About that graph…

This one:

The title “Battle of the Graphs” certainly lives on, even though it is approaching a decade in age, as there has been a lot of off-topic contention on this WUWT thread as well as a free-for-all bashing over at the “Stoat” a.k.a. William Connolley (who “takes science by the throat”, implying he is some sort of “tough guy”) saying that this graph that appeared in a Telegraph article was erroneous and created by Christopher Monckton.

Based on the simplest available evidence, I was ready to conclude, as were many, that indeed Monckton had created the graph, that it was in error, and that he had refused to admit to any of this. I was ready to censure him myself, just as the over-the-top Stoaters wanted to do, probably so Connolley could direct a new denigrating Wikipedia entry as he is known to do (he’s not allowed to edit Wikipedia pages of living persons anymore, so he directs by proxy). Now, after further investigation I can tell you I was wrong, and so is Connolley.

If Monckton was wrong I certainly would’ve had no trouble pointing this out just as the Stoaters were doing, but I have one advantage that neither Monckton nor the Stoaters have: I have actually worked at a newspaper and I have submitted articles as a guest author to newspapers. So, I am familiar with the artwork process. Further, I have also published a number of articles from Monckton myself here and I am quite familiar with his style of producing graphs.

Thus, I noticed something about the Telegraph article that no one else seemed to.

WUWT commenter Kevin O’Neill, who also frequents Connolley’s website pointed out in this comment the charges against Monckton.

First let’s have a look at the article itself. The URL for it is:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533290/Climate-chaos-Dont-believe-it.html

A screencap of the heading portion is shown below with the highlight done by me in yellow.

Unfortunately the link under the yellow highlight no longer works and so for some it is impossible to check Monckton’s references and calculations that were included with the essay. We’ll get back to that in a moment, please read on.

Here is how the article presented the graph that is in contention, I have screen captured a portion of the original Telegraph article:

Several things immediately struck me as being out of place when I first saw the graph after reading about the contention surrounding it, here is a list.

The style (colors, font, etc) is not anything like I’ve ever seen from Monckton in all the graphs he has submitted to WUWT.
The horizontal lines on the bottom portion of the graph are ~~obviously spaced incorrectly~~ (the 20th century average line looks like it is incorrect on left axis) along with other cues in the plot line indicating to me that they were hand-drawn yet I’ve never gotten the graph from Monckton that was hand-drawn. Everything he has ever sent me has always been from a computer program output, thus the idea of having ~~improperly spaced lines and coordinates~~ a hand drawn plot didn’t make sense to me.
My experience with newspapers told me that this was likely a graph that was prepared by the art department of the UK Telegraph. You see, all major newspapers and even some middle and minor ones have an art department. And, when they get some sort of illustration from a guest author, or data from a government report, they almost always redraw it to fit the style and format of the newspaper. Especially the colors and the fonts.

Just look at any major newspaper in the United States like USA Today when they get in data from say, the Labor Department, they produce their own graphs of that data. They can also make grievous mistakes with such data in the way it is presented such as this article from Charles Apple (who watches newspapers and the graphics and photos they produce) demonstrates:

Obviously, neither the editor nor the artist saw the sexual suggestion in the imagery. I don’t blame the NWS or the Red Cross who provided the data, I blame Doyle Rice and Julie Snider. Note the references at the bottom of the graphic.

Here, USA Today took data from the National Weather Service and the American Red Cross and turned it into what is obviously a ridiculous graphic. It got past the editor, and made it into the final publication.

I noted such references to internal artists, editors, and sources were missing from the UK Telegraph article as seen in the screen cap further above, and it is this omission that I believe led many people to conclude that Monckton produced that graphic.

If you examine other graphics from the UK Telegraph, you will find that they do have such references but they are also similarly designed and of a similar size with similar fonts and colors. For example, look at this graphic from 2005 that has been redrawn, but no mention given of an internal reference to The Telegraph art department:

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4198339/Global-warming-will-bring-cooler-climate-for-UK.html

It is plainly obvious that is a graphic created by the newspaper and not by any scientific entity, otherwise it wouldn’t have the jagged shadow edges. So, the question surrounding the graph allegedly produced by Christopher Monckton is; did he included in the original list of references that he provided the Telegraph in that now missing link at the top of the original article? I’m happy to say I have found that original source file that Monckton provided to the Telegraph. It was lodged in the Wayback machine. I was able to find it simply by putting in the correct URL of the original Telegraph article as shown below:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090301000000*/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533290/Climate-chaos-Dont-believe-it.html

When you pull up the archive from 2009, the link appears for the PDF file of Monckton’s references but unfortunately it gives a 404 as seen below:

Oddly though if you click on the LEFT MOST vertical lines (circa 2007/2008) in the timeline above, the PDF will actually download, and that is what I did. For those of you that would doubt this you can go here and try it yourself:

Click to access warm-refs.pdf

And for posterity, here is a local link to the PDF of the References Monckton provided for the Telegraph article in 2006: warm-refs

If you open that PDF file you will notice a number of graphs and references including the graph from IPCC section 7 graph C. McIntyre speaks of its source here.

But no trace of the exact artwork combination as presented above appears in the Telegraph article is in Monckton’s reference PDF file, clearly indicating that the telegraph art department redrew that 1990 IPCC graph and the hockey stick graph, changing the top-bottom order. Below is page 6 from Monckton’s “warm-refs” PDF file, showing those graphs:

While I was ready to condemn Monckton for producing a sloppy graph like many of these Stoaters, it is now abundantly clear to me that he did not draw it and the claims by these people are erroneous and simply mendacious.

Stoat/Connelley is simply flat wrong, and the website that cited Monckton’s graphic as an example of what not to do needs to clarify that it was the newspaper that made the errors, that the source graphs came from the IPCC, and that Monckton drew none of them.

All this breastbeating over something that can be simply researched as I have done is just a waste of everyone’s time.

Monckton prepared a rebuttal as well which I present below.

=================================================================

There comes a point …

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Those of us who have raised questions about the magnitude of Man’s influence on climate have become used to the expensively funded, often carefully co-ordinated campaigns of personal vilification organized by adherents of the Climatist Party Line. Occasionally we growl a little. More often we refuse to be distracted. We carry on.

The purpose of these relentless attacks on us is not only to do us down but also to frighten off third parties who might otherwise find the courage to speak out and express their own doubts about the Party Line.

But there comes a point when it is necessary to take action. I hope no one will disagree that that point is reached when allegations of lying or fabrication are made; when the allegations are unquestionably false; when they are persisted in despite requests to cease and desist; and when they are widely disseminated in a manner calculated baselessly to cause maximum reputational damage.

Recently a commenter at Jo Nova’s blog posted several comments to the effect that I had “faked” a graph. I quickly asked Jo to replace them with a note to say legal proceedings were in train. Enough, I had decided, was enough.

Here is the diagram I was supposed to have “faked”:

This surely blameless diagram appeared alongside an article I had written for the Sunday Telegraph on 5 November 2006, the first time I ever went public on the climate question. The article went live on the internet at midnight on a Saturday night. Two hours later the Telegraph’s website crashed, for 127,000 people had tried to access the article.

Now, it is not the custom of UK newspapers to ask their contributors to illustrate their articles. As usual, I was not consulted and offered no advice on the matter, and had no hand in their production and no foreknowledge that they were to be used. The graphs are not labeled as having been sourced from the IPCC (indeed, one of the graphs has the shadow of a hockey stick overlaid on it and marked as the “IPCC ‘hockey stick’”, making it blindingly obvious that it is not an official IPCC’s graph).

The Telegraph’s graphs are simple and, it seems to me, harmless schematics illustrating the difference between the representations of 1000 years’ global temperatures as they appeared in the IPCC’s 2001 (top) and 1990 (bottom) reports.

The graph from p. 202 of the IPCC’s 1990 report now looks like this:

With the article I supplied some background material for Telegraph readers on its website. In that material, the IPCC’s 1990 graph also appeared, mistakenly captioned as 1996 rather than 1990. The graph as I reproduced it looked like this:

What I had not realized until very recently was that for several years allegations had been circulated all over the place to the effect that I had fabricated the graphs that had appeared in the Sunday Telegraph article. Yet not one of those who had made these allegations had ever contacted me to verify the facts. And not one of them had said what was wrong with the Telegraph’s graphs anyway.

Perhaps the worst of the many allegations of dishonesty against me appeared on a “science education” website, where an entire section under the bold heading “Misuse of scientific images” was devoted to the Telegraph’s graphs.

The offending section contained the following untruths:

Ø that in that article I had “disputed the concept of climate change” (Not that old chestnut again! I had accepted the concept but queried its likely magnitude);
Ø that the Telegraph’s graphs were instances of “poor use of graphical displays” that “can confuse and obscure data” (No, they neatly showed the main point: in 1990 the medieval warm period and little ice age were shown clearly, but by 2001 both had gone, and a sharp uptick in the 20^th century had been added);
Ø that I had “created the [1990] graph on the bottom using different calculations that did not take into account all of the variables that climate scientists used to create the top graph” (No, I had not created either graph or done any calculations for such a graph);
Ø that I had deployed “common techniques used to distort visual forms of data – manipulating axes, changing one of the variables in a comparison, changing calculations without full explanation – that can obscure a true comparison” (No, none of the above); and
Ø that the article had been published in the Daily Telegraph (No, the Sunday Telegraph, and that suggests the website had never seen the original article but had picked up the libel from somewhere else).

I only discovered that this spectacularly inaccurate and profoundly damaging infestation of allegations when the commenter at Jo Nova’s site who had accused me of “faking” the graph mentioned on his own blog that I had not objected to the libel as it appeared on the science-education website. I had not objected because I had not known about it. No one at that website had thought to check any of the facts with me, or, as far as one can tell, with anyone else.

In short order a letter before action was sent to the website, which promptly did the right thing and took out the entire section, though there are indications that attempts are being made in some quarters – unsuccessfully so far – to get them to put it back up again.

I gave the commenter at Jo Nova’s website who had accused me of “faking” the graphs several chances to retract and apologize. Instead, he and several others sneeringly doubled down by accusing me of “lying” when I had said the graphs at the Telegraph website had not purported to be, and had not been labeled as, IPCC graphs.

They also alleged that the graph in my background materials accompanying the Telegraph article was “not the same graph” as that from the IPCC’s 1990 report: in effect, that I had “faked” that one as well. Judge that for yourselves from the two monochrome versions of the graph above. There seem to me to be no material differences, and I think it would be hard for the defendants to convince a court that there were any.

So I am going to court. My lawyers say the libels are plain and indefensible. They comment additionally that no judge would regard the schematics in the Telegraph (whoever had drawn them) as significantly misrepresenting the difference between the 1990 and 2001 reports’ images of the past millennium’s global temperature anomalies. As far as they can see, there is not a lot wrong with the graphs in any event.

I have told this story not only because some commenters here have been unwise enough to repeat in threads here the allegations they have made elsewhere but also because I thought it might be time to reveal the steps we have to take on an almost weekly basis to try to stem the tide of false allegations directed at us.

Nor am I by any means the only victim. For years, this shadowy Propagandaamt has been tampering with Fred Singer’s Wikipedia page to allege that he believes in Martians.

Niklas Mörner, the sea-level expert, has had his page got at on the ground that he sometimes dowses for water or other underground treasure. My late father once did that for the Maltese Government, and found three lost Punic tombs and a fine marble head of Seneca from the first century AD. My drawing of it (in the day before digital cameras) is probably still to be found somewhere in the Museum of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge. But I never had the knack for dowsing myself.

A pressure-group founded and funded by Prince Charles is prone to intervene to try (unsuccessfully, the last time they tried it on me) to prevent the publication of skeptical scientific papers in British learned journals.

A team of paid hacks telephones the Chancellor and the Dean of the Faculty at every university at which skeptics are invited to speak. About half the time, they succeed in getting us disinvited.

Journal editors are sacked for printing papers by skeptics.

However much one might hope that scientific discourse can be conducted in an open atmosphere of sensible dialog, the truth is that on the climate it can’t, because the extremists won’t play fair. The Politburo are determined to keep the scare going for just a little longer, till they can get the Treaty of Paris safely signed by all nations in December 2015.

So I am going to court to defend myself and, in so doing against the constant barrage of falsehoods told in support of the Party Line. We went to court against Al Gore because his movie was poisonous political propaganda dressed up as science.

We won. Nothing else but a court case would have worked. It was only when the department of education in London were confronted with 80 pages of scientific testimony, and knew that that testimony would stand up in court against all their falsehoods and evasions, that they caved in and settled, paying $400,000 to the plaintiffs and undertaking to circulate 77 pages of corrective guidance to every school in England.

In the present case, the other side has blinked thrice. On the website of my defamer, there is a nervous little note that he will not give me his name and address unless I answer various impertinent questions of his. The court will have no patience with any nonsense of that sort.

And there are now various postings at the same blog, again rather nervous, saying that perhaps they could plead that I don’t have a reputation and they can accuse me of whatever they like.

They will be unwise to take that line. For if they say I have no reputation they have to be able to come up with evidence that any material detrimental to my reputation on which they may try to rely is true. And most of it is no more accurate than their accusations that I “faked” a graph that I had plainly not faked. If they waste the court’s time with point after point that has nothing to do with the case at hand, they will merely aggravate the damages they will have to pay.

Finally, the perp has been unwise enough to admit that at the time when he made his allegation of “fakery” he did not know whether I had “faked” the graph or not. In the courts, to make a damaging and untrue allegation not knowing whether or not it is true is as culpable as making it when one knows it is not true. And there is no defense once that admission has been made. It has been made.

There is a curious and touching notion among some skeptics that, since the truth will of course prevail in the end, we should persevere with the scientific argument but not take the defamers and the scamsters to court. The feeling is that using the courts somehow isn’t cricket.

Sometimes, though, it’s necessary to play hardball. Being Valiant for Truth is not for wimps.

================================================================

UPDATE:

From comments, Steve McIntyre finds another version of the Lamb/IPCC AR1 1990 graph, which looks to me to be much closer to the graph used in the Telegraph article. This graph does NOT appear in Monkton’s PDF.

He writes in a comment:

The lower panel of the Telegraph diagram appears to have derived from (what appears to be) a variation of the Lamb graphic, a variation that I had not noticed until now. The variation appears in the following blog posts (and visually matches almost exactly):

http://drtimball.com/2011/they-are-still-trying-to-rewrite-climate-to-show-current-conditions-are-abnormal/

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2009/12/from-mann-paper-in-nature.html

Neither blog post provides a citation for the figure, but there are clues that should enable its exact provenance to be tracked down fairly quickly. It appears to be from a book about European climate and have been developed by Lamb. It is unclear why the Telegraph would have used this variation instead of the IPCC 1990 variation, but doubtless we will find out in due course.

UPDATE2:

Nick Stokes adds in comments (bold mine):

There is a version of that graph at the John Daly site here. The article does not seem to be dated, but Daly is indicated as the author, which would make it 2004 or earlier. No source given.

Here is the graph from John Daly’s website, listed as figure 4:

And here is the Metadata, dating the creation of it precisely to Feb 10, 2004, two years before Monckton’s article in the Telegraph.

(right click on image at Daly’s website here to verify yourself)

Nick Stokes adds in a second comment:

Steve McIntyre says: July 3, 2014 at 12:12 pm

“The lower panel of the Telegraph diagram appears to have derived from (what appears to be) a variation of the Lamb graphic, a variation that I had not noticed until now.”

Here, on the Wayback machine, is a version from 2001 on the John Daly site.

And the screencap:

Since Daly’s graph is a near perfect match for the one in the Telegraph, and appears as far back as April 21, 2001, and Monckton did not provide it in his PDF to the Telegraph, I’d say “case closed”.

UPDATE3:

There is some whingeing from Kevin O’Neill in comments that Figure 7.1c from IPCC AR1 WG1 chapter 7 (available here: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_07.pdf ) was not “faithfully” reproduced in my article, even though I made a reference to a technical discussion at Climate Audit on that specific graph and the exact figure appears no less than 3 times in the essay split between my own and Monckton’s

If you open that PDF file you will notice a number of graphs and references including the graph from IPCC section 7 graph C. McIntyre speaks of its source here.

To satisfy such whingeing, here is the exact page from IPCC AR1 WG1 chapter 7, followed by a magnified view of figure 7.1 (including graphs A,B, and C) in case Mr. O’Neill wants to claim “a magnified version is needed for readers with poor eyesight” as part of his game. I challenge him and readers to find any material difference between the graphs below taken directly from the IPCC WG1 Chapter 7 page 202 and those in the essay.

Magnified figure 7.1abc:

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Brent Hargreaves

July 3, 2014 10:28 am

Connolly: pronounced McCarthy.

Chris B

July 3, 2014 10:33 am

Brent Hargreaves says:
July 3, 2014 at 10:28 am
Connolly: pronounced McCarthy.
——————-
That’s an insult to McCarthy.

Otter (ClimateOtter on Twitter)

July 3, 2014 10:48 am

‘scuse my language, but, do you really think they will give a damn about the truth of the matter?

Jean Parisot

July 3, 2014 10:54 am

Connolly: pronounced McCarthy.
Nah, McCarthy was at least correct.

Kev-in-uk

July 3, 2014 10:55 am

Well done for the research mr watts. However i would say shame on you for doubting monckton so harshly. People make errors, that is normal – but honestly it is a little silly to even think of monckton as pushing in some deliberate fakery? Perhaps not impossible but very very very unlikely!
As for monckton, i hope he makes em squeal!

REPLY: I don’t accept your criticism as pertinent, only facts matter here. I call them as I see them, and first available evidence was not supportive of Monckton at all. However, it should be noted that had I no first hand experience with the man, and not knowing his habits and practices, like the Stoaters I would probably not have dug deeper. – Anthony

Kip Hansen

Editor

July 3, 2014 10:56 am

Thank you Anthony and Monckton ==> I just love it when lies are exposed and the truth prevails.

Kip Hansen

Editor

July 3, 2014 10:58 am

Anthony — If I’d known you were looking for that .pdf I would have sent you a copy — I tend to download and save things –> a copy has been on my laptop since first published.
REPLY: Thanks, but finding it on the Wayback machine in a reproducible way is better, because the Stoaters would then say that the PDF had been altered if I didn’t have the source that is unimpeachable. They have no shame over there. -Anthony

Anthony Watts

Author

July 3, 2014 10:58 am

OK Enough with the McCarthy references. Connolley may be a self-described weasel (Stoat) but he’s far worse than McCarthy IMHO, since he’s accountable to nobody. At least McCarthy was accountable to his constituents. I don’t think there is a parallel person that Connolley could be compared to.

Alan Poirier

July 3, 2014 11:05 am

I certainly hope this sets the record straight. I have been in the newspaper business for more than 30 years. In all that time, we never once asked a writer for his/her opinion of a headline, graph or layout of a page. I do wish that someone, anyone, would have asked the editors at the Telegraph the provenance of the graphic. It probably would have cleared up this confusion from the get-go. I am just glad Lord Monckton’s good name has been preserved. I do enjoy reading his articles.

jakee308

July 3, 2014 11:06 am

But McCarthy was right; the State Department and many positions in the Roosevelt administration (and carried over into Truman’s) WERE occupied by members of the Communist Party.
Proof came later through the breakdown of the USSR and the KGB revelations of that period of time.
Perhaps some of who he accused were not but he was vilified just for trying to find out if they were.
Similar to how Liberals are all up in arms about ID for voters.
You can tell when you’ve hit a nerve when they start to squeal.

kadaka (KD Knoebel)

July 3, 2014 11:08 am

From Monckton’s reply:

Niklas Mörner, the sea-level expert…

Is there a more proper spelling we are not using? Around here it’s normally Nils-Axel Mörner.
Example:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/31/the-marshall-islands-and-their-sea-level-changes/

A short comment by Nils-Axel Mörner

David L. Hagen

July 3, 2014 11:12 am

Well put.
Continuing honorably the example of Valient for Truth as portrayed by John Bunyan!

Lloyd Martin Hendaye

July 3, 2014 11:14 am

Arousing Monckton of Brenchley in such contexts is akin to liberating Smaug.

george e. smith

July 3, 2014 11:16 am

Well take a good look at that 2001 UN (IPCC) graph that has the number (6) beneath it.
This I believe was Michael Mann’s hockey stick debut graph. And there it is gloriously labeled….
……Northern Hemisphere…….
Subsequent morphisations of this graph, disappeared the “Northern Hemisphere” appellation and suddenly the hockey stick became a “Global Phenomenon,” rather than a regional aberration.
Unfortunately for Mann, his Northern Hemisphere local effect graph refuses to stay disappeared, as he would wish for.
Hey as I recall, Yamal, and its famous Charlie Brown Christmas tree, are in the Northern Hemisphere region too.

richardscourtney

July 3, 2014 11:19 am

kadaka (KD Knoebel):
At July 3, 2014 at 11:08 am you ask

From Monckton’s reply:

Niklas Mörner, the sea-level expert…

Is there a more proper spelling we are not using? Around here it’s normally Nils-Axel Mörner.

Nils-Axel is correct but he is addressed as Niklas by his friends.
I gained the honour of being able to address him as Niklas when he, Lord Monckton and I were successful in winning the ‘climate debate’ at St Andrews university. I also then gained the honour of being able to address Lord Monckton as Christopher.
In a public forum such as here I would address them formally.
Richard

Jonathan Abbott

July 3, 2014 11:25 am

Interesting times….
…and sometimes very entertaining!

bit chilly

July 3, 2014 11:27 am

fantastic to see lord monckton once again have the balls to challenge these people. i owe a debt of gratitude already due to the aforementioned gore rubbish no longer infiltrating my childrens education.
i wish you all the best with the legal challenge ,though i have no doubt it will be successful . let us see how much snivelling and blame shifting goes on amongst the accusers and we will see how strong their belief in the cause is now.

Peter Miller

July 3, 2014 11:30 am

Take no prisoners, alarmists deserve everything that is coming their way, but most especially they deserve to be ridiculed for their bad, toy town, science.

AlecM

July 3, 2014 11:32 am

Very interesting that HRH is allegedly responsible for the attacks on objective science.

MikeUK

July 3, 2014 11:36 am

Climate science seems to be beset by a lack of traceability and configuration control. Since so much is at stake it behooves all in the front-line to have such things under rigid control. I’ve used “Source Safe” and “SVN” tools at work, and can recommend both.

Bloke down the pub

July 3, 2014 11:39 am

Many moons ago, I wrote to the editor of the Sunday Telegraph about a photo they had photoshopped. In the process they had unfortunately given someone an extra leg ( no Rolf Harris jokes please). I pointed out the loss of trust that such obvious alterations would lead to but got an high-handed reply. I suppose I should be grateful for that small courtesy.

Monckton of Brenchley

July 3, 2014 11:40 am

First and foremost, I want to say Thank you to Anthony for having spent so much of his already overburdened time on researching the question whether I had fabricated the graphs that appeared in the Sunday Telegraph. He had worked very hard on it, and without consulting me, so that he could avoid being swayed in his judgment. I had worked out that he was doing the research, because one of my defamers had been privately emailing him to try to persuade him that I had been dishonest about the Telegraph’s blameless graphs. That tactic backfired badly.
Anthony’s detective work is a model of its kind, looking closely at the graphs themselves, understanding the context (which is that authors do not illustrate their own articles), and working out from the graphs that I regularly supply here that the Telegraph’s graphs looked quite different.
One of the many extraordinary things about this very widely circulated libel is how long it seems to have been around without my having become aware of it. It was only because one of my defamers posted a comment at Jo Nova’s website to say I had “faked” a graph that I was able to go back via his blog to other sources, the worst of which was what presents itself as a “science education resource” website but looks like nothing so much as one of the countless thousands of Communist front organizations that the KGB’s desinformatsiya directorate created throughout the West.
That website had the libel in the most extreme form I have yet seen. My clerk sent its operators a letter before action, whereupon it took down the offending item. But my defamers at another website contacted them and persuaded them to put it back up again, though my name no longer appears. However, because the offending item continues to be linked to me on various climate-communist websites, the damage will continue unless the offending item, which is quite spectacularly inaccurate in every material particular, is altogether removed.
So my clerk has now sent a letter from me to the website telling it that it must now either take the item down permanently and put up a permanent apology to me to undo the damage that years of falsehood have caused or face legal action for libel. When I get back from Vegas (see all y’all there), writs will fly, and I’ll be able to retire on the damages (not that I’m of a retiring disposition).
Finally, thanks again to Anthony for allowing me to set the record straight, and for doing so much homework himself. The efficacy of the libel may be judged by the fact that, even though he knows me well enough to understand that I would not knowingly fabricate evidence, he was almost persuaded by one of my defamers that I had “faked” the graph. In fact, even if I had faked the graph there does not seem to me to be that much wrong with it. It fairly shows that the 1990 report’s graph of the past 1000 years’ global temperatures had shown the medieval warm period and the Little Ice Age, and that the 2001 report’s graph abolishes those and adds a sharp uptick in the 20th century. That was the sole purpose of the Telegraph’s blameless graphic.
Even if I had drawn the graphic, nothing on it identifies it as an official graph: indeed, the shadow of a hockey stick accompanied by the words “IPCC hockey stick” should have revealed even to the meanest intelligence that no claim was being made that the graphic was anything other than a schematic to show the extraordinary alteration of the reconstructed temperature record. But we are dealing not with the meanest intelligence but with people who are mean but not intelligent.

Doug Hilliard

July 3, 2014 11:43 am

Go get ’em!

Chris4692

July 3, 2014 11:45 am

Maybe it’s in part because my expectations of newspapers is low, but I don’t see a reason for there to be any controversy. The graphs as presented fairly present the differences in the originals. Even if they were mis-sourced, the general shapes are reasonable representations of the two versions of climate history: those two versions were not limited to the two versions cited. Those accusing Mr Monckton of anything in regard to this must be really grasping at straws.

Tom J

July 3, 2014 11:48 am

‘William Connolley (who “takes science by the throat”, implying he is some sort of “tough guy”) …’
Could it really mean that Connolley’s doing everything he can to insure, that in the end, the scientific method will suck.

Louis

July 3, 2014 11:52 am

“…saying that perhaps they could plead that I don’t have a reputation and they can accuse me of whatever they like”
—
If that attitude doesn’t demonstrate their willingness to lie, what would? As long as they can manufacture an excuse, they are willing to lie for the cause. Climate alarmists and leftists have a lot in common in that regard. They feel it is okay to lie about liars or to hate haters, but by doing so they become one of them and hypocrites to boot. Worse than that is the fact that they feel no obligation to prove their allegations. All they have to do is label you a liar (denier) or a hater and they feel free to abuse you. By putting such labels on everyone they disagree with, it gives them license, so they think, to attack, distort, exaggerate, and outright lie about them.

andrewmharding

Editor

July 3, 2014 11:54 am

Twice in my professional life (as a dentist), I have had asked for my opinions by a newspaper, that were subsequently published. The first time, what was printed was totally different to what I said, I rang the newspaper and complained, a verbal apology was made, but no published apology.
The second time the same newspaper rang me again asking me for a telephone interview about a recent publication concerning dentists spotting signs of child abuse. I said I would comment, but, due to the sensitivity of this subject, I asked them to e-mail me the article for my approval before publication. This they did, they quoted verbatim what I had said and the article was published.
If anyone is asked to write/dictate an article for publication please, please check what is written first.

Gunga Din

July 3, 2014 11:58 am

I don’t think there is a parallel person that Connolley could be compared to.

===============================================================
A book-burner who doesn’t use matches?

David, UK

July 3, 2014 12:02 pm

Anthony, rather than “digging deeper” I wonder why you did not, as a first option, simply approach the man for an explanation? Thought you guys had a better relationship than that.
REPLY: I wanted to find things out on my own, nullius in verba, so to speak. Call it a fault. After I had figured it out, THEN I contacted Monckton. Had I contacted him in the first place, I likely would not have found the PDF file. – Anthony

richard verney

July 3, 2014 12:04 pm

george e. smith says:
July 3, 2014 at 11:16 am
/////////////////
As you say, the graph is labelled Northern hemisphere, so it is particularly surprising that neither the Medieval Warm Period, nor the Little Ice Age are well defined. At the time this graph was drawn, I thought that the warmists accepted both events as having occurred but argued that these events were local to the Northern Hemisphere only, and were not global events.

Steve McIntyre

July 3, 2014 12:12 pm

The lower panel of the Telegraph diagram appears to have derived from (what appears to be) a variation of the Lamb graphic, a variation that I had not noticed until now. The variation appears in the following blog posts (and visually matches almost exactly):
http://drtimball.com/2011/they-are-still-trying-to-rewrite-climate-to-show-current-conditions-are-abnormal/
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2009/12/from-mann-paper-in-nature.html
Neither blog post provides a citation for the figure, but there are clues that should enable its exact provenance to be tracked down fairly quickly. It appears to be from a book about European climate and have been developed by Lamb. It is unclear why the Telegraph would have used this variation instead of the IPCC 1990 variation, but doubtless we will find out in due course.

fobdangerclose

July 3, 2014 12:18 pm

It would be so nice if this climate change thing via Al Gore etal was in fact about PDF files and graphs.
Too, seems as an example, John F. Kerry, why did he never sue the swiftboatvets blog or the owner/operators of that blog. Clear enough he has enough of his wifes money to do so.
Seems a huge class action deal of the law would be required to find and bring to court all the guilty in this fake warming problem.

u.k.(us)

July 3, 2014 12:23 pm

“Obviously, nether the editor nor the artist saw the sexual suggestion in the imagery.”
=========
What ??? TF.
It never crossed my mind.
I’ll now try to read the rest of the post, with an open mind.
It’s gonna take all my will.

Mark Stoval (@MarkStoval)

July 3, 2014 12:41 pm

I was ready to censure him myself, just as the over-the-top Stoaters wanted to do, probably so Connolley could direct a new denigrating Wikipedia entry as he is known to do (he’s not allowed to edit Wikipedia pages of living persons anymore, so he directs by proxy). Now, after further investigation I can tell you I was wrong, and so is Connolley.

I found out a long time ago that we should be on guard against deciding that anyone is guilty unless we have conclusive proof of wrongdoing. It would take some heavy duty evidence to convince me of any blatant wrongdoing and then a subsequent cover-up by Mr. Monckton. I would always extend Lord Mockton the courtesy of asking him for his side of the issue. I would always extend to Lord Mockton the presumption of innocence.
On the other hand, in the Case of Dr. M. Mann, I thought his work was incorrect and did not meet the burden of “good science” but did not think that he had committed any fraudulent acts. But then he refused to release all data, methods, and code. He has hidden his work for years now, which is evidence of wrongdoing to me. In science why hide your work if you are not hiding something? Is it a case of Piltdown Mann?
The difference in the two cases is that Lord Monckton always makes public all the data and sources he uses and Dr. Mann never does.

Gary

July 3, 2014 12:43 pm

Let’s lay a large part of the blame for this episode at the feet of “journalists” and their media who fail to cite their sources. A simple notation that the graphics were redrawn based on information from xyz would have avoided giving fodder to the feckless weasels. When I learned how to write scientific papers long ago and redrew a graph, it was an anathema and plagiarism not to say what was done and where the original information came from. Newspapers and other media should be held to the same standard.

rogerknights

July 3, 2014 12:44 pm

Good luck, Christopher!
The lawsuit I’d like to see is one directed at those who have claimed that WUWT and AW are “on the payroll of Heartland. This includes, Mann, SourceWatch, and Desmogblog. This would have a much bigger impact, because millions have read and believed that charge, because it would damage the credibility of those false accusers to lose in court, and because it would provide an opportunity to cross-examine and expose Gleick about the origin and authorship of his phony Heartland “Strategy” document, which Desmogblog bases its claims on.
I laid out the case for such a suit about a month ago in two WUWT comments here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/07/why-climate-change-doesnt-scare-me/#comment-1656581
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/07/why-climate-change-doesnt-scare-me/#comment-1656913

A Guy Named Jack (@JackHBarnes)

July 3, 2014 12:56 pm

When I was a published columnist for an online financial website, the editors requested that I include data for each of my articles. They would take my graphics and change the visual aspect to match a template they used on all authors.
My included material never looked like the published output. I like how Anthony handle this topic.
Lord M Stated: “There is a curious and touching notion among some skeptics that, since the truth will of course prevail in the end, we should persevere with the scientific argument but not take the defamers and the scamsters to court. The feeling is that using the courts somehow isn’t cricket.”
While science is a contact sport, it still needs the art of patience, to fully allow the meal to be cooked. Or said differently, sometimes you have to wait for the other side to really screw up before we make the point of proving them wrong.

A Guy Named Jack (@JackHBarnes)

July 3, 2014 12:57 pm

Dang it. I used the A word in my last post. Wondering how long it takes between these posts to show up.

Follow the Money

July 3, 2014 1:01 pm

The bots got upset now about one newspaper graph from 8 years ago? Really? That is what this is all about?
You should laugh them off.
How about exploring who created the NH/SH graphs in AR5? Some of the related-chapter’s named authors? Someone else? They have remarkable “errors.” Also different looking plottings relative to the underlying sources which are cited.

rogerknights

July 3, 2014 1:03 pm

Anthony: In your haste your sentence below wasn’t clear; I’ve inserted fixes clarifying your intent (right?):
“However, it should be noted that had I ~~note~~ not first hand experience with the man, and ~~knowing~~ known his habits and practices, then, like the Stoaters I would probably not have dug deeper. – Anthony”
REPLY: No that’s not it either. This is it.
“However, it should be noted that I have ~~note~~ first hand experience with the man, and knowing his habits and practices, then, if after hearing his version first, like the Stoaters I would probably not have dug deeper. – Anthony”
And it should also be noted that I don’t give a rats butt what anyone thinks about how I should have conducted my investigation. The result speaks for itself. -Anthony

SandyInLimousin

July 3, 2014 1:06 pm

Anthony
REPLY: I don’t accept your criticism as pertinent, only facts matter here. I call them as I see them, and first available evidence was not supportive of Monckton at all. However, it should be noted that had I note first hand experience with the man, and knowing his habits and practices, like the Stoaters I would probably not have dug deeper. – Anthony
Not once bitten twice shy then?

July 3, 2014 1:07 pm

Well Kevin O’Neill?

Margaret Hardman

July 3, 2014 1:14 pm

[snip off topic -mod]

latecommer2014

July 3, 2014 1:31 pm

I approve wholly of Lord Mockton’s legal action, and wish others we so inclined. The more time they have to spend on their defense the less time they have for malicious attacks..

earwig42

July 3, 2014 1:31 pm

In reading this post and the comments I have had to read the name Conno$$ey 13 times! Now not only do I have to empty my spittoon, I have to wash out my eyes.
To Lord Moncton, Sue the bastages!

Latitude

July 3, 2014 1:31 pm

Now, after further investigation I can tell you I was wrong,…..have you checked your water lately?
😉

JohnWho

July 3, 2014 1:33 pm

You see, Monckton doesn’t have to use false data or faked graphs to present the reality regarding the changing climate and anthropogenic CO2 emission’s possibly immeasurable contribution.
On the other hand, Alarmist/Warmists may use false data or faked graphs to present their viewpoint, and, therefore, it appears they then assume everybody does.
Projection, anyone?

Margaret Hardman

July 3, 2014 1:37 pm

Not off topic as it was contained within Monckton’s own defence. I offered it as an example of Monckton’s scholarship. I shall comment on the graph then: did some minion at the Sunday Telegraph pick the graph out of thin air? This actually opens more questions as the matter isn’t settled as Anthony would like. My questions from the other thread have not been answered.
[maybe if you would phrase your questions without layering on unnecessary contempt – your typical way, people might be more inclined to help you. See McIntyre’s comment up thread pointing to another version. -mod]

Bill

July 3, 2014 1:49 pm

How dare Monckton send the newspaper links to figures from IPCC
documents!

PaulH

July 3, 2014 1:52 pm

For years, this shadowy Propagandaamt has been tampering with Fred Singer’s Wikipedia page to allege that he believes in Martians.
Yet another reason to view information gleaned from Wikipedia with great suspicion.

Lars P.

July 3, 2014 2:00 pm

Wel, well, the alarmists tell lies, and in the end some start believing their own lies.
Putting lies in wikipedia does not make those lies true, it only destroys the good work others did invest in wikipedia and more.
Some need to hit the wall to understand this…

markx

July 3, 2014 2:01 pm

“Taking science by the throat”, eh?
That can only be interpreted as not allowing the science to speak for itself.

Gunga Din

July 3, 2014 2:03 pm

And it should also be noted that I don’t give a rats butt what anyone thinks about how I should have conducted my investigation. The result speaks for itself.

==========================================================================
I don’t know if our host and Monckton have ever met. Their “relationship” is a non-issue even if they had. The issue is what is the truth of the matter. Our host now knows it beyond a shadow of a doubt. So should we.
(Aren’t stoats and skunks considered to be in the same family?)

Gunga Din

July 3, 2014 2:07 pm

Margaret Hardman says:
July 3, 2014 at 1:37 pm
…. I shall comment on the graph then: did some minion at the Sunday Telegraph pick the graph out of thin air?

========================================================================
My guess, and it IS just a guess, is that they just used the first graph their search came upon. (Saved time.)

Tom in Florida

July 3, 2014 2:08 pm

I am certainly glad that these charges have been exposed as false because they are false. It doesn’t matter to me who is involved, Now. it may seem odd to anyone who was reading “that other thread” where things did get hot and heavy, but I choose my sides by what I believe to be right. In this instance I believe CM has been wronged, in the other I believe what CM was doing was wrong.

