm and current of 400 ppm, the change is so small as to be a rounding error.
Pat Frank;
In order that the TOA radiant temperature remain constant, the ERL increases in altitude so as to proportionately increase the effective radiant surface area.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The TOA radiant temperature doesn’t remain constant. It declines.
Margaret H,
If catastrophic AGW is not a religion, then why do people believe in it, given the complete absence of any empirical evidence?
It is my anecdotal experience that when people are wrong it is usually for one of two reasons. Either the issue doesn’t affect them so they do not take the time to find the truth or they have spent most of their time in an echo chamber where the wrong belief is continually reinforced. When it comes to understanding the Catholic religion in terms of Western culture ethics, I’m afraid Lord Monckton suffers from the latter. For those of us that have sat through the indoctrination process and had the intelligence even as a young person to reject the nonsense we find it sad and comical that those who fell for it somehow believe that all of us are subordinate to it. It is obvious that those who are religious believers are just as bankrupt in their minds as those parroting ‘peer reviewed requirements’ in regard to global warming. People are not God fearing, they are ‘peer fearing’. The rules of conduct disseminated by the Catholic church are not static infallible truths, they were arrived at by consensus, much the way the hundreds of off shoot Christian religions have been once literacy began to play a role. It is quite obvious to me that religion is a reflection of mans morality, Religion has NOT defined mans morality. Holy passages are only used to enforce peer belief while other passages are ignored or interpreted to meet the peer consensus. Lord, I believe you are suffering from the echo chamber on this issue. Otherwise, I rather like your posts, in general.
What a fascinating thread – well, at times. But I have to repeat myself. ‘Warren’ is a construct. Even MoB seems to have realised that as he only refers to the name parenthetically. I mean, we are talking to a ‘guy’ who claims not to know what AR stands for and has to be educated in the terminology of IPCC; ‘It’ even seems to think the adjectival form for Venus is ‘Venetian’ (!); and, having claimed to be ignorant of so many things – or just plainly chooses to ignore them until one for the ‘Warren’ forms comes up with an answer – comes back to claim chapter and verse recollection of obscure ‘peer-reviewed’ papers on ocean heat storage (for example).
Well, the bot (‘Warren’) has served a useful purpose by bringing out a wealth of knowledge that cannot be denied. ‘It’ has given many sceptics an education that could not be paid for. For that we should thank ‘it’. (And, BTW: if you doubt my idea of ‘Warren’ as a construct, just think of how many rabbit holes go to make up one. Very ‘Alice in Wonderland’).
Happy New Year everyone, whatever your pov: Just remember to wrap up warm for it.
PJ Clarke asserts that because one run of one model produces a 21 year pause that global warming is not falsified. I would ask, then that given the infrequency of such a prediction, what is the confidence level of that prediction? Even in the IPCC published data, we see that actual temperature is mining the depths of the probability distribution. Such a hiatus is highly improbable according to the IPCC modelling. One forgets that an event that has only a 1 % probability of occuring has a 99% probability of not occuring, yet an event that more likely than not should not occur, is held as proof of that occurence.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. Many of the models are proven wrong, these MUST be removed from the cohort forthwith. Averaging a model that is right (or near right) with one that is known to be wrong is NOT going to produce an answer closer to the truth. In my mind the IPCC report is fatally flawed by this, and cannot be taken seriously until the known falsified models are removed from the cohort.
Besides PJ, enthalpy doesn’t carry over, average temperature is an estimate of the enthalpy of the earth at a point in time, while the pause continues, the trend line continues to lower its slope. Energy will rise from the point enthalpy at the time, it isn’t going to spring out of the oceans to bring back 1999 in an instant. This means that if we show a single period at a given enthalpy then we need to recover from that position. An example, let’s say we saw 10 years at the same temperature as the LIA due to say, the current solar minimum. CO2 warming then has to start from scratch again raising the temp from that low baseline again, you can no longer use that high and rising baseline you did before. So CO2 temperature rise should be largely monotonic, to offset such a forcing, the natural variation (cooling) warmists claim is offsetting CO2 warming has to be similarly increasing in a period of rising solar activity to a sunspot peak. We are at the peak of a sunspot cycle, there is a fair way down from here. If this is in fact true, then adding the cooling descent to the solar minimum to an alreading increasing cooling bias to the climate might be quite worrying, however I’m fairly confident the CO2 warming, and hence the required cooling offset to produce the pause is largely imaginary.
Every time the temperature declines, we are given that much longer to confirm the science before we burden the public with destructive mitigation policies, but let’s hope the cooling is shallow.
to Harry Passfield
Yes well no one saw/ got my sarcasm reference to rabbits and ‘Warren’. I will try better next time lol
[Ne’er fear, the mods see all, read all, remember all. Mod]
Would the IPCC’s defenders be saying that if the oceans’ heat content were falling rather than rising? To ask the question is to know the answer.
Similarly, would the U. of Colorado be saying that sea level should be redefined to mean the volume of the ocean’s basins if those basins’ volume had been shrinking rather than growing? (If shrinking, the actual sea level “where the rubber meets the road” would be rising more rapidly than it otherwise would.) Again, to ask the question is to know the answer.
PS: Similarly, would the NCDC fail to publicize and focus on its new, high-quality station set if its temperatures were higher (instead of considerably lower) than its current, old-fashioned collection? NO, in thunder!
Pat Frank;
In order that the TOA radiant temperature remain constant, the ERL increases in altitude so as to proportionately increase the effective radiant surface area. The surface area increases just enough so that the radiant energy density remains constant. So, even though the TOA temperature and the energy density remain constant, the total radiated energy increases.
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Just realized that I probably misunderstood you in my earlier reply. If you mean the total energy flux as measured at TOA rather than the temperature at TOA, then I pretty much agree. If the ERL moves from say 10km to 11 km, that’s a 10% increase. But if we use an approximate radius of the sphere as 6400 km, that’s only an increase to 6401 which would increase the surface radiating area by only .03%.
Of course that’s a bit misleading too, because you’re averaging something that doesn’t have a linear relationship in the first place, ie area of a sphere is A = 4piR^2. Then the statistical distribution of the escape level as CO2 increases is also not linear as it is a natural log function. Then one needs to factor in that the earth is an oblate sphere and the atmosphere is thicker at the tropics than the poles… and then one’s head starts to hurt…