Skeptics get a seat at the table.
IPCC 5th Assessment Review Meeting starts at 9.30am GMT
Witnesses
- Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, Professor Myles Allen, University of Oxford University, and Dr Peter Stott, Met Office
- Professor Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nicholas Lewis, Climate researcher, and Donna Laframboise, Author
Live feed link follows.
Purpose of the session
Topics being examined include:
- IPCC AR5 key findings on climate change;
- Consensus and uncertainty about climate change;
- Reliability of climate models used by the IPCC;
- Areas of scrutiny (climate sensitivity, the hiatus etc.); and
- The structure and practices of the IPCC.
Watch here: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=14741
The ECC home page: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/energy-and-climate-change-committee/
Well done!
1. Amazing to see. how British MPs even tried to go into Batesian mathematics. One of them even schooled the alarmist alarmist panel, that by diverging expectation from measured data should increase uncertainty and not decrease it.
Very interesting note from Nic Lewis, that Francis Zwiers book, climate science #1 source for statistics, does not even contain Bayesian maths.
2. Nic Lewis focussed on “his” 2 points and the panel clearly got the message. Sensitivity is low and climate models are failing.
Which new study was he talking about, with ocean heat uptake now halfed for 2004-2011 ?
3. Tim Yeo – of course – an utter and painful disaster. Should be noted, that elsewhere in the US Congress, such disruptive behaviour was common practise from Boxter / Clinton and friends.
alcheson says: @ur momisugly January 28, 2014 at 11:38 am
…. there are a huge number of comments being deleted by the moderators. Looks to me a lot of censoring going on against the non-koolaid drinkers. Is the Guardian is taking the tactic of censoriing out anyone who doesn’t agree with them now?
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They and the BBC have been for a while.
JP says: @ur momisugly January 28, 2014 at 11:44 am
Alan the Brit: If you then insist on making bad jokes about Donna Laframboise’s name, it’d be RASPberry, not strawberry 🙂
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I call her La Raspberry because I murder French and my husband cringes.
rgbatduke:
re your point about GCMs in your post at January 28, 2014 at 11:35 am.
As you say, the issue was raised in the Sessions. Hence, it can be followed up by the Committee either in writing or by recalling the witnesses before another Session.
Very good Civil servants support each Select Committee. If they assess that issues were not adequately covered then they will advise the Select Committee. Indeed, over coffee after the Session a Civil servant may seek out a witness and ask for clarification to enable advise to provide the Committee (I have experienced this).
If you feel a desire to advise the Committee of your concerns then you can provide a written Submission and it will be assessed by a Civil Servant considering what to advise the Committee. If you do this then please include information on your academic position. Remember that you not being a Brit does not matter: two of the Witnesses were Americans. The Committee is charged to oversee policy and it can obtain information it needs from anywhere. You never know, they may Call you.
I hope that helps.
Richard
Manfred says: @ur momisugly January 28, 2014 at 1:27 pm
… Tim Yeo – of course – an utter and painful disaster. Should be noted, that elsewhere in the US Congress, such disruptive behaviour was common practise from Boxter / Clinton and friends.
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That is why Robert made his Rules.
richardscourtney says:
January 28, 2014 at 1:55 am
“Reprated assertions that ‘the models ARE climate’; e.g. internal variability of the climate is the same as variability of the models.”
This is a truly damning statement and especially so since they are now making the assertion openly. For years, they have used obfuscation as their only tool in dealing with questions of natural variability. Now they admit that for them “natural variability” refers to the model rather than nature. In other words, they do not so much as recognize natural variability where it exists, outside the models in nature. Natural variability is simply what Mother Nature can do on her own. We have some historical records of Mother’s feats in decreasing or increasing temperatures. The extremes in our data records are what we know of natural variability. Those data records must be used to test models.
Any “natural variability” built into the model will amount to nothing more than a tautologous part of a larger tautology and, as such, cannot tell us anything about nature.
Hot under the collar says:
January 28, 2014 at 12:32 pm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03t7lhw/Select_Committees_Live_Climate_Change_Committee/
For non UK residents unable to access iPlayer – Media Hint addon for Firefox (and Chrome?) is a simple workaround.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-hint/
Thanks much to Richardscourtney, M Courtney, and all Brits for very helpful comments.
Everyone please check out judith Curry’s running comments on her site.
rgbatduke wrote –
” It is a fact not generally known that,owing to the difference between solar and sidereal time,the Earth rotates upon its axis once more often than there are days in the year” NASA /Harvard
For the love of all that is worthy, no, this is one question that absolutely should not have been asked unless one’s purpose in asking was to demonstrate beyond any doubt that one is an idiot. Fortunately, Lindzen is an actual physicist and would never ask a leading, irrelevant question about something he understands perfectly well and that is utterly divorced from the questions being discussed.”
People who can’t interpret a basic temperature graph where temperatures rise and fall within a 24 hour period which correlates directly with one rotation of the Earth are lost souls much less intelligent and reasonable.
http://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/los-angeles/hourly
Within that ‘solar vs sidereal’ fiction is a catastrophic amount of damage where cause and effect are concerned insofar as if you can’t match the rising and falling of temperatures at your location with a turning Earth then there is no longer any point to science and certainly no mandate to discuss it.
So,what commission can you convene to discuss why every astronomer on the planet has trouble ascertaining the cause of the most immediate experience of global temperature fluctuations if they insist there is one more rotation than there are days in a year with all the effects within that day ?.
The three sides in that sideshow today were out of their depth as they are merely inheritors of late 17th century fluff and voodoo and particularly due to the single greatest act of vandalism perpetrated on astronomy .It is the reason contemporaries are exceptionally poor at cause and effect –
“For to the earth planetary motions appear sometimes direct, sometimes stationary, nay, and sometimes retrograde. But from the sun they are always seen direct,…” Newton
This attempt to create an set of observation from Earth (relative space and motion) with a transferable hypothetical modeling as seen from the Sun (absolute space and motion) robbed the original discoveries of their substance as all observations are seen from a moving Earth and all effects are a consequence of a moving Earth including the daily temperature fluctuations and the annual set. The fact is that the modelers in astronomy never understood their own system,they loved the voodoo but never understood what Newton was doing even though he literally spells it out as I have just explained –
“It is indeed a matter of great difficulty to discover, and effectually to distinguish, the true motion of particular bodies from the apparent; because the parts of that absolute space,in which those motions are performed, do by no means come under the observation of our senses. Yet the thing is not altogether desperate; for we have some arguments to guide us, partly from the apparent motions, which are the differences of the true motions; partly from the forces, which the causes and effects of the true motion.” Newton Principia
None of you would give up Newton and his agenda but that is at the bottom of this current modeling mess and although Von Humboldt was not the first or last to talk up higher reasoning against the agenda based on speculative/predictive assertions,his was the most expansive in pointing out that higher reasoning undoes the damage –
“These are the imaginings of incomplete- notions-philosophers who make space an absolute reality. Such notions are apt to be fudged up by devotees of pure mathematics, whose whole subject- matter is the playthings of imagination, but they are destroyed by higher reasoning” Leibniz
In short,you cannot model your way out of a mess the same way you modeled your way into one and that is the answer behind an impasse that suits only those with reputations and salaries to protect.
Thanks clipe, but I notice the BBC iplayer recording cuts off most of the skeptic’s presentation. Why am I not surprised?
I don’t know if it is ‘selective hearing’, but at 34:50 when Peter Lilley asked about a study showing the models converging because they were all overemphasising or using warming in the arctic, I am sure you can hear one of the IPCC faithful (or at least someone) say “shit” ?
rgbatduke wrote in response to what is possibly the dumbest statement ever coming from the minds of men –
” It is a fact not generally known that,owing to the difference between solar and sidereal time,the Earth rotates upon its axis once more often than there are days in the year” NASA /Harvard
“For the love of all that is worthy, no, this is one question that absolutely should not have been asked unless one’s purpose in asking was to demonstrate beyond any doubt that one is an idiot. Fortunately, Lindzen is an actual physicist and would never ask a leading, irrelevant question about something he understands perfectly well and that is utterly divorced from the questions being discussed.”
http://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/los-angeles/hourly
Talk about a pyramid built on its apex with all the instability that follows !. The only question worthwhile asking is how an entire generation lost the correlation between daily temperature fluctuations within a 24 hour period and one rotation of the planet. The answer is surprisingly complicated but when you insist on an imbalance between rotations and 24 hour days you are encountering a glimpse at a sideshow that has lasted for a number of centuries in astronomy but has now entered terrestrial sciences through modeling.
The human mind that dwells on either the daily temperature graph or the statement is forced into a conclusion sooner or later because the strain of trying to get rotations to diverge from the daily spiking and descent of temperatures is untenable. People may refuse to believe the solution is just that simple but boy does it open up the can of worms concealed within a lot of voodoo and fluff since Flamsteed first jumped to that rash ‘sol;ar vs sidereal’ conclusion and Sir Isaac built on it.
The sideshow today is a symptom of errors inherited from previous centuries so drop the celebrity hero worship of Newton and deal with the matter in the objective way it should be treated. If they ever do convene a commission on the matter as to how an entire generation of astronomers lost the basic correlation between planetary dynamics and daily temperature rises they will find Newton’s agenda at the core of that hideous error passed of currently as ‘fact’.
Sorry Mod, thought the other reply didn’t make it.
Just curious, are the two Courneys (Richard S and M) related?
Still just going through. Never in the past did I hear Stott. All the bad things said about him that I said must be exaggerations that I out of hand disclaimed I now see were understated. All I can say thus far from what I have heard is:
‘And then at twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles
And arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry,
’cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American
Blind justice, and there wasn’t nothing he could do about it, and the
Judge wasn’t going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy
Pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each
One explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. And
We was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the snow, but that’s not
What I came to tell you about.’
MattS says: @ur momisugly January 28, 2014 at 2:44 pm
Just curious, are the two Courneys (Richard S and M) related?
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Richard is M’s Father, but are very much individuals.
[The mod’s are thankful that neither Janice, Gail nor Pamela are (or will claim to be) related to either Courneys …. Mod]
MattS:
At January 28, 2014 at 2:44 pm you ask
It is no secret that Mathew is my son.
As most people have noticed, he and I disagree on most things (e.g. as in this thread). But I would not want a son who agrees with me, would you? It might be a problem if we were in close and frequent contact but we are not; e.g. we only meet once or twice a year. So, we enjoy our disagreements especially when together.
Richard
Thanks Richard and M Courtney for the live comments! Quite interesting that it even is possible to invite an equal panel of pro’s and con’s for a parliament committee. Far from the possibilities in my own country. The Netherlands is a lot farther in that way…
MattS, It has been stated that Richard S Courtney is my father on this thread by several commentators and also elsewhere by my mother; so in this I suspend my scepticism (at least until someone richer seeks to make me his heir).
However, I am not one to always leap to my father’s defence and do not always agree with his judgement. For example, his summary of this event is completely wrong with respect to who won the event (in my opinion).
Also we live four hours apart and will probably not see each other as often as twice this year.
Just read rest of the comments.
It seems that Richard S Courtney cannot spell my first name.
Hmm…
Perhaps I was too credulous.
M Courtney:
You say concerning you being my son
Seems it is time for you to seek that “someone richer” which should not be hard 🙂
Dad
Sun Earth relation.
http://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=93459
[The mod’s are thankful that neither Janice, Gail nor Pamela are (or will claim to be) related to either Courneys …. Mod]
I have an English great-grandfather….
Courtneys – five minutes in the penalty box for hockey-sticking 🙂
Interesting how this blog, in addition to having wonderful science and increasingly broader excursions into excellent writing about and in defense of science, also brings folks (and families) together from around the world, with many viewpoints and ideas from which we all benefit. Aren’t there other Sr./Jr. posters here, e.g. Phil and Phil’s Dad, and the Pielkes?
Ahh, families, can’t live with them, can’t live without them (spoken as the parent of a teenager…my sister tells me it gets better….)(Mom always (still) liked her best :))…
Jeff says: @ur momisugly January 28, 2014 at 5:03 pm
. Aren’t there other Sr./Jr. posters here…
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Yes Dr. Tim Ball & son.
Isn’t it truly stunning what Nic Lewis has already achieved ?
Not only did he force the IPCC into that embarrassing corner of avoiding a central estimate of the most important climate parameter at all,
now he even motivated British MPs to look into Bayesian Mathematics !
Wonderful achievement. Imagine Barbara Boxter or Al Gore doing this. Absolutely impossible. So big thanks and merits also to these British MPs who still have some democratic spirit hardwired in their brains.
That means nothing less, than these MPs no longer believe what their experts say and want to check by themselves. Huge success for citizen science and democracy.