DirkH

July 3, 2014 2:09 pm

“over at the “Stoat” a.k.a. William Connolley (who “takes science by the throat”, implying he is some sort of “tough guy”)”
I always took it as his declared intent to kill science.

A.D. Everard

July 3, 2014 2:14 pm

Excellent. More of this sort of thing should end up in court. The alarmists play dirty and while the skeptical side objects, the alarmists simply push on. They, the alarmists, have the money, have the microphones AND the headlines. Rarely do they face the repercussions.
Go at ’em, Christopher Monckton! I wish there were more like you.

Zeke Hausfather

July 3, 2014 2:25 pm

I’m amused at how some folks edited the label of the old Lamb figure to make the axis end at 2000 instead of 1950. Tisk tisk.

William Connolley

July 3, 2014 2:25 pm

> I’m happy to say I have found that original source file that Monckton provided to the Telegraph. It was lodged in the Wayback machine
Can’t say I’m impressed by your sleuthing. That info has been on my blog for days: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2014/06/27/battle-of-the-graphs/#comment-49253
I don’t find the idea that the Telegraph would invent a graph out of thin air terribly plausible. Nor that Lord M wouldn’t even check the article pre or post publication.
> that the source graphs came from the IPCC
No, clearly not: the lower pane bears a vague resemblance to 7.1.c but clearly isn’t it.
But you’ve missed AIG news from late 2006 (http://www.klimarealistene.com/web-content/09.03.08%20Klima,%20CO2%20analyser,%20Monckton%20m.fl%20NB%20Nov06.pdf). Which was by “Christopher Monckton (Reproduced with kind permission of Lord Monckton of Brenchley)”. And the graph in question appears on p13. At the end the article says “(Reproduced with kind permission from the Author).” So I can’t see any way that Lord M can disclaim responsibility for that.
REPLY: See the updated version 2 of the Lamb graph courtesy of McIntyre at the end of the article, which closely matches the Telegraph version, and is NOT in Monckton’s PDF. I suggest you try to explain that.
I generally don’t read your blog in detail (I simply noted you were on about it), because the bias and condescending attitude you display towards anyone with an opinion contrary to your own makes it an exercise in futility. Your ego there seems so large that the MOT must have to put out orange road cones ahead of you when you travel. It is quite off-putting. So, I don’t trust you to honestly research anything, therefore I do my own work.
As for the new PDF you supply, it seems clear to me this is an article reference (with Monckton as the author) not a personal communications. Something you’ll have to prove. I see it as a desperate a stretch – but certainly good enough for a Wikipedia smear. – Anthony

Steve Keohane

July 3, 2014 2:29 pm

A most excellent ending to that long post. Thanks Anthony and Christopher.

July 3, 2014 2:37 pm

I’m not particularly pleased with the “guilty until proved innocent” nature of this. Lacking evidence of fraud on Monckton of Brenchley’s part, Anthony was prepared to censure him. I accepted Monckton’s claim of innocence based only on the fact that there was no proof he was guilty of anything. That is the way it is supposed to work and is something Willis and Leif should practice when making unsupportable claims about David Evans.

mellyrn

July 3, 2014 2:45 pm

Where can I find out more about the lawsuit against Gore that “we” (Monckton and -?-) won? I should very much like to read about it. I am sorry not to have heard of it before.

jim Steele

July 3, 2014 2:52 pm

Good detective work Anthony!

Michael D Smith

July 3, 2014 2:57 pm

There are lots of images like that: http://bit.ly/1osJCE4
Maybe you can find the original in there somewhere. Some even reference “Gore’s presentation”. Make of it what you will…

Nick Stokes

July 3, 2014 2:57 pm

Steve McIntyre says: July 3, 2014 at 12:12 pm
“The lower panel of the Telegraph diagram appears to have derived from (what appears to be) a variation of the Lamb graphic, a variation that I had not noticed until now.”
There is a version of that graph at the John Daly site here. The article does not seem to be dated, but Daly is indicated as the author, which would make it 2004 or earlier. No source given.

William Connolley

July 3, 2014 3:00 pm

> As for the new PDF you supply, it seems clear to me this is an article reference (with Monckton as the author)
Yes. That’s exactly what it is. That’s the point.
> and is NOT in Monckton’s PDF. I suggest you try to explain that
I agree that’s an interesting point. I disagree that its conclusive;explanations are easy.
> updated version 2 of the Lamb graph
In blog posts from 2009 and 2011. As is usual in “skeptic” blogs they don’t bother giving sources; but for all we know they copied the Telegraph.
> Stoat/Connelley [sic] is simply flat wrong, and the website that cited Monckton’s graphic as an example of what not to do needs to clarify that it was the newspaper that made the errors, that the source graphs came from the IPCC
You still haven’t realised that the IPCC isn’t the source of the lower pane graph. It may or may not be the modified source of the upper pane.
REPLY: Which doesn’t matter, and you still don’t realize the precarious position you’ve put yourself in. Monckton seems quite determined to make a legal example out of you.

Nick Stokes adds: There is a version of that graph at the John Daly site here. The article does not seem to be dated, but Daly is indicated as the author, which would make it 2004 or earlier. No source given.

My best advice to you Mr. Connolley is that you should offer up a retraction and an apology, post-haste. Though, I’ll be happy to invest in popcorn futures if you don’t – Anthony

Nick Stokes

July 3, 2014 3:02 pm

Steve McIntyre says: July 3, 2014 at 12:12 pm
“The lower panel of the Telegraph diagram appears to have derived from (what appears to be) a variation of the Lamb graphic, a variation that I had not noticed until now.”
Here, on the Wayback machine, is a version from 2001 on the John Daly site.

Tonyb

July 3, 2014 3:30 pm

Mellyrn
I assume the court case against al gore is the one in the uk high court
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3310137/Al-Gores-nine-Inconvenient-Untruths.html
Tonyb

Golden

July 3, 2014 3:36 pm

Interesting how the theory of evolution needed a pit bull like Thomas Huxley and climate science has a weasel. His grandson Julian Huxley was a Malthusian eugenicist and founder of WWF, the organization supporting AGW. The history of Evolution is full of discredited so-called human fossils alleging to be evidence of human evolution. Climate science is just as atrocious when it comes to scientific evidence. Too bad they didn’t have email back then. Public disclosure would probably be just as eye opening.

Anthony Watts

Author

July 3, 2014 3:40 pm

Thanks Nick Stokes, those are two of the most useful comments you’ve ever made.

HorshamBren

July 3, 2014 3:42 pm

Lord Monckton’s article in the Telegraph in November 2006 is important for another reason
Prior to its publication, I had always accepted at face value what the IPCC and many climate scientists were saying about global warming … although not to the extent of Fraser Steel at the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit, who was recently quoted as saying: “Lord Lawson’s views [on climate change] are not supported by the evidence from computer modelling and scientific research,”
However, Lord Monckton’s piece inspired me to investigate further – the first step being a back of an envelope calculation using the Stefan-Boltzman equation mentioned towards the end
As a result, I’m no longer an unthinking ‘warmist’, but a reflective ‘lukewarmer’
So thank you, Lord Monckton, for being the catalyst that set me thinking about this fascinating subject, and thanks to Anthony Watts, Robert Brown, Bishop Hill, Jo Nova, Judith Curry and Paul Homewood for the signposts along the way!

John M

July 3, 2014 3:49 pm

Weasel says:

I don’t find the idea that the Telegraph would invent a graph out of thin air terribly plausible.

But somehow, you’ve been arguing for years that Time and Newsweek came up with those Global Cooling articles in the 70s entirely on their own.

Nick Stokes

July 3, 2014 3:55 pm

Anthony Watts says: July 3, 2014 at 3:40 pm
Well, yes, but it would really help if people would not cite unsourced graphs. We still don’t know where it came from.

Anthony Watts

Author

Reply to Nick Stokes

July 3, 2014 4:00 pm

“…it would really help if people would not cite unsourced graphs. We still don’t know where it came from”
Agreed, but it seems quite clear it was not sent to the Telegraph in the PDF from Monckton, owing to its absence, but I have tools that may tell us from metadata. Working on it. -A

Rob

July 3, 2014 4:00 pm

I’ve always liked that graph. John Daly
did some great work! Definately an H.H.
Lamb derived product.

Tom J

July 3, 2014 4:02 pm

William Connolley
July 3, 2014 at 2:25 pm
says:
‘I don’t find the idea that the Telegraph would invent a graph out of thin air terribly plausible. Nor that Lord M wouldn’t even check the article pre or post publication.’
In the above you are writing about something you know absolutely nothing about. Oh, to be an expert in everything. Well, you’re not. I can assure you a graphic design department will redo those graphs to improve the visual aspects of them. As an example, by US law almost all food packages must have nutritional labels on them, and the government contracted with a studio to design those labels and lay out the specifications for them. And guess what? We in the graphic design department never followed those specifications. The world does not work the way you think it does.

Chuck Nolan

July 3, 2014 4:14 pm

If a skeptic is thought to be wrong no one hammers him more than another skeptic.
Alarmists rarely self attack.
Alarmists get hammered by alarmists when they become skeptics.
**
As far as voter ID, try to get into Holder’s inJustice Department without one.
**
Tom J says:
July 3, 2014 at 11:48 am …
Could it really mean that Connolley’s doing everything he can to insure, that in the end, the scientific method will suck.
——————————-
Nah, he’s trying to make sure the scientific method will be abandoned or die.
**
Good on Lord Monckton. Please hold his feet to the flame.
The truth is, even if this whole CAGW thingy blows over the really bad guys will get away with it. It’s all these other low level hypocrites that are helping them so we need to hold everybody accountable every chance we get. Who knows, we might catch a big one. Use their tactics against them.
I could see how maybe Al Gore and Obama would want everyone to pay for global warming but why this guy?
They offer two choices: 1) Allow Wall Street millionaires to become billionaires with default swaps and hedge funds trading in carbon credits. 2) Give congress and thereby all of government trillions more dollars to piss away. Damn…decisions, decisions, decisions.
Nobody’s explaining how either of these choices will even affect global warming even 1°C.
So, how much leeway do you get during the discovery process?
To prove malice one might want to look at some other activities of the blogger.
Who does he work for?
What kind of income does he have?
Who pays the bills?
Does he throw mud everywhere or just at Lord Monckton?
What kind of help does he get and how much?
And my biggest question is “How can he be so sure about CAGW?”
cn

Anything is possible

July 3, 2014 4:16 pm

I think the graph under discussion MAY have originated in this paper :
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/254/5032/698.abstract
I can’t confirm because I am not a member of Science Magazine – perhaps someone who is can check it out?
TIA.

Anything is possible

July 3, 2014 4:18 pm

No, my bad it didn’t. Please ignore above post.

NikFromNYC

July 3, 2014 4:25 pm

Welcome to Wikipedia.gov, Dr. Connolley, where citizens have recourse to not only challenge slander, but severely punish it. When Obama’s lies about Obamacare soon result in a conservative takeover, those deeply involved in the climate scam will further suffer ClimateAudit.gov in turn. Haughtily dismissing the blunt proof of full corruption of peer review in the form of the bladeless input data of the latest hockey stick sensation from Marcott in 2013 makes all that ancient history of Mann’s shenanigans fresh again. Yet you did dismiss it, foolishly, and in public, an act that is undeniable proof of ethical and moral corruption to any objective observer, including laypersons since there’s no statistical black box involved behind it, just no blade, period. Science is the one of the very few human activities besides the law that at its core is defined as being averse to being taken by the throat.
Monckton is helping initiate a proper backlash against willful, knowing and slanderous deception in the name of bastardized “science” in place of the real thing.
“It is far better to be feared than loved. For of men it may be generally affirmed that they are thankless, fickle, false, studious to avoid danger, greedy of gain, devoted to you while you are able to confer benefits upon them, and ready, as I said before, while danger is distant, to shed their blood, and sacrifice their property, their lives, and their children for you; but in the hour of need they turn against you. The Prince, therefore, who without otherwise securing himself builds wholly on their professions is undone. For the friendships which we buy with a price, and do not gain by greatness and nobility of character, though they be fairly earned are not made good, but fail us when we have occasion to use them. Moreover, men are less careful how they offend him who makes himself loved than him who makes himself feared. For love is held by the tie of obligation, which, because men are a sorry breed, is broken on every whisper of private interest; but fear is bound by the apprehension of punishment which never relaxes its grasp. Nevertheless a Prince should inspire fear in such a fashion that if he do not win love he may escape hate. For a man may very well be feared and yet not hated, and this will be the case so long as he does not meddle with the property or with the women of his citizens and subjects. And if constrained to put any to death, he should do so when there is manifest cause or reasonable justification. But, above all, he must abstain from the property of others. For men will sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony…. Returning to the question of being loved or feared, I sum up by saying, that since his being loved depends upon his subjects, while being feared depends upon himself, a wise Prince should build on what is his own, and not on what rests with others. Only, as I have said, he must do his utmost to escape hatred.” – Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince, 1505)
-=NikFromNYC=-, Ph.D. in chemistry (Columbia/Harvard)

commieBob

July 3, 2014 4:27 pm

If I were being sued I would talk to a lawyer. A good lawyer will keep you out of court. You really don’t want to go there. Ask yourself: “Is this the hill I want to die on?” Even if the judge holds the damages to a nominal one dollar, the lawyers’ fees will destroy you. Even if you can afford to pay the lawyers, the waste of your time and added stress aren’t worth it.

NikFromNYC

July 3, 2014 4:34 pm

Mann’s eventually apologetic retraction of slandering Andrew Bolt is of note:
http://blogs.news.com.au/images/uploads/mannlie_thumb.jpg

Robert of Ottawa

July 3, 2014 4:42 pm

Anthony, this is the second time in a week that there has been a “controversy” between you and other Skeptics.
I suggest there is an organized attack on Skeptics by Warmistas, the goal being to create “division in the ranks” and provide the press with gotcha arguments. Remember the purpose of 350.org and http://www.climaterapidresponse.org etc. There is a concerted effort going on here; remember also that the US government has declared global warming as the most urgent issue on the planet.

Monckton of Brenchley

July 3, 2014 4:45 pm

Once again, full marks to Anthony, and also many thanks indeed to Steve McIntyre, whose fascinating comment attaching an image of the John Daly temperature reconstruction may well – as Anthony has said – have closed the case. For I did not possess and had never seen a copy of that graph, but presumably the Telegraph found it on the John Daly website. Now we shall see whether my defamers have the good sense to apologize without reserve, retract their libels, and remove them from the web.
To those who say it is unwise to go to law, I say that I have never yet entirely lost a libel case. I only pursue them rarely, and only when the libel is particularly damaging, particularly persistent, particularly widely circulated, demonstrably false, and not retracted or apologized for upon request. In such cases, it is not likely that one will lose, particularly in the Scottish courts, which are very businesslike and down-to-earth in their approach and will have absolutely no patience with the various evasions and circumlocutions that are the stock-in-trade of the climate communists.
The wriggling stops at the door of the court, as the Department of Education found out to its enormous cost in the Al Gore case. It was I who recommended that the case be pursued; I who suggested, against the advice of lawyers, that the case should be filed; I who advised the plaintiff to fire the lawyers and get proper ones when they refused to carry out his instructions; I who insisted, against the new lawyers’ advice, that detailed scientific testimony was essential; I who insisted that they write to the court and ask for a new judge when the first judge threw the case out because there was no scientific testimony; I who wrote the scientific testimony once we got a new judge.
At every stage, just about everyone said I was wrong. But I had faith in the desire of the courts to reach the truth. The first judge failed to watch the movie before throwing out the case, so on that ground – and to the astonishment of the lawyers – I got that judge thrown off the case and another appointed. For I knew what they had forgotten: that justice must be seen to be done. And this is just one of many major cases in which I have taken on the establishment, usually on behalf of consultancy clients, and won.
Though it is never wise to be too cocky, any fair-minded person reading the evidence would surely conclude that any allegation that I had faked the graphs that appeared in the Telegraph article was baseless.
“Anything is possible” mentions the landmark paper by Friis-Christensen and Lassen in 1991. In the context of the current failure of global temperatures to rise for almost 18 years (see an adjacent posting by me for the latest update), and bearing in mind the numerous predictions of global cooling that are now in circulation, including a prediction just sent to me by Dr Horst Ludecke that the world may be 1.2 K cooler by 2100 than today, the conclusion of that great paper by F-C and L is worth restating here:
“The observations we have presented suggest that long-term variations in Earth’s temperature are closely associated with variations in the solar cycle length, which therefore appears to be a possible indicator of long-term changes in the total energy output of the sun. If this result can be related to a real physical mechanism there is a possibility to determine the greenhouse warming signal and predict long-term climate changes by appropriate modeling of the sun’s dynamics. Estimation of the natural variability of the Earth’s climate and its causes are needed before any firm conclusion regarding anthropogenic changes can be made.”
Amen to that.

Christopher Hanley

July 3, 2014 4:53 pm

A version of Lamb’s 1000 year climate history graph appears on page 184 of my edition of The Irish Landscape by Frank Mitchell published in 1976.
The caption reads: ‘A graph to illustrate fluctuation of mean annual temperature in England, by 50-year averages, for the past 1000 years (After H. H. Lamb)’.
The peak around 1200 AD is shown at about 10.25C and the graph stops about 1950.

Monckton of Brenchley

July 3, 2014 5:00 pm

Mr Stokes says he wishes people would not cite unsourced graphs. But I did not cite the graphs that were inferentially drawn by the Telegraph’s graphics department, because I did not see the graphs until the paper came out and my lovely wife brought it from the village.
As always, I shall be willing to accept apologies and retractions, in terms acceptable to and agreed in advance with me, and displayed with due prominence for the same length of time as the original defamations, whereupon I shall regard the matter as closed. Otherwise, my defamers will answer to the courts, and it may also be necessary to involve other parties responsible for facilitating the wide dissemination of the malicious libel of which I have been – until our kind host’s admirable intervention – the unwitting victim.

Bill Illis

July 3, 2014 5:14 pm

What we should be talking about is that Lamb’s graph is the most accurate …
… and Connolley’s never-ending, going-on-a-decade-now, mission to re-write all climate history and science the way he sees fit is …
… unethical to say the least. More accurately, it is …
How can a science be a science if it is primarily focussed on fiction. That makes it science fiction.

John Of Cloverdale WA, Australia

July 3, 2014 5:15 pm

AlecM says:
July 3, 2014 at 11:32 am
Very interesting that HRH is allegedly responsible for the attacks on objective science.
Also interesting is that HRH says:
“I happily talk to the plants and trees, and listen to them. I think it’s absolutely crucial,”
Read more:
I wonder if he asked his plants about CO2, the plant food.

Transport by Zeppelin

July 3, 2014 5:23 pm

William Connolley is an excellent example of the >UGLY< side of the climate debate.
An utterly rude & sarcastic child!

Steve McIntyre

July 3, 2014 5:29 pm

I wouldn’t say that the provenance of the figure has been fully explained. The form of the graphic at John Daly’s website (h/t Nick Stokes) does not exactly match Lamb versions that I’ve seen. Did the variation originate with Daly? Or somewhere in the Lamb corpus, is there a variation that differs from the IPCC 1990 version and leads to the Daly version?

Anthony Watts

Author

Reply to Steve McIntyre

July 3, 2014 5:55 pm

To Steve McIntyre.
One possibility is that the graph variation originated with Daly for another purpose. I’m wondering if an early version of that drawing appears in Daly’s book, “The Greenhouse Trap” from 1989. It would be about the right time to see Lamb’s graph for the first time, and redraw it for a book based on his own observations.
http://www.amazon.com/greenhouse-trap-effect-will-earth/dp/0947189777/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404439849&sr=1-1&keywords=John+L.+Daly+Greenhouse
The version we see from circa 2001-2004 on his website may be a later digitized version of what he may have originally produced for his book. This is just conjecture on my part, but I have ordered a paperback copy of Daly’s 1989 book, and hopefully that will help settle the provenance once and for all if it is there.
In the meantime, if any readers have the book, they can scan it and report here if they find the graph.

Mike Singleton

July 3, 2014 5:35 pm

Why is “Big-Ears” getting away with this, as commented in the body of text.
“A pressure-group founded and funded by Prince Charles is prone to intervene to try (unsuccessfully, the last time they tried it on me) to prevent the publication of skeptical scientific papers in British learned journals.”
He does some bizarre things but surely he should be taken to task over this. For the none UK readers the inference of involvement of a royal personage can carry undue and unwarranted weight even in todays society.

Martin

July 3, 2014 6:12 pm

I think it’s perfectly reasonable for anyone reading that Telegraph article to assume that the author Monckton is the one responsible for the graph.
Dr. Connolly merely said “My candidate for the source of this nonsense is Monkers, in the Torygraph, with a copy of Photoshop.”
That’s not libel!!

commieBob

July 3, 2014 6:15 pm

Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 3, 2014 at 4:45 pm
… To those who say it is unwise to go to law, …

My advice was not to you 🙂 My advice was to someone who is under threat of being sued.
For about ten years, I followed SCO v. IBM, Novell, Red Hat, the whole world. It is a case study of how to keep a bogus case before the courts while inflicting the maximum damage on the ‘good guys’ (ie. scorched earth). The one thing I learned, and learned well, is that even skilled and experienced lawyers can not, with any certainty, predict how a judge will decide.
However, IBM et al. answered my question: “Is this the hill I want to die on?” with: “We must defend this hill.” and it cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in lawyer bills. SCO went bankrupt and left no assets that could be used to recompense IBM and Novell for the damages inflicted on them.

Follow the Money

July 3, 2014 6:20 pm

Re: “Lamb corpus” and Steve McIntyre’s earlier Lamb reference, at the library I looked at Climate, Present, Past and Future (1972) and Climate, History and the Modern World (1982). I did not look at every figure within them, but was impressed the generalist type of graph at question would not likely appear in those two. Unavailable at this time to me is “The English Climate” (1964) which by its name and smaller approach (212 pp. only) feels more public-friendly. According to gbooks snippet view, the public-oriented (and obscure) phrase “Dickens winters” appears in The English Climate at its page 77, although it is not visible in the actual snippet presented on my screen.

a reader

July 3, 2014 6:30 pm

That is not John Daly’s book.
REPLY: Right you are, I put up the wrong Amazon link, there are two books by that name. Fixed. – Anthony

Follow the Money

July 3, 2014 6:40 pm

Neither is the one Anthony Watts is displaying! There is another book published one year earlier by John Daly whose title also begins, “The Greenhouse Trap…” So Mr. Watts may wish to cancel his Amazon order??
Lamb is suggested as the deeper source.

angech

July 3, 2014 7:45 pm

Anthony keep your friends close and your enemies closer. While sites such as stoat focus mainly on manly activities like rowing and Tamino’ s on feminism and man hating (strange bedfellows) they are worth the occasional look to see the depths of hatred due to noble cause rot. You might also like to put up a post on Arctic sea ice blog and it’s failure to update it’s graphs, always stopping at the point of apocalypse .
Only a confident person can put up links, as you do to the opposition sites knowing that any one with an open mind reading the misleading arguments and vitriol could only be persuaded to disagree with them.

William McClenney

July 3, 2014 7:47 pm

A while back, we were treated to an education by William Connelley here at WUWT (where did the search function go????) on how quickly he receives notifications of breaking messages of note to him. One might therefore assume that messages posted on his Sloat website might be on that list, given the rapid response times I noted during what I think was his most recent numerous presence here.
One might also test this assertion, as in the following (additional observations are below the quotation):
——————————————-
o recommend it to TGL. It really is interesting.
#155 William McClenney
2014/07/03
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Doing nothing about climate change probably will be a catastrophe.There is very little (bordering on zero) doubt in my mind on that. Loutre and Berger (2003) (paywalled at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818102001868) inform us that the Holocene will just go blithely along for another 50k years. It’s always good to be stuck in time, isn’t it? Unfortunately, as early as 2005 Lisiecki and Raymo (paywalled at:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004PA001071/full) inform us:
“Recent research has focused on MIS 11 as a possible analog for the present interglacial [e.g., Loutre and Berger, 2003; EPICA community members, 2004] because both occur during times of low eccentricity. The LR04 age model establishes that MIS 11 spans two precession cycles, with 18O values below 3.6 o/oo for 20 kyr, from 398-418 ka. In comparison, stages 9 and 5 remained below 3.6 o/oo for 13 and 12 kyr, respectively, and the Holocene interglacial has lasted 11 kyr so far. In the LR04 age model, the average LSR of 29 sites is the same from 398-418 ka as from 250-650 ka; consequently, stage 11 is unlikely to be artificially stretched. However, the June 21 insolation minimum at 65N during MIS 11 is only 489 W/m2, much less pronounced than the present minimum of 474 W/m2. In addition, current insolation values are not predicted to return to the high values of late MIS 11 for another 65 kyr. We propose that this effectively precludes a ‘double precession-cycle’ interglacial [e.g., Raymo, 1997] in the Holocene without human influence.”
As Lisiecki and Raymo (2005) allude, the Holocene is 11k years old so far, in fact the more precise age as counted from periglacial lake varves is 11,717 years old. And this is where the problem with future climate catastrophe lies. You see only the MIS-11 interglacial is known to have achieved interglacial warmth for longer than about half a precession cycle.
And that is where the potential climate catastrophe resides in spades! We are at the 23kyr part of the precession cyclicity right now, making 11,500 half and 11,717 “about half.”
If we don’t do something about this specter, and quicksmart, then we could end up with mind-boggling climate catastrophe! Neuman and Hearty (1996) spell it out for us:
“The lesson from the last interglacial “greenhouse” in the Bahamas is that the closing of that interval brought sea-level changes that were rapid and extreme. This has prompted the remark that between the greenhouse and the icehouse lies a climatic “madhouse.” (http://www.researchgate.net/publication/249518169_Rapid_sea-level_changes_at_the_close_of_the_last_interglacial_(substage_5e)_recorded_in_Bahamian_island_geology/file/9c96051c6e66749912.pdf)
What on earth do they mean by a climatic “madhouse?” Well, the IPCC in 2007, in figure 10.33 from page 821 of Chapter 10 of Assessment Report 4 in SRES marker A1F1 show the upper error bar of the worst case “business as usual” shows that if we do nothing about anthropogenic GHG emissions, sea level (the ultimate measure of climate change) could go up a whopping +0.59 meters, which, of course, is an awful lot of sea level rise!
To put this into proper perspective one should have a look at Figure 2 of Hearty et al (2007) “Global sea-level fluctuations during the Last Interglaciation (MIS 5e)”, a compilation of a dozen studies from around the globe which show estimates of what was either the 2nd or 3rd strong thermal excursion (depending on other studies) right at the end of the Eemian, the last interglacial back in the record. The estimates show anywhere from a +6.0 to +45 m amsl sea level rise accompanied the final thermal pulse before climate dropped off into the last ice age.
But it might be worse than we thought…… Lysa et al (2001) measured up to a +52.0 m amsl rise at the end of MIS-5e, the Eemian (http://lin.irk.ru/pdf/6696.pdf)
In fact, studies of MIS-11 and MIS-19 show a similar pattern of 3 strong thermal pulses that also occurred during glacial inception.
That is why it is absolutely critical that we get right after quelling that IPCC AR4 worst case scenario of +0.59 meters by 2099. Why? If we can quell an anthropogenic rise that is 1 to almost 2 orders of magnitude less than that which might occur anyway, and maybe up to 3 times in quick succession, it will be good practice towards taking on the specter of far more catastrophic climate “madhouse” also known as glacial inception.
“As always……this message will self-destruct in five seconds” see William Connolley and his Wikidelete key.
————————————————————-
After copying what appears on my browser, after at least 4 hours, take a look at the top of the quote. That didn’t show up until I pasted it here! I’ve never seen such a means of commenting before.
There are several things of note here:
1) I had no idea one could put a comment so far up in an email or internal communication.
2) if a comment never achieves being moderated then is is actually deleted?
3) In this instance, how fast was William Connelly’s noted hi-tech comment and response time relative to past WUWT response exchanges? Why would the same take so many hours on Stoat relative to momentary Connelley responses-to-comments here? The differential, of course, is growing ever-more interesting.
4) Any bets on if such a comment recommended as “It really is interesting” will pass muster on Sloat), or if, in the final analysis, it is deemed better not to let it pass moderation, meaning it cannot have been deleted.
More connected, more contemplative, more certain, and obviously much faster That is how “5-hour Reverse Pretzel Logic (RPL)”, plus a few more hours, works.
Got it?

Kip Hansen

Editor

July 3, 2014 7:55 pm

Re: Original IPCC graph at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPCC_1990_FAR_chapter_7_fig_7.1%28c%29.png#mediaviewer/File:IPCC_1990_FAR_chapter_7_fig_7.1%28c%29.png
Did anyone else note that the caption is incorrect? It says “Years before present” but then gives dates as 1000 AD, 1500 AD and 1900AD.
Thus, [the] graph has to be “fixed” before use by anyone else — one can’t use the original as-is. Just a funny little note in the larger scheme of things.

Streetcred

July 3, 2014 8:16 pm

July 3, 2014 at 2:25 pm |William Connolley says.
—–
I’m going to laugh loud and heartily when your hide gets tacked to the frame for curing !! Hopefully, Lord Monckton will cure you of your infliction for good.

William McClenney

July 3, 2014 8:29 pm

As posted just this moment over at Sloat:
——————————
But that’s not actually the worst of it, as you might very well expect. What if the IPCC is right about CO2? Ulrich Muller and Jorg Pross, writing in Quaternary Science Reviews 26 (2007) sum this nasty little problem up neatly:
“The possible explanation as to why we are still in an interglacial relates to the early anthropogenic hypothesis of Ruddiman (2003, 2005). According to that hypothesis, the anomalous increase of CO2 and CH4 concentrations in the atmosphere as observed in mid- to late Holocene ice-cores results from anthropogenic deforestation and rice irrigation, which started in the early Neolithic at 8000 and 5000 yr BP, respectively. Ruddiman proposes that these early human greenhouse gas emissions prevented the inception of an overdue glacial that otherwise would have already started.” [emphasis mine]
Bet you didn’t see that one coming. Or this one:
“Investigating the processes that led to the end of the last interglacial period is relevant for understanding how our ongoing interglacial will end, which has been a matter of much debate…..”
“The onset of the LEAP occurred within less than two decades, demonstrating the existence of a sharp threshold, which must be near 416 Wm2, which is the 65oN July insolation for 118 kyr BP (ref. 9). This value is only slightly below today’s value of 428 Wm2. Insolation will remain at this level slightly above the [glacial] inception for the next 4,000 years before it then increases again.” Sirocko and Seelos (Nature, 2005) [emphasis mine]
Essentially, this means that if the IPCC is right, Ruddiman is probably right in that the reason we are not already undergoing the climatic “madhouse” known as glacial-inception is BECAUSE of our anthropogenic emissions! Wouldn’t that mean that removing the CO2 “climate security blanket” at any time in the next ~4,000 years could “tip” us into the next glacial? Tell me again why you want to remove it?
The entire AGW debate actually IS just that simple. We, meaning us, would really have to up our climate change game to get anywhere close to the normal natural background noise of the climatic “Madhouse” that is a glacial inception.
GHGs either can or cannot mitigate glacial inception. It is no more complicated or simple than that. Period.
a) If GHGs can get us over the next ~4,000 years of glacial inception risk, then why are we having this discussion at all?
b) If GHGs can’t vault us across the next ~4,000 years of glacial inception risk, then why are we having this discussion at all?
——————————————-
In a hair over 3.5 hours, any acceptance or response over at Sloat will be tomorrow, PDT. Just so we all get that.

Phil.

July 3, 2014 9:15 pm

Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 3, 2014 at 4:45 pm
Once again, full marks to Anthony, and also many thanks indeed to Steve McIntyre, whose fascinating comment attaching an image of the John Daly temperature reconstruction may well – as Anthony has said – have closed the case. For I did not possess and had never seen a copy of that graph, but presumably the Telegraph found it on the John Daly website. Now we shall see whether my defamers have the good sense to apologize without reserve, retract their libels, and remove them from the web.
Interestingly the Telegraph article was also published in AIG News, #86, November 2006 which contained the same ‘Battle of the Graphs’ figure, under your byline claiming to have been reproduced with your kind permission.
http://www.klimarealistene.com/web-content/09.03.08%20Klima,%20CO2%20analyser,%20Monckton%20m.fl%20NB%20Nov06.pdf
If that graph was produced from John Daly’s version then the distortion of the temperature axis which is apparent in the Telegraph version was added later.
Another similar version which shows up with the name: hhlamb_1000_years.jpg seems to have originated in the Register (http://regmedia.co.uk/2009/11/26/hhlamb_1000_years.jpg) it is referred to as the last 1000 years in Europe and has had the post 1950 wiggles added but doesn’t have the T axis distortion. That one certainly appears to have arisen from the Daly one, the IPCC derived graphs only run to 1950 such as the following:
http://illuminutti.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/maunder-minimum-01.jpg?w=627
The only versions with the distorted axis that I have come across are the Monckton/Telegraph versions.
“Anything is possible” mentions the landmark paper by Friis-Christensen and Lassen in 1991. In the context of the current failure of global temperatures to rise for almost 18 years (see an adjacent posting by me for the latest update), and bearing in mind the numerous predictions of global cooling that are now in circulation, including a prediction just sent to me by Dr Horst Ludecke that the world may be 1.2 K cooler by 2100 than today, the conclusion of that great paper by F-C and L is worth restating here:
“The observations we have presented suggest that long-term variations in Earth’s temperature are closely associated with variations in the solar cycle length, which therefore appears to be a possible indicator of long-term changes in the total energy output of the sun. If this result can be related to a real physical mechanism there is a possibility to determine the greenhouse warming signal and predict long-term climate changes by appropriate modeling of the sun’s dynamics. Estimation of the natural variability of the Earth’s climate and its causes are needed before any firm conclusion regarding anthropogenic changes can be made.”
Amen to that.
Unfortunately that ‘great paper’ is seriously flawed by the presence of inappropriate smoothing and arithmetic errors that are responsible for the apparent ‘close association’ referred to.
This is shown in Fig. 1 by Damon and Laut:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DamonLaut2004.pdf

ullr1998

July 3, 2014 9:47 pm

This is certainly a lot of dredging by lots of people to put this wild hair to bed! CONGRATULATIONS to the ever energetic and resourceful Anthony – to Lord Monckton – to Steve McIntyre – to Nick Stokes – and no doubt others whom I may have missed in my first read-through.
This is a Herculean labor – and one that transcends a lot of deceit and mischief minded, good hearted and mindful as well as the partisan trolls.
This has been long lived menace on climate science discussions. I hope that Lord Monckton’s lawsuit can be the final bottle-stopper — and for us geeky readers here like me, an opportunity for a new book to be written, perchance? I welcome, no – RELISH the thought!

William Connolley

July 3, 2014 11:39 pm

I’ve just received the following email, from someone claiming to be AW:
—-
As a third party, I am passing this request on from Monckton of Brenchley.
He requests that I provide him with your email addresses so that he can send a communication to you.
Please advise if you accept this request.
—-
But its an odd request. Firstly, my email isn’t hard to find. Second, someone purporting to be Lord M has already been posting messages to me on my blog (see, e.g. http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2014/06/27/battle-of-the-graphs/#comment-49175). Of course, there is no way of telling if that person is Lord M. And of course, I have no way of telling if the purported email is from AW.
REPLY: Well you do now. Monckton asked me to see if was OK to pass on your email. I assume from your “not hard to find” statement that it is now OK. OF course you could have simply replied to the email and asked for verification, but that would have spoiled your opportunity to make an issue of it. – Anthony

Kevin O'Neill

July 3, 2014 11:45 pm

As one of the many people that Monckton of Brenchley is pursuing accusing of libel, I will add my two cents.
First, Anthony does the discussion a disservice by not *accurately* reproducing both the IPCC 1990 graph and the graph from Monckton’s reference materials. When you are discussing the difference between two graphs is it not important to reproduce them accurately? Monckton claimed his “inexpert eye” couldn’t tell the difference. And lo and behold Anthony fails to reproduce them accurately and in full. Hmmm. Forgive me for being just a bit …. disappointed.
1) The graph in Moncton’s reference materials is captioned as being from UN 1996. It’s not. Let’s bypass the year error. Even if it had been labeled from UN 1990 it would have been wrong. It’s NOT an authentic IPCC graph. When something is not authentic it’s a knock-off, a fake, a counterfeit. The graph in Monckton’s reference materials that purports to be from UN 1996 is a fake. Monckton – not the Telegraph – is responsible for his reference materials. Monckton (re)produced the fake graph.
2) Monckton has admitted he did not have the IPCC 1990 report. His excuse for the reference materials graph is that:
a) an eminent scholar sent it to him
b) he got it from a reliable source
c) he reproduced the IPCC 1990 graph
Take your pick – Monckton has given all three responses – though c) conflicts directly with his statement that he didn’t have the 1990 report.
3) Not having the 1990 report is evidence in and of itself of falsification/fabrication. You do not cite materials you have not read. Not having the report Monckton jumped to the conclusion that the graph wholly represented the expert’s opinion. The text, on the otherhand, clearly raises questions. To this day, nearly a decade after his Telegraph article, I have *NEVER* seen Monckton mention the caveats in the text. One could draw the conclusion he’s *still* never read the report.
4) In the original thread where this started Monckton said, “For my part, I am referring Mr Svalgaard’s long list of malicious comments about Dr Evans (but not about me: I give as good as I get) to his university…”
Got that, “but not about me:I give as good as I get” — yet he’s pursuing libel charges against how many people? Right. Obviously Monckton of Brenchley can’t keep his own words straight. Some might call that a lie. Some might call him a liar. Hell, I would. I have 🙂
Now, in most internet flamewars, people don’t run around threatening libel suits, but then again most of us don’t have a lawyer on retainer as I suspect Monckton does. I don’t like intimidating tactics. I don’t like bullies. I don’t care about fake British lords. I am very easy to find. Anthony has my email address. My home address can be found in less than a minute of internet search time. I have made my offer to Monckton of Brenchley to withdraw my assertion that he lied. He has ignored this. All I asked is that he explicitly state several simple, self-evident truths.
I have absolutely *zero* fear of losing a libel suit. In fact, I would welcome the opportunity. So the “Right Honorable” gentlemen ought to actually sh*t or get off the pot.
The takeaway for me is that to excuse his research misconduct Monckton says he is neither an academic nor a serious researcher. That we should all remember the next time he opines on anything.

MikeB

July 4, 2014 12:22 am

Zeke Hausfather says:
July 3, 2014 at 2:25 pm

I’m amused at how some folks edited the label of the old Lamb figure to make the axis end at 2000 instead of 1950. Tisk tisk.

Zeke, I take your point but this is exactly how graph 7.1 (c) was presented in the first IPCC report. The time axis does appear to extend to 2000, even though that report was published in 1990. No justification is given nor reference made to where the graph or data came from (presumably from Lamb but it doesn’t say).
However, since the IPCC is the ultimate Authority on this topic based on thousands of peer-reviewed scientific works in which every line is scrutinised and approved by governments around the world, it seems reasonable for other authors to refer to it.

Pointman

July 4, 2014 1:32 am

Poor Willy, first he’s scorned and now possibly sued, all in one month. That’s some going.
Pointman

Monckton of Brenchley

July 4, 2014 1:49 am

“Phil.” repeats a point made earlier in the thread: that my article in the Sunday Telegraph had been reprinted, with my consent, in another paper, accompanied by the Telegraph’s graphs. It is my custom, when I am asked whether anything I have published may be reproduced in a respectable medium, to consent subject to the condition that the copyright-owner (in the present instance the Telegraph) also agrees.
I have no information to suggest that the respectable journal that reproduced my article did so without the consent of the Telegraph.
In any event, there is nothing wrong with the Telegraph’s graphs. They show the main point mentioned in the text: that the IPCC’s 1990 European millennial temperature reconstruction differs from its 2001 Northern-Hemisphere reconstruction over the same period. In the latter, the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age have been eradicated and the 20th-century temperature uptick exaggerated.
It seems not impossible that the systematic attempts to smear me by my defamers may have been motivated in part by the desire to conceal the extent of this divergence, which, notwithstanding the squidging of the y axis in both graphs to make them fit the limited space available, is clearer in the Telegraph’s schematic than anywhere else I have seen. The minor variations between the Telegraph’s curves and those of the original IPCC graphs are, in this context, insignificant and irrelegant.
To those who imply that the Telegraph, in thus altering the aspect ratio of both graphs, is not fairly representing them, I point out that in any graph in which the units on the x and y axes are different there is freedom to alter the aspect ratio. As it happens, the squidging of the vertical axes in both graphs has the effect of diminishing, not enhancing, the visual impact of the differences between the two graphs – a difference that was nevertheless very clear in them.
Frankly, it is extraordinary that my defamers found such willing takers for the nonsense that I had “faked” the Telegraph’s graphs. Given the narrow purpose for which the graphs were drawn, there is nothing wrong with them: indeed, their clarity is commendable. And I did not draw them in any case. Nor, as it now turns out, did I even supply – in my background material – the graphs on the basis of which the Telegraph drew its own graphs. Congratulations to Anthony for smoking that one out.
“Phil.” cites a non-reviewed “Forum” article in EOS as suggesting that Friis-Christensen and Lassen were incorrect in their conclusion that longer solar cycles indicate lesser solar activity and vice versa. However, some confirmation of their result may be found in noticing that an overlong solar cycle tends to be followed by a weaker cycle: in short, that there is an offset of approximately one solar cycle in the effect. Certainly, the present solar cycle – if it is now at its peak – is considerably weaker than the overlong previous cycle. That tends to suggest that Dr Evans may not be wide of the mark in finding an 11-year delay between changes in solar activity and the climatic response on Earth. One should perhaps keep an open mind. And Friis-Christensen and Lassen are certainly correct that it would be advisable if possible to identify and filter out the mechanisms by which temperature changes naturally in order to determine the anthropogenic residual correctly.

Monckton of Brenchley

July 4, 2014 1:56 am

Mr Hansen correctly points out that in IPCC (1990, fig. 7.1(c)) the caption not only showed the dates from 900-1950 AD, specifying 1000, 1500 and 1900 AD, but also, below the year-dates, carried the apparently bizarre caption “Years before present”. This error arose because the “Years before present” caption applied to parts (a) and (b) of the three-part graph, which took the reconstructed record back a million and 10,000 years respectively, while the “1000 AD 1500 AD 1900 AD” caption manifestly applied only to part (c).
It is interesting that at least one of my defamers took me to task for having altered part (c) when all that I had done was to remove the manifestly irrelevant and misleading caption that did not apply to that part of fig. 7(1). It would surely have been more appropriate if the IPCC had been criticized for its unsatisfactory labeling of the graph. But my defamers seem to regard the IPCC as sacrosanct and incapable of error.

Monckton of Brenchley

July 4, 2014 1:57 am

“Martin” says one of my defamers did not commit libel. However, in support of his conclusion he cites only one of that defamer’s comments.

Nick Stokes

July 4, 2014 2:16 am

Monckton of Brenchley says: July 4, 2014 at 1:49 am
“In any event, there is nothing wrong with the Telegraph’s graphs.”
What is wrong with the schematic is that it embellishes the 1990 plot with numbers on the y-axis. If those are based on genuine science, that would be interesting. But no-one can tell us who put them there, or on what basis they were derived.

William Connolley

July 4, 2014 2:21 am

> the desire to conceal the extent of this divergence
Not believable. Wiki has the same information, but more clearly and accurately presented: see the second graph in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MWP_and_LIA_in_IPCC_reports
I drew it. No-one is attempting to conceal the difference between the IPCC ’90, 95/6 and 2001 temperature reconstructions. The point at issue is the interpretation of the difference. You lot insist that things were better in the good old dayes (http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/10/10/adoration-of-the-lamb/); everyone else accepts that science moves on and improves.

berniel

July 4, 2014 2:39 am

The source of the Daly website graph:
I did once try to source the graph on Daly’s website, but to no avail. The closest I got was a smoothing of the La Marche 1994 White Mountain Bristlecone graph. This was commonly used to indicate the North American trend in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It seems to have all the bumps in the right place, if heavily smoothed. Lamb reproduced it a number of times. It also appears in the influential US GARP report of 1975 (Fig 9a graph c).
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/hubert-lamb-and-the-assimilation-of-legendary-ancient-russian-winters/1975_understanding_paris_london/#main
The millennium graph in Daly’s The Greenhouse Trap
In the section ‘The last thousand years’ on p51 Daly uses an uncited graph that is again smoothed, but very close to Lamb’s extension of Manley’s CET graph for summer, 10b here:
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/global-temperature-graphs/1964_1966_britiansclimateinthepast-unpub-lecture-pub-inchangingclimate/
Daly does not reference, but he has a few of Lamb’s books in his suggested reading which contain the CET millennium graphs (and the La Marche 1974 graph).
The Telegraph graph is stylistically close to Tinkell 1986
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/global-temperature-graphs/1986_tickell_gmt/#main
and to Nat Geographic 1976:
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/hubert-lamb-and-the-assimilation-of-legendary-ancient-russian-winters/1976_nov_-matthews_natgeo/#main
Finally, it should be noted that the Lamb CET millennium graphs, and two other graphs–which derived from a trans-europe temperature map–were widely used to indicate the millennium trend in NH and global temperature from the late-70s and up until the hockey stick. But, while he did speculate about a more generalized (especially a European trend), Lamb never made the Global claim of these graphs. To get an idea of just how complex Lamb imagined the spacial variability, especially how the MWP and LIA vary, even across a small arc of the globe, see this winter severity map:
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/hubert-lamb-and-the-assimilation-of-legendary-ancient-russian-winters/1963_lamb_millennium_map_europe/#main

dbstealey

July 4, 2014 2:40 am

Mark Stoval (@MarkStoval) says:
The difference in the two cases is that Lord Monckton always makes public all the data and sources he uses and Dr. Mann never does.
That is true, and an excellent contrast. And:
BM says:
Well Kevin O’Neill?
The answer is made clear above. A stand-up guy would accept that the question of the graph has been resolved. But like Warmists everywhere, people like O’Neill and Connolley can not admit that Lord Monckton is innocent of their incessant accusations.
We all recognize a class act. Anthony is a class act. They are not.

knr

July 4, 2014 3:07 am

Nick Stokes you get a lot farther if you willing to discuss ’embellishes’ to graphs , pictures and even data that the warmest have been willing to use for years . And not just the none climate ‘scientists’ either , science by press release using scarier claims and graphs combined with a unwillingness to correct publicly identified errors seem an ‘occupational hazard ‘ of those working in this area.

Michel

July 4, 2014 3:13 am

The IPCC now bases its certainties on the Fig 5-7 from the Chapter 5 of the latest AR5 report, from which everybody can see that picking one reconstruction rather than another one enables all sorts of interpretations.
The lack of T increase over the past 15-18 years is not visible since the graph is conveniently cut at the year 2000.
see figure at: https://db.tt/bSYmjvZV

knr

July 4, 2014 3:16 am

Kevin O’Neill s
‘I don’t care about fake British lords.’
You don’t like facts either it would seem , the majority of those who are ENTITLED to be called Lord do cannot sit in the house of Lords , therefore having the right to sit in the house of Lords has does not affect your right to the use the title. That has been true for years and would have been easy to find out if you could care to . Meanwhile Monckton does have a right to the title , that has been legally settled.
Poor fact checking , smearing and BS , you’re a true son of ‘the cause ‘

Anthony Watts

Author

July 4, 2014 4:40 am

In response to Kevin O’Neill.
Readers should follow this link to Climate Audit (referenced in my post) http://climateaudit.org/2008/05/09/where-did-ipcc-1990-figure-7c-come-from-httpwwwclimateauditorgp3072previewtrue/ to see that this particular bugaboo has been a William Connolley has made a career out of accusations about the IPCC AR1 Figure 7c graph.
Yet Connolley, while castigating McIntyre back in 2008, still has done nothing to contribute to finding the provenance he’s been whingeing about that I am aware of.
Kevin O’Neill seems equally Stoat-like in that he’s claiming

“First, Anthony does the discussion a disservice by not *accurately* reproducing both the IPCC 1990 graph and the graph from Monckton’s reference materials”.

The link to the reference at Climate Audit seemed more than sufficient to me, especially since McIntyre discusses the issue in detail. But I decided to indulge Mr. O’Neill, and in UPDATE3 I’ve added the link to IPCC FAR WG1 Chapter 7 and “faithfully” reproduced Figure 7 including 7A, 7B, and 7C. in that update, including both the page and a magnified version in case Mr. O’Neill wants to make a new claim about the graph not being big enough for his failing eyesight to interpret.
Also, from my viewpoint, Figure 7.1c appeared no less than three times in the entire combined essay, yet O’Neill considers these appearances as “fake” but offers no supporting evidence to back up the claim of fakery. This is why Monckton plans to take him to court.
The question now for readers is to find anything materially different (except for the Y axis label font style, which might be nothing more than differences from the draft to final WG1 report) between what Monckton submitted in his PDF to what the IPCC Chapter 7 page 202 graph 7.1c shows. I myself cannot determine any difference of significance in what the graph line portrays, and I consider Mr. O’Neill’s point moot and nothing more than gamesmanship, and therefore I’m predicting he’ll find some new and equally pointless objection to raise now.

William Connolley

July 4, 2014 4:56 am

>> someone purporting to be Lord M has already been posting messages to me on my blog
> REPLY: Well you do now. Monckton asked me to see if was OK to pass on your email.
I’m still curious if the person posting to my blog was Lord M or not. I can see no way to know for sure; that a person who you have presumably verified is indeed the real Lord M is attempting a second channel of communication suggests that it wasn’t the real one. Perhaps the person who posts on this thread claiming to be Lord M could comment?
REPLY: You really should stop playing games, as you have the ability to verify the comment yourself. The IP address and email in your comment should be enough, unless of course you are technically inept or that scienceblogs platform doesn’t provide such information. I can easily verify you as “you” by your email and IP address which shows you commenting from Cambridge, UK. But I’ll leave the decision to Monckton as to whether to waste further time. – Anthony

bit chilly

July 4, 2014 5:04 am

kevin and william seem to be quite happy to have the right of reply here.pity the same cannot be said for some of the websites they frequent that support the warming meme.
the points they are attempting (and failing spectacularly) to make here are laughable. all those years of unadulterated sensationalism unchallenged,whilst having smoke blown up their arse by acolytes have gone to their heads . off with their heads i say ,or in modern parlance ,reduction of assets through the legal process.

knr

July 4, 2014 5:14 am

William Connolley given the extensive work of you and your sock puppets the idea Wiki can be trusted to cover this subject honestly and fairly is frankly hilarious. Congratulates you trued it into worthless locationsof information on AGW thanks to your effects, you must be so proud .

Phil.

July 4, 2014 5:22 am

Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 4, 2014 at 1:49 am
“Phil.” repeats a point made earlier in the thread: that my article in the Sunday Telegraph had been reprinted, with my consent, in another paper, accompanied by the Telegraph’s graphs. It is my custom, when I am asked whether anything I have published may be reproduced in a respectable medium, to consent subject to the condition that the copyright-owner (in the present instance the Telegraph) also agrees.
I have no information to suggest that the respectable journal that reproduced my article did so without the consent of the Telegraph.
Since they don’t give the source as The Telegraph and don’t give the usual copyright statement referencing the newspaper it seems likely that they did not get The Telegraph’s consent. Apparently they thought you were the copyright holder?
In any event, there is nothing wrong with the Telegraph’s graphs.
Actually there is, they show a bizarre distortion of the vertical axis not found on any other version of the Lamb graph.
Nick Stokes says:
July 4, 2014 at 2:16 am
Monckton of Brenchley says: July 4, 2014 at 1:49 am
“In any event, there is nothing wrong with the Telegraph’s graphs.”
What is wrong with the schematic is that it embellishes the 1990 plot with numbers on the y-axis. If those are based on genuine science, that would be interesting. But no-one can tell us who put them there, or on what basis they were derived.
The earliest I’ve seen is Tickell in 1986 who added a temperature bar, but no absolute scale.
“Phil.” cites a non-reviewed “Forum” article in EOS as suggesting that Friis-Christensen and Lassen were incorrect in their conclusion that longer solar cycles indicate lesser solar activity and vice versa. However, some confirmation of their result may be found in noticing that an overlong solar cycle tends to be followed by a weaker cycle:
Actually it doesn’t ‘suggest’, it explicitly details their errors.
Their graph doesn’t show “overlong solar cycle tends to be followed by a weaker cycle” even in its original form, although the switch from ‘overlong’ to ‘weaker’ by you is confusing.

Nylo

July 4, 2014 5:34 am

Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 3, 2014 at 11:40 am
IPCC hockey stick” should have revealed even to the meanest intelligence that […] But we are dealing not with the meanest intelligence but with people who are mean but not intelligent.
I love that sentence! lol I’m sure I will find the occasion to use it myself 🙂
One can always learn from Lord Monckton, even when he doesn’t try to teach 🙂

William Connolley

July 4, 2014 6:07 am

>> was Lord M or not. I can see no way to know for sure
> REPLY: You really should stop playing games, as you have the ability to verify the comment yourself. The IP address and email in your comment should be enough,
How could it be enough? I’ve got no idea what Lord M’s IP should be; nor what his email address is. If you’d like to post here his email address or IP I could verify it, I suppose. Or he could. But Lord M isn’t very good at answering questions.
REPLY: Oh, please. You know where he lives in ~~England~~ Scotland, right? Or has that fact escaped you as well? Maybe you could look it up in Wikipedia. Then use any one of the freely available IP checking tools, which you can also probably look up on Wikipedia.
Of course you and I know you’ll come back and say that’s not enough. You’ll cite “uncertainty”. I’m not playing your silly game any further, so make no reply. – Anthony

a reader

July 4, 2014 6:10 am

The absolute scale on the temp. bar looks like it may come from Lamb’s fig. 4.4 on page 53 of “Weather Climate and Human Affairs”. The “middle” line, which is about at 9.25C, is marked as the 20th century average, so I assume that is what it is. That line is not on Lamb’s chart.

July 4, 2014 6:18 am

Monckton of Brenchley coins a brilliant new word

The minor variations between the Telegraph’s curves and those of the original IPCC graphs are, in this context, insignificant and irrelegant.

(emphasis mine)
What a lovely, relevant, and elegant new word – and one that is so appropriate for much of what passes for climate science.

beng

July 4, 2014 6:19 am

When one pokes into Connolley’s turf (Telegraph), he squeals like a pig (que Deliverance).

July 4, 2014 6:43 am

Phil sputters:

If that graph was produced from John Daly’s version then the distortion of the temperature axis which is apparent in the Telegraph version was added later.

What vertical distortion are you talking about? The degree lines are spaced equally at the half-degree point in the upper and lower graphs. I’d have chosen a different line type for the 20th century average, but that has to do with clarity, not accuracy.

gary gulrud

July 4, 2014 6:46 am

knr says:
July 4, 2014 at 5:14 am
Indeed, heh.
Wiki, like wiggle lines, is appropriate for the shape of the matter, little more. Like the urban dictionary one uses it mainly to identify the jargon.

harkin

July 4, 2014 7:06 am

Pity some alarmist bloggers have no sense of journalistic method nor ethics.
All WC needed to do was contact LM for comment and he could have saved himself much embarrassment.

xyzzy11

July 4, 2014 7:26 am

Connolly is still crowing about the graph, He posts:
“My candidate for the source of this nonsense is Monkers, in the Torygraph, with a copy of Photoshop.”
get him!

Hoser

July 4, 2014 7:51 am

Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 3, 2014 at 11:40 am
Regarding mean people…. I have found it interesting to consider the use of the word “mean” applied to people. It is no doubt an old usage (I should look it up in the OED). It implies a person is angry, violent, uncaring, and willing to inflict pain on others. Scientifically, the word retains the original sense of “average”. However, let’s go back a few centuries to Britain where the average person lived in conditions far worse than today. Life was much more difficult, a struggle just to survive, and people could not afford to be generous. The noble elites could look down on the average person with disdain and call them “mean” as nasty sarcasm, simultaneously serving to elevate their own self-importance. Fortunately, we were able to free ourselves from domination by rulers having that sort of attitude. Happy 4th of July.

William Connolley

July 4, 2014 9:23 am

> Oh, please. You know where he lives in England, right?
Nope. I could look it up, but so what? A vaguely correct IP is no guarantee of identity.
REPLY: Gosh, since you made I clear I can’t use this method to identify you, because you might be a “fake” then we’ll have no more comments here from you until you can verify your identity. Funny though, just a little bit of certainty in a sea of uncertainty seems good enough to justify your views on global warming. – Anthony

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 9:29 am

Anthony – the graph in the reference materials – is NOT the IPCC graph. Case closed. It may be ‘based on,’ ‘derived from’ etc, but it is NOT “from the UN 1996 report” as Monckton stated in his caption. If it’s not the genuine article it’s a fake. Look at the weasel words you’re both using – that it’s not materially different. That is only intended to obscure the FACT that it is NOT from the 1996 – scratch that – 1990 report.
And yes, the X-Axis legend and the missing c) in the upper left hand corner make it immediately obvious it’s not the original. It is after all correctly referred to as Figure 7.1.c. And my eyesight was never in question. I spotted it as a fake as soon as I saw it. Monckton is the one who claimed that to HIS “inexpert eye” they looked the same.
I said that the caption to the figure in his reference material is proof he lied. Is the caption a false statement? Yes, Does that meet the definition of ‘lie’? Yes (#s 2,3, & 6 from Dictionary.com ).
Monckton is responsible for the fake graph and Monckton has lied. It’s pretty simple to parse out.
Even Monckton has agreed that he might be guilty of misconduct if he were an academic or a serious researcher – but you choose to endorse his research methods. I am saddened for your own reputation.
BTW – I am firmly of the opinion that Monckton will never attempt to file a libel suit against me. I really don’t need any more information than is in this post plus a side-by-side of the two graphs and their captions to prove my case. Not only that, but in the arena of science he’s pretty much by his own admission libel proof. He’s neither an academic nor a serious researcher – so there’s no reputation ‘in his calling’ to uphold. Plus, throw in his Obama birther stance and a few other choice incidents and I’m not sure his reputation can actually get any lower. But I hope he does file, I’ve never visited England (my military tours were in the Far east – not Europe) and I would make sure to be there.

Anthony Watts

Author

Reply to oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 10:27 am

A reply to Kevin O’Neill aka “oneillsinwisconsin” …unless like Mr. Connelley’s assertions you could be a “fake” because I apparently just don’t have the tools to ascertain your identity.
The 1996/1990 caption typo is your basis for “fakery”? This is probably one of the most laughable and desperate comments I have ever seen. But I’m glad you’ve made your position crystal clear. It makes the job of litigators easier. The difference in the two versions of IPCC figure 7.1.c could simply be an earlier version from the IPCC draft report versus the final verson. That doesn’t make it “fake”.
But your argument is irrelevant, because the version used in the Telegraph has no trace line that looks like IPCC Figure 7.1.C. It looks like the other graph cited from John Daly’s page, right down to the extra wiggles, which looks to be from another H.H. Lamb publication. So, your argument fails. Perhaps you’d like to say that Monckton drew and faked that one too?
Funny that the only citation you provide is for the word “lie”, yet nothing to support your actual claims. I find it all quite entertaining, this hand wringing over minutiae, as evidence for “fakery”, while at the same time Connolley argues that simple things like comment identities can’t be verified.
We’ll have a popcorn sale soon on WUWT. – Anthony

gary gulrud

July 4, 2014 9:50 am

[snip – multiple policy violations, feel free to resubmit -mod]

NikFromNYC

July 4, 2014 10:15 am

Exhibit A: A graph well known to all insiders of the climate alarm debate, known to be an old textbook staple, a rough common knowledge estimate of the history of temperature, a lot like the way various evolutionary spirals are presented to show when bacteria, turtles and mammals first appeared.
Exhibit B: Quite late to the game, a newspaper illustrates news of how the United Nations has now in revolutionary fashion replaced the old common version of temperature history with a new and “improved” one that happens to utterly revise that history in a way that merits emergency level funding for the formerly obscure study of climate.
Exhibit C: William Connolley, a notorious partisan insider activist on the fifth most popular web site in the world, makes a loud public claim that Christopher Monckton, a potent climate alarm skeptical voice has uniquely fabricated one of the graphs in the news article.
Exhibit D: The latest widely promoted confirmation of this new “improved” hockey stick version of history that represents how William says science has “moved on” from the old commonly accepted version, is now widely known to contain utterly no alarm supporting blade in any of the input data:
http://s6.postimg.org/jb6qe15rl/Marcott_2013_Eye_Candy.jpg
Exhibit E: Upon being confronted with the unretracted Marcott 2013 hockey stick in top journal Science, in the slanderous thread on his blog being discussed here, William threatened censure instead if acknowledgement of its blade fabrication: “[This comment sat in the moderation queue for a bit. And if you continue to post stuff that I redacted, you’ll remain under moderation (though I should still deal with posts in the queue promptly, so sorry about the delay). As to the rest: yawn. We’ve been through this before, endlessly -W]”
Exhibit F: Upon being legally confronted about libelous statements, William and supporter Kevin refer to their campaign of reputation tarnishing as a mere “Internet flame war” involving a “bully,” thus doubling down on their public claim that Christopher is a deceptive scoundrel in his involvement in one of the most contentious policy issues of the day.
A pattern presents itself of promotion of known deception and slander against one of the most public voices involved in exposing that deception.

dbstealey

July 4, 2014 10:45 am

This entire kerfuffle over one minor graph produced by a newspaper art department amounts to one thing: misdirection.
It’s the old, “Look! A squirrel!” routine. Rather than debate Mann’s preposterous and repeatedly debunked Hokey Stick chart, these no-accounts go on the attack over something that simply does not matter.
I challenge Connolley and/or O’Neill to discuss Mann’s chart. Right here. Explain why the alarmist crowd are the only ones who deny that the climate changed, until human emissions came along. Explain why global warming stopped many years ago. Explain why every scary alarmist prediction has turned out to be flat wrong.
I could go on, but point made: this chart nonsense is nothing but misdirection.
REPLY: Let’s not, for two reasons.

1. It will turn the thread into an off-topic conversation
2. It will make it all about them, rather than the issue at hand.
-Anthony

Village Idiot

July 4, 2014 11:10 am

Wasn’t it 2006 that Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, SMOM, liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Broderers, Officer of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, a Knight of Honour and Devotion of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, and member of the Roman Catholic Mass Media Commission, spotted the ‘climate sceptic’ cash cow?

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 11:14 am

Anthony – my position was made clear in the other thread. You perhaps should go back and reread it. I have never claimed the ‘Battle of the Graphs’ image was created by Monckton. I asserted then, as I have asserted here, that the graph in the reference materials is Monckton’s responsibility. He is responsible for that material (whereas there was a question who was responsible for the ‘Battle of the Graphs’ image). It matters not if he drew it, bought it, or found it lying in the street – he put it in his reference materials. He put the fake graph with the false caption in the reference materials.
My position has not changed. Apparently you never actually read my post in the other thread. Seems very similar to Monckton never actually having IPCC 1990 while writing about it.
PS – WordPress seems to randomly go between my real name and the ‘oneillsinwisconsin’ IDs. You’ll see the same change in the other thread.

Langenbahn

July 4, 2014 11:27 am

“Obviously, neither the editor nor the artist saw the sexual suggestion in the imagery.”
Or perhaps, as I have long suspected, USA Today has no editors.

richardscourtney

July 4, 2014 11:36 am

Village Idiot:
The answer to your question at July 4, 2014 at 11:10 am is
No.
Richard

dbstealey

July 4, 2014 11:59 am

oneillsinwisconsin says:
I asserted then, as I have asserted here, that the graph in the reference materials is Monckton’s responsibility.
Anthony’s article makes clear that the graph was the newspaper’s responsibility.

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 12:11 pm

Why is any of this important? Misinformation, disinformation, and false statements about climate are made everyday and lead many people to have completely skewed ideas of what is and isn’t known.
We have as a recent shining example the illustrious Brandon Smith, Republican State Senator of Kentucky. During a committee hearing on new EPA rules he said,
“I don’t want to get into the debate about climate change, but I will simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There are no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.”
The stupid … it burns. Where did that stupid come from? And someone hearing that, who doesn’t know any better, but trusts a Republican State Senator, is probably nodding their head in agreement.
Many – including the Right Honorable (sic) Monckton – have tried to make the case that the 1965 Lamb schematic was state of the art climate science circa 1990. They exaggerate Figure 7.1.c’s importance by never mentioning that it was created in 1965 and was based on temperatures in central England. Lamb never claimed it was representative of global temperatures and indeed noted in his texts that not all parts of the world shared in the warming.
And the 1990 report in the paragraph directly above Figure 7.1 states: “The period since the end of the last glaciation has been characterized by small changes in global average temperature with a range of probably less than 2°C (Figure 7.1), though it is still not clear whether all the fluctuations
indicated were truly global.”
Likewise the Executive Summary on page 199 says, “Such [surface temperature] fluctuations include the Holocene Optimum around 5,000-6,000 years ago. the shorter Medieval Warm Period around 1000 AD (which may not have been global) and the Little Ice Age which ended only in the middle to late nineteenth century. Details are often poorly known because palaeo-climatic data are frequently sparse.”
From this it is clear that the 1990 report did not necessarily believe in a global MWP. Those who claim otherwise are misrepresenting the report. Those who claim Figure 7.1.c as being definitive either fail to understand its origins, have not read the text, and or are trying to mislead. I will leave it Monckton to tell us which of these categories he falls into.
Thus we have many people who do not believe in AGW spouting the climate equivalent nonsense of “we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here.” Don’t be Brandon Smith.

knr

July 4, 2014 12:14 pm

oneillsinwisconsin do you believe that newspapers only ever report ‘EXACTLY’ what others have told them , not editing at all? If you do not then your case falls flat unless you can say why Monckton should be treated differently to anyone else .

Ken Coffman

July 4, 2014 12:17 pm

Brandon Smith meant to say that general temperature changes on Mars mate up with temperature changes on Earth, suggesting there may be linkage.

dbstealey

July 4, 2014 12:20 pm

oneillsinwisconsin says:
We have as a recent shining example the illustrious Brandon Smith, Republican State Senator of Kentucky.
I’ll see your state senator, and raise you a Democrat Congressman.
The stupid, it burns. Where did that stupid come from? ☺
And there is no doubt, the “(sic)” shows Mr O’Neill to be bereft of any class:
Many – including the Right Honorable (sic) Monckton
Monckton has more class in a hair follicle than O’Neill has in his whole being.

knr

July 4, 2014 12:21 pm

‘oneillsinwisconsin says:
July 4, 2014 at 12:11 pm
Why is any of this important? Misinformation, disinformation, and false statements about climate are made everyday and lead many people to have completely skewed ideas of what is and isn’t known.’
If you have issues with this , why don’t you try asking Mann and the team why they keep doing it ?

richardscourtney

July 4, 2014 12:21 pm

oneillsinwisconsin:
Please explain the relevance to the matter in hand of anything in your bloviation at July 4, 2014 at 12:11 pm.
Richard

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 12:25 pm

dbstealey – are you claiming that the reference materials – which bear Monckton’s pink portcullis logo and his email address were actually put together by the Telegraph? No, you’re wrong. Monckton has never denied that he put the reference material package together. In fact he has excused the graph’s mistakes because he was sick and did not have access to the 1990 report. He said the graph (in the reference materials) was:
a) sent to him by an eminent scholar
b) obtained from a reliable source
c) reproduced by himself
Today is another day so perhaps he has another excuse. Regardless, the reference materials are his responsibility – the graph’s inclusion is his responsibility.
REPLY: “the graph’s inclusion is his responsibility.”
No, sorry, You are 110% wrong.
I can assure you having both worked for a newspaper, and submitted articles with illustrations myself, that the responsibility for inclusion of such graphs lie entirely with the newspaper. They can choose to include submitted illustrations or not. When they do include such illustrations they almost always have the art department handle it and format into their publication style. For example, the hockey stick graph from IPCC AR2 is also redrawn, seen in the top panel of the Telegraph graphic. They redrew it rather that use the colorful IPCC graph Monckton provided…unless of course you’d liek to claim he “faked” and drew that one too?
Others in this thread have made similar comments. Likewise, choice of accompanying photographs and the headline are always always in the editorial domain of the newspaper.
For example, Monckton’s original title for the article, as submitted in the PDF was “Apocalypse Cancelled”.
The Telegraph chose their own headline which was: “Climate Chaos? Don’t believe it”
From my viewpoint of hands-on media experience (something you don’t seem to have) and based on the fact that Monckton didn’t actually submit the graph in question, and since the graph on John Daly’s website from 2001 is a near perfect match to the bottom panel of the Telegraph graphic you are complaining about, you argument is nullifed.
Your argument is at a dead end, with only pointless claims of a 1990/1996 typo remaining and will only end in embarrassment, and possibly a legal issue for you. Unfortunately, you seem unable to comprehend just how badly you’ve dug a hole for yourself and I believe your ego makes it impossible to admit this to yourself.
Take my friendly advice, sir. You’ve lost. Shut up for your own good. – Anthony

dbstealey

July 4, 2014 12:37 pm

Mr O’Neill changes the subject, after bringing it up. Here is Rep. Hank Johnson’s interchange whith Admiral Willard:
Johnson: This is a island that at its widest level is what … twelve miles from shore to shore? And at its smallest level … uh, smallest location … it’s seven miles between one shore and the other? Is that correct?
Willard: I don’t have the exact dimensions, but to your point, sir, I think Guam is a small island.
Johnson: Very small island, about twenty-four miles, if I recall, long, twenty-four miles long, about seven miles wide at the least widest place on the island and about twelve miles wide on the widest part of the island, and I don’t know how many square miles that is. Do you happen to know?
Willard: I don’t have that figure with me, sir, I can certainly supply it to you if you like.
Johnson: Yeah, my fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.
Willard: We don’t anticipate that… [☺☺☺]
The fact that politics is brought up makes it clear that the Warmist crowd has no credible science to support their Belief in catastrophic AGW.
If I am wrong, then simply post testable, measurable scientific evidence quantifying the fraction of a degree of global warming caused by human GHG emissions. That should be simple, since scientists have been looking for exactly those measurements for more than 30 years.

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 12:45 pm

dbstealey – in other words, like Monckton, you cannot own up to your mistakes. I guess you’re right and honorable too.
Monckton put together the reference material package. The Telegraph had nothing to do with the figures included in the reference materials or their captions. All mistakes in the reference package are Monckton’s responsibility.
It’s very simple,. Monckton’s reference material. Monckton’s choice of inclusions. Monckton’s responsibility..

dbstealey

July 4, 2014 12:45 pm

I see no portcullis in the graph in question. Isn’t that changing the goal posts?

NikFromNYC

July 4, 2014 12:51 pm

Kevin now digs deeper by slanderously equating seasoned climate skepticism about the now undeniably *fraudulent* hockey stick version of temperature history with the naive sensationalism of a politician. Kevin also now oddly claims that the news article graph which is itself merely a quite fair and accurate boilerplate comparison of a hot past versus a fraudulently cold past has Monckton’s graphic moniker attached to it despite being illustrated in the style of the newspaper without any graphic logo actually on it. Kevin in big lie fashion parrots the same lame claim that only the tiny hockey stick team proxy studies merit attention while he simply ignores the fact that the vast majority of worldwide proxy studies reveal precedent for contemporary warming in medieval times as are collected on the CO2Science.com web site in its MWP section.

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 12:52 pm

dbstealey – You are referring to the ‘Battle of the Graphs’ image. That image was NOT in the reference materials.
The reference materials graph is at the top of the post in whose comment thread we abide.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/monckton_warm_refs_page6.png?w=640
The claim is NOT that Monckton created said graph (in the reference materials) but that he falsely attributed it to the IPCC. It is not an authentic IPCC graph. The caption is false.
Why do people comment when they haven’t read and cannot follow the threads of a discussion?

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 12:58 pm

Notice how there is no response on the substance of Figure 7.1.c and the text of the report?
The authors clearly indicated they questioned its application to global temperatures. Lamb never claimed it was representative of global temperatures. Yet how many times as it been trotted out as ‘proof’ of the MWP as a global phenomenon? How many separate posts here and other skeptical sites have used it without ever once mentioning the caveats?

Monckton of Brenchley

July 4, 2014 1:07 pm

To those who unwisely try to maintain that the graph in my reference materials was not the graph from IPCC (1990), when they should have retracted and apologized for their allegation that I lied about it, I say that the caption shown in my reference materials is the caption shown in the graph from IPCC (1990), i.e. “1000 AD 1500 AD 1900 AD”. The graphs themselves are identical in all material particulars.

dbstealey

July 4, 2014 1:11 pm

Notice how there is no response on the substance of Rep Hank Johnson?
And notice how there is no response on the substance of: If I am wrong, then simply post testable, measurable scientific evidence quantifying the fraction of a degree of global warming caused by human GHG emissions. That should be simple, since scientists have been looking for exactly those measurements for more than 30 years. ?
The basic debate is, and always has been, over the conjecture that CO2 causes global T to measurably rise. Since the alarmist crowd has decisively lost that debate, all they are left with is minor nitpicking.

dbstealey

July 4, 2014 1:14 pm

Well, we’ve been invited to two barbeques and Mrs S says it’s time to go, so I will withdraw from the debate for now. ☺

Alan Poirier

July 4, 2014 1:19 pm

Here is the graph on page 202 of the 1990s IPPC report.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 1:21 pm

I just did a quick Google search for text “the shorter Medieval Warm Period around 1000 AD” – a direct quote from the Executive Summary and which is followed immediately in the Summary by the parenthetical remark “(which may not have been global)” . I enclosed the quoted text in double quotes so that I would only get returns that included the entire phrase.
Google returned 45 hits. Only 12 were displayed. Not one came from a skeptical site – except where used in the comments to rebut a misrepresentation of the Lamb schematic.
In other words, I cannot find a single skeptical climate poster/blogger/writer that has ever quoted the Executive Summary’s indication that the MWP may not have been global. Not one. Brandon Smith is not alone.

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 1:29 pm

Monckton of Brenchley – The caption for you upper figure clearly says, “from UN 1996 report”
“1000 AD 1500 AD 1900 AD” are labels – they are not the caption.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/monckton_warm_refs_page6.png?w=640

NikFromNYC

July 4, 2014 1:36 pm

I wonder if I’ll get redacted again over at Willipedia’s blog:
“How can you guys just ignore the MWP revealing proxy studies from the Southern Hemisphere in order to discount the MWP as being just a local event that didn’t amount to real climate history? Just pretend out loud they don’t exist?! Claiming the MWP was just Northern itself is a claim that falsifies hockey sticks since most of them are Northern hemisphere claims too. The highly technical wording of your arguments can’t and hasn’t concealed this intellectual circus. It’s shocking that mainstream climate “science” also promotes your activist view of things that falsifies itself upon closer examination. I call it a circus since the argument goes in circles such that hockey sticks are real since the MWP was only Northern and look here we found a hockey stick in the South too so that confirms the Northern one and Monckton presented a falsified diagram of the MWP that was only local so our also Northern hockey stick is real since the MWP didn’t occur in the South too, since we ignore studies that say it did since those studies are only tabulated on a “denier” web site called CO2Science.com. Also don’t talk further about Marcott fabricated blade or we will “redact” you since we “covered” the latest hockey stick before.”

richardscourtney

July 4, 2014 1:42 pm

oneillsinwisconsin:
re your series of posts culminating with the one at July 4, 2014 at 1:21 pm.
Clearly, you do not understand the problem you have.
Viscount Monckton intends to sue YOU for assertions YOU made.
Statements and actions of politicians, Brandon Smith or anybody else are not relevant.
You claim Viscount Monckton is responsible for inclusion of a graph in an article when the addition was an Editorial decision of ‘The Daily Telegraph’. For your claim to be true you must show that Viscount Monckton personally agreed to inclusion of the graph prior to its publication, but you have not.
You assert that Viscount Monckton did not include all caveats the IPCC provided with the graph. That, too, is not relevant because nobody disputes the IPCC said those caveats were possibilities and not facts (that is what the word “may” means).
You claim the graph is materially different from a graph published by the IPCC. You have not stated any such material difference and none is apparent.
You claim these issues pertaining to the graph amount to Viscount Monckton having deliberately published falsehood, he denies that and is taking you to court for libel.
Clearly, you are failing to recognise the depth of the hole you are in. Perhaps you need to consider that stopping digging would be sensible.
Richard

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 1:47 pm

richardscourtney says:”You claim Viscount Monckton is responsible for inclusion of a graph in an article when the addition was an Editorial decision of ‘The Daily Telegraph’….” I stopped reading there because you are WRONG.
I have always referred to the graphs in his reference materials. I don’t care about the ‘Battle of the Graphs’ image. The reference material was put together by Monckton. The graphs that were included in the reference materials were Monckton’s decision. The mistakes in the reference materials are Monckton’s and have nothing to do with the Telegraph.
Why do people comment that cannot read and follow a thread? Are you dbstealey’s twin?

richardscourtney

July 4, 2014 2:06 pm

oneillsinwisconsin:
I am saddened by your post addressed to me at July 4, 2014 at 1:47 pm.
I wrote a post (at July 4, 2014 at 1:42 pm) which attempted to help you by assisting you to understand your grave problem which your posts in this thread are increasing.
Your reply was to say “WRONG” to my first point, to say you had not read most of what I wrote, and to conclude by making the laughable implication that I “cannot read and follow a thread”.
oneillsinwisconsin, it is no wonder that you are in this great mess and making your situation worse when you rebut attempts to help you understand your problem by metaphorically putting your fingers in your ears and shouting ‘I won’t hear you! I won’t hear you! I won’t …’.
Richard

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 2:07 pm

To refresh anyone that may have missed my offer in the previous post on this topic – since it was very near the end of the comments. I made what I consider to be a charitable offer to Monckton of Brenchley:
I will retract my claim that Monckton of Brenchley lied, *if* he will explicitly state:
A) The caption on Page 6 of his reference materials is wrong.
B) That the figure on Page 6, purportedly from IPCC 1996, is not from either IPCC 1996 or IPCC 1990 and that the figure is not authentic, i.e., a fake.
C) His research methods were shoddy and only excused by the fact he is neither an academic nor a serious researcher.
A) is demonstrably true.
B) is demonstrably true
C) Is Monckton’s own excuse for not being guilty of misconduct
If this is being dragged out it is by Monckton’s own design. I have *zero* fear of a libel suit. None whatsoever. If anything, it will give me an excuse to visit Europe. I have even charitably offered to withdraw the charge if he will simply state what is known to be true or already admitted.

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 2:13 pm

richardscourtney – when someone starts off a comment by getting an essential fact WRONG – I feel no need to read further. I notice in your recent post you fail to admit you were wrong.
If I were Monckton of Brenchley I’d be threatening you with a libel suit for making a false accusation against me – since you wrote, “You claim Viscount Monckton is responsible for inclusion of a graph in an article when the addition was an Editorial decision of ‘The Daily Telegraph’…” and I never made any such claim and you have failed to either admit you were wrong or apologize.

Simon

July 4, 2014 2:17 pm

From what I have read of Mr Monckton, I think it highly unlikely he will carry through on his threat to sue. The loud Lord has a history of threatening action of this kind without much happening
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/8545516/Sceptics-ire-amuses-but-views-retain-sting
But, I for one hope he does. It will make for great entertainment. I have never heard of this O’Neill fellow, but he seems as sharp as a tack. If nothing else, he has sparked a great conversation here.

richardscourtney

July 4, 2014 2:17 pm

oneillsinwisconsin:
At July 4, 2014 at 2:07 pm you say

I have *zero* fear of a libel suit. None whatsoever.

If that be true then you are a fool. And it explains your inability to see the problem you have; you are too stupid to see it.
Richard

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 2:19 pm

richardscourtney – are you offering legal advice? Generally on the web that is accompanied by a disclaimer – IANAL – unless you are a lawyer. In which case, which law school – I want to make sure any lawyer I may ever hire in my life never went there.

NikFromNYC

July 4, 2014 2:21 pm

Kevin spins: “Notice how there is no response on the substance of Figure 7.1.c and the text of the report? / The authors clearly indicated they questioned its application to global temperatures. Lamb never claimed it was representative of global temperatures. Yet how many times as it been trotted out as ‘proof’ of the MWP as a global phenomenon? How many separate posts here and other skeptical sites have used it without ever once mentioning the caveats?”
Yet in the IPCC report itself the graph is described as being global: “Schematic diagrams of global temperature variations.”
The only caveat included was: “…though it is still not clear whether all of the fluctuations indicated were truly global.”
The report also says that the former hot era 5-6K years ago was “worldwide.”
The great irony here is that claiming the MWP was only Northern becomes an admission that Northern hockey sticks stand falsified, meaning nearly all hockey sticks. Logic destroys their claims that seem to merely amount to word games as, in a public debate, William and Kevin are loudly accusing Christopher of lying but when challenged only offer arcane technicalities well within the norms of newspaper publishing, as they double down with new claims of lying based on obscure “mistakes” made in reference materials where any casual observer can see no mistakes at all, just everyday schematics that are used for reference by everyone involved in the climate debate.
Maybe these Wikipedia guys can plead insanity.

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 2:22 pm

Simon – I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s really not a case that I’m so sharp; rather they’re so dull. I only look sharp in comparison.

richardscourtney

July 4, 2014 2:26 pm

oneillsinwisconsin:
Your post at July 4, 2014 at 2:19 pm adds to the evidence of your stupidity.
No, you silly boy, I did not and I have not given any legal advice.
I pointed out that only a fool enters into a legal dispute with what you call “*zero* fear” because the only certainty about a court case is that the lawyers will make money.
It seems that your severe inability at reading comprehension is part of the reason you are in the mess with Viscount Monckton.
Richard

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 2:30 pm

NikFromNYC writes: “…when challenged only offer arcane technicalities well within the norms of newspaper publishing..”
Again and again. The newspaper did NOT publish Monckton’s reference materials. He compiled his reference materials. He selected the reference material graphs for inclusion. He is responsible for the mistakes in the reference materials – the Telegraph had nothing to do with them.
dbstealey, richardscourtney, NikFromNYC — please people, read the thread and attempt to understand it before you chime with something that is completely wrong.
NikFromNYC adds:”The only caveat included was….” Wrong. I gave two examples in my post that addressed the substance of Figure 7.1.c. So, either you can’t count past one or you can’t read. I don’t really care and I’ve given up on anyone actually admitting a mistake. At least we have an audience of one (Simon) that recognizes how poor your collective arguments are.

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 2:35 pm

richardscourtney – still unable to admit your initial mistake, eh? It’s really not that hard. Just try typing s-o-r-r-y -I-w-a-s-m-i-s-t-a-k-e-n

richardscourtney

July 4, 2014 2:39 pm

oneillsinwisconsin:
re your post at July 4, 2014 at 2:35 pm.
Yes, I am very sorry that I made the mistake of trying to help you.
I was very, very mistaken because – as everybody can now see – you are so stupid that you are incapable of being helped.
Richard

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 2:44 pm

richardscourtney – You made a false claim about me, but I should construe that as trying to help me. Does that line work with other people? It ain’t gonna fly here.
Let us recap. You wrote, “You claim Viscount Monckton is responsible for inclusion of a graph in an article when the addition was an Editorial decision of ‘The Daily Telegraph’…”
But I never made such a claim. So, your statement is false. But you don’t have the cojones to admit a mistake.
que sera sera

NikFromNYC

July 4, 2014 2:46 pm

Kevin here loudly demonstrates his willful and persistent intent to conflate a trivial report date typo that changes not a bit of impact of a newspaper article into a public cry of motivated lying by Christopher. Both William and Kevin are proudly trying to turn a typo into a public character assassination. If that’s not slander, what is? If he hadn’t included a typo would that change anything at all in the sincere message of the article?

richardscourtney

July 4, 2014 2:50 pm

oneillsinwisconsin:
OK. I tried to help you and failed, so I will try to continue the conversation in your manner. Here goes.
Oooh diidums! Has didums dropped his rattle then? Does diddums want Richard to pick it up for him?
Nope, I can’t do it. Sorry, oneillsinwisconsin. I suggest you converse with C0nn0lley because he has your type of ‘conversation’ all the time.
Richard

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 2:57 pm

NikFromNYC – Have you managed to count to two yet? I see no acknowledgement of your error. That’s actually quite rude. Two comes after one – just so we’re on the same page mathematics wise. I’ll consider you and richardscourtney ignorable if you can’t even admit to such self-evident mistakes.
Likewise, if you can point to a factual mistake I’ve made I’ll be happy to correct it.
To date we have my claims that:
The reference material graph that purports to be from UN 1996 is not authentic.
The caption for said graph is false.
If Monckton were an academic or serious researcher he may be guilty of misconduct.
Is anyone here claiming the graph is authentic? No. Weasel words about how it’s similar, materially the same, etc. Great. All well and good. The question is: Is it authentic? No.
Is anyone claiming the caption is true? No. It’s false. Obviously so.
Monckton has already excused his research methods on the grounds that he is not an academic or serious researcher.
So, all three of my claims are known to be true or already admitted. Monckton doesn’t like having his false statement called a lie. Too bad. False statements are, by definition, lies.

Monckton of Brenchley

July 4, 2014 2:59 pm

And what relevant caption am I supposed to have omitted from the IPCC’s 1990 graph in the reference materials I supplied with my article eight years ago in the Sunday Telegraph? Surely not the words “Years before present”? They do not relate to the graph of the past 1000 years’ temperatures, as the dates “1000 AD 1500 AD 1900 AD” make rather plain. They relate to the two upper panels of the IPCC’s graphic, which are not relevant as they reach back 10,000-1 million years, while the “hockey stick” graph with which they are being compared reaches back only 1100 years. If the omission of the words “years before present” is the slender and manifestly diversionary basis for the allegation that I have “lied” about that graph, then my defamer will not find the courts impressed.

NikFromNYC

July 4, 2014 2:59 pm

Exhibit A: “You wrote, “You claim Viscount Monckton is RESPONSIBLE for inclusion of a graph in an article when the addition was an Editorial decision of ‘The Daily Telegraph’…” But I never made such a claim. So, your statement is false.” – Kevin
Exhibit B: “Monckton put together the reference material package. The Telegraph had nothing to do with the figures included in the reference materials or their captions. All mistakes in the reference package are Monckton’s RESPONSIBILITY.” – Kevin
This reminds me of when William claimed he was not the Connolley character critiqued in an article about activist Wikipedia corruption since he found a point in it he disagreed with:
http://notrickszone.com/2014/05/16/leaked-memo-on-climatology-exposes-growing-worry-within-german-meteorological-society-unacceptable-unethical-developments/#comment-942428
Questioner: “Is this the same William Connolley who got banned from Wikipedia for littering global warming propaganda?”
William: “No, that’s not me. Have another go?”

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 3:03 pm

Since I have a drop or two of Irish blood in my veins, I must indulge in a limerick:
A Viscount from Brenchley by name
Took up the Climateball game
But his refs were so bad
Even skeptics were sad
And he had only himself to blame
Don’t worry – I’m keeping my day job 🙂

NikFromNYC

July 4, 2014 3:14 pm

Kevin shouts: “False statements are, by definition, lies.”
Actual lie definition: “A false statement made with DELIBERATE INTENT TO DECEIVE; an INTENTIONAL untruth; a falsehood.”
You found a typo in an old newspaper article and are now intimately involved in a concerted campaign to publicly label someone a liar, an immoral and unethical act that is called slander.
Typo definition: “An error (as of spelling) in typed or typeset material.”

KNR

July 4, 2014 3:15 pm

oneillsinwisconsin
‘ He selected the reference material graphs for inclusion.’ not ture the graph you jumped come for The Telegraphy not Monckton .
So you accept that newspapers do indeed edit the work of others before its published in the paper , well given this editing does included adding pictures, often form a stock source . Why do you feel it should be different this time ?
No fact checking , an willingness to smear first and think latter and a total inability to admit mistakes, I would say you Mann in disguise but your too rational , which tells us much about Mann’s stay of mind.
Still if everything is as you say it is you should take the view others have of ‘mad Mann ‘ when he throws courts cases around ‘bring it on’

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 3:18 pm

KNR – we add you to the list, a rather ignoble one. We are discussing the graph in Monckton’s reference materials – the Telegraph had nothing to do with those figures. Please read and understand the comment thread before chiming in with incorrect, i..e., WRONG!, statements.
No one, including Monckton, disputes that he is responsible for the reference materials (hint: you have to download the PDF to read them).

FTM

July 4, 2014 3:24 pm

oneillsinwisconsin
citations of executive summaries
labels self poser toxin

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 3:31 pm

NikFromNYC – No, what I found is that you can’t count past one. Or you’re unable to admit a mistake.
Agian, you should really read the comment thread *before* making a fool of yourself.
I have already written upthread:
“I said that the caption to the figure in his reference material is proof he lied. Is the caption a false statement? Yes, Does that meet the definition of ‘lie’? Yes (#s 2,3, & 6 from Dictionary.com ).
You should also refer back to the previous comment thread on this topic and read what I wrote there. I made the point that a charitable reader would call these mistakes, errors, etc. And that I chose NOT to be charitable because Monckton does not act as a charitable reader to others and does not deserve being read charitably in return. Be that as it may, while in general we consider lies to be intentionally deceitful, it is not strictly necessary.
I have no way of knowing whether Monckton intentionally selected those graphs to mislead his audience. But the fact he never read the report and *still* used the graph without mentioning either it’s true age or the caveats surrounding it indicates willful ignorance if nothing else (and is the thrust of the rationale why – if he were an academic – he’d be guilty of misconduct).
But there is little point in discussing any of this if you are unable or unwilling to admit your statement was wrong. You need to at least be able to count to two to make it worth my time replying. See, my standards aren’t that high- most three year-olds can meet that standard.

Anthony Watts

Author

July 4, 2014 3:32 pm

LOL!
Kevin O’Neil doesn’t seem to understand that newspapers can choose to draw and include their own artwork, choose their own headlines, and choose their own photographs to accompany any submitted article. They aren’t bound by any edict to use the submitted article exactly. That’s why they have editors and art departments and photo departments.
For example, Monckton’s original title for the article, as submitted in the PDF was “Apocalypse Cancelled”.
The Telegraph chose their own headline which was: “Climate Chaos? Don’t believe it”.
I now await Kevin’s claim that Monckton submitted a false headline in his PDF.
His whole line of argumentation is the most laughable thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen anyone keep digging their own hole this long.

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 3:33 pm

FTM – obviously I’m biased, but my limerick kicks ass on your haiku.

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 3:36 pm

Anthony – Monckton has already admitted he selected the graphs for the reference materials – three different times (and with three different responses). Remember, he said he received it from a)an eminent scholar; b) from a reliable source; c) he reproduced it himself.
Are you calling Monckton a liar – that the Telelgraph selected the graphs in his reference materials?
REPLY: No, I’m calling you an idiot, something I carefully reserve for people that have dug their hole so deep they’ve lost sight of what they are arguing about. – Anthony

Anonymous

July 4, 2014 3:39 pm

oneillsinwisconsin,
Per Lord Monckton’s own words above:
"With the article I supplied some background material for Telegraph readers on its website. In that material, the IPCC’s 1990 graph also appeared, mistakenly captioned as 1996 rather than 1990. The graph as I reproduced it looked like this:"
would seem to address your first and second points. Without those you have no basis for your third point. One might hypothesize that you are aware of this, and as such, are arguing in less than good faith. Determination of the acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis is left as an exercise for the reader.

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 3:46 pm

Monckton of Brenchley writes in the comments on the previous post on this topic: “I did get the date of the 1990 graph wrong by five years because the graph was sent to me by an eminent professor who had inadvertently misdated it, and I was not able to verify it directly because the IPCC reports in question were not then online and I was a very sick man, confined to barracks and quite unable even to travel to the nearest village, let alone to the nearest university library 150 miles away. It was not until two years later that I was cured, and by then the world had moved on.”
and Monckton of Brenchley also writes:In my reference materials that were separately available to interested readers, I reproduced the IPCC’s 1990 graph and identified it as being from the IPCC….”
And MoB also writes: “And I am not an academic, and I was not writing a scientific paper. I received the graph from a reliable source who had made an inadvertent error in the date. “
I apologize, I said ’eminent scholar’ whereas it was actually ’eminent professor’ – so sue me 🙂
Look – this isn’t rocket sceince. Monckton is responsible – by his own admission – for the reference material graphs.
Brandon Smith is not unique.

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 4:05 pm

anonymous – neither an academic nor a serious researcher can cite material they have not read. This is prima facie evidence of misconduct. My initial statement was that *if* Monckton were an academic or serious researcher he may be liable for misconduct. Obviously he’s not, and that’s how he answered. See quote here.

NikFromNYC

July 4, 2014 4:11 pm

Kevin, could you please confirm in public, for the record, that you believe that Monkton’s misdating of a newspaper article reference in a way that has no impact on the message of that article whatsoever amounts to willful deception that taints his reputation in a way worth loudly promoting all the while the misdating of low lying proxy series in the latest hockey stick that is the only reason a blade appeared due to spurious data drop-off amounts to good science? Do you really think you’re on the ethically robust side of this debate, as a person? Does the word “debate” even apply to your side trying to slander skeptics as they act as whistleblowers?
Does my above link to a screenshot of mathematician Mann’s wide promotion of the latest faux hockey stick not amount to misconduct too, in your view? Is not one case an everyday busy typo wheras the other is gross Enron level fraud?

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 4:12 pm

Anthony – Monckton’s own words conflict with your belief. He says was responsible for the graph included in the reference material. If you think me an idiot for that – then that’s your problem. I’m taking Monckton at his word.

Alan Poirier

July 4, 2014 4:13 pm

@oneillsinwisconsin: I have never seen anyone so doggedly determined to make an ass of themselves. The graphic referenced in the supporting document from Monckton is clearly from the 1990 IPCC report — it’s on page 202. (see earlier post). It’s equally clear that the graphic the Telegraph chose to use to illustrate the article is one of their own making. Newspapers do this all the the time. Editors do not ask a writer’s permission on anything. We edit copy as we see fit. We write headlines as we see fit. We assign those stories to pages as we see fit. We don’t show the finished pages to the writers. We are editors. That is what we do. It’s sort of like being God. 🙂
BTW, this is also from that same report: “The late tenth to early thirteenth centuries (about AD 950-1250) appear to have been exceptionally warm in western Europe, Iceland and Greenland (Alexandre 1987, Lamb, 1988) This period is known as the Medieval Climatic Optimum China was, however, cold at this time (mainly in winter) but South Japan was warm (Yoshino, 1978) This period of widespread warmth is notable in that there is no evidence that it was accompanied by an increase of greenhouse gases.”
Give it up. You’re looking more and more ridiculous with each post.

Anonymous

July 4, 2014 4:26 pm

oneillsinwisconsin:
I will concede the point that an academic citing material which he or she has not personally reviewed has the potential to be construed as misconduct, but not that it is misconduct. It depends on what the meaning of "is" is. I will presume that your failure to respond to the fact that your first and second points were directly addressed by Lord Monckton is indicative of acquiescence on your part.

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 4:27 pm

Alan Poirier – Monckton has admitted three different times that *he* is responsible for the graphs in the reference materials. Why do choose not to believe him and claim the Telegraph did it?
And no – it is not the *authentic* graph. That whole discussion has already taken place upthread. It is not authentic. Similar to, derived from, based on – yes. Authentic, no. Am I being pedantic – yes. Remember, Monckton is suing me for libel. So I am being very clear on what I said and will not allow others to twist my words.

Alan Poirier

July 4, 2014 4:35 pm

@oneillsinwisconsin: You are hopeless.

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 4:45 pm

anonymous – I was not expecting to have to reproduce the prior thread in its entirety.
In that thread I wrote:
“The misconduct – Monckton now admits that he did not have the 1990 report. As Dr. John Mashey has explained, “In academe, this is called false citation, misrepresentation of a source, or falsification/fabrication. Such things can be academic misconduct, not because the curve [on the graph] is wrong, but because the different image (not labeled “after” or “derived from”, etc) strongly implies that the original source was not consulted.” No inference needed. Monckton has admitted he didn’t refer to the source material. Perhaps that’s why he never mentions the caveats in the original text of the 1990 report that apply to Figure 7.1.c. Shoddy research.”
In discussing the misconduct I had a parenthetical “”…. (if he were an academic or serious researcher) …..”” The point was always moot because Monckton *is not* an academic or serious researcher. I knew that when I wrote it (hence the parenthetical), but to illustrate that his research methods were shoddy.
I am not an expert on academic research misconduct. I can believe that there are some grey areas – personally, I doubt this is one of them. The fact that no skeptic (including Monckton) ever mentions the caveats that are included in the 1990 IPCC text regarding Figure 7.1.c would indicate they are not familiar with the material. Yet the caveats speak directly to the point trying to be made – namely, was the MWP global in scope?

milodonharlani

July 4, 2014 4:56 pm

oneillsinwisconsin says:
July 4, 2014 at 4:45 pm
Yes. The Medieval Warm Period was most certainly global in scope, as has been repeatedly demonstrated on this blog from studies conducted around the world. So was the Little Ice Age which followed the MWP & the Dark Ages Cold Period which preceded it, along with the Sui-Tang lesser warm spell within it. So too were the older Roman Warm Period, the Greek Dark Ages Cold Period, the Minoan WP, the cold period before that & the Holocene Climatic Optimum.
For a few of the overwhelming number of studies showing the world-wide reach of the Medieval Warm Period, see:
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
See also:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/31/new-paper-shows-medieval-warm-period-was-global-in-scope/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/23/warm_period_little_ice_age_global/
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/07/another-broken-hockey-stick-new-paper.html

oneillsinwisconsin

July 4, 2014 5:18 pm

anonymous – i have no idea what you mean by “indicative of acquiescence on your part”
Has he admitted that the reference material graph is not authentic? If so, I missed it. I did a word search on this page and never found him using the word. He has evaded admitting the graph used was not an authentic IPCC graph.
He writes: “Frankly, it is extraordinary that my defamers found such willing takers for the nonsense that I had “faked” the Telegraph’s graphs. Given the narrow purpose for which the graphs were drawn, there is nothing wrong with them: indeed, their clarity is commendable.”
But the graph is not authentic; we call that a knock-off, imitation, fake, counterfeit, etc. If it was captioned as based on, derived from, etc then the charge would be baseless. It says “from UN 1996 report”. It isn’t. Monckton has not revealed where it’s from – but we know it is not from IPCC 1990. Remember what Dr Mashey wrote: “In academe, this is called false citation, misrepresentation of a source, or falsification/fabrication. Such things can be academic misconduct, not because the curve [on the graph] is wrong ….”
Whether the graph is a fake does not depend on if it is a relatively faithful reproduction – it’s being passed off as authentic. It’s not. And there are material differences despite what some may think. The error in the X-axis title (Years before present) is not there in the fake, nor is the c) in the upper left portion of the graph. We may find it convenient to remove these or ‘correct’ them – but that means they are no longer original sources and can’t be called such.

Robert in Calgary

July 4, 2014 5:31 pm

In news that actually matters, the mighty Germans will be taking on host Brazil in a World Cup semi-final.
Since this thread is now a tap dancing extravaganza, here’s my contribution.

This thread is now ripe for another great Josh cartoon. Kevin as Inspector Clouseau.

NikFromNYC

July 4, 2014 5:46 pm

Kevin misdirects: “…was the MWP global in scope?”
Yes. The proxy studies that show it listed at CO2Science.com are from all over the world. But this news article pointed out a vast historical revisionism that involved a Northern Hemisphere hockey stick of Michael Mann that itself turned back into a MWP restoring bowl when Mann’s conveniently mistaken centering of his principle component analysis was corrected. But a trivial date typo by Monckton somehow merits claims that skepticism against this fraudent revisionism is willfully bogus as personified in Christopher since he’s a liar? What possible motivation would a six year difference in report date make towards deceiving readers about the fact of historical revisionism? Is this typo why you classify the graph as “not authentic?” It’s a well known graph that he submitted, and was indeed in an IPCC report.
I’ve copied some Southern Hemisphere plots of the MWP here:
http://oi62.tinypic.com/9amiqw.jpg

Anonymous

July 4, 2014 6:34 pm

oneillinwisconsin:
The graph as used by Lord Monckton is indeed materially the same as the one found on page 202 of the IPCC report. The differences are immaterial. If you don’t believe me, do the work of overlaying one on the other With minor scaling and rotational changes, the material aspect of the two graphs, namely the curve, is identical. The erroneous caption and labeling as item c in in a three graph group do not change the data that are being discussed. You can be pedantic all you want, but in so doing you are willfully ignoring the pertinent information and instead focusing on meaningless trivialities.
Your words:
"To date we have my claims that:
The reference material graph that purports to be from UN 1996 is not authentic.
The caption for said graph is false.
If Monckton were an academic or serious researcher he may be guilty of misconduct."
On point one, as pointed out above the relevant information in the graph is not materially different from the graph found on page 202 of the IPCC report. Consequently I do not find this claim to be meritorious.
On point two, Lord Monckton has noted that the graph is from the 1990 report and not the 1996 report, so the caption was incorrect. Calling it false may imply an intent to deceive. I do not concur that there was such an intent on the part of Lord Monckton, thus I prefer to call it incorrect, and Lord Monckton has acknowledged as much. As such, I find this claim as well to lack merit.
We have discussed point three and choose to differ regarding whether a determination of misconduct would or would not be made. As I believe that reasonable minds can differ, I’ll call this one a push.

NikFromNYC

July 4, 2014 7:32 pm

Kevin here rises up in the social status hierarchy of tribal allegence to warmongers. Alas his cartoonish overweighting of skeptical foibles that strongly invoke the red flag laugh test means Connolley remains nakedly exposed as a hacktivist spin doctor, civil courts be damned for God now be Michael Mann, so Monckton is the Devil dammit, and by hook or crook we intent to prove it.

Alan Poirier

July 4, 2014 7:52 pm

That’s DOCTOR CONnolley. :)~

NikFromNYC

July 4, 2014 8:22 pm

[snip – that comparison is a bit over the top – you are welcome to resubmit -mod]

dbstealey

July 4, 2014 8:39 pm

Back now from two [excellent] barbeques, and I have one comment:
I do not agree with O’Neill, but let’s pretend that O’Neill is completely right about everything. What would that mean?
That would mean that he has successfully misdirected the debate toward a trivial difference in charts. Does this matter? Not a bit.
What does matter? Maybe this reminder will help:
The entire “climate change”, “global warming”, “carbon” scare is based on the discredited notion that a rise in CO2 will cause runaway global warming. If it does, then we should be having that debate.
But if it doesn’t, then the alarmist crowd, including O’Neill and Connolley, have been proven wrong. That is the real reason that O’Neill is so wound up and fixated on Lord Monckton: it is much preferable to admitting he has been wrong all along regarding the central issue: does CO2 cause catastrophic AGW? The answer, clearly, is No. Global warming has stopped, and not just recently.
Planet Earth has been demonstrating for the past decade and a half that the alarmist crowd is flat wrong. If they would admit it, then skeptics would be happy to help them determine why their conjecture was wrong, and maybe find an explanation that makes sense. That is how the Scientific Method works. But like an alcoholic, O’Neill must first admit to reality.
As O’Neill shows here, he is incapable of admitting that global warming has stopped. That would negate any serious concern about CO2, and everyone could move on to important things. But instead, O’Neill preposterously claims the MWP was local. [See here. Mouse over interactive charts.] As we see, the MWP was planet-wide, covering both hemispheres.
Skeptics have no problem admitting when we’re wrong. I thought global warming was a serious problem in the late ’90’s. But facts changed, and my views changed with them. That is the glaring difference between skeptics and climate alarmists: alarmists simply cannot admit that they were wrong — even when the planet rubs their nose in it.
As O’Neill writes:
…still unable to admit your initial mistake, eh? It’s really not that hard. Just try typing s-o-r-r-y -I-w-a-s-m-i-s-t-a-k-e-n.
But O’Neill can’t admit his initial mistake. He cannot admit he has been proven wrong about the effect of CO2. Most alarmists cannot admit that their initial belief about CO2 has been shown to be flat wrong. There is a mountain of empirical evidence proving that any warming due to anthropogenic CO2 is too small to measure. So people like O’Neill stick with their religious True Belief, despite all evidence to the contrary. He cannot admit that his initial conjecture turned out to be wrong. Sad, really.

Non Nomen

July 5, 2014 12:53 am

Follow the Money says:
July 3, 2014 at 1:01 pm
The bots got upset now about one newspaper graph from 8 years ago? Really? That is what this is all about?
…
_________________________________
If that slander isn’t stopped once and for good, it will never end.
[/sarc]

Robert Clark

July 5, 2014 12:57 am

This latest dust up sounds like another attempt to make the Medieval Warm Period disappear, like in the ClimateGate emails. Rather than making a lawsuit perhaps Monckton should focus on that.
Bob Clark

richardscourtney

July 5, 2014 1:06 am

oneillsinwisconsin:
I am taking the – probably forlorn and foolish – risk of again trying to help you.
I wrote with genuine attempt to help you at July 4, 2014 at 1:42 pm in a post that is here. I concluded that post saying

Clearly, you are failing to recognise the depth of the hole you are in. Perhaps you need to consider that stopping digging would be sensible.

Your reply was at July 4, 2014 at 1:47 pm and is here. It rejected my attempt at help, said you had refused to read most of my post, provided two ‘red herring’ insults, and attempted to start an ‘angels on a pin’ argument by saying

richardscourtney says:

”You claim Viscount Monckton is responsible for inclusion of a graph in an article when the addition was an Editorial decision of ‘The Daily Telegraph’….”

I stopped reading there because you are WRONG.
I have always referred to the graphs in his reference materials. I don’t care about the ‘Battle of the Graphs’ image.

Well, as others have pointed out, you DID claim that Viscount Monckton is responsible for inclusion of a graph in an article when the addition was an Editorial decision of ‘The Daily Telegraph’. However, I ignored your falsehood because it ignored my expression of concern in attempt to help you. Indeed, your falsehood was a distraction from my attempt to help you, and – concern having failed – I replied first with logic, then with mockery, and after that with ridicule. Nothing worked.
You were determined to keep digging and you still are despite the wide range of people who have now attempted to help you understand your problem.
I now write to ask you to read the thread from my post which first tried to help you (I have provided a link which jumps to it from this post), and to reflect on all the posts from all the people up to this point. For your sake, as has been said to at least two others, I say to you

I beg ye in the bowels of Christ to consider that ye may be wrong.

Richard

Non Nomen

July 5, 2014 1:12 am

Lord Monckton is far too intelligent to tamper or forge data. And imho he is of undoubtable integrity, both giving him a considerable leap of faith.
I am convinced the telegraphists will get a mighty electric shock in court.

Margaret Hardman

July 5, 2014 6:58 am

Non Nomen, that’s given me a good laugh. The good Lord’s list of being economical with the truth is lengthy.
As for Rev Courtney and William Robinson’s communal lack of reading comprehension, Kevin has come up against the traditional debating technique – let’s keep bringing it back to something that has been settled tomavoidnhaving to confront the charge being made. Lord Monckton’s own words suggest there is a case to answer. Let us have a coherent answer to it.

J Murphy

July 5, 2014 6:59 am

“We went to court against Al Gore because his movie was poisonous political propaganda dressed up as science.
We won. Nothing else but a court case would have worked. It was only when the department of education in London were confronted with 80 pages of scientific testimony, and knew that that testimony would stand up in court against all their falsehoods and evasions, that they caved in and settled, paying $400,000 to the plaintiffs and undertaking to circulate 77 pages of corrective guidance to every school in England.”
Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
(I put the extended title because, as someone else here has already mentioned, quite a few Americans seem to be in awe of British gentry and their titles!)
Anyway, that’s quite a mix-up comment he’s given.
Firstly, if he’s referring to ‘Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education & Skills [2007]’, then the case was against the Secretary of State for Education & Skills (as it says in the title of the case) and not against Al Gore. The claims were under “political indoctrination” and a “duty to secure balanced treatment of political issues” in schools (as judged under ss406 and 407 of the Education Act 1996).
Secondly, the film was allowed to continue to be shown in schools because the final paragraph of the judgement (yes, it went to a form of judgement after opposing arguments were held in front of a judge. There was no ‘caving in’) :
—“In the circumstances, and for those reasons, in the light of the changes to the Guidance Note which the Defendant has agreed to make, and has indeed already made, and upon the Defendant’s agreeing to send such amended Guidance Note out in hard copy, no order is made on this application [“to declare unlawful a decision by the then Secretary of State for Education and Skills to distribute to every state secondary school in the United Kingdom a copy of former US Vice-President Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth…”], save in relation to costs, on which I shall hear Counsel.”
Thirdly, the “80 pages of scientific testimony” must refer to the defence case because the judge says, among other things:
—“The following is clear:
i) It is substantially founded upon scientific research and fact, albeit that the science is used, in the hands of a talented politician and communicator, to make a political statement and to support a political programme.”
—“I have no doubt that Dr Stott, the Defendant’s expert, is right when he says that:
‘Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate.'”
—“Mr Downes [the claimant’s Counsel, i.e. the one trying to prevent the film being shown] produced a long schedule of such alleged errors or exaggerations and waxed lyrical in that regard. It was obviously helpful for me to look at the film with his critique in hand.
In the event I was persuaded that only some of them were sufficiently persuasive to be relevant for the purposes of his argument…”
—“References are helpfully now given to the IPCC report.”
Fourthly, I have read that Dimmock’s costs were approximately £200,000, of which the Government department had to pay two-thirds of them, i.e. about £140,000. This left Dimmock (and his backers) with a bill of approximately £60,000. Can Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley confirm or deny this?
Finally, the Guidance booklet has a total of 70 pages. How can “77 pages of corrective guidance” fit inside that?
The judgement is here : http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/2288.html
The booklet is here: http://www.google.it/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ase.org.uk%2Fdocuments%2Fclimate-change-revised-guidance%2FCCrevisedguidanceNov07.pdf&ei=Sfq3U7KcHIuQ4gTc_IC4BQ&usg=AFQjCNFFkWBAAq5TbxdNMzzW-fLUa3LvEQ&sig2=91ExlfGzAAGzKdYnsNVB6A&bvm=bv.70138588,d.bGE
(This is what the notes say on the web page next to the Guidance booklet:
—“In 2007, judicial review proceedings were issued in the High Court challenging the distribution of the Climate Change film pack for teachers, which had been sent to secondary schools. The claim argued that use of the pack and, in particular, showing the film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, would place local authorities and schools in breach of ss. 406 and 407 of the Education Act 1996.
On 10 October, the High Court ruled that it is lawful for schools to use ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and the other parts of the climate change pack in accordance with this amended guidance.”)

J Murphy

July 5, 2014 7:06 am

And does anyone know of any climate-related libel proceedings Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley has actually threatened, carried out, followed through with and won?

Jud

July 5, 2014 7:09 am

O’Neill. As someone with 100% Irish blood, and who has had the pleasure of knowing many much more honorable bearers of your name let me clear a few things up.
It turns out Monckton has been openly called a liar by your colleagues(and, who knows, maybe by you too – it would be interesting to see what the record shows there) for many years based on an allegation he made ‘fake’ charts for a Telegraph article.
Now that it has come to his attention he has – very reasonably – asked for a retraction.
Rather than offer that retraction I am seeing a couple of things happening.
Things that, by the way, are absolutely typical of warmist sleaze and evasion.
The stoat – who seems to have disappeared – has doubled down on his liar accusation – even though the original basis for it has been clearly demonstrated to be wrong.
That is, Monckton had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of the graph that supposedly shows him to be a liar.
The stoat’s apprentice, meanwhile, has picked up something equivalent to a typo (which had already been openly acknowledged by Monckton, and which has zero bearing on the original ‘liar’ accusations) and is trying to make that the crux of the ‘liar’ debate.
Your objective has been to divert the fire on the stoat over the substantive issue.
In that respect I say well done – there hasn’t been much said on the actual issue since you decided to clog up the discussion.
On the other hand you should be ashamed of yourself.
Either man up and address the main issue – that Monckton has been erroneously called a liar for several years – or go back to the stoat’s echo chamber from whence you no doubt came.

richardscourtney

July 5, 2014 7:45 am

J Murphy:
Your post at July 5, 2014 at 6:59 am concerns the legal case of ‘Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education & Skills [2007]‘. Viscount Monckton’s brief mention of it was true and accurate. Your post is misleading, and probably deliberately misleads as a method to side-track the thread onto irrelevant discussion of that case.
A short and reasonable understanding of the legal issues pertaining to Gore’s film in the UK is here.
This thread is not about that. It is the long-standing and repeated libel concerning the graph in the Daily Telegraph.
Richard

richardscourtney

July 5, 2014 7:51 am

Margaret H@rdma@n:
At July 5, 2014 at 6:58 am you assert

Lord Monckton’s own words suggest there is a case to answer

Really!? I am astonished to learn of that at this late stage.
Please quote and cite “Lord Monckton’s own words” which you assert “suggest there is a case to answer”. Or are you merely throwing an unjustifiable smear?
Richard

Salvatore Del Prete

July 5, 2014 7:59 am

I appreciate honesty. Thanks Anthony.
Based on the simplest available evidence, I was ready to conclude, as were many, that indeed Monckton had created the graph, that it was in error, and that he had refused to admit to any of this. I was ready to censure him myself, just as the over-the-top Stoaters wanted to do, probably so Connolley could direct a new denigrating Wikipedia entry as he is known to do (he’s not allowed to edit Wikipedia pages of living persons anymore, so he directs by proxy). Now, after further investigation I can tell you I was wrong, and so is Connolley.

J Murphy

July 5, 2014 8:31 am

richardscourtney, Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley himself brought up the Dimmock case, without mentioning the details and the actual recorded result :
“So I am going to court to defend myself and, in so doing against the constant barrage of falsehoods told in support of the Party Line. We went to court against Al Gore because his movie was poisonous political propaganda dressed up as science.”
Please show where the “misleading” parts are in my post, so I can correct them if necessary.
And I don’t need to read other websites personal opinions on the case – I can read the original (and I gave the link for everyone else who is interested), see the words of the judge, and can see that the film is still available to be shown by every state secondary school in the United Kingdom.
The only winning came as a result of common-sense, scientific fact and legal judgement. As usual, the rational and reasoned arguments won and the film can now be watched by children, and they can read the accompanying booklet, knowing that the facts are there for all to see. Something that everyone should be pleased about.

richardscourtney

July 5, 2014 9:03 am

J Murphy:
re your post at July 5, 2014 at 8:31 am.
No, I will not bite your red herring and I commend everybody else to ignore it, too.
This thread is about the patience of Viscount Monckton having exhausted so he is planning legal redress for the untrue smears about the ‘Telegraph graph’. I fully understand why warmunists want to discuss anything other than that, but please have those diascussions where it is not an irrelevant nuisance.
Richard

Non Nomen

July 5, 2014 9:25 am

Margaret Hardman says:
July 5, 2014 at 6:58 am
Non Nomen, that’s given me a good laugh. The good Lord’s list of being economical with the truth is lengthy.
As for Rev Courtney and William Robinson’s communal lack of reading comprehension, Kevin has come up against the traditional debating technique – let’s keep bringing it back to something that has been settled tomavoidnhaving to confront the charge being made. Lord Monckton’s own words suggest there is a case to answer. Let us have a coherent answer to it.
____________________________
So you certainly have no problem with presenting that lenghty list in full here, have you?

Anthony Watts

Author

Reply to Non Nomen

July 5, 2014 9:36 am

Yes Margaret Hardman, let’s see your specific list where Monckton has been “economical with the truth”. I expect to see your list, not some list compiled by others not involved in this thread.
Your list should be able to be produced within mere seconds of seeing this comment, since you obviously have it in hand.

dbstealey

July 5, 2014 9:31 am

Margaret Hardman says:
The good Lord’s list of being economical with the truth is lengthy.
Please give us that long list, because I for one missed it.

Non Nomen

July 5, 2014 11:23 am

Margaret Hardman: don’t let us wait until the cows come home to see that list! I am really keen on having a look at it,

milodonharlani

July 5, 2014 11:25 am

J Murphy says:
July 5, 2014 at 6:59 am
Chris’ title isn’t in the gentry; it’s noble, ie in the peerage. A viscount ranks fourth out of the five titles in the British nobility system, higher than baron but below earl (equivalent to count), marquess & duke. There are also royal dukes, lower than prince & of course king or queen regnant.

Keith

July 5, 2014 11:30 am

Hi Anthony,
You say towards the top of this article, among the points as to what was out of place about the graph in the Telegraph:

The horizontal lines on the bottom portion of the graph are obviously spaced incorrectly indicating to me that they were hand-drawn

Firstly, I agree that Lord Monckton is once again being maligned by the usual Rent-a-Mob puppets who shout down anyone disagreeing with their masters. He hasn’t faked anything here, nor does the graph as shown in the Telegraph show anything incorrect or spurious: the MWP peaks around 10C, with the modern warm period hitting around 9.5C for Europe, just like that from John Daly’s site, and follows the same shape as that from Hubert Lamb for the IPCC. Mann’s attempts to rub that out are nearer to fakery than anything alleged to have been done here by Monckton.
This point you make above, though, doesn’t appear to me to be an accurate one. I don’t see any obvious spacing errors in the lines showing the temperatures between 8.5C and 10.0C. Is the line showing the average 20th century temperature causing some confusion?
REPLY: Yes, I think you may be correct, though it wasn’t clear that was the 20th century average line to me, but I see the label in the midpoint. – Anthony

Margaret Hardman

July 5, 2014 11:48 am

Nom, the game is to ask for the list but then snip it when it is provided. Or if it is allowed to be posted, it won’t be accepted. But first, Lord Monckton is not a member of the House Of Lords in spite of his many claims to be one. I expect the tedious lawyer’s opinion and the reinterpretation of the 1999 Act but I rather go with the authorities of the House the,selves when they say he is not a member of the House of Lords (oh, and when he did put himself up, presumably conceding the fact, he polled a stunning, massive zero).

dbstealey

July 5, 2014 1:05 pm

Margaret Hardman says:
Nom, the game is to ask for the list but then snip it when it is provided. Or if it is allowed to be posted, it won’t be accepted.
There is no “game”. This is a good test of Margaret Hardman’s credibility. She stated unequivocally that there is a ‘lengthy list’ of Lord Monckton “being economical with the truth”, AKA: lying. She was called on it.
Either Margaret Hardman will post a long [and verifiable] list of Monckton’s prevarications, or she was fabricating it. I can’t imagine Anthony snipping what he asked for. Instead, readers would have an easy time of refuting anything posted.
I wonder how Margaret feels now, being on the receiving end? LM has been attacked ad hominem constantly, for years. His offense? He posts solid science, and the alarmist cult does not like that one bit.
They cannot refute his science, so they lower themselves to making ad hominem attacks. They play the man, not the ball.
Alarmists lost the scientific debate long ago. Now they are just being sore losers.
REPLY: “I can’t imagine Anthony snipping what he asked for. Instead, readers would have an easy time of refuting anything posted.”
So, Margaret? Let’s see it. – Anthony

milodonharlani

July 5, 2014 1:08 pm

Here are Lamb’s reconstructed average yearly “PREVAILING TEMPERATURES (°C) IN CENTRAL ENGLAND”, based upon adjusted values given for winter & summer:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/stgeorge/geog5426/Lamb%20Palaeogeography%20Palaeoclimatology%20Palaeoecology%201965.pdf
800-1000 9.2
1000-1100 9.4
1100-1150 9.6
1150-1200 10.2
1200-1250 10.1
1250-1300 10.2
1300-1350 9.8
1350-1400 9.5
1400-1450 9.1
1450-1500 9.0
1500-1550 9.3
1550-1600 8.8
1600-1650 8.8
1650-1700 8.7
1700-1750 9.24
1750-1800 9.06
1800-1850 9.12
1850-1900 9.12
1900-1950 9.41
1950-2000 9.?
2000-2014 9.?
I hope Tony Brown will provide valid CET numbers for last two periods. If central England has warmed ~0.7 degree C since 1900, then 1950-2014 might be as high as ~9.8 degrees. Even if it has been that warm there, then since 1900 has still been cooler than the balmiest 150 years of the MWP, as shown by the expunged IPCC graph, & the fastest rates of warming were after AD 1150 & 1700.

Jonathan Abbott

July 5, 2014 1:18 pm

Only someone entirely ignorant of the British system of peerages would think that holding the title ‘Lord’ is evident of a claim to be a sitting member of the House of Lords. They are two different things.

Simon

July 5, 2014 1:26 pm

So that is a couple of lists we are looking for here.
1. The economical with the truth comments of Christopher M?
2. The climate-related libel proceedings Christopher M has actually threatened, carried out, followed through with and won?
I would say both are entirely relevant to the thread, and I for one would love to see the length of both lists.

F. Ross

July 5, 2014 1:29 pm

Margaret Hardman says:
July 5, 2014 at 6:58 am
“… The good Lord’s list of being economical with the truth is lengthy.
…”

Based on Ms Hardman’s follow on comment it would seem that her statement (above) might, in itself, be interpreted as “economical with the truth”.
Knickers in a twist?

richardscourtney

July 5, 2014 1:39 pm

Margaret H@RdM@n:
I see that at July 5, 2014 at 11:48 am you have responded to a request for clarification from Non Nomen but you have yet to provide any response to my request for clarification.
I remind that at you made a post at July 5, 2014 at 6:58 am which claimed I had

lack of reading comprehension

In light of your thinking that, I would have thought you would have wanted to clarify something you wrote in that same post when I replied at July 5, 2014 at 7:51 am saying

Margaret H@RdMa@n:
At July 5, 2014 at 6:58 am you assert

Lord Monckton’s own words suggest there is a case to answer

Really!? I am astonished to learn of that at this late stage.
Please quote and cite “Lord Monckton’s own words” which you assert “suggest there is a case to answer”. Or are you merely throwing an unjustifiable smear?

Obviously, your failure to reply to my request is an oversight which I now anticipate you will correct.
Richard

richardscourtney

July 5, 2014 1:44 pm

Jonathan Abbott:
Your post at July 5, 2014 at 1:18 pm says in total

Only someone entirely ignorant of the British system of peerages would think that holding the title ‘Lord’ is evident of a claim to be a sitting member of the House of Lords. They are two different things.

Only an egregious troll attempting to mislead about the British system of peerages would suggest that being a Member of the House of Lords is the same as being Sitting Member of the House of Lords. They are two different things.
Richard

milodonharlani

July 5, 2014 1:48 pm

Jonathan Abbott says:
July 5, 2014 at 1:18 pm
Please correct me if wrong, but IMO prior to 1999 a viscount would have been entitled to sit in the House of Lords. In that house of Parliament, “Lord” refers to noble peers of the realm(s). You’re right about “Lord”, of course, not automatically conferring such status even before the change, since it can also be a courtesy title. Members of the House of Lords were & are Lords Spiritual & Lords Temporal.

Margaret Hardman

July 5, 2014 2:14 pm

They play the man, not the ball.
I see where I’ve been wrong all this time. I should have been playing the Mann, not the ball.
When Lord Monckton is confronted with errors in his science and presentations, he often resorts to letters to various principals and vice chancellors, threats of legal action and so on. I believe the proper answer is the one given in the Arkell v Pressdram case all those years ago.
I seem to remember that he chose to, let’s be generous, decide he had something better to do than continue to debate Peter Hadfield on this very site.
Ric@hard courtn@y, when Kevin was talking about the extra materials rather than the graph printed in the actual physical paper, you could not,or would not recognise that Kevin was talking about a different graph to you even when that was pointed out by Kevin. I realise it is a gambit to redirect the argument back to something that has been dealt with but someone of your intelligence should have understood what he meant. Someone of mine certainly did.

richardscourtney

July 5, 2014 2:39 pm

Margaret H@RdM@n:
Thankyou for the clarification you provide at July 5, 2014 at 2:14 pm in response to my request that said

Please quote and cite “Lord Monckton’s own words” which you assert “suggest there is a case to answer”. Or are you merely throwing an unjustifiable smear?

Your clarification makes it abundantly clear that you were merely throwing an unjustifiable smear.
Richard

J Murphy

July 5, 2014 3:01 pm

Jonathan Abbott, you wrote: “Only someone entirely ignorant of the British system of peerages would think that holding the title ‘Lord’ is evident of a claim to be a sitting member of the House of Lords”
If that is the case, what do you make of this comment by Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley:
“Finally, you may wonder why it is that a member of the Upper House of the United Kingdom legislature, wholly unconnected with and unpaid by the corporation that is the victim of your lamentable letter, should take the unusual step of calling upon you as members of the Upper House of the United States legislature either to withdraw what you have written or resign your sinecures.”
(http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2007/02/01/british-lord-demands-end-climate-science-censorship)

richardscourtney

July 5, 2014 3:23 pm

J Murphy:
At July 5, 2014 at 3:01 pm you ask Jonathan Abbott a question which begins, “If that is the case, …”.
There have two posts by different people which explain it is not the case. And one wonders why you think it would be when it is asserted by Jonathan Abbott.
Richard

Jonathan Abbott

July 5, 2014 4:03 pm

J Murphy, regardless of what Viscount Monckton may or may not have said (it doesn’t interest me and I can’t be bothered to check), since the House of Lords was reformed a few years ago there are plenty of Britons who are members of the peerage who do not sit in the house of Lords.
Anyone who is unable to accept this simple fact only reveals their own ignorance. The only possible reason anyone has for raising this point is to mount an ad hominem attack.

dbstealey

July 5, 2014 5:20 pm

Margaret Hardman,
Anthony, I, and others have asked about your ‘lengthy list’ of Lord Monckton’s lies:
“So, Margaret? Let’s see it.”
But Margaret still posts no list. Her scurrilous ad hominem attack was baseless.
Instead, Margaret replied with a reference to Arkell v Pressdram, which we all know here as saying, “F___ off.”
Got your number, Margaret. You have zero credibility. And of course, no class.

J Murphy

July 5, 2014 11:37 pm

Jonathon Abbett, it is lucky, therefore, that there are others who are bothered about this and who wish to make sure that the ignorance on the matter is not allowed to increase :
“My predecessor, Sir Michael Pownall, wrote to you on 21 July 2010, and again on 30 July 2010, asking that you cease claiming to be a Member of the House of Lords, either directly or by implication. It has been drawn to my intention that you continue to make such claims.
I must therefore again ask that you desist from claiming to be a Member of the House of Lords, either directly or by implication, and also that you desist from claiming to be a Member ‘without the right to sit or vote’.
I am publishing this letter on the parliamentary website so that anybody who wishes to check whether you are a Member of the House of Lords can view this official confirmation that you are not.”
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-information-office/2011/letter-to-viscount-monckton-20110715.pdf
Is that ad hominem or a wish to let the truth be out so that ignorance is not allowed to stand?

Non Nomen

July 6, 2014 12:13 am

Margaret Hardman says:
July 5, 2014 at 11:48 am
Nom, the game is to ask for the list but then snip it when it is provided. Or if it is allowed to be posted, it won’t be accepted.
…
_____________________________________
Well, you certainly must have misunderstood Anthony Watts who asked you to publish your list here. I’m pretty sure he won’ “snip” it, because he wants to know himself. But this (non-)problem can be avoided easily:
publish your lengthy list in any blog you like.
You do not even have to give a clue here because that news is going to spread by itself in no time.
Let the world know that you do deliver facts and not only nebulous, unverifiable insinuations.
Prove the world that you are not a lying slandersl*t, but a person whose word can be trusted.

richardscourtney

July 6, 2014 12:55 am

Jonathan Abbott:
Your post at July 5, 2014 at 4:03 pm can only be blatant and deliberate falsehood or an example of psychological projection. Your history of posts on WUWT does not indicate which of those two possibilities is the more likely on this occasion.
Your post says in total

J Murphy, regardless of what Viscount Monckton may or may not have said (it doesn’t interest me and I can’t be bothered to check), since the House of Lords was reformed a few years ago there are plenty of Britons who are members of the peerage who do not sit in the house of Lords.
Anyone who is unable to accept this simple fact only reveals their own ignorance. The only possible reason anyone has for raising this point is to mount an ad hominem attack.

YOU raised the subject of Viscount Monckton being a Member of the House of Lords (HoL) when you provided a post at July 5, 2014 at 1:18 pm which said in total

Only someone entirely ignorant of the British system of peerages would think that holding the title ‘Lord’ is evident of a claim to be a sitting member of the House of Lords. They are two different things.

And, according to you, “The only possible reason anyone has for raising this point is to mount an ad hominem attack.”
Importantly, your self-admitted “ad hominem attack” provided a falsehood (as do most of your statements on WUWT). Your “attack” on Viscount Monckton pretended that being a Member of the HoL is the same as being a Sitting Member of the HoL. They are NOT the same: only Sitting Members can speak in the Chamber and can vote on matters there discussed. Viscount Monckton is a Member of the HoL and says he is. As is your common practice, you have introduced a ‘red herring’.
Richard

Margaret Hardman

July 6, 2014 1:45 am

The 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is not now, now has he ever been, a member of the House of Lords. http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2011/july/letter-to-viscount-monckton/. That much is plain and simple and stated in my link.
That his lordship has said words to the contrary is also beyond doubt. That he stood for election to the House in 2007 is also beyond doubt. I haven’t had breakfast yet so I might still have time for some impossible beliefs but this cannt be one of them. So, Richard, you are plain wrong.

dbstealey

July 6, 2014 2:12 am

Margaret Hardman,
You are being redundant. That same letter was posted in a link just a few comments up. Is that really the best you can do?
A few points:
1) That is one item, which is merely a difference of opinion. Only the monarch can make a definitive ruling on the matter. Differences of opinion cannot be arbitrarily classified as “being economical with the truth” [AKA: lying].
2) With a couple of dozen more items, you could possibly claim that you have “a lengthy list” of lies told by Lord Monckton. But as of right now your credibility remains at zero.
3) This is about you, Margaret Hardman. It is not about Lord Monckton, who stands on his science. You have no credible science to support your alarmist beliefs, and your low class response was to mount ad hominem attacks against a person, rather than to argue the science.
At this point the simplest way out for you is to apologize for your baseless and scurrilous accusation. Labeling someone you disagree with as a liar is not some minor pejorative. It is a monumental insult that is disallowed in Parliamentary debate. It goes directly to the credibility and character of the accused. The only thing worse is when the labeler is bearing false witness, like you are.
You have not produced a long list of purported lies, because you cannot. An ethical, stand-up person would admit that she got emotional, and made a false statement. An apology would allow you to move on.
Otherwise, every comment you make from now on will be an opportunity to show readers what kind of a person you are. And it isn’t pretty.

Steve Milesworthy

July 6, 2014 2:34 am

There is some context missing from this analysis of the graph that appeared in the Telegraph.
Now it may be true that the author of a newspaper article normally does not see the art-work that is next to the article, and it would be perfectly reasonable to assume that the same occurred in this case.
However, this was not a normal article. The article was published alongside a two-part pull-out. I assume warm-refs.pdf is the contents of that pull-out, based on George Monbiot’s contemporaneous analysis.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/nov/14/science.comment
I would say that this was a somewhat unprecedented publication. The Telegraph is a big “quality” (as opposed to tabloid) newspaper in the UK and at in 2006 was being bought by one in thirty homes (650,000 copies). So to include, at great expense, a two-part pull-out on a complex scientific subject by someone who admits to not being a scientist, was a very surprising decision and must have involved a lot of discussion with the most senior editors.
So there was a great deal more to this publication than some journalist or commenter filing a copy to the editor for the editor to deal with how he pleases.

gnomish

July 6, 2014 2:36 am

i only checked to read stealey, cuz i usually like his comments.
richard- it looks to me like abbot didn’t say what you think he said… if it matters…

Non Nomen

July 6, 2014 3:11 am

Steve Milesworthy says:
July 6, 2014 at 2:34 am
…
I would say that this was a somewhat unprecedented publication. The Telegraph is a big “quality” (as opposed to tabloid) newspaper in the UK and at in 2006 was being bought by one in thirty homes (650,000 copies). So to include, at great expense, a two-part pull-out on a complex scientific subject by someone who admits to not being a scientist, was a very surprising decision and must have involved a lot of discussion with the most senior editors.
So there was a great deal more to this publication than some journalist or commenter filing a copy to the editor for the editor to deal with how he pleases.
___________________________________________
Some really interesting background you mention here. What did the telegraphists say or what are they going to say in court? How did THEY handle that delicate matter? And can we trust in a newspaper that seems to have manipulated data? Maybe Lord Monckton can tell more about the procedures at the Telegraph, since he had been a publisher himself?

J Murphy

July 6, 2014 3:34 am

dbstealey, you wrote :
—“1) That is one item, which is merely a difference of opinion. Only the monarch can make a definitive ruling on the matter. Differences of opinion cannot be arbitrarily classified as “being economical with the truth” [AKA: lying].”
It isn’t a difference of opinion – the statement given in the letter is issued on behalf of the monarch (or, in the modern sense, actually Parliament or the Government) and legal action could follow if Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley were to make such a claim in future. The particular reasons are given in Mereworth v Ministry of Justice, [2011] EWHC 1589 (Ch); [2011] WLR (D) 217 (http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2011/1589.html&query=mereworth&method=boolean#disp3).
Also, the monarch doesn’t make “definitive rulings” – the monarch ‘assents’ to the wishes of Parliament.
Certainly not a “difference of opinion”!

Scott Wilmot Bennett

July 6, 2014 4:13 am

I don’t buy into the silly arguments concerning the provenance of
the “IPCC” MWP graph provided by Christopher Monckton in the Telegraph reference materials.
It is clear enough to the eye, that they are identical graphs (Only the labels differ).
When overlaid they are a perfect match, so much so, that it is clear they are from the same source.
What I want to point out particularly, is that both carry a transcription error that has been transposed to both images. This points unequivocally to a common source for the graphs and the error.
The error is in the horizontal axis. It contains a non-linear distortion which cause the spacing between years to be uneven. It can’t be corrected with a simple transform and would be time consuming to duplicate not to mention pointless.
This kind of distortion commonly occurs when a physical document is scanned. Any warping of the paper will be replicated in the copy.
I downloaded both graphs, from the IPCC’s website and the Telegraph.
Both images contain the identical non-linear error that is apparent when the time line of each is laid against itself.
I have linked to an animated gif that illustrates the points made above:
http://tinypic.com/r/30sy7x3/8

Phil Clarke

July 6, 2014 4:58 am

Lord Monckton’s mendacity generally takes these forms:
1. Cherry-picking studies and data that support his case, while misrepresenting or ignoring contrary evidence.
2. Getting the science wrong and repeating the erroneous science even after it has been shown to be so, often at a louder volume. Nothing wrong with making errors, but Monckton’s response when his are pointed out generally consists of a bluster-filled but vacuous rebuttal, perhaps with a bullying threat of legal action – almost never followed through – while he carries on with the same false claims at a higher volume.
3. Misrepresenting science and scientists. One frequently follows one of his references given to support a point to find the science and usually the scientists says something else altogether.
4. Mis-stating or overstating the facts.
Examples of (1)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/moncktons-deliberate-manipulation/
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/moncktons-artful-graph/
At this very website, (where siting and equipment issues are highlighted, hah) Monckton uses the Central England Temperature series to try to indicate a (cherry-picked) period starting from before the mercury-in-glass thermometer was even invented had a faster rising temperature than recent decades, even after I’ve pointed out that the data points were rounded to the nearest 0.5C, making such a calculation meaningless.
Examples of 2 would be Monckton’s paper published on the APS website, (which he falsely claimed was a peer-reviewed article, which annoyed the physicists) the 125 errors of fact were documented here:
http://www.altenergyaction.org/Monckton.html
Or the response of a group of climate scientists to Monckton’s testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-response.pdf
Or the ‘rap sheet’ compiled by Barry Bickermore
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/lord-moncktons-rap-sheet/
Or Skeptical Science’s ‘Monckton Myths’
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton_Myths_arg.htm
Examples of (3) are collated here http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/Monckton_vs_Scientists.pdf
For example, Monckton frequently cited the work on atmospheric radiation of Dr Rachel Pinker (amusingly getting the scientist’s gender wrong). [Reply: As you amusingly spell Lord Monckton’s name wrong below. ~ mod.]
Monkton: “What, then, caused the third period of warming? Most of that third and most recent period of rapid warming fell within the satellite era, and the satellites confirmed measurements from ground stations showing a considerable, and naturally-occurring, global brightening from 1983-2001 (Pinker et al., 2005).”
Dr Pinker responded “This statement in effect equates temperature change with surface solar radiation change which, as noted in points 2 and 3 above, is only one input into a complex climate process. Also, it is not necessarily the case that global brightening is naturally-occurring; it can be caused by anthropogenic aerosols or changes in the atmospheric moisture content as well as clouds, possibly affected by increasing CO2 levels.”
In the Telegraph piece that carried the controversial graphs, Monckton wrote:
“Sami Solanki, a solar physicist, says that in the past half-century the sun has been warmer, for longer, than at any time in at least the past 11,400 years, contributing a base forcing equivalent to a quarter of the past century’s warming. That’s before adding climate feedbacks.”
But oddly omitted Solanki’s complete scientific opinion: “I am not a denier of global warming produced by an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases. Already at present the overwhelming source of global warming is due to manmade greenhouse gases and their influence will continue to grow in the future as their concentration increases”
http://www2.mps.mpg.de/homes/solanki/
Examples of 4 would be a fabrication to sell merchandise:
A SCOTTISH aristocrat who claimed he was forced to sell his ancestral pile after losing a fortune on a $1 million puzzle has admitted that he invented the story to boost sales.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/scotland/top-stories/aristocrat-admits-tale-of-lost-home-was-stunt-to-boost-puzzle-sales-1-679237
Lying about his words at the gate-crashed Copenhagen conference…
“It was not I who called them Hitler Youth. It was three Germans and a Dane in the audience”
Not according to the video, sir 1.26. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZw8yF5alkM
Or recently here, claiming he ‘won’ the UK High Court case against the distribution of Nobel prize winner Al Gore’s OScar-winning documentary to UK schools. The case was an attempt by Stewart Dimmock, a school governor, to get a Court order for the film to be banned, so the only reasonable interpretation of ‘winning’ would be if such an order was made. The Judge decided not to make any such order and in fact described the film as ‘substantially founded upon scientific research and fact’ and ruled that ‘Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate’. The film is thus ruled fit and remains available for educational use, with some changes to the Teachers notes detailing differences between the films interpretation and mainstream scientific opinion.
Dimmock was ordered to pay a third of his costs, about £60K. If that is a ‘win’, what does losing look like?
Then there is his development of a wonder-drug, which will cure anything from AIDS to the common cold …..
That’s just a few examples of His Lordship failing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. Follow the links to discover many, many many more.
Will you have the courage to post this, or will it disappear like my previous completely polite and completely factual corrections to His Lordship’s wrong assertions?

Margaret Hardman

July 6, 2014 6:42 am

dbstealey, as you well know, having had it pointed out a number of time, the issue of Monckton not being a member of the House Of Lords is not a matter of opinion and is not something that any of our earnest twittering about will change. Parliament has decided, its officer has made an instruction and, under our constitution such as it stands, there is a definitive ruling. Monckton is not a member of the House of Lords, period.
As for a lengthy list of examples – I didn’t take long to Google a lengthy list last night. Since you are too impatient to wait for me to put my list into order, perhaps you would like to Google your own. I shall take my time ensuring that my list is correct.
By the way, since you like to put words into my mouth, I stand by my science and am not in the least bit worried about my credibility, especially not on the world’s most popular climate science website (TM).

richardscourtney

July 6, 2014 7:31 am

Margaret Hardman:
I am astonished that you conclude your post at July 6, 2014 at 1:45 am with the falsehood that I am “plain wrong”. Your egregious post says in total

The 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is not now, now has he ever been, a member of the House of Lords. http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2011/july/letter-to-viscount-monckton/. That much is plain and simple and stated in my link.
That his lordship has said words to the contrary is also beyond doubt. That he stood for election to the House in 2007 is also beyond doubt. I haven’t had breakfast yet so I might still have time for some impossible beliefs but this cannt be one of them. So, Richard, you are plain wrong.

As I have repeatedly stated, being a Member of the House of Lords (HoL) is NOT the same as being a Sitting Member of the HoL. Only Sitting Members can speak in the Chamber and can vote on matters there discussed. Viscount Monckton is a Member of the HoL and he says he is.
A Member of the HoL can stand in an election to become a Sitting Member of the HoL. I cannot and you cannot because we are not Members of the HoL. But Viscount Monckton of Brenchley can stand in an election to become a Sitting Member because he is a Member of the HoL and – as you admit – in 2007 he did stand for such election without objection to his standing.
You are smearing and – despite the trolling of J Murphy – the opinion of some flunky changes none of this because only the monarch can change it.
Simply, nothing I wrote on this is “plain wrong” and nothing you have written about this is right.
Richard

richardscourtney

July 6, 2014 7:49 am

J Murphy:
In your post at July 6, 2014 at 3:34 am you assert

Also, the monarch doesn’t make “definitive rulings” – the monarch ‘assents’ to the wishes of Parliament.

Your assertion is absolutely and emphatically not true.
The monarch provides Letters Patent which provide peerages and only the monarch can revoke Letters Patent. HM Government – or any subject of the Crown – can petition the monarch about a peerage but the monarch has no responsibility or precedent which requires the monarch to agree to the petition.
A peerage differs from other awards (e.g. knighthoods) in that a peerage provides Membership of the House of Lords (HoL). A Member of the HoL has a right to stand in elections for appointment to become a Sitting Member of the HoL. Sitting Members have voting rights in the HoL – including entitlement to vote in these HoL elections – but Members don’t have such voting rights.
Richard

Jonathan Abbott

July 6, 2014 8:32 am

richardscourtney:
I am utterly bewildered by your attacks on me. My first post said:
“Only someone entirely ignorant of the British system of peerages would think that holding the title ‘Lord’ is evident of a claim to be a sitting member of the House of Lords. They are two different things.”
The point I was making is that I have seen a number of comments on previous threads assert that Viscount Monckton is not a real ‘Lord’ because he is not a voting member of the House of Lords, and his claim to be a member of the peerage is somehow fake. I was trying to head that off, I was not commenting on Lord Monckton’s claims to be a ‘non-voting’ member of the HoL, which is not a topic that interests me. I note J Murphy has posted up some links but I assume Lord Monckton has reasons of his own for his claim; neither side interests me. I only meant to pre-empt any refutations of his claim to the honorific ‘Lord’.
In my second comment I said:
“J Murphy, regardless of what Viscount Monckton may or may not have said (it doesn’t interest me and I can’t be bothered to check), since the House of Lords was reformed a few years ago there are plenty of Britons who are members of the peerage who do not sit in the house of Lords.
Anyone who is unable to accept this simple fact only reveals their own ignorance. The only possible reason anyone has for raising this point is to mount an ad hominem attack.”
– I was merely trying to reinforce my previous point.
There appears to have been nothing more than a mis-communication between us. I expect and hope that you will now apologise and withdraw your claims that I have been guilty of “blatant and deliberate falsehood or an example of psychological projection.”
As I final point, I am dismayed that the moment you decide I am not on your side of the debate, you accuse me of a “…falsehood (as do most of your statements on WUWT)”, and “As is your common practice, you have introduced a ‘red herring’.” Such demonstrably false claims reflect poorly on your objectivity.

richardscourtney

July 6, 2014 8:35 am

gnomish:
Your post at July 6, 2014 at 2:36 am says in total

i only checked to read stealey, cuz i usually like his comments.
richard- it looks to me like abbot didn’t say what you think he said… if it matters…

I quoted Abbott verbatim and in total and commented on what he wrote. He has not disputed any part of my understanding of his writings.
If you think Abbott intended something other than he wrote then it would have been helpful if you had said what you think he intended. Abbott would probably appreciate an excuse to pretend he wrote other than his falsehoods which I refuted.
Richard

Monckton of Brenchley

July 6, 2014 9:25 am

All this rubbish about the House of Lords is off topic. When some custard-faced clerk put up a posting on the House of Lords website telling me not to say I was a member of the House (tellingly having failed to contact me first), I was astonished. So, on returning to the UK from Australia, where publication of the clerk’s absurd letter had been carefully timed to precede by hours a major, prime-time, one-hour TV debate between me and the director of the Australia Institute (a shoddy tactic that failed: my opponent lost heavily), I asked my lawyers to approach a barrister learned in peerage law. His conclusion, in one of the most plainly-worded opinions I have seen, was that in answering an Australian journalist’s question “Are you a member of the House of Lords” by saying “Yes, but without the right to sit or vote” I was at all points correct.. He concluded, “The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is a member of the House of Lords, albeit without the right to sit or vote, and he is fully entitled to say so.” Those here who claim to know better know no more peerage law than they do of climate science.
The House of Lords Act 1999, which abolished the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit or vote but did not take away their peerages, defines membership of the House in the narrowest sense as the right to sit and vote. In that sense I am not a member, but I had made that explicitly clear in my answer to the journalist. This whole affair was a political tactic by the usual suspects with the willing assistance of the over-politicized clerk, whose role in these matters is confined to issuing certificates to say who is entitled to sit and vote and who is not. He had no need to write his posting, for I had already made clear in my answer to the Australian journalist, live on air a a few days before the debate, that I have no right to sit or vote. And that, whether the usual suspects like it or not, is an end of the matter.
As I said at the outset, this constant carping on about the House of Lords, though very good for the website’s hit-count and hence for Anthony’s advertising revenue, is off topic and I am asking him and his excellent and patient moderators to ban it here and hereafter after as a topic of discussion. Of course I am doing damage to the true-believers’ cause, and of course, lacking any scientific basis for undoing that damage, they will follow the tactic of totalitarians everywhere and try to denigrate the man and not his argument. If Aristotle were alive today, as the old saying goes, he would be turning in his grave.

dbstealey

July 6, 2014 9:27 am

Phil Clarke,
Thank you for all your anti-Monckton assertions. Since I do not click on blogs like Mann’s, you would do better to post whatever examples you want to cite here.
Not that I agree with your characterization; I don’t. You have a personal vendetta, an axe to grind, and so you cite differences of opinion or point of view as “lies”. Despicable on your part.
Instead of playing the man, play the ball: explain to us how Monckton’s science is wrong. Everything else just feeds your personal fixation on Lord Monckton. That reflects badly on you, not on him.

Margaret Hardman

July 6, 2014 9:32 am

Richard, I’m not sure which is more sore at the moment, my face or my palm. It doesn’t matter what you or I think. David Beamish, Clerk of the Parliaments said:
“I must repeat my predecessor’s statement that you are not and have never been a Member of the House of Lords. Your assertion that you are a Member, but without the right to sit or vote, is a contradiction in terms. No-one denies that you are, by virtue of your letters Patent, a Peer. That is an entirely separate issue to membership of the House. This is borne out by the recent judgment in Baron Mereworth v Ministry of Justice (Crown Office) where Mr Justice Lewison stated:
“In my judgment, the reference [in the House of Lords Act 1999] to ‘a member of the House of Lords’ is simply a reference to the right to sit and vote in that House … In a nutshell, membership of the House of Lords means the right to sit and vote in that House. It does not mean entitlement to the dignity of a peerage.” ”
If you struggle to understand what that actually means then I, for one, cannot help you. It is palpably clear. There is no such thing as a member of the Lords who cannot actually sit in the Lords. If such a stupid reading were allowed then I am an MP, just not allowed by virtue of never being elected, to take a seat in the chamber of the House Of Commons.
Strangely, the fact that I used the most pertinent, indeed only relevant, piece of evidence to show how Lord Monckton is not one of the things he claims to be (he is a Lord, however) has demonstrated my point about reading comprehension.
You, and others, may wish to peruse this list http://www.theyworkforyou.com/peers/ which is an independent website. I think you’ll find someone absent from their list of members of the House Of Lords.

richardscourtney

July 6, 2014 9:40 am

Jonathan Abbott:
Your final two paragraphs of your post at July 6, 2014 at 8:32 am say

There appears to have been nothing more than a mis-communication between us. I expect and hope that you will now apologise and withdraw your claims that I have been guilty of “blatant and deliberate falsehood or an example of psychological projection.”
As I final point, I am dismayed that the moment you decide I am not on your side of the debate, you accuse me of a “…falsehood (as do most of your statements on WUWT)”, and “As is your common practice, you have introduced a ‘red herring’.” Such demonstrably false claims reflect poorly on your objectivity.

OK. I completely and fully apologise if I misunderstood your intention and you were saying Viscount Monckton is a Member of the House of Lords.
I quoted your previous posts verbatim and in full, so if I did misrepresent them then readers could compare my comments to your actual words.
I did NOT introduce a ‘red herring’: I answered posts which falsely claimed Viscount Monckton is not a Member of the House of Lords. I introduced nothing.
It is simply true that most of your comments on WUWT have been falsehoods that you have failed to correct when challenged on them by people including me. Hence, I saw no reason to doubt my understanding that your posts were falsely attacking Viscount Monckton. If – as you now claim – you were attempting to refute those false attacks then I apologise for that misunderstanding, too.
Richard

dbstealey

July 6, 2014 9:49 am

Margaret Hardman is still fixated on Lord Monckton. As usual, she is wrong when she says there is a “definitive” ruling. I explained to her above that only the sovreign can make such a a final ruling. In any case, that simpleminded criticism has nothing whatever to do with Hardman’s scurrilous charge of lying. As stated above, it is only a difference of opinion. Since you are unteachable, I will not try again on that score.
Margaret keeps flogging away on that dead horse, because she cannot produce ‘a lengthy list’ of lies, as she claimed. That makes Margaret Hardman a liar, no?
Margaret says:
As for a lengthy list of examples – I didn’t take long to Google a lengthy list last night.
So where is it, Margaret? As Anthony noted above:
Your list should be able to be produced within mere seconds of seeing this comment, since you obviously have it in hand.
You have been equivocating since yesterday. When you made your accusation you either had your list, or you were lying about it.
Now you are scrambling to try and find something, anything, to avoid showing that you are a liar and a bearer of false witness. So make it good, Ms Hardman. Any list you manage to come up with must be “lengthy”, and it must be factual. No pointing to differences of opinion such as your letter above. That cannot qualify as a lie. Only a long list of lies will rescue you from your own public prevarication.
Margaret Hardman is on trial here, not Lord Monckton. Ms Hardman claims to be a witness to lies. Produce them, or the readers of WUWT will know exactly who the liar is.

J Murphy

July 6, 2014 10:06 am

richardscourtnery, you wrote:
—“A peerage differs from other awards (e.g. knighthoods) in that a peerage provides Membership of the House of Lords (HoL).”
I don’t know what you mean by “Membership” (perhaps you can explain) because the fact is that ‘The House of Lords Act 1999’ ended the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords, and deprived excluded hereditary peers (i.e. all but 92) of all the privileges of membership of the House of Lords. What is the “Membership” you mention?
(http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1999/34/contents)

Jonathan Abbott

July 6, 2014 10:06 am

richardscourtney,
I have to say I am very disappointed that you continue to attack me. When you say that “…most of your comments on WUWT have been falsehoods that you have failed to correct when challenged on them by people including me,” were you were referring to this article that Anthony was kind enough to publish:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/25/my-personal-path-to-catastrophic-agw-skepticism/
…or was that an example of me being “…an egregious troll”?
Then, in an example of extreme irony, you seem to think that I was accusing you of introducing a “red herring”, when all I did was quote your own words back to you.
Your behaviour in this thread suggests that you are no more than a cheerleader for your particular side, rather than someone who rationally judges individual comments and commenters on their merit. That your chosen ‘side’ is also mine is beside the point. I have seen many examples of such behaviour among Alarmists but I don’t remember seeing this among sceptics before. Oh well.
The comments on this thread have already moved wildly off-topic so I’ll save everyone’s time by allowing you the last word.

Margaret Hardman

July 6, 2014 10:42 am

Db, I’m not on trial.
The Queen rightly and nevessarily delegates plenty of matters to various people. The matter of membership of the House of Lords is one of them. The Queen does not even write her own birthday honours list. Isn’t it funny how, in a thread about the truth or otherwise of a claim of Lord Monckton, that I become the one on trial. I’d quit, DBS, before you find the temple that the Rt Hon’s father dowsed for.

Margaret Hardman

July 6, 2014 10:54 am

Db, I noticed that you want a factual list. Since you seem incapable of accepting the facts I have so far adduced regarding the House of Lords, there would be no point listing anything for you. For more discerning and intelligent readers it might be different.

Non Nomen

July 6, 2014 11:21 am

dbstealey says:
July 6, 2014 at 9:49 am
Margaret Hardman is still fixated on Lord Monckton. As usual, she is wrong when she says there is a “definitive” ruling. I explained to her above that only the sovreign can make such a a final ruling. In any case, that simpleminded criticism has nothing whatever to do with Hardman’s scurrilous charge of lying. As stated above, it is only a difference of opinion. Since you are unteachable, I will not try again on that score.
Margaret keeps flogging away on that dead horse, because she cannot produce ‘a lengthy list’ of lies, as she claimed. That makes Margaret Hardman a liar, no?
…
Margaret Hardman is on trial here, not Lord Monckton. Ms Hardman claims to be a witness to lies. Produce them, or the readers of WUWT will know exactly who the liar is.
________________________________________________
I fully second that.
Once again, the true nature of CAGW propaganda has unveiled its ugly antic in the postings of M.H.
The arguments of M. Mann are flawed. So are those of M. Hardman.

Slartibartfast

July 6, 2014 11:51 am

It’s interesting to note how many times that Lord Monckton’s Wikipedia entry has been edited; several times by William M. Connolley. There were even a few edits by a guy named Tim Lambert, which is also interesting.

richardscourtney

July 6, 2014 12:13 pm

Jonathan Abbott:
You say you offer me the last word. No need. I twice said that if I had misunderstood you then I apologised and I explained why I may have misunderstood you. Your response was your post at July 6, 2014 at 10:06 am. I am content to leave that as being the last word which people can read for themselves.
Richard

richardscourtney

July 6, 2014 12:23 pm

Margaret Hardman:
In your post at July 6, 2014 at 10:42 am you say

Isn’t it funny how, in a thread about the truth or otherwise of a claim of Lord Monckton, that I become the one on trial.

Yes, I agree.
I write to suggest that you may benefit from reflecting on how you have managed to contrive that “funny” situation.
Your reputation and situation are not improved by your posting unjustified smears, outrageous falsehoods, and claims to defamatory knowledge which you fail to substantiate.
Richard

Robert in Calgary

July 6, 2014 12:35 pm

Like most alarmists these days, Margaret clams to have facts but can’t produce them when challenged.
“oh, our host might snip them”
“oh, I’m going through the list to make sure it’s correct”
“oh, you won’t accept them as facts”
“oh, please let me change the subject”
If she isn’t going to post her legendary lengthy list, I wouldn’t mind if she gets the heave ho until Labour Day.

dbstealey

July 6, 2014 12:40 pm

Margaret Hardman says:
I’m not on trial.
Yes, you are, Margaret. Readers are your jury.
You stated that you had “a lengthy list” of Lord Monckton’s lies. Several readers called you on that, asking for your list. You still pretended to have a long list. You wrote:
As for a lengthy list of examples – I didn’t take long to Google a lengthy list last night.
So where is it?
Anthony wrote:
Your list should be able to be produced within mere seconds of seeing this comment, since you obviously have it in hand.
That was yesterday. But still no ‘list’. Instead, you keep beating a dead Parliamentary horse. A differnce of opinion is not proof of lying, Margaret. It is a difference of opinion.
You are on trial here for falsely claiming to have a long list of lies. But when your feet are held to the fire, you cannot produce “a lengthy list” of those putative lies. You are on trial here for bearing false witness against a respected contributor to this site, who has done you no harm. In fact, it is you who lies. Isn’t it? With your lies you are doing serious harm to the reputation of someone who has done you no wrong.
When pressed, you wrote:
I shall take my time ensuring that my list is correct.
As I stated above, make sure your list is a long one, as you alleged. Make sure it proves that Lord Monckton was “lying”.
The nonsense about whether Parliament has voted on the HoL is simply misdirection on your part. No rational person would call those different points of view a “lie”. You are simply tapdancing around the fact that you have accused someone of being a serial liar. That reflects on entirely you, Margaret Hardman, not on him. He is innocent until proven guilty, but so far you have posted zero proof to support your accusation.
Robespierre comes to mind. After causing untold carnage with his rabble-rousing, society turned on him, and his ultimate fate was the same as the fate of the innocent people he accused. You are no different.
So yes, you are on trial here in the court of public opinion. You have only two options:
First, you can produce your alleged long list of lies. As stated, make sure it is long, and that it proves that Lord Monckton is a serial liar.
Second, you may extricate yourself by apologizing to Lord Monckton. No one would think less of you; how could they? Sometimes people get emotional and make mistakes. When that happens, an apology is in order. But with no ‘lengthy list’ or apology, you convict yourself of being a false withness. In Western civilization there are few things more evil, or reprehensible, or despicable than bearing false witness against an innocent person.
The choice is yours Margaret Hardman. Because as you see, you are on trial here. Produce the list that you repeatedly claimed to have, or apologize to Lord Monckton. There is no third choice for an honorable person.

milodonharlani

July 6, 2014 1:01 pm

http://lordsoftheblog.net/about/
Chris is correct:
Membership of the Lords
Currently there are around 780 Members of the House of Lords, mostly ‘life peers’ who are appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister. Members that are nominated by political parties are vetted by the House of Lords Appointments Commission, which is an independent public body, before they are accepted into the House of Lords. The Commission also puts forward recommendations for non-political nominees.
As well as life peers there are 92 hereditary peers, although their place in the Lords is no longer an automatic birthright following the House of Lords Act 1999. There are also 26 bishops and archbishops of the Church of England, who are known as the Lords Spiritual.
Members of the House of Lords work on behalf of the UK as a whole, rather than for any particular constituency, unlike MPs who represent a geographical area. Many Members remain active in their field of expertise, whether it be political campaigning, science, medicine, the arts, or a whole range of other areas.

milodonharlani

July 6, 2014 1:04 pm

Contains relevant portions of the 1999 Act:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld/ldstords/147/14702.htm

Phil Clarke

July 6, 2014 1:59 pm

Thank you for all your anti-Monckton assertions. Since I do not click on blogs like Mann’s, you would do better to post whatever examples you want to cite here.
DBS – Looks like Margaret has a point, you’re going to dismiss without giving any reason any evidence that contradicts your worldview. One out of eight links was to RealClimate, and I provided inline more than enough examples of His Lordship stating falsehoods to make counting the spoons after he’s left the party a very good idea.
You have a personal vendetta, an axe to grind, and so you cite differences of opinion or point of view as “lies”. Despicable on your part.
Ah the difference of opinion thing again, strange that Monckton’s ‘differences of opinion’ all seem to go in the same direction, such as the opinion stated by his SPPI that the piece His Lordship authored for a newsletter on the APS website, and in which Arthur Smith found over 100 errors (linked above) was in fact ‘Mathematical proof that there is no “climate crisis” […] in a major, peer-reviewed paper in Physics and Society, a learned journal of the 46,000-strong American Physical Society”
Monckton states that the article was reviewed by Al Saperstein… but wait
“I spoke to Al Saperstein of Wayne State University in Michigan, one of two co-editors of Physics & Society, the offending newsletter. He stressed that that the article was not sent to anyone for peer-reviewing. Saperstein himself edited it. “I’m a little ticked off that some people have claimed that this was peer-reviewed,” he said. “It was not.”
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2008/07/now-will-you-publish-my-paper-showing.html
Saperstein was the guy the peer said peer-reviewed the peer’s paper, which paper was, it goes without saying, peerless nonsense.
explain to us how Monckton’s science is wrong.
Already been done, many times over by better scientists and science communicators than me, but as you seem so click-averse, to take the central claim of his APS paper that climate sensitivity is a lot smaller than the IPCC’s value, he uses the correct formula
ΔTλ = ΔF2x κ f
where
ΔTλ This is the change in temperature than should be expected from a doubling of CO2 levels.
ΔF2x This is the “forcing”, or the change in the energy balance at the top of troposphere, which results from a doubling of CO2 levels. It has units of Watts/m2.
κ This is the “base sensitivity”, or the expected response of the Earth’s temperature, per unit forcing. It has units of K W-1 m2.
f This is a dimensionless multiplication factor, capturing the effect of various climate feedbacks to amplify or damp the temperature response.
To get his number Monckton amongst other ‘adjustments’ divides the forcings by three. (equation 17) To quote ‘Duae Quartunciae’
That’s just surreal. There’s no basis to reduce the forcing here. It’s the temperature response that is involved. He gives a vague appeal to Lindzen (2007), Taking greenhouse warming seriously, in Energy & Environment 18 (7-8). But that paper does not propose any reducing in forcing; only to sensitivity… on roughly the same dubious basis of limited troposphere warming.
Not content with that Monckton also divides the temperature change by half on the basis of McKitrick (2007). But this (disputed) paper only applies to land, Monckton applies the adjustment to the whole globe.
I’ve already listed Arthur Smith’s list of errors – those with a less closed mind can find DQ’s full critique here http://duoquartuncia.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/aps-and-global-warming-what-were-they.html and Gavin Schmidt’s here http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/07/once-more-unto-the-bray/
Anyone taking Monckton’s ‘science’ on trust, loses the right to call themselves ‘sceptical’, or so it seems to me.

dbstealey

July 6, 2014 3:13 pm

Phil Clarke,
Ask any editor in the world if writers make mistakes. The answer is that they do, all the time, and a lot. I regularly make errors like that, and no doubt you do, too. Every writer does.
Every statement I have ever read regarding Lod Monckton and “lying” amounts to nothing more than ad hominem attacks. You, like many others who cannot refute the science, fall back on your personal attacks. It is reprehensible. If you can show where it has been adjudicated that someone lied, then that is acceptable. Short of that, it is just a scurrilous ad-hom attack. I suspect that’s all you ever had. Prove me wrong.
An ad-hom opinion is far different from lying, which is Ms Hardman’s accusation. Note that Hardman has never posted her ‘long list’ of ‘lies’ since she made her accusation, despite pretending that she has it at her fingertips. Bearing false witness is serious, and nothing you have written is anything other than being an apologist for that. If you have your own ‘long list’ of putative ‘lies’, then post them right here. I for one am not taking your reading assignments on other blogs, especially incredible ones like SS. My time is more important than that. Anything you post had better be verifiable as a “lie” and adjudicated as such, and not as a difference of scientific opinion that you do not agree with, or differences in culture, or governmental opinions. We know what a lie is. A lie, for example, is claiming that you possess a long list — and then using endless excuses to avoid posting it. You are doing the same thing, attacking by vague implication. Once again: prove he was lying. If you can.
Next, the actions of Planet Earth support Lord Monckton’s view, and not the IPCC’s. The real world does not support your belief. Global warming has stopped. Therefore, climate sensitivity to ∆CO2 must be far lower than what is claimed by the UN/IPCC — which is a government body pretending to be a scientific body. The IPCC’s marching orders involve determining the human causes of global warming. With a remit like that, of course they will find what they are well paid to find.
Argue all you like, it is amusing to skeptics, because the real world flatly contradicts what you are trying to sell. If you admitted the truth: that there is no empirical evidence showing that CO2 causes runaway global warming, then you would have no reason to continue arguing. In fact, you have already lost the science debate, which is ipso facto why your only remaining argument consists of ad hominem attacks.
Some minuscule warming is beneficial. More CO2 is a good thing. The only reason to continue your anti-science arguing is either because you have your ego invested in your new religion, or you are getting some sort of payoff.
The facts show conclusively that the “climate change” scare was a false alarm. But like Margaret Hardman, you are incapable of admitting that you were wrong. That is either devious, or crazy. Maybe both.

Simon

July 6, 2014 3:35 pm

Phil Clarke
Firstly can I say your two (main) responses here have been a treat to read. I have been aware of many of the points you raised about Monckton, but not all.
Secondly (and sadly) dbstealey’s response to you is about as good as he gets. You have outlined a number of times our friend Mr Monckton has made significant errors in his work, but you also detailed an article that quoted Mr Monckton admitting he lied to promote his puzzle and so make money. In any real persons book, that is dodgy stuff. ( In my opinion….The fact Monckton seems to think it is ok to do this, says volumes about him)
So what happens? DB addressed none of your specific points, he (to deflect that he had no response) just moves on to attack someone else who till this point has not provided a list. (I suspect one is coming though) Then he moves to his usual rant about there being no GW. If nothing else he is consistent.
Thanks again and looking forward to more of your posts.

Scott Wilmot Bennett

July 6, 2014 6:14 pm

I got a surprise this morning when I overlaid the Lamb/Daly graph and the Telegraph graphic illustrated in the head post.
The graphs are identical except for aspect ratio.
I discovered this by adjusting the height independently of the width, resulting in a compressed temperature axis in the Lamb/Daly graph.
It is clear to me that this is the source of the graph as Anthony has suggested.
And this in fact is the way it was made (Adjusting the aspect ratio of the source graphic).
The spacing of the horizontal lines clinched it for me.
The lines of the temperature axes line up exactly and the unusual origin, starting at 8.5 is explained by the Lamb/Daly graph which begins at 8.25 with only every second line labeled.
I have put together a short animated gif that illustrates this perfect mapping.
http://oi59.tinypic.com/25j9gn8.jpg
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=25j9gn8&s=8#.U7jO0yg9Vtk
[Thank you. .mod]

dbstealey

July 6, 2014 6:46 pm

Simon says:
You have outlined a number of times our friend Mr Monckton has made significant errors in his work…
No, he hasn’t. Try reading before posting, you might learn something. All Phil Clarke did was link to some incredible blogs. And “outlined” is a weasel word. Clarke made some vague assertions, and you swallowed the bait.
Next: exactly what “significant errors in his work” has Mr Monckton made? Don’t waste our time with sad links to sad blogs. In your own words, please.
Next, Monckton specifically did not admit that he lied. So you are either lying about it, or you are an ignoramus. Try reading the source before posting.
Finally, Simon sez:
DB addressed none of your specific points
In fact, I addressed the only point that matters: the alarmist cult has been consistently wrong about everything. Global warming stopped 17+ years ago. Where is your god now?
As to Clarke’s other points, what would they be, exactly? Speak for yourself. I don’t respond to links thrown out as if they mean anything, and I don’t do homework. Explain for yourself what those points are — not with links to other blogs, but in your own words. If you can.
Run along now back to your thinly-trafficked alarmist echo chamber blog, where a handful of swivel-eyed alarmists mutually head-nod whenever they read something emotionally satisfying. Here, we discuss specific facts. Try that for a change — it will be a first.
==============================
Scott Wilmot Bennett,
Thank you for those charts. They thoroughly debunk the wild-eyed notion that the charts in question are materially different. Anthony was right as usual: this is a tempest in a teapot, because it is all the alarmist cult has. They are running around in circles like Chicken Little, pointing at an insignificant graph and clucking that the sky is falling. But it is only a tiny acorn.

Robert in Calgary

July 6, 2014 7:27 pm

Phil Clarke? Would that be alarmist troll Phil Clarke?
Ah, yes it is.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/26/quote-of-the-week-myles-allens-failure-to-communicate/
As our host commented in May 2012 –
“I’m sure our UK troll supreme Phil Clarke will bring his famous expert consultancy services to bear in comments to tell us how we’ve all misinterpreted this as he’s done in previous comments here. /sarc”

Simon

July 6, 2014 8:23 pm

dbstealey
“Next, Monckton specifically did not admit that he lied. So you are either lying about it, or you are an ignoramus. Try reading the source before posting”
Direct quote from Mr Monckton.
“I was selling the house anyway and they asked me if I would be willing to tell people I was selling the house because I was afraid somebody might solve the puzzle too fast. I said ‘yes’. They said, ‘Don’t you mind being made to look an absolute prat’, and I said, ‘No – I’m quite used to that’. History is full of stories that aren’t actually true. We sold shed-loads of extra puzzles and I made an handsome profit – and I sold the house as well.”
I’d call that a lie. What would you call it?

Robert in Calgary

July 6, 2014 8:40 pm

Simon seriously. That’s it?
How scandalous. /sarc.

F. Ross

July 6, 2014 9:37 pm

Simon says:
July 6, 2014 at 8:23 pm
“…
I’d call that a lie. What would you call it?”
Advertising.

dbstealey

July 7, 2014 1:07 am

Hi F. Ross and Robert,
Simon is undoubtedly sitting in his mom’s basement, furiously typing away after reading barry bickmore’s anti-Monckton polemics. But Simon left out this ‘direct quote’ from Lord Monckton:
“I did not admit to lying… it is a matter of record that I sold my house, having admittedly taken full advantage of the publicity opportunity that the circumstances of the sale presented, and paid the prize in full.”.
Simon says he “lied”. But by carefully cherry picking what he posted, and leaving the quote above out, Simon misrepresented the comment. Shame on Simon. He is getting into Margaret Hardman territory… and speaking of Margaret, where is she? Busy researching her “lengthy list”, perhaps?
Simon can re-read bickmore’s nonsense to find Lord Monckton’s comment, but it is tedious reading pages of those ad hominem rants. They have nothing whatever to do with either the graph, or with the science debate — which the alarmist cult won’t discuss, because they don’t have the facts on their side.
There is also a reference by über-troll Phil Clarke, in which he claims that Lucia doesn’t agree with Monckton. But in large, bold font Lucia writes:
Oddly, I agree the IPCC model’s projections look high!
In other words Lucia agrees with Monckton’s view. Sorry, Phil.
I could go on, but everything these jamokes write is ad hominem nonsense. They lost the science debate decisively, so now they think that by piling on the man they can score some points. As if.

Robert Clark

July 7, 2014 1:27 am

Back to important matters, the question of the Medieval Warm Period is fundamental to the question of whether the present warming trend is unprecedented AND whether it would have dangerous effects. It is quite notable that prior to the global warming scare the existence of the MWP was well accepted among climate scientists.
It is only now that supporters of AGW deny its existence. In that sense they could be referred to as climate “deniers”.
Bob Clark

William Connolley

Reply to Robert Clark

July 7, 2014 1:49 am

> It is quite notable that prior to the global warming scare the existence of the MWP was well accepted among climate scientists.
Or so you say, but you offer no evidence. What you seem unable to face up to is that science progresses: there was early work, largely based around conditions in Europe. Subsequent research has found a more mixed picture. But you cling to the Olde Wayes.

Scott Wilmot Bennett

July 7, 2014 2:55 am

Re: Medieval Warm Period
This is my proof to win the $30,000 so don’t steal it! 😉
Global climate change requires that the MWP (Its existence is uncontested) was not global in extent. However, if this argument is true, it would give the lie to the notion of global climate* change. If the ‘climate change’ of the MWP wasn’t global, how could climate change be said to be global! You have to think about this a little but it is logically water tight (Both deductively and inductively IMHO).
This is not a semantic argument, it could be fully fleshed out.
*climate being > 30 years of weather

PJ Clarke.

July 7, 2014 2:55 am

Thanks Simon. Seems the policy here is living up to its ‘no censorship’ banner.
Dbs – Margaret’s exact form of words was ‘economical with the truth’, which has a pedigree which you can Google. Monckton is too smart to tell outright porkies very often (sorry, Uk Slang Porky Pie=Lie), but one can be dishonest without explicitly stating something that one knows to be untrue, I detailed and supported the different forms of Moncktonian mendacity above. It is nearer to propaganda than overt falsehood.
As for significant errors, you are seemingly Ok with a completely arbritrary division by three in forcings and applying a land-only adjustment to the entire globe (inter alia). Or did I get that wrong? That speaks a lot about your ‘scepticism’.
Only the monarch can make a definitive ruling on the matter. Differences of opinion cannot be arbitrarily classified as “being economical with the truth” [AKA: lying].
That is not actually the case, and the HoL thing is a distraction, but let us look at the process and see where it leads. Briefly: UK laws are enacted as Acts of Parliament. An Act starts life as a Bill, goes through several readings in the House of Commons and the Upper House, at the end of which is is voted upon. If it passes the vote the final step that passes the Bill into law as an Act of Parliament is agreement by the Monarch, the Royal Assent. This is largely symbolic however as a minimum it means that the monarch is aware of the Act.
In November 1999 Queen Elizabeth granted Royal Assent to the House of Lords Act. This could hardly be more explicit: ‘
Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—
No-one shall be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage.
So, if Lord Monckton is claiming membership of the basis of his hereditary peerage, then he is disagreeing with the express will of Parliament and the Monarch.
Sorry dbs, you’re wrong again.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1999/34/introduction

PJ Clarke.

July 7, 2014 6:02 am

Monckton’s Key facts about global temperature, and Phil’s 😉
Ø The RSS satellite dataset shows no global warming at all for 214 months from September 1996 to June 2014. That is 50.2% of the entire 426-month satellite record.
UAH shows warming at a rate of 0.8C / century over this ‘pause’.
Ø The fastest measured centennial warming rate was in Central England from 1663-1762, at 0.9 Cº/century – before the industrial revolution. It was not our fault.
The CET series is not fit for this purpose until around 1770. From 1659 to October 1722 the monthly values were stated to a precision of the nearest half-degree C, sometimes 1C.
Ø The global warming trend since 1900 is equivalent to 0.8 Cº per century. This is well within natural variability and may not have much to do with us.
There is no evidence anywhere in the paleo record of a rise in global temperatures at this rate.
Ø The fastest warming trend lasting ten years or more occurred over the 40 years from 1694-1733 in Central England. It was equivalent to 4.3 Cº per century.
See above re CET. It was measured indoors, or inferred from weather diaries or infilled with data from the Netherlands. And it has not been demonstrated that CET is a good proxy for global.
Ø Since 1950, when a human influence on global temperature first became theoretically possible, the global warming trend has been equivalent to 1.2 Cº per century.
No. CO2 may have been responsible for some warming earlier than this.
Ø The fastest warming rate lasting ten years or more since 1950 occurred over the 33 years from 1974 to 2006. It was equivalent to 2.0 Cº per century.
Nope. See RSS 1991-2006 – 2.7C/century http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/hadcrut4gl/from:1990/to:2006/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1991/to:2006/trend/plot/rss/from:1991/to:2006/trend/offset:0.2
Ø In 1990, the IPCC’s mid-range prediction of the near-term warming trend was equivalent to 2.8 Cº per century, higher by two-thirds than its current prediction.
Yes, the IPCC FAR did forecast a 1C increase by 2025 compared to 1990 under ‘BAU’, however the actual forcings ran substantially below BAU, nearer to IPCC scenario C or D which had a predicted warming of 0.1C / decade.
Ø The global warming trend since 1990, when the IPCC wrote its first report, is equivalent to 1.4 Cº per century – half of what the IPCC had then predicted.
Near enough on the observed, if not the predicted.
Ø In 2013 the IPCC’s new mid-range prediction of the near-term warming trend was for warming at a rate equivalent to only 1.7 Cº per century. Even that is exaggerated.
The definition of near-term changed for AR5, it projects an increase of 0.3 to 0.7C in the period 2016-2035 relative to average of 1986-2005, a range of 0.1C to 0.23C/decade.
Ø Though the IPCC has cut its near-term warming prediction, it has not cut its high-end business as usual centennial warming prediction of 4.8 Cº warming to 2100.
This must mean RCP8.5, the most extreme scenario, and Monckton has cherry-picked the top limit, the actual IPCC value ‘most likely’ is 3.7 with a range of 2.6 to 4.8C.
Ø The IPCC’s predicted 4.8 Cº warming by 2100 is more than twice the greatest rate of warming lasting more than ten years that has been measured since 1950.
No. that calculation was wrong.
Ø The IPCC’s 4.8 Cº-by-2100 prediction is almost four times the observed real-world warming trend since we might in theory have begun influencing it in 1950.
But the most likely value – for the most extreme scenario – is just over two times the observed, and the scenario shows acceleration over the century.
Ø Since 1 January 2001, the dawn of the new millennium, the warming trend on the mean of 5 datasets is nil. No warming for 13 years 5 months.
But the uncertainty range in such a short series also embraces the warming trend predicted by the models.
Ø Recent extreme weather cannot be blamed on global warming, because there has not been any global warming. It is as simple as that
Surface air temperature is but one metric, the amount of energy in the climate system has been growing and its distribution changing.
Note that there are errors and distortions in Monckton’s ‘key facts’, but nothing one could describe as a ‘lie’, but neither is this list balanced, complete or accurate.

dbstealey

July 7, 2014 6:20 am

Scott Wilmot Bennett,
There is a mountain of evidence proving the worldwide existence of the MWP. Connolley is just an old blinkered propagandist who doesn’t want anyone else to see the facts. [Mouse over map for interactive charts]
And forget Clarke’s cherry-picking. This chart tells the story.

J Murphy

July 7, 2014 6:51 am

Well, it seems that there is to be allowed no more criticism of the good lord or any more questions to be asked as to how he can claim to be what he has never been. OK, I can understand how uncomfortable such criticisms are to him and his followers.
So, with regard to the MWP and dbstealey’s link, the striking thing about the various graphs is how the MWP seems to encompass the years 600 to 1450 – very roughly: some of the graphs are not exactly very well produced. The question is, therefore, can anyone pick a period during which the MWP was affecting the whole globe at the same time; and can anyone pick a 10 year (or 100 year period if it makes it easier) that was globally warmer then than it has been over the last 10/100 years?

richardscourtney

July 7, 2014 7:39 am

J Murphy:
re your question at July 7, 2014 at 6:51 am, I refer you to
Soon W and Baliunas S ‘Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years’ Climate Research, Vol. 23: 89–110, (2003)
This superb paper can be read here.
It was so good a paper that – as Climategate revealed – Michael Mann organised the ‘Team’ to try to stop its publication and organised a campaign to remove the Editor of Climate Research. These despicable matters can be learned here.
The paper’s Abstract says

The 1000 yr climatic and environmental history of the Earth contained in various proxy records is reviewed. As indicators, the proxies duly represent local climate. Because each is of a different nature, the results from the proxy indicators cannot be combined into a hemispheric or global quantitative composite. However, considered as an ensemble of individual expert opinions, the assemblage of local representations of climate establishes both the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period as climatic anomalies with worldwide imprints, extending earlier results by Bryson et al. (1963), Lamb (1965), and numerous intervening research efforts. Furthermore, the individual proxies can be used to address the question of whether the 20th century is the warmest of the 2nd millennium locally. Across the world, many records reveal that the 20th

The work of Lamb (1965) is presented as the graph under discussion in this thread and is provided in the above essay.
So the answers to your question can be read from that graph and are
Yes, and, the period was between 1100 and 1300 AD.
Richard

richardscourtney

July 7, 2014 7:43 am

Hmmm, one of my links did not work. It is this
http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/28/direct-action-at-harvard/
Richard

William Connolley

July 7, 2014 10:40 am

>> There is a mountain of evidence [http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html] proving the worldwide existence of the MWP.
> the striking thing about the various graphs is how the MWP seems to encompass the years 600 to 1450 – very roughly
Exactly. That page is nearly useless: its an undigested mish-mash of graphs, from which you couldn’t even begin to try to calculate a global or hemispheric mean. It does serve to nicely illustrate the IPCC’s point: that the thing called “MWP” has various different regional manifestations and is by no means at the same time in all places.
> the period was between 1100 and 1300 AD
Really? The top lefthand graph labels the MWP at a time clearly before 1000; probably about 800. The one two below that has two teensy peaks labelled MWP, but they are before 1100. the one just to the right of that has an “MWP” dot, again before 1000 (all of these graphs, BTW, are “adapted from” rather than straight honest reproductions). And so on. The graphs DBS points at simply aren’t evidence for the MWP that RSC believes in.

William Connolley

July 7, 2014 10:48 am

> the period was between 1100 and 1300 AD.
S+B say “(2) Is there an objectively discernible climatic anomaly during the Medieval Warm Period (A.D. 800–1300) in this proxy record?” so I’m not sure why you’re using a different period.

J Murphy

July 7, 2014 11:21 am

richardscourtney, that paper defines it as 800–1300AD as far as I can tell, which is still a wide spread. Couldn’t find any 50 or 100 year periods where the warmth was contemporaneous throughout the globe. In fact, there seems to be a rather large area of the globe missing:
“The figures graphically emphasize the shortage of climatic information extending back to the Medieval Warm Period for at least 7 geographical zones: the Australian and Indian continents, the SE Asian archipelago, large parts of Eastern Europe/Russia, the Middle Eastern deserts, the tropical African and South American lowlands (although the large number of available borehole-heat flow measurements in Australia seems adequate for the reconstruction of ground temperatures back to medieval times; see Huang et al. 2000). Therefore, our conclusions are provisional.”
So I can’t see how it can be claimed that there was a globally warmer period during the Medieval Warm Period than now.
Also, thirteen of the scientists cited extensively in the paper published a rebuttal explaining that Soon and Baliunas had seriously misinterpreted their research:
“On past temperatures and anomalous late-20th-century warmth”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003EO270003/abstract
And there was another later report looking into the same data, and they came up with a different result :
“National Research Council. Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2006.”
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676#toc
Why would anyone want to believe one paper above all others?

F. Ross

July 7, 2014 11:54 am

J Murphy says:
July 7, 2014 at 11:21 am
“…
Why would anyone want to believe one paper above all others?”
Indeed, why? Dr. Mann’s Hockeystick?

J Murphy

July 7, 2014 1:27 pm

Indeed, F.Ross. For more ‘hockeysticks’ and confirmation of such, check:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large-scale_temperature_reconstructions_of_the_last_2,000_years
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=R1
(Another version of a link I gave previously)
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter05_FINAL.pdf
(5.3.5)
No-one should ever rely on one source or one paper, I agree.

richardscourtney

July 7, 2014 1:34 pm

J Murphy:
At July 7, 2014 at 1:27 pm you write

No-one should ever rely on one source or one paper, I agree.

Well, no. It is preferable to have more than one source when the different sources a\re independent. Indeed, that is why I cited the paper of Soon & Balliunas which collates hundreds of independent sources.
Importantly, no-one should ever rely on wicki especially when C0nn0lley has bastardised it.
Richard

dbstealey

July 7, 2014 2:29 pm

J Murphy says:
Well, it seems that there is to be allowed no more criticism of the good lord…
Yo, stupido! Who said that?
Imagine your alarmist blogs wanting to hear how Mann claimed to be a Nobel Laureate, or any of his many other prevarications. There is a lot more on Mann than on any skeptic, bar none. But if you think criticism is not allowed, fine. MovOn to the science.
Anyone who believes there was no MWP is totally clueless. Connolley gripes about numerous charts, but he’s got nothing himself. He always was a crybaby.
The alarmist clique is parroting Mann’s claim that there was no “climate change” until industrial emissions began. Psychological projectionists that they are, they accuse skeptics of not accepting that the climate changed. If it were not for projection, alarmists wouldn’t have much to say, would they?
Skeptics have always known that the climate changes. We also know that the very minor fluctuations in T over the past century and a half are extremely minuscule and unusually small. The recent 0.7ºC fluctuation is nothing. We are currently in a Goldilocks climate. Skeptics know that within the past 15K years, global T has fluctuated by TENS of degrees, in only a decade or so. And that was before CO2 began to rise.
Every alarmist prediction has turned out wrong. All of them. When a group makes numerous predictions, and they ALL turn out wrong, rational people will disregard their swivel-eyed nonsense. That is the position you religious True Believers have put yourself in. No wonder you fall back on ad hominem attacks. Because you sure don’t have any credible science.

dbstealey

July 7, 2014 2:31 pm

J Murphy says:
For more ‘hockeysticks’ and confirmation…
Earth to Murphy: Mann’s Hokey Stick has been thoroughly debunked. Deal with it.

J Murphy

July 7, 2014 2:34 pm

richardscourtney, the paper you linked to has approximately 200 references. You described it as having ‘hundreds’, to highlight the amount of information given.
The NRC link I provided has approximately 350 – I didn’t count because there are 17 pages of them, but they appear to have at least 20 references on each page. More information.
Why do you find your preferred source more believable?

dbstealey

July 7, 2014 2:37 pm

Phil Clarke says:
Margaret’s exact form of words…
[snip your question is out of line- Anthony]
Apparently you are her apologist now, since she has skedaddled. No doubt to go and research her “lengthy list” — you know, that long list she had at her fingertips…
Keep digging, Clarke. It is amusing.

J Murphy

July 7, 2014 2:37 pm

dbstealey, when you have some credible, sourced information to back up your assertions, without the need for insults, I will look at it. Until then, carry on arguing with yourself.

dbstealey

July 7, 2014 2:39 pm

JMurphy says:
…when you have some credible, sourced information…
I posted a source with dozens of charts, most of them peer reviewed. But being blinkered, what you really want is for me to cherry-pick empirical evidence for you, proving there was no MWP.
Sorry, can’t be done. The MWP was a global event, as seen in the link above. Deal with it.

richardscourtney

July 7, 2014 2:44 pm

J Murphy:
At July 7, 2014 at 2:34 pm you ask me

Why do you find your preferred source more believable?

I answer, because Willie Soon is an author and I know he is an honest and diligent scientist.
And I reply with two questions to you.
What makes you think C0n0lley-corupted Wikipedia has any credibility?
What relevance has this to the subject of this thread except that MY reference pertains to the graph which is part of the subject?
Richard

J Murphy

July 7, 2014 4:02 pm

richardscourtney, I don’t know what William Connolley (if that is who you are referring to?) has to do with the Wikipedia link I posted, or, indeed, how he can be so powerful as to ‘corrupt’ Wikipedia as a whole. To my mind, the best thing about Wikipedia is that it gives a good outline of any subject which you can then investigate further by following the references/links or by using Google or your search-engine of choice. A link to information about the reliability of Wikipedia (from Wikipedia) contains lots of information and links, so anyone can see for themselves how reliable a source it is. If you don’t trust that, because of some influence that William Connolley might have on that page, Google will give similar results if you type in relevant key-words. Hopefully William Connolley is not claimed to be a malign influence on Google too!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia
As to your second question, the relevance is to the MWP, which figures prominently in the dodgy graph which is the subject of this thread.

Simon

July 7, 2014 4:29 pm

[the issue has been dealt with, thanks – Anthony]

F. Ross

July 7, 2014 4:39 pm

@dbstealey says:
July 7, 2014 at 2:29 pm
Precisely so!
Kudos for continuing to try to reach those who refuse to see or hear. Would that I had that patience.

RACookPE1978

Editor

July 7, 2014 5:10 pm

J Murphy says:
July 7, 2014 at 4:02 pm (replying to) richardscourtney,
I don’t know what William Connolley (if that is who you are referring to?) has to do with the Wikipedia link I posted, or, indeed, how he can be so powerful as to ‘corrupt’ Wikipedia as a whole. To my mind, the best thing about Wikipedia is that it gives a good outline of any subject which you can then investigate further by following the references/links or by using Google or your search-engine of choice. A link to information about the reliability of Wikipedia (from Wikipedia) contains lots of information and links, so anyone can see for themselves how reliable a source it is. If you don’t trust that, because of some influence that William Connolley might have on that page, Google will give similar results if you type in relevant key-words.

I cannot believe you are so ignorant to NOT know that your esteemed (self-proclaimed) Connolley personally deleted over 20,000 Wikipedia entries by other authors and writers in favor of HIS self-selected agenda and bias on topics centered around his religion (your religion) of CAGW caused by man-released CO2. (Other edited estimates have been as large as 48,000 Wikipedia entries – I will leave the specific counting to others.) And you believe his edits, his censorship and bias, make Wikipedia “reliable”?

milodonharlani

July 7, 2014 5:16 pm

J Murphy says:
July 7, 2014 at 11:21 am
India:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v364/n6439/abs/364703a0.html
A δ13C record of late Quaternary climate change from tropical peats in southern India
R. Sukumar*, R. Ramesh†, R. K. Pant† & G. Rajagopalan‡
*Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore-560 012, India
†Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad-380 009, India
‡ Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany, Lucknow-226 007, India
STABLE-ISOTOPE ratios of carbon in soils or lake sediments1–3 and of oxygen and hydrogen in peats4,5 have been found to reflect past moisture variations and hence to provide valuable palaeoclimate records. Previous applications of the technique to peat have been restricted to temperate regions, largely because tropical climate variations are less pronounced, making them harder to resolve. Here we present a δ13C record spanning the past 20 kyr from peats in the Nilgiri hills, southern India. Because the site is at high altitude (>2,000 m above sea level), it is possible to resolve a clear climate signal. We observe the key climate shifts that are already known to have occurred during the last glacial maximum (18 kyr ago) and the subsequent deglaciation. In addition, we observe an arid phase from 6 to 3.5 kyr ago, and a short, wet phase about 600 years ago. The latter appears to correspond to the Mediaeval Warm Period, which previously was believed to be confined to Europe and North America6,7. Our results therefore suggest that this event may have extended over the entire Northern Hemisphere.
SE Asian archipelago:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/11/ocean-heat-content-around-indonesia-shows-medieval-warm-period-and-2c-warmth-in-holocene/
Eastern Europe/Russia:
http://www.co2science.org/subject/m/summaries/mwprussia.php
Middle Eastern deserts (eg Saharan & coastal Pakistan references):
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V5/N12/C2.php
Tropical African lowlands (eg lowland rain forest of Gabon reference):
http://www.co2science.org/subject/m/summaries/mwpafrica.php
Tropical South American lowlands:
https://sites.google.com/site/medievalwarmperiod/
Amazonia suffered immense drought between 700-800 AD and 1000-1100 AD. (Fire, Climate Change and Biodiversity in Amazonia: a Late Holocene Perspective. M. Bush. Phil. Trans. Royal Society. 2008. Archaeological Evidence for the Impact of Mega-Nino Events on Amazonia during the past two Millennia. B. Meggers. Smithsonian. 1994.)
Yet the (admittedly partly sub-tropical) usually hyper-arid Atacama desert was considerably wetter than today between 880-1250 AD. (Perennial Stream Discharge in the Hyper-arid Atacama Desert of Northern Chile during the Late Pleistocene. Nester et al. PNAS. 2007.)
Satisfied now?

RACookPE1978

Editor

July 7, 2014 5:43 pm

Milo:
How do your dates above line up with the collapses of the Mayan (Yucatan) and pueblo cultures (desert southwest canyons US)?

milodonharlani

July 7, 2014 6:17 pm

RACookPE1978 says:
July 7, 2014 at 5:43 pm
The Anasazi of the SW were clearly affected by the American Great Drought (generally AD 1150-1450), which is blamed for the collapse of the Mound Builder culture (arguably a civilization). Their demise however is usually dated to the 13th century, so a little before the upper Mississippian peoples, which may not be surprising, given the difference in local climates.
Being tropical, the Mayan situation is a little different. The Terminal Classic phase dates from AD 800 to 900, so is more associated with climatic changes during the transition from the Dark Ages Cold Period to the MWP. One of the explanations for the collapse of Classical Mayan civilization is the known occurrence of “mega-droughts” in the Yucatán & Guatemala region about that time, aggravated by the thinness of tropical soils stripped of vegetation. In some areas, this causes laterite to form, impeding agriculture.

milodonharlani

July 7, 2014 6:22 pm

PS: The Oort Minimum is variously given as AD 1010-1050 or 1040-1080, so not really implicated in either of the cases about which you inquired. The Wolf however does jibe with the demise of the Anasazi, although maybe a little late, depending upon the uncertain dating of their collapse.

J Murphy

July 8, 2014 12:02 am

milodonharlani asks whether I am satisfied now? Well, reading the only credible, scientific link (A δ13C record of late Quaternary climate change from tropical peats in southern India), I don’t see how anyone could be! They mention “a short, wet phase about 600 years ago” which “appears to correspond to the Mediaeval Warm Period”. Does that mean that you believe the MWP occurred globally and simultaneously, albeit short, around 1400? That seems a lot later than the previous suggested dates of 800 to 1300.
As for RACookPE1978’s comment – Well, you believe what you want to and carry on insulting others you don’t appear to like, for some reason. I, and most others in the real world, will carry on using Wikipedia with the usual provisos of checking and backing-up with other sources given there and found externally.
I suggest an article on Groupthink as an example of how reliable Wikipedia can be: I don’t see any editing having been done by the supposedly all-powerful and dreaded William Connolley, so it should be OK for everyone to read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

RACookPE1978

Editor

July 8, 2014 5:52 am

milodonharlani says:
July 7, 2014 at 6:17 pm (replying to)

RACookPE1978 says:
July 7, 2014 at 5:43 pm

The Anasazi of the SW were clearly affected by the American Great Drought (generally AD 1150-1450), which is blamed for the collapse of the Mound Builder culture (arguably a civilization). Their demise however is usually dated to the 13th century, so a little before the upper Mississippian peoples, which may not be surprising, given the difference in local climates.
Being tropical, the Mayan situation is a little different. The Terminal Classic phase dates from AD 800 to 900, so is more associated with climatic changes during the transition from the Dark Ages Cold Period to the MWP.

Good points: But, is it correct to assume that the MWP will always behave the same worldwide? Would extended SW US droughts or northwest (Iowa-Ohio-Illinois droughts and Mayan droughts all be expected to occur at the same time? Or long cycles of El Nino (CA-AZ-NM drouths), or La Nina (TX-OK-LA central southern uS0 drouths be unexpected?

Scott Wilmot Bennett

July 8, 2014 6:30 am

I get it now, the MWP is just misdirection. What the ~~globalists~~, whoops! What the warmists are really concerned to hide is the LIA. Global glacial retreat is much harder to hide!!
/ no sarc intended!

Scott Wilmot Bennett

July 8, 2014 6:53 am

Global glacial retreat is the ‘hero poster’ for alarmists. But it is the Achilles heal of global warming because the empirical evidence for the slow but steady retreat of glaciation since the LIA is impossible to hide.

F. Ross

July 8, 2014 8:30 am

“…
I don’t see any editing having been done by the supposedly all-powerful and dreaded William Connolley,
…”
It is to laugh. None so blind, etc.

dbstealey

July 8, 2014 8:43 am

J Murphy says:
…reading the only credible, scientific link…
In other words, Murphy cherry-picks the one item out of everything else that he believes supports his True Belief.
Murphy is far from being up to speed on Connolley, who has altered tens of thousands of Wikipedia articles, most all on climate issues. He changes them to lasso lemmings like Murphy, who shows here that it works.
I’ve often said that Wikipedia is OK for quantum physics and cosmology. But everything else is biased in one way or another — especially climate articles. They are just not credible, due to Connolley’s anti-science propaganda. Connolley deletes or alters anything that does not follow tha alarmist Narrative, and then people like Murphy actually believe what he reads at Wikipedia is factual. It isn’t.
If Murphy wanted to learn the truth, he would read WUWT for a few months in order to get up to speed. Right now he is at the cut and paste, cherry-picking stage.
Murphy does not want to learn the truth: that global warming stopped many years ago. That fact alone debunks the “carbon” scare that has become Murphy’s new religion.
At least 97% of all scientists accepted the MWP as a given twenty years ago. Then — as clearly shown in the Climategate email dump — the climate propagandists decided they had to “get rid of the MWP”. That was also testified to in a U.S. Senate hearing by Dr. David Deming.
The desperate and dishonest attempt to erase the MWP has failed because of sites like WUWT. But if not for the internet, clueless folks like Murphy would only be hearing that the MWP never existed. Now Murphy has a chance to learn the truth. Will he?
Based on our experience here, no. A new Ice Age could push glaiers down over Chicago again, a mile deep, and religious true believers like Murphy would still be parroting the Party line. Because peopaganda works on the simple minded.

J Murphy

July 8, 2014 11:52 am

If the MWP has been ‘erased’, ‘got rid of’ (and other dramatic descriptions), why does Wikipedia have a page on it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period) with lots of references, and stating that it lasted “from about AD 950 to 1250”? That time-period seems to agree with what some people here, and the few credible references given, have also stated. Where’s the disappearance?
And the dreaded William Connolley doesn’t see to have made any changes for the last year and a half on that page, as far as I can see. Maybe he hasn’t done as thorough a job as you seem to believe?

dbstealey

July 8, 2014 12:18 pm

J Murphy,
You are reading into other comments things that were never said.
You are still far from being up to speed on Connolley’s Wikipedia shenanigans. As commented on WUWT recently [and many times in the past], Connolley uses a sockpuppet now to make changes, since he has been banned from altering comments. Why do you think he was banned? Because he was being honest? Is that what you think?
Let me ask you something, J Murphy: do you want to learn? Or do you just want to troll these comments? If you really want to learn, skeptics here can help you. But if you only want to run interference, you are doing an adequate job.

William Connolley

July 8, 2014 2:01 pm

> As commented on here recently [and many times in the past], Connolley uses a sockpuppet now to make changes, since he has been banned from altering comments.
This is a lie, in both parts. I’ve never used sock puppets, and have not been banned for altering comments.

Follow the Money

July 8, 2014 2:14 pm

RE: Lamb’s book “The English Climate” (1964 Second edition “rewritten” (first ed. 1954)”I mentioned somewhere above, I viewed it now. The subject graph or similar does not appear in this book. “Dickens” appears at p. 77, but not “Dickens winters” (see graph), so my trust in google books searching has been adjusted downward. (Dickens is cited for his relating London’s sooty fog)
The only 1k – like graph is at p. 165, going back to 1100 AD, showing on a decadal scale “summer dryness” and “winter character”

richardscourtney

July 8, 2014 2:34 pm

William C0nn0lley:
At July 8, 2014 at 2:01 pm you write saying in total

> As commented on here recently [and many times in the past], Connolley uses a sockpuppet now to make changes, since he has been banned from altering comments.

This is a lie, in both parts. I’ve never used sock puppets, and have not been banned for altering comments.

That is interesting but incomplete.
It is a matter of record that you were banned in the past. Why do you say that was?
Also, in light of the many falsehoods you have put on wicki, why should anybody believe anything you say?
Richard

William Connolley

July 8, 2014 3:07 pm

> the many falsehoods you have put on wicki [sic]
You’re long on accusations but short on details or evidence.
I’ve put no falsehoods on wiki (unlike the comment I was responding to, which is a simple lie, and which you can’t defend). But if you have any examples you’d care to quote of things you consider falsehoods, I’d be happy to discuss them.

J Murphy

July 8, 2014 4:41 pm

I’m also still looking for an answer from anyone as to what 50 or 100 year period during the MWP was globally and contemporaneously warmer than the last 50 or 100 years.

Robert Clark

July 8, 2014 4:56 pm

It’s not just the MWP that has to be denied to be global but also the Little Ice Age. For to accept there could have been a two degree Celsius global temperature drop in the LIA, would put one in the uncomfortable position of explaining why a 2 degree drop could happen globally but not a 2 degree rise.
Bob Clark

dbstealey

July 8, 2014 6:08 pm

Robert Clark says:
It’s not just the MWP that has to be denied to be global but also the Little Ice Age.
True; the alarmist cult cannot admit that global temperatures changed prior to the industrial revolution, because if they admitted that, their entire belief system would come crashing down.
J Murphy seems ignorant of the fact that prior to any significant changes in CO2, global T changed quite a bit. That graph is from a credible, peer reviewed, widely cited source. It clearly shows that during the current Holocene, global temperatures were far higher than now. And this graph shows that the current climate is nothing special; temperatures have been much warmer — and colder — than now.
The alarmist crowd doesn’t have any credible science to back up their assertions. They believe that by saying something, reality will conform. Reality doesn’t work that way. The alarmist crowd is simply wrong.
Then, when their assertions crash and burn, they go all ad hominem, which shows that they’ve abandoned all science-based argument. Pathetic, no?

milodonharlani

July 8, 2014 6:19 pm

J Murphy says:
July 8, 2014 at 4:41 pm
Maybe you should have looked a little harder, as at the dozens of studies that have been cited in this blog showing the MWP globally warmer than now. Ditto the Roman & Minoan Warm Periods & of course the Holocene Optimum & the previous interglacial, the Eemian, as also was the long MIS 11 interglacial.
I’ve already shown Lamb’s figures for the CET, in which at least AD 1100-1400 was warmer than 1950-2000 & since then. If anything it was warmer longer in most of China, for instance:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/08/new-review-paper-finds-medieval-warming.html

JBL

July 8, 2014 6:22 pm

“It is a matter of record that you were banned in the past.”
“Banned” means something particular on WP. That particular thing does not apply to Connolley, nor has it ever done. You pretend to care so much about this non-factoid, but you can’t be bothered to understand what you’re talking about!

milodonharlani

July 8, 2014 6:25 pm

Which facts are of course why the Team needed to “get rid of the MWP” in order to protect its cushy, jet-set, grant-fed life style.

milodonharlani

July 8, 2014 6:30 pm

RACookPE1978 says:
July 8, 2014 at 5:52 am
No, the MWP wouldn’t behave the same everywhere, as I’ve pointed out in other comments. What matters though is that its signal can be detected essentially everywhere real scientists have looked for it, although not always with the same set of climatic parameters. Tropics, temperate & high latitude, coastal & continental, mountain & plain, not to mention various regions of sea & ocean, would react somewhat differently in T, precip, winds, what have you.
Globally, however, in so far as a paleo-GASTA can be determined, it was warmer. Glaciers are an obvious indicator, out of many.
[GASTA = Global Annual Surface Temperature Average? .mod]

milodonharlani

July 8, 2014 6:32 pm

J Murphy says:
July 8, 2014 at 12:02 am
Please state why you find the other dozens of links incredible. There are lots more where they came from. What makes you impervious to overwhelming evidence?
Thanks.

richardscourtney

July 9, 2014 12:02 am

Anonymous sock puppet posting as JBL:
At July 8, 2014 at 6:22 pm you write saying in total

“It is a matter of record that you were banned in the past.”
“Banned” means something particular on WP. That particular thing does not apply to Connolley, nor has it ever done. You pretend to care so much about this non-factoid, but you can’t be bothered to understand what you’re talking about!

That is some of the most dismal sock puppetry ever!
Nobody was talking about WP. It was about the despicable C0nn0lley being banned from making edits on wicki.
I “pretend” nothing. I said the fact you have quoted, and I asked a clear question for clarification. You pretend that I “don’t understand” what you have completely misrepresented.
And I add that C0nn0lley claimed to not use sock puppets, but you – one of his anonymous sock puppets – turn up here to obfuscate his guilt by trying to divert attention from the facts.
Richard

J Murphy

July 9, 2014 2:53 am

dbstealey, since the only credible link in your last post was a graph of Greenland temperatures created using data from the NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, it must be presumed that you accept them as being a reliable source. And what do they say, with all their studies of Paleoclimate? This:
–“The similarity of characteristics among the different paleoclimatic reconstructions provides confidence in the following important conclusions:
Dramatic warming has occurred since the 19th century.
The recent record warm temperatures in the last 15 years are indeed the warmest temperatures the Earth has seen in at least the last 1000 years, and possibly in the last 2000 years.”
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleolast.html
They should know, right?
And they also seem to know that temperatures can change without human influence (just as forest fires can happen without humans causing them):
–“Few people contest the idea that some of the recent climate changes are likely due to natural processes, such as volcanic eruptions, changes in solar luminosity, and variations generated by natural interactions between parts of the climate system (for example, oceans and the atmosphere). There were significant climate changes before humans were around and there will be non-human causes of climate change in the future.
The paleo record also tells us how much temperature change occurred in the past when carbon dioxide levels were different. Studies show that the 100 ppm reduction in carbon dioxide during the last glacial was accompanied by a 3°C cooling in the western tropical oceans. This amount of temperature change is consistent with the change predicted by numerical climate model simulations.”
(http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/end.html)
milodonharlani, you state:
—“I’ve already shown Lamb’s figures for the CET, in which at least AD 1100-1400 was warmer than 1950-2000 & since then.”
If you look at the Met Office website (http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/data/download.html) you will find the data for 1950 onwards. At least for the most recent period so far (2000-2013), the yearly average is 10.2, equal to the 1150 to 1300 period from Lamb. And if you look at the figures produced in accordance with the CET series produced by Gordon Manley in 1974 (http://www.climate-uk.com/provisional.htm), the yearly average is 10.3, i.e. higher.
And I base my opinion on evidence and the science, which is why I rely on the vast amount of evidence given in the credible links I have posted, from the one from NOAA shown in this post, to the link in a previous post from the NRC – http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=R1
Even the Wikipedia link I gave has links to lots of other links, giving lots of evidence. I accept the facts based on the overwhelming scientific evidence produced in the scientific literature. Why can’t everyone?

William Connolley

July 9, 2014 4:52 am

> Anonymous sock puppet posting as JBL… And I add that C0nn0lley claimed to not use sock puppets, but you – one of his anonymous sock puppets
I have no connection to JBL. Your assertion that he is a sock of mine is false. You made it up out of thin air. You have no evidence for it, you know you have no evidence for it, but that doesn’t stop you. Perhaps you should pause to think: how many of your other assertions are of the same form?
>> the many falsehoods you have put on wicki [sic]
> You’re long on accusations but short on details or evidence…. But if you have any examples you’d care to quote of things you consider falsehoods, I’d be happy to discuss them.
Oh look, another example of something you’ve just made up out of thin air and then just run away from when challenged.

richardscourtney

July 9, 2014 6:46 am

J Murphy:
re your post at July 9, 2014 at 2:53 am.
You have again cited the C0n0lley-corrupted wicki despite several people telling you why that is no source of any worth.
You have claimed ignorance of what has been done to wicki.
If you are truly as ignorant as you claim then perhaps you would benefit from accepting the references of people who do know what they are talking about.
Richard

dbstealey

July 9, 2014 7:11 am

J Murphy says:
…since the only credible link in your last post…
Thank you for your baseless assertion. But just because you don’t like a particular chart is due only to the fact that it easily deconstructs your alarmist nonsense. Both charts have their provenance within them; feel free to write the authors if you disagree with their data.
You say:
Dramatic warming has occurred since the 19th century.
But as my links both show, dramatic warming during the Holocene is normal and natural. The 19th Century is not exceptional. What you are attempting to do is cherry-pick a recent warming episode, and claiming it is unusual. It is not, as the charts I posted make very clear. Everything being observed now has happened repeatedly in the past, and to a greater degree. Nothing happening now is either unusual or unprecedented.
Your argument doesn’t hold water. It fails. Everything being currently observed is a further confirmation of the climate Null Hypothesis, which has never been falsified.
You don’t even know what the Null Hypothesis is, do you? Really, you don’t know anything, you just parrot the nonsense you get from alarmist blogs. You say:
…I base my opinion on evidence and the science…
You really are amusing. You just don’t know it.

J Murphy

July 9, 2014 7:24 am

Oh, well: it looks like no-one can come up with a 50 or 100 year period during the MWP which was globally and simultaneously warmer than the last 50 or 100 years. It seems that the scientific evidence presented on the NOAA site is correct, but that should be no surprise, I suppose:
“The recent record warm temperatures in the last 15 years are indeed the warmest temperatures the Earth has seen in at least the last 1000 years, and possibly in the last 2000 years.”
(http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/end.html)

Phil.

July 9, 2014 7:57 am

dbstealey says:
July 8, 2014 at 6:08 pm
J Murphy seems ignorant of the fact that prior to any significant changes in CO2, global T changed quite a bit. That graph is from a credible, peer reviewed, widely cited source. It clearly shows that during the current Holocene, global temperatures were far higher than now. And this graph shows that the current climate is nothing special; temperatures have been much warmer — and colder — than now.
Since those graphs do not contain any data from the last 158 years it obviously says nothing about the ‘current climate’. The first one is not ‘credible’ since it has a mislabeled time axis, as has been shown on here multiple occasions, in fact a whole thread was devoted to it.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/13/crowdsourcing-the-wuwt-paleoclimate-reference-page-disputed-graphs-alley-2000/
The conclusion was that the Lappi graph you cited was ” Classification: Incorrect – Move to Incorrect/Falsified Graphs section – Label Incorrect Graph – The x axis label, “Years Before Present (2000 AD)”, should read Years Before Present (1950 AD)”

richardscourtney

July 9, 2014 8:03 am

J Murphy:
At July 9, 2014 at 7:24 am you lie saying

Oh, well: it looks like no-one can come up with a 50 or 100 year period during the MWP which was globally and simultaneously warmer than the last 50 or 100 years.

Bollocks!
I answered that when you first posed it!
My answer is at July 7, 2014 at 7:39 am and this link jumps to it. It concludes saying

So the answers to your question can be read from that graph and are
Yes, and, the period was between 1100 and 1300 AD.

Your egregious response is at July 7, 2014 at 11:21 am. It disputes my factual answer saying

richardscourtney, that paper defines it as 800–1300AD as far as I can tell, which is still a wide spread. Couldn’t find any 50 or 100 year periods where the warmth was contemporaneous throughout the globe. In fact, there seems to be a rather large area of the globe missing:

“The figures graphically emphasize the shortage of climatic information extending back to the Medieval Warm Period for at least 7 geographical zones: the Australian and Indian continents, the SE Asian archipelago, large parts of Eastern Europe/Russia, the Middle Eastern deserts, the tropical African and South American lowlands (although the large number of available borehole-heat flow measurements in Australia seems adequate for the reconstruction of ground temperatures back to medieval times; see Huang et al. 2000). Therefore, our conclusions are provisional.”

So I can’t see how it can be claimed that there was a globally warmer period during the Medieval Warm Period than now.t

That response is plain daft and it resulted in much debate which I did not enter because your reply was so risible that I did not think there was a need to reply to it. However, since you now claim I did not answer your question, I am now addressing your silly excuses for ignoring my answer.
There are several sequential periods of “50 or 100 years” between “1100 and 1300 AD”. You try to pretend that the global medieval warm period (MWP) should be “800–1300AD” but that disagrees with the findings of Soon&Baliunas which I quoted. However, “800–1300AD” contains more sequential periods of “50 or 100 years” than “1100 and 1300 AD”.
The of Soon&Baliunas paper provides proper caveats and, therefore, it lists the parts of the globe which do not have specific temperature determinations for the MWP. It seems unlikely that those regions did not show contemporaneous warming with the rest of the world. But so what? The issue is that global average surface temperature anomaly (GASTA) was at least as high in the MWP as it is now.
Not all regions are included in compilations of GASTA today, and many places have shown cooling while GASTA has risen. There is no reason to suppose the global warming of the MWP did not contain cooling regions, too.
Soon&Baliunas rightly say that their findings are “provisional” because it is possible that additional data may become available. Similarly, modern versions of GASTA are provisional; indeed, they change almost every month and the changes have been severe, see this.
I gave you the answer to your question when you asked it, but the truth could not be digested by your prejudice so you refused to consume it.
Richard

JBL

July 9, 2014 8:41 am

“Nobody was talking about WP. It was about … wicki.”
Christ you’re a moron. What do you think “WP” is an abbreviation for in a discussion about Wikipedia? (Here, I will spell it out for you so your two brain cells don’t trip over each other so much.)
This is not hard at all: there is something called “banned” on Wikipedia. William Connolley (who is not me, though I do sometimes read and comment on his blog) has been subject to various sanctions on Wikipedia over the years, but banning is not among them. If you knew even the tiniest bit about Wikipedia, you would understand this. You seem to be too lazy to learn what you’re talking about and too nasty to care about the dishonesty, but really it would take about 15 minutes to know enough to stop making this stupid error, if you wanted to. Then you could continue bashing WMC (do I need to spell that out, too?) without simultaneously making a fool of yourself by getting trivial “facts” wrong.

richardscourtney

July 9, 2014 10:23 am

Sock puppet posting as JBL:
At July 9, 2014 at 8:41 am you ask me

What do you think “WP” is an abbreviation for in a discussion about Wikipedia?

I answer that WP is an abbreviation for Word Press when it is posted on a Word Press platform and is not stated to be otherwise.
But a sock puppet for C0n0lley could claim it is an abbreviation for anything with a w and a p in its title because that is the kind of excuse he makes for altering wicki so it contains falsehoods.
Thankyou for your clear demonstration of the technique.
Richard

J Murphy

July 9, 2014 10:51 am

richardscourtney, you say:
—“You try to pretend that the global medieval warm period (MWP) should be “800–1300AD” but that disagrees with the findings of Soon&Baliunas which I quoted. However, “800–1300AD” contains more sequential periods of “50 or 100 years” than “1100 and 1300 AD”.”
I’m not quite sure what is happening here, because I have not tried to pretend anything and have only given the date-range as I understood it from the S&B paper. But maybe I should post a quote from the paper – perhaps that will help:
“Is there an objectively discernible climatic anomaly during the Medieval Warm Period, defined as
800–1300? This definition is motivated by e.g. Pfister et al. (1998) and Broecker (2001), and is a slight modification of Lamb’s original study (1965).”
Those date-ranges are mentioned on pages 2, 4, 8 and 10, so they are rather difficult to miss.
Perhaps that can end any further unwarranted accusations of pretence.
Anyway, I can find nowhere in that paper where they claim a global, contemporaneous MWP warmer than recent times but, in case I missed it in that paper, once again I will ask if someone can provide a 50 or 100 year period, either from that paper or others like it, that shows a global, contemporaneous period in the MWP that is warmer than the last 50 or 100 years. Anyone?

milodonharlani

July 9, 2014 11:15 am

J Murphy says:
July 9, 2014 at 2:53 am
You most certainly do not base your opinion on science.
Did you even look at your own data? The average in Manley’s CET was 9.76 degrees C for the period 1971 to 2000. How then could the 50 years 1951 to 2000 possibly be over ten degrees, when the 1950s & ’60s were cooler than the ’80s & ’90s?
You asked about 50 year periods, not single years. If the average for a 50 year period in the MWP was, say, 10.2 degrees, then surely there were a lot of years warmer than that, so comparing annual data now to an average then won’t cut it.
We don’t yet know what the current half century will end up being, but warmer than the long stretch of warmth in the MWP it probably will not be.
Your question has been answered & you’ve tried to weasel your way out of the answer you didn’t like, but failed.

milodonharlani

July 9, 2014 11:19 am

J Murphy says:
July 9, 2014 at 10:51 am
You’ve already repeatedly been shown that the MWP was warmer than now. Your response has been to, well, lie on the one hand while disallowing numerous studies without saying why you find them faulty.
The fact is that from every ocean & every continent the inescapable conclusion is that the MWP was warmer than the Modern Warm Period. Moreover, the Roman Warm Period was warmer than the MWP & the Minoan was warmer than the Roman.
Data from all around the world show that our planet has been in a cooling trend for over 3000 years, to include Antarctica, where the WAIS quit retreating about that time, as shown by radionuclide decay in soil exposed at the ice sheet edge. Tree studies from the northern high latitudes show the same, along with all climatic zones in between.
Sorry, but you lose. Real science wins.

richardscourtney

July 9, 2014 11:31 am

J Murphy:
Your post at July 9, 2014 at 10:51 am purports to be an answer to my post at July 9, 2014 at 8:03 am.
You conclude that pretence of a reply by writing

Anyway, I can find nowhere in that paper where they claim a global, contemporaneous MWP warmer than recent times but, in case I missed it in that paper, once again I will ask if someone can provide a 50 or 100 year period, either from that paper or others like it, that shows a global, contemporaneous period in the MWP that is warmer than the last 50 or 100 years. Anyone?

There can be no more clear example of your habit of pretending other than reality because my post that purports to reply had answered that saying

The of Soon&Baliunas paper provides proper caveats and, therefore, it lists the parts of the globe which do not have specific temperature determinations for the MWP. It seems unlikely that those regions did not show contemporaneous warming with the rest of the world. But so what? The issue is that global average surface temperature anomaly (GASTA) was at least as high in the MWP as it is now.
Not all regions are included in compilations of GASTA today, and many places have shown cooling while GASTA has risen. There is no reason to suppose the global warming of the MWP did not contain cooling regions, too.

You have had several different answers from three different people but you persist in pretending your question has not been answered. Why?
Richard

dbstealey

July 9, 2014 12:32 pm

Anonymous Phil. says:
Since those graphs do not contain any data from the last 158 years…
Well then, AP, let me help you and J Murphy out. Global warming has stopped.
Those are current. Got more data sets if you want ’em.
Oh, and BTW: the MWP was global. Deal with it.

JBL

July 9, 2014 3:27 pm

richardscourtney, very good, you managed to read the first half of my post without getting stuck this time. Perhaps at some point you will read the second half.

richardscourtney

July 9, 2014 3:41 pm

Sock Puppet posting as JBL:
re your post at July 9, 2014 at 3:27 pm.
I read all your silly post and answered the part I set up.
The remainder of your post was childish name calling of a kind one could anticipate from one of C0n0lley’s minions.
Richard

dbstealey

July 9, 2014 9:32 pm

JBL says:
Christ you’re a moron.
JBL, Richard Courtney is correct:
…WP is an abbreviation for Word Press when it is posted on a Word Press platform and is not stated to be otherwise.
WP = WordPress.

J Murphy

July 10, 2014 12:11 am

Ignoring all the baseless accusations, insults and non-scientific, credible sources, I see there are still no takers who will publically state which 50 or 100 year period during the MWP was globally and contemporaneously warmer than recent times. Very revealing…

richardscourtney

July 10, 2014 12:24 am

J Murphy:
Your post at July 10, 2014 at 12:11 am says in total

Ignoring all the baseless accusations, insults and non-scientific, credible sources, I see there are still no takers who will publically state which 50 or 100 year period during the MWP was globally and contemporaneously warmer than recent times. Very revealing…

Ignoring all the baseless accusations and insults you have provided, I see that you still refuse to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence showing the MWP was as global as the present global warming, and the MWP was warmer than now. Some of of this evidence has been provided to you here by three different people but you assert the science is not “credible sources” because it refutes what you want to believe. Very revealing …
Richard

Steve Milesworthy

July 10, 2014 2:46 am

There are dozens and dozens of papers covering different regions for different parts of the 800-1300 period identifying warmer, colder, wetter, drier periods within that period.
If JBL or J Murphy were able to provide strong evidence that some areas were cooler during 1010-1060 now, then it is easy for someone to say “ah well, your’re missing the bigger picture” or that “you should have looked at the data for 1120-1170”. E.g. data from clam shells plus anecdotal data about famines shows that Iceland’s coldest period was not the LIA but the 11th century.
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100308/full/news.2010.110.html
If I read a review paper like Soon and Balnius, I want to check the sources. But, e.g. Iriondo 1999 that W&B use to say that parts of S America were may be 2.5C warmer than now cost ££ to download. So I don’t want to pay the money until I can identify the key sources for a particularly notable period.
(The Met Office library, where I am now, doesn’t seem to have deep pockets).
So pick a 50 year period and then see if JBL, J Murphy etc. can pick it apart.

richardscourtney

July 10, 2014 3:15 am

Steve Milesworthy:
re your post at July 10, 2014 at 2:46 am, I see the tag-team continues.
You say

So pick a 50 year period and then see if JBL, J Murphy etc. can pick it apart.

Read the thread!
Several people have cited such periods of 50 years; see e.g, my post at July 9, 2014 at 8:03 am which both iterates my having provided them and complains at J Murphy pretending I did not. It says

There are several sequential periods of “50 or 100 years” between “1100 and 1300 AD”. You try to pretend that the global medieval warm period (MWP) should be “800–1300AD” but that disagrees with the findings of Soon&Baliunas which I quoted. However, “800–1300AD” contains more sequential periods of “50 or 100 years” than “1100 and 1300 AD”.

.
I don’t understand why you “JBL, J Murphy etc.” pretend such periods have not been cited: it fools nobody (except, perhaps, yourselves).
Richard

Steve Milesworthy

July 10, 2014 3:35 am

richardscourtney: “I see the tag-team continues.”
I call ad hom. But I don’t comment much at Stoat, have never noticed JBL and J Murphy before, and most of my comments are telling WMC how narrow-minded he is, and most of his are him telling me I have to provide more evidence for my beliefs.
*I* have been asking for evidence for more specificity for several years now on other forums for the reasons that I give in my post. Normally it’s about the CO2 science project. IIRC Loehle gives a 30 year period – do you agree with his 30 year period?

richardscourtney

July 10, 2014 7:53 am

Steve Milesworthy:
At July 10, 2014 at 3:35 am you ask me

*I* have been asking for evidence for more specificity for several years now on other forums for the reasons that I give in my post. Normally it’s about the CO2 science project. IIRC Loehle gives a 30 year period – do you agree with his 30 year period?

No, as I have repeatedly said in this thread including in my post addressed to you, the MWP as reported by Soon & Baliunas was from ~1100 AD to ~1300 AD which is much longer than 30 years.
Your asking this question is yet more evidence that you are the latest in the sequence of participants in the tag team. That is an observed fact and it is not an ad hom.: i.e. you are the latest in the series of persons arriving to ask the same question in different words each time the question is again answered.
Richard

Steve Milesworthy

July 10, 2014 8:54 am

richard, I’m not part of a tag team, so it isn’t “an observed fact”. It’s an observation that has been misinterpreted by you because you want to associate me with people I’ve never met or conversed with. I suspect we’re all curious about your choice of 1100-1300 when the paper talks about 800-1300 (and even talks about the cold english winters of 1260-onwards)
I was having a very similar discussion with Steve McIntyre in 2007, but he said then “At this point, I’m not arguing that a MWP is established world wide…”
http://climateaudit.org/2007/05/15/swindle-and-the-ipcc-tar-spaghetti-graph/
Anyway, From S&B:
“For Questions (1) and (2), we answered ‘Yes’ if the
proxy record showed a period longer than 50 yr of
cooling, wetness or dryness during the Little Ice Age,
and similarly for a period of 50 yr or longer for warm-
ing, wetness or dryness during the Medieval Warm
Period.”
So if it is wet or dry in the MWP period, it must be evidence of warmth.
If it is wet or dry in the LIA period, it must be evidence of cold.
Not *terribly* convincing.

J Murphy

July 10, 2014 10:23 am

richardscourtney, I don’t know why you keep stating that “the MWP as reported by Soon & Baliunas was from ~1100 AD to ~1300 AD” because I don’t see it in their paper. Could you include a direct quote from the paper, or describe which page, etc. it is on? The only place I can find those time-periods mentioned is in connection with Bohemia. Other than that, the time period mentioned as a MWP in that paper is as I have stated before, and as Steve Milesworthy has again repeated, is 800-1300.
Generally, though, even in the paper they admit “…the results from the proxy indicators cannot be combined into a hemispheric or global quantitative composite” and “…individual proxies can be used to address the question of whether the 20th century is the warmest of the 2nd millennium locally”. So why do people think this paper is proof of a global MWP?
It’s also pretty ironic that the paper even acknowledges “…the…Medieval Warm Period…should indicate persistent but not necessarily constant warming…over broad areas…”. Ironic because I don’t know how often I’ve seen the claim that AGW is now ‘proven’ false because temperatures haven’t increased at a constant and steady rate over the last…(insert your time-period of choice). If people believe that is true, then obviously no period of the MWP can be taken as proof of warmer temperatures then than now, unless you have detailed proof of temperatures for specific years.
Finally, though, and most importantly, those who do read the paper and analyse it properly (rather than just be told that it proves a global MWP, or it proves recent temperatures are lower than the MWP, etc., and just accept what they have been told) can see that the spread of date ranges for the MWP from the paper are from roughly 1000AD at the Poles, to 1100AD in Asia, 1200AD in Europe/Americas, and 1300AD in South Africa/Australasia. (Or, to go by the total spread of dates given for the different regions of the globe given separately: 800AD [or “several centuries before 1130”, whichever is earlier] to 1400AD). These are all very rough dates and regions, based on data in the paper, but they show, if you look for yourself, a MWP that was an influence on different regions at different time-periods. Very different from the general increase in temperatures experienced globally and contemporaneously over the most recent period.
But, again, if anyone wants to give some dates they reckon prove differently (i.e. that the MWP was global and contemporaneous), feel free to provide a 50 or 100 time-period.

richardscourtney

July 10, 2014 11:07 am

J Murphy:
At July 10, 2014 at 10:23 am you ask me

richardscourtney, I don’t know why you keep stating that “the MWP as reported by Soon & Baliunas was from ~1100 AD to ~1300 AD” because I don’t see it in their paper. Could you include a direct quote from the paper, or describe which page, etc. it is on?

Good grief! How many more times do you want me to do this?
Which is your problem: you can’t read or you won’t read?
I first provided citation, quotation, link and explanation in my post at July 7, 2014 at 7:39 am. I cannot be bothered to write it all yet again so I provide this link which jumps to it.
This is the final time I will answer this question which you have repeatedly asked despite my answering it each time.
Richard

richardscourtney

July 10, 2014 11:17 am

Steve Milesworthy:
You say at July 10, 2014 at 8:54 am

richard, I’m not part of a tag team, so it isn’t “an observed fact”. It’s an observation that has been misinterpreted by you because you want to associate me with people I’ve never met or conversed with.

I don’t know why you claim I “want” to associate you with anybody. I don’t.
As I said, I observed the fact that you are the latest in the sequence of participants in the tag team. That is an observed fact and it is not an ad hom.: i.e. you are the latest in the series of persons arriving to ask the same question in different words each time the question is again answered. I have no idea whether or not you knew other particiants in the tag team before you decided to join it. And I fail to see anything I have – or could have – “misinterpreted”. I have merely stated facts.
The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was warmer than at present and was at least as ‘global’ as the present warm period. Lamb’s graph describes it. Live with it.
Richard

dbstealey

July 10, 2014 11:34 am

J Murphy,
What is the matter with you?? You don’t seem able to understand anything, no matter how clearly it is explained to you.
This is a big problem with the alarmist crowd. When something simple is explained, many of them just cannot understand. Why? Because their minds are already made up, and any contrary information causes immense cognitive dissonance. A mental road block results.
Run along back to one of your thinly-trafficked alarmist blogs, where you don’t have to think. You will be right at home there. Here, you’re just cluttering up the thread with stupidity.

J Murphy

July 10, 2014 1:36 pm

OK, so richardscourtney can’t copy and paste a quote from a paper he linked to…because the assertion he made – “the MWP as reported by Soon & Baliunas was from ~1100 AD to ~1300 AD” – does not exist in the paper. No surprise.
And dbstealey finds it easier to insult than provide a simple 50 or 100 year period during the MWP which he can assert was globally and contemporaneously warmer than recent times. What a surprise…not.

dbstealey

July 10, 2014 5:10 pm

J Murphy won’t accept anything that doesn’t conform to his religious beliefs. But foer other readers, here is a chart based on Ohio State data. It shows a lot longer time frame than “50 or 100” years, where the MWP exceeded current parameters.
Next, here is a peer reviewed study from Harvard, showing the same thing.
And JoNova does an extensive research article here. WUWT previously posted this graph, which aligns with the peer reviewed studies above.
Next, this graph is based on the peer reviewed studies noted in the graph.
Next, CO2 science posted this graph of the MWP, compared with modern temperatures.
Moberg and Ljundqvist provided the data for this graph of the MWP, comparing it with current temperatures.
There are many more like those. The existence of a long duration, world wide MWP is not in doubt. These charts are not for the benefit of J Murphy, because his mind is jmade up and closed tighter than a submarine hatch. He cannot accept reality. But for new readers, the record must be kept straight despite the incessant, mindless arguments by the alarmist cultists.

J Murphy

July 11, 2014 1:49 am

dbstealey, of your three credible links (the ones leading to science, or with a connection to the science in some vague way – I’ll be generous):
The first one (http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/archive/pr0310.html) is to a press-release about the Soon and Baliunas paper already mentioned and discussed here, so that doesn’t add any proof.
Your second link (http://s90.photobucket.com/user/dhm1353/media/Hockey1-1.png.html), although it is to a non-scientifically verifiable site, does contain easily-creatable and verifiable graphs, including the above Northern Hemisphere graph showing present temperatures warmer than during the MWP, and this one which shows the same (http://s90.photobucket.com/user/dhm1353/media/Moberg1.png.html). What were you trying to prove with them?
Your third link, although, again, not strictly related to the actual science, has an article which states “The warming of the Earth’s surface by downwelling radiation is imaginary” (http://www.biocab.org/Downwelling_Radiation_and_EMRP.pdf)…
But, trying to ignore that, the graph shown is difficult to decipher, especially as the temperature reference seems to ultimately go back to…Soon and Baliunas! Well, that is a popular paper with some people, isn’t it?
So, come on dbstealey, why not give a 50 or 100 year date range that you reckon was globally and contemporaneously higher than recent times? Don’t rely on links to blogs and graphs that need to be interpreted and investigated. State your own opinion and dates. Why not?

Steve Milesworthy

July 11, 2014 2:14 am

richardscourtney,
OK I get it, but it is not compelling for the reasons I gave above. You say S&B “extends” the work of Lamb 1965. And Lamb 1965 created the MWP holy grail whose date range must not be touched (even if some of S&B’s proxies disagree with it because they are for the “transition” to the LIA).
It’s not compelling because many of the references in S&B are to proxies of “wet or dry” not warmth. Wet or dry does not mean warmth. Which is substantially what Steve McIntyre taught me back in 2007 when I was getting into this discussion.
Anyway, discussion and engagement is not your strong suit so I’ll leave you in peace and go and argue with a proper arguer like WMC or Lucia.

Steve Milesworthy

July 11, 2014 2:21 am

dbstealey,
Personally, I think it would be very interesting to know why the current warmth does not appear to have shown up in many proxy studies (which seems to be the point the S&B paper is making).
There are lots of plausible reasons why it has not (e.g. the period is too short, the proxies have not been updated (something Steve McIntyre finds unconvincing, the CO2 and/or change in land use is having an impact etc. etc.), but plausible reasoning is not always reliable.
BTW your Harvard link is to the press release on Courtney’s S&B citation.

dbstealey

July 11, 2014 10:01 am

J Murphy says:
dbstealey, of your three credible links…
Question: who elected you to be the arbiter of which peer reviewed links are “credible”, and which are not? Post your CV here, so we can determine if you are an authority. I suspect not. From your other comments, you are not even close to being up to speed on the subject.
I posted links that specifically answered what was asked, saying that there are many more like those examples available; the existence of a long duration, world wide MWP is not in doubt. But as I wrote above:
J Murphy won’t accept anything that doesn’t conform to his religious beliefs.
As I predicted, Murphy cannot accept anything that contradicts his religious true belief. I commented that those charts…
…are not for the benefit of J Murphy, because his mind is made up, and closed tighter than a submarine hatch. He cannot accept reality. But for new readers, the record must be kept straight despite the incessant, mindless arguments by the alarmist cultists.
I see nothing that changes that.
=============================
Steve Milesworthy says:
Personally, I think it would be very interesting to know why the current warmth does not appear to have shown up in many proxy studies
That is far too vague. What proxy studies are you referring to? The fact is that there is no “current warming”. Forget proxy studies. Empirical evidence trumps them all.

J Murphy

July 11, 2014 10:57 am

dbstealey, OK, you’re not prepared to give dates for when you think the MWP was global and contemporaneous. Fine. Everyone can see that.
But, moving on, why does your last link (“no ‘current warming'” – http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/trend) show RSS mean temperatures from 1997 but the trend from 1997.9?
For a bit of fun I will show the same data used, but from a year before (1996 – http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996/plot/rss/from:1996/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996/normalise/offset:0.68/trend);
and from 1983, to give a more valid climatic 30-year comparison (http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1983/plot/rss/from:1983/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1983/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1983/normalise/offset:0.68/trend).
Without looking, does anyone want to guess whether the trend is positive or negative?
Isn’t it amazing how you can get whatever trend you want if you pick your start date?

dbstealey

July 11, 2014 2:46 pm

J Murphy just doesn’t listen. Several skeptics have posted information, but Murphy — a self-appointed ‘expert’ with no CV — declares that only links which might support his globaloney are “credible”.
Murphy has never answered my very relevant question: who elected you to be the arbiter of which peer reviewed links are “credible”, and which are not?
Answer, please. Or forfeit the debate, as my links stand on their own otherwise.
Global T has been much higher and lower during the Holocene, and for much longer durations than 50 – 100 years. Honest folks will admit that fact. Dishonest folks will pretend that they are qualified experts, who falsely claim to know what links are “credible”. As if.
This chart shows that the planet was warmer than now during the MWP, and for several hundred years [the red line]. But our self-appointed “expert” doesn’t like that chart. Why not? Because it debunks his belief system. But so do lots of other links.
Murphy attempts to put skeptics into the position of having to prove a hypothesis. But skeptics are not required to prove a hypothesis or conjecture, because the CAGW conjecture belongs sloely to the alarmist clique. They own it. So the onus is entirely on the alarmist crowd, and their CAGW conjecture desperately needs support.
J Murphy has zero understanding of the climate Null Hypothesis. For those who do, the Null Hypothesis states that the current climate is neither unusual nor unprecedented; everything now being observed has happened before, and to a greater degree. Thus, there is no “fingerprint of AGW”. It simply does not exist, in any measurable degree. The entire CAGW conjecture is based on one big evidence-free assertion.
Next, J Murphy asks: why does your last link show RSS mean temperatures from 1997 but the trend from 1997.9?
Answer: because I used someone else’s link. Here, this link shows all data from 1997.0. They are essentially the same as 1997.9: there has been no global warming, while CO2 steadily rises. That answers Murphy’s trivial question. Now I would like to read his answer to my question: who elected Murphy as the arbiter of which links are “credible”? Or was he just winging it?
The rest of Murphy’s links are irrelevant, for this reason: it was the über-Warmist Phil Jones who designated 1997 as the benchmark start year. Go complain to Jones if you don’t like it.
In 1999, Jones picked 1997 and said that it would require no global warming for fifteeen years, beginning in 1997, to veriify if global warming has stopped. No doubt Jones thought he was on safe ground by requiring 15 years without any global warming. But as it turned out, we now have 17 years and 10 months without any global warming. Thus, any prior years that J Murphy cherry-picks now are irrelevant. Besides, he’s only a noob, and his education is just getting started. He also needs some new talking points, because the ones he’s been using are old and busted.
Anyone can pick a time frame that supports their belief system. For example, this chart clearly shows global cooling occurred from the 1940’s – 1970’s. That debunks the failed conjecture claiming that human activity is the cause of global warming.
The central fact is that global warmig stopped a long time ago, while [harmless, beneficial] CO2 continues to rise. No matter how much they nit-pick, the alarmist crowd loses the debate. Because the only real Authority is Planet Earth — and the planet is clearly showing the alarmist crowd that they were flat wrong.

richardscourtney

July 11, 2014 3:05 pm

Steve Milesworthy:
Thankyou for admitting your arguments are poor when you say to me at July 11, 2014 at 2:14 am

Anyway, discussion and engagement is not your strong suit so I’ll leave you in peace and go and argue with a proper arguer like WMC or Lucia.

That was in reply to my having wiped the floor with you in my post at July 10, 2014 at 11:17 am which is here.
Clearly, if “discussion and engagement is not {my} strong suit” then your arguments must be really, really rubbish when I can demolish them so easily.
Perhaps your lack of ability at arguing is because you are using the stoat as an example.
Richard

J Murphy

July 12, 2014 12:21 am

dbstealey, you wrote :
—“who elected you to be the arbiter of which peer reviewed links are “credible”, and which are not?”
Nothing to do with me. There’s a simple definition, but it’s not to do with “peer reviewed links”, which I don’t know anything about. It’s to do with links to peer-reviewed science : A link to peer-reviewed science is a link to a paper that has been peer-reviewed, and not to blogs or mysterious graphs. Simple.
But why are you using a GISP2, Greenland link (your “This chart” – http://i.snag.gy/BztF1.jpg) to claim anything about “the planet”? Does GISP2 show global temperatures? Where does that chart even come from? Have you verified it?

Steve Milesworthy

July 12, 2014 12:33 am

richardscourtney,
What I’m saying is that you have a fixed view. You cite evidence that doesn’t even support your view. You don’t explain when people get reasonably confused about what you are trying to say and simply repeat yourself. You don’t engage with refutations of your view. For example, why does your citation rely on wet or dry proxies to prove warmth during some periods and coolness during others. This point is completely fatal to S&B’s claim.
If you can’t, or refuse, to defend your claim, then that is not “wiping the floor” with me. Nobody else is reading this thread any more except you and me, so phrases like “wiping the floor” are falling on deaf ears.
PS. I was quite relieved (after a bit of searching in Hansard, the record of the UK parliament) to find that your claims of influence on UK parliament are rather thinner than your biography suggests.

richardscourtney

July 12, 2014 2:17 am

Steve Milesworthy:
You start your post at July 12, 2014 at 12:33 am saying to me

What I’m saying is that you have a fixed view. You cite evidence that doesn’t even support your view

Those two falsehoods are pure psychological projection. Please do not ascribe your faults to me when I do not exhibit them.
The remainder of your post is a similarly deluded rant.
Richard

richardscourtney

July 12, 2014 2:45 am

Lewis P Buckingham:
You conclude your post at July 12, 2014 at 1:55 am asking to be convinced about the absence of the MWP.
I respectfully submit that you won’t get convinded for two reasons.
Firstly, it is not possible to prove a negative so it cannot be shown that the MWP – or anything else, e.g. Father Christmas – does not exist. This is the importance of alibi evidence in a criminal trial: it is not possible to prove somebody did not do something but it is possible to prove she was somewhere where she could not have committed an alleged crime.
Secondly, very many proxies from around the world indicate temperatures were hotter than now about a thousand years ago. Few indications of then colder temperatures than now have been found. This is similar to an alibi: the MWP cannot be shown to have not existed but there is evidence that global temperature was warmer than now. And it is not possible for the MWP to have not existed if it was warmer then.
Of course, when discussing temperatures in the MWP we are discussing proxy data which is not complete coverage of the globe. Present global temperature is thermometer data which is not complete coverage of the globe. Hence, at issue is the validity of the proxies.
The proxy information takes many forms; e.g. tax records, crop distributions, forminfera, etc..
The range of these proxies provides confidence that their indication is right; i.e. global temperature was higher in the MWP than now. This was generally accepted until the MBH hockeystick which many accepted and some persist in accepting despite its total falsification.
This general acceptance is demonstrated by Lamb’s graph which described it (and is under discussion here) having been included in the first IPCC Report.
Richard

Steve Milesworthy

July 12, 2014 2:46 am

Lewis,
From my perspective the polarisation of the discussion often results in those who believe the Lambian MWP was global assume that those who do not believe it must, or need, to believe in the Mannian non-MWP. I engage with a lot of climate scientists and the view is a lot more nuanced than that though from what I see (I am not a climate scientist).
It annoys me when Courtney tries to tag me as a team member, when I spend far more time on “sceptic” blogs than on Stoat. I used to comment a lot at climateaudit, and I was there when the scales started falling of Steve Mosher’s eyes in a thread on David Parker’s UHI paper.
Looks to me like the climate was different but probably not globally warmer in the MWP era than in the 20th Century. And in the 21st Century if current temperatures are sustained or increase we will begin to gain a clear statistical lead on the MWP. As you say, it seems parts of Greenland were probably warmer, but then again, Iceland had terrible times in the 1050+ period according to clam shell proxies and famine records. I base my view on past investigations into the co2science archive of papers, and finding a tendency to overstate paper’s conclusions, which would be needless if an MWP was more evident.
Seems to me that no one proxy is a proxy for global warming/cooling whatever. One has to look at lots of proxies and measurements and come to a balanced view (objectively, S&B did not come to a balanced view it appears to me).

Steve Milesworthy

July 12, 2014 3:15 am

Hi again, Lewis, you are doing better than me at initiating discussion from Richard.
Richard seems to be saying that because he believes Lamb was regarded as settled science, it should not be changed without incontrovertible evidence. The problem is that Lamb did not believe the MWP was global as his plot was UK/Europe based and next to his plot he contrasted it with descriptions of colder conditions in China at the same time.
https://sites.google.com/site/medievalwarmperiod/Home/p171–172-of-lamb-s-climate-history-the-modern-world

Steve Milesworthy

July 12, 2014 3:18 am

Lewis, PS. I currently have a more substantive reply to you in moderation. The one that followed got through so I might have hit some trigger words.

dbstealey

July 12, 2014 3:59 am

J Murphy says:
…why are you using a GISP2, Greenland link to claim anything about “the planet”? Does GISP2 show global temperatures?
Yes. There is extensive evidence showing that the hemispheres warm and cool simultaneously. This has been discussed here many times. Feel free to read the archives. “MWP” is a good keyword start.
There are also numerous sources like this showing Holocene temperatures. The attempt to erase the MWP and the LIA is a deliberate ploy to support Mann’s thoroughly debunked Hockey Stick chart. Prior to MBH99, the MWP was accepted as a global event.
When taken in context, the current very *mild* warming is seen to be merely a minor fluctuation. A change of only 0.7ºC over a century and a half is literally nothing. It is noise. Within the past 15K years, global T has changed by TENS of degrees — within decades. Thus, the wild-eyed arm waving over 0.7ºC is simply an attempt to rouse the rabble.

Steve Milesworthy

July 12, 2014 5:20 am

Lewis,
My immediate thought would be to question anything described as a “narrative”. Narratives do exist, and many people ascribe to them, promote them and seek evidence to promote them. But reality is usually more complicated.
I don’t have any reason for rejecting GISP2. Have people rejected it? I accept it in a similar way to accepting the cold conditions that seem to have been apparent in Iceland at similar times.
The current warming in the northern latitudes of the northern hemisphere is similar to the warming that shows up in the models (not too surprising as land warms quicker than ocean). I see the Arctic warming as a fact. The narrative is that it may be proxy for the sorts of unexpected impacts that may occur, as people did not expect the Arctic to melt so quickly (though some climate scientist at the Met Office think the melting is exacerbated by regional natural variability).

J Murphy

July 12, 2014 5:45 am

Lewis P Buckingham, you wrote:
—“We are constantly being told that the Arctic is a proxy for global warming.
We are told that its being ‘ice free’ is the sign that AGW is upon us.
Yet when a proxy for Arctic temperatures appears at, http://i.snag.gy/BztF1.jpg
that shows the ups and downs of temperature, including in Medieval times,it does not have provenance so should be rejected.”
I don’t know that it should be rejected but it shouldn’t be used to show global temperatures in the MWP, as it was.
Are you happy to use graphs found on the internet, with no indication of where they’re from? I realise it gives some information as to where the data has come from but, looking at it, can you tell what year the latest data-point is from?

dbstealey

July 12, 2014 8:04 am

Apparently J Murphy did not click on my link above. It is pretty much the same as the other graph of the Holocene, but it has its provenance in the graph.
Every time a point is raised and answered, the typical response of the alarmist clique is to move the goal posts to something else. They lost the debate, but they will never admit it. Instead, they argue incessantly, like a Jehovah’s Witness, or like one of Mrs Keech’s Seekers, when the promised flying saucer did not appear [see ‘Leon Festinger’ for edification].
Finally, I point out once again that the planet is naturally warming from the LIA — one of the coldest episodes of the entire 10,700 year Holocene. So of course glaciers and polar ice will decline. But human-emitted CO2 has nothing to do with it. If it did, then both the Arctic and the Antarctic would see declining ice. But that is not happening, therefore CO2 — a well mixed trace gas — cannot be the cause.
Nothing has falsified the Null Hypothesis, therefore the default position for honest skeptics is that what is being observed is natural climate variablity, no different from past natural variability. And once again: there is no evidence of AGW. AGW may exist, but without any measurable evidence, it is insignificant, and should be completely disregarded for all Policy purposes — and all future ‘climate change’ funds shoud immediately be discontinued.

J Murphy

July 12, 2014 9:18 am

OK, dbstealey, I looked at your link to a graph on a blog (http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png), and can see a very badly presented graph. There are two things to note, which will show why such graphs should be treated with the utmost caution, especially if they come from blogs rather than credible scientific sites where the data can be accessed directly.
Firstly, the ‘present’ with regard to GISP2 (Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2) “refers to northern hemisphere summer of the year 1950 A.D” (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/document/notetime.htm). So, when you see that graph with the label ‘Years Before Present (2000AD)’, that is not correct. It should say ‘Years before Present (1950AD)’. Unless, of course, they’ve taken the figures up to the year 2000 somehow, without mentioning where the extra years of data have come from. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can reveal all.
Secondly, since the first time data-point is 95 (i.e. 95 years before present), even using the graph’s claim of the present being 2000AD would mean the first data-point is 1905. However, knowing that GISP2 present is actually 1950, 95 years before that date means that the first data-point is 1855.
Would anyone like to guess what the temperature data would have shown over Greenland since that date? Would a true sceptic like to produce a graph that takes those temperatures up to recent times? If not, I wonder why not…

J Murphy

July 12, 2014 9:21 am

By the way, I am making the real data available for all, so that no-one has to rely on graphs created by others: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt

Pamela Gray

July 12, 2014 10:15 am

dbstealey says:
July 12, 2014 at 8:04 am …”— and all future ‘climate change’ funds should immediately be discontinued.”
I disagree. Infrastructure, especially those related to dams, population centers next to rivers, and roads/railways, have been neglected and are in need of funds! A well-maintained infrastructure allows gross domestic product to be easily and quickly shipped. The one thing that has significant impact on these structures is climate extremes (hot and cold). We know what the extremes are, that’s the boundaries of climate for any given climate region. Everything inbetween is weather pattern variations. Because of lack of funds, these items have been barely maintained for typical weather, not climate extremes, and that is where we have failed.
Example: In Wallowa County there are 3 paved roads in and out of the entire county. All three are slide prone with sharp narrow turns and cliffs on either side. Only two are open during the winter and the other is regularly cut up from slides.
How about we cut, severely, the “machine” that is behind our elected and appointed officials and dump that money into some cliff and beach erosion control.

dbstealey

July 12, 2014 10:44 am

J Murphy saqys:
By the way, I am making the real data available for all…
As I have throughout.
Note that one of the sources in Murphy’s link is R.B. Alley. That is the same source as several of my links. Now that we are in agreement that there were hundreds of years of a warmer climate during the MWP than now, I trust Murphy is finished dissembling.
Next, Murphy labels the graphs posted as not being credible. It is Murphy who is not credible. Every link I have posted uses verifiable data. Murphy cannot accept that, because if he does, his entire argument goes up in smoke.
J Murphy asks:
Would a true sceptic like to produce a graph that takes those temperatures up to recent times?
Thank you for noting that. The only honest scientist is a skeptic. That leaves out Mann, Trenberth, Briffa, Jones, and many other riders on the grant gravy train.
Next, here is a graph that ‘takes temperatures up to recent times. Here is another, more recent graph.
And another, and another, and another.
Here are U.S. temps for the past century. Here is the long term trend line of rising global temperature from the Little Ice Age. Note that there is no acceleration.
Here is data from 1900. Note the cooling from the 1940’s to the 1970’s. No alarmist model can explain that. Another chart; where is the predicted acceleration in globnal warming?
Here is the Central England Temperature record. No acceleration there, either.
Natural global warming since the LIA began well before industrial activity ramped up.
Dozens more provided on request. Just ask, if you want to learn.
It is clear to any unbiased observer that there is no “fingerprint of AGW” anywhere in the temperature record. Further, on all time scales, from years to hundreds of millennia, all evidence shows that ∆CO2 is caused by ∆temperature. There is no evidence showing that CO2 changes cause changes in T. The alarmist crowd began with an incorrect premise — that rising CO2 will cause rising T — so naturally, their conclusion is wrong. They got causation backward, although they will never admit it. But unbiased readers can see that ∆T causes ∆CO2, not vice-versa.
Finally, I should correct the misinformation presented by J Murphy, claiming that this graph has no source. Look in the lower left corner.

dbstealey

July 12, 2014 10:48 am

Pamela Gray says:
Because of lack of funds, these items have been barely maintained for typical weather, not climate extremes, and that is where we have failed.
Sorry I wasn’t more clear. Funding for infrastructure has been starved due to redirecting money into “climate study” grants. Many $Billions are wasted every year on those grants, when a tiny fraction of that money would provide for all infrastructure needs.

Pamela Gray

July 12, 2014 11:09 am

There ya go.

J Murphy

July 12, 2014 1:55 pm

Well, dbstealey, you certainly know how to spread an argument! And at no time have you ever linked to the original data – you have simply scattered links containing graphs, some of which claim to use that data. I prefer to look at the original data; you obviously prefer others to say that they have used it and then produce graphs which you can use as you feel fit.
Anyway, your first link claims to be Yearly Average Temperature going back to 1900 but has no references. Explain where it’s from and what it represents, e.g. Global, Regional? What data source?
Your second link claims to be Raw Monthly Temperature going back to 1950 but has no references. Explain where it’s from and what it represents, e.g. Global, Regional? What data source?
Your third link claims to be United States Annual Average Temperature from 1895 to 1997 but has no references. Seems to be from a blog that hasn’t been updated for nearly two years. What data source?
Your fourth link claims to be Hadley, UAH and CO2 data from 2002 to 2009, and is from a blog.
Your fifth link is from Wood For Trees and you give HADCRUT, HADSST, RSS in two ranges: one from 1987 and one from 2002.
Your sixth link is from WUWT and shows a graph labelled “Total 50-State Record High Temperatures”, from 1884 to 2000.
Your seventh link is again from Wood For Trees and you give HADCRUT and GISTEMP from 1880 to 2010.
Your eighth link is again from Wood For Trees and you give HADCRUT in two ranges: one from 1912 to 1942, and one from 1982 to 2013.
Your ninth link is again from Wood For Trees and you give HADCRUT again in two ranges: one from 1975, and one from 1997 to 2013.
Your tenth link claims to be CET Extended: 1538 to 200, and is from a blog. So it’s Central England Temperatures. Where did the extended data come from?
Your eleventh link claims to be HADCRUT3 data, from 1850 to 2010, and is from a blog, albeit with lots of data available. It seems to claim that the Little Ice Age ended around the Summer of 1908 – going by the graph.
Your twelfth link is again from Wood For Trees and you give HADCRUT again, as well as CO2, from 1959.
Your thirteenth link claims to be a record of temperatures and CO2 going back about 425,000 years, and is from a blog. No references, so where did the data come from?
Your fourteenth link claims to be a record of Global Land-Ocean Temperature and CO2 Rates of Change from 1959 to 2009, and is from a blog which hasn’t been updated for nearly two years. No references, so where did the data come from?
I presume you will know all the answers to those questions, as any true sceptic would if he or she wanted to check properly what he or she is posting and asking others to accept. But what relevance does any of it have to Greenland and GISP?
As for your last link, which is what this is all about, and is the only link you give with any relevance to this discussion : Can you explain what the most recent date is for data given in that graph? And do you have a link to a graph that contains the same information but with temperature data up to date? Two simple questions, I think you will agree.

dbstealey

July 12, 2014 3:55 pm

J Murphy is certainly amusing. One by one, he goes through all fourteen (14) links I posted, and he finds fault with every one of them. Not one of them can be acceptable to J Murphy. What are the odds, eh? ☺
The reason I posted all those links was to avoid any accusation of cherry picking. So I posted numerous charts from numerous sources, all of which deconstruct the swivel-eyed alarmist nonasense. You know, the endless predictions of catastrophic AGW — not one of which has ever happened.
When someone like Murphy becomes a religious convert, nothing that contradicts his True Belief is acceptable. As far as Murphy is concerned, the charts I posted are the spawn of Satan. Science does not matter; they cannot be allowed to stand. Otherwise, cognitive dissonance would cause Murphy’s head to explode.
As I offered, here are a few more charts and graphs to educate J Murphy:
click1 [Time to panic… NOT.]
click2 [The biosphere is starved of harmless, beneficial CO2]
click3 [Another chart showing that T causes CO2 changes.]
click4 [chart of GISS data]
click5 [Global T flat, past 17 years]
click6 [More evidence that GW has stopped]
click7 [Current climate very mild v past climate]
click8 [No causation, CO2 v T.]
click9 [Trend lines, several data sets, vs CO2]
click10 [Warming effect of CO2 – too small to measure]
click11 MWP v CO2 – no correlation]
click12 [Human CO2 v natural emissions]
click13 [8 separate countruies, from LIA. No acceleration in T.]
click14 [Earth has usually been much warmer than now]
click15 [There was natural global warming. Now the planet is cooling.]
click16 [Alarmist predictions debunked; many data sets]
click17 [No global warming.]
click18 [Forget tenths of a degree. That is just noise. This tells the real story]
click19 [Another CET chart, by J. Curry. No recent acceleration.]
click20 [Greenland (NH) and Antarctica (SH) overlay. Both hemispheres show the same warming/cooling trends, proving that ice cores are a good proxy for global T]
Those charts are not for the benefit of J Murphy, because his mind is made up and closed tighter than a drum skin. He simply cannot accept reality. But for new readers, the record must be kept straight despite the incessant, mindless arguments of climate alarmists.
Murphy deviously attempts to put skeptics into the position of having to prove a hypothesis. But skeptics are not required to prove anything, because the CAGW conjecture belongs solely to the alarmist clique. They own it. The onus is entirely on the alarmist crowd, but they have failed to provide credible evidence that AGW exists. That is why skeptics are laughing at them: they’ve got nothing but their Belief.
Also, as stated above J Murphy has zero understanding of the climate Null Hypothesis. That is why he avoids commenting on it. The Null Hypothesis supports the fact that there is no “fingerprint of AGW”. It simply does not exist. The entire CAGW conjecture is based on one big evidence-free head fake. So Murphy avoids trying to debate the Null Hypothesis [a corollary of the Scientific Method], but instead, like a maniac Chicken Little he attacks numerous charts by numerous sources, many of them peer reviewed and all data based. None of them can be acceptable to the CAGW religious folks. If they accepted reality, their arguments would fail.
Unbiased readers can decide which charts are the most relevant. They all make it clear that the alarmist crowd is wrong, but some charts will appeal to some folks, and others will appeal to different people. None can appeal to J Murphy, because to accept even one of them would dangerously raise the pressure in his skull. ☺

J Murphy

July 12, 2014 4:21 pm

OK, dbstealey, you want to carry on Gish Galloping, insulting, belittling and…not answering questions or admitting that you prefer to rely on unsourced and unreferenced graphs, and blogs, rather than go directly to actual, real scientific data. Fine.

dbstealey

July 12, 2014 4:27 pm

OK J Murphy, you want to carry on Gish Galloping for a thoroughly debunked global warming scare, and never answering questions about the Null Hypothesis, or the complete failure of the alarmist crowd to produce any verifiable evidence of AGW based on any real, actual data? Fine. In that case, you lose the debate.

bluegrue

July 13, 2014 8:57 am

An old blog post at HOT TOPIC deals with all the “Oh look at Greenland” nonsense. It extends the temperature record at the GISP2 site to the present day using data from Box et. al., 2009. The uptick at the end of all the GISP2 plots that dbstealy linked to covers the 1790-1850 period, not the “Mann Hockey Stick” as one of them claims. All of them get the “current” temperature wrong. Current temperatures at the GISP2 site are about 1.5°C higher today (2000-2009 average) than they were in 1850, the time at the end of the uptick shown by dbstealy. 1.5°C above 1850 is the highest temperature for the last 2000 years and surpassesed only for a few, short periods over the last 10000 years. (image from HOT TOPIC).
What’s more, temperature variability in the Greenland temperature record is about 60% larger than the temperature variability of the Northern Hemisphere. (Box et. al., 2009)
As an aside, the above post by Gareth on HOT TOPIC was referenced and discussed extensively on this WUWT post by Easterbrook in December 2010. dbstealy moderated comments on that WUWT page.

dbstealey

July 13, 2014 1:20 pm

bluegrue,
I posted numerous links, and I can post at least as many more. Just ask — if you want to learn.
Here is your problem: you must deconstruct every link, because every link I posted debunks the CAGW scare. J Murphy can’t do it, and neither can you.
The basic debate is over the question of CO2 causing runaway global warming. The goal posts have been moved constantly by the alarmist crowd, as skeptics destroyed each alarmist argument in turn. Exactly none of the alarmist predictions have come true. None of them. So why should anyone pay attention to what you claim now?
‘Runaway global warming’ and ‘climate catastrophe’ — the original scare — has morphed into “climate change”. Skeptics didn’t do that; your folks did it. Your problem is that skeptics know that the climate has always changed. In truth, it is the climate lemmings, led by Michael Mann, who have bought into the nonsese that the climate never changed, prior to the industrial revolutiuon. That misinformation was promoted by Mann’s frightening MBH99 chart; a chart that was issued a Corrigendum by the journal Science. It is completely bogus. That is why Mann is still stonewalling the publication of his data, methods, metadata and methodologies that he used to creat his Hokey Stick chart — fifteen years later!
The whole debate is based on the alarmists’ psychological projection, claiming that skeptics don’t believe in changing climates, when in reality that is the specific position of alarmists: they still believe the climate was unchanging until human CO2 emissions ramped up. That is why your side lost the debate. The science is settled: the rise in CO2 did not cause runaway global warming, as was incessantly predicted.
So now you are reduced to nitpicking irrelevant points like the putative Monckton chart, and cherry-picking only items that you believe will support your CAGW scare. That isn’t science, that is only confirmation bias. You have decided that CO2=CAGW, and you arrange your arguments to come to that conclusion. Your problem isn’t skeptics. Your problem is that Planet Earth — the ultimate Authority — is proving you wrong.
There is no testable, measurable scientific evidence to support the belief that CO2 is harmful in any way. It is a minuscule trace gas, which has risen from 3 parts in ten thousand, to only 4 parts in ten thousand, over a century and a half. In the process, the added CO2 is measurably greening the planet. CO2 is every bit as essential to life on earth as H2O. But H2O can’t be easily taxed, so you demonize “carbon”.
On net balance, the rise in CO2 is a good thing. There is no identifiable downside. It is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. More is better, at both current and projected concentrations.
You are flogging a dead horse with your “carbon” scare. It is unscientific nonsense. But once something like that becomes a religion, the newly converted cannot ever admit that they were wrong. They would be considered apostates, and cast out into the wilderness by their co-religionists. So you have no choice. You must toe the Party line. Thinking for yourself, based on all available evidence, is simply out of the question. You are trapped, and it’s easy for rational folks to deconstruct each and every lame argument raised by the alarmist clique.
The central question of whether the rise in CO2 has caused, or will cause runaway global warming has been settled by Planet Earth. You lost that debate decisively, and everything else is irrelevant backing and filling.

bluegrue

July 13, 2014 2:22 pm

dbstealey, I’d be happy to discuss just one plot at a time and let you go on a Gish gallop. You have consistently promoted plots of GISP2 temperatures that misrepresent the data as containing data for the majority of the 20th century and the current temperature. The plots only support your narrative because of these distortions. You seem to either not know or not care. Why?

bluegrue

July 13, 2014 2:23 pm

The above should read “not go on a Gish gallop”, of course.

Phil.

July 13, 2014 2:37 pm

dbstealey says:
July 12, 2014 at 10:44 am
Finally, I should correct the misinformation presented by J Murphy, claiming that this graph has no source. Look in the lower left corner.
Yes the source of the data which is misplotted in the graph by some unknown person is given, this graph has no given source. The graph also falsely identifies the rise in the data prior to 1855 as the ‘Mann hockey stick’. You were told this in the thread 4 years ago (referred to above) but stubbornly keep trotting out the same graphs. The very graphs that are identified by WUWT as:
“Classification: Incorrect – Move to Incorrect/Falsified Graphs section – Label Incorrect Graph – The x axis label, “Years Before Present (2000 AD)”, should read Years Before Present (1950 AD)”

dbstealey

July 13, 2014 3:30 pm

If it were not for baseless assertions, bluegrue and Phil. wouldn’t have anything to say here.
I posted numerous graphs. However, neither one of you has posted any so-called ‘corrcted’ graphs. All you are both doing is whining. You are about as credible as a computer climate model. You say I “stubbornly keep trotting out the same graphs.” But what do you post? Nothing of substance. You just object, that’s all. Weak objection noted, either start posting verifiable facts, or move on.
If you would like to learn something, just ask. I can post numerous additional graphs. But you will get to the point of looking like fools, because you will have to object to all of them. Your True Belief does not allow for anything else; anything else meaning you cannot admit to the truth, that all the predictions of runaway global warming were flat wrong. I’ve posted at least thirty (30+) graphs here, showing that the objections of the alarmist cult are 100% wrong. Your response was to cherry-pick a couple of graphs, and vaguely object to them.
But do you post a ‘corrected’ graph? No. All you do is complain about it. You really have no credible argument.
You will have to debunk every graph I posted, because they all show the same thing: that CAGW is nonsense. And CO2=CAGW is your basic argument, because without runaway global warming and climate catastrophe we are pretty much back to natural climate variability, and your false alarm is defenestrated.
Instead of moving the goal posts in every comment, either man up and admit that the ‘runaway global warming’ scare has been debunked by Planet Earth, or continue with your indefensible argument. It makes debating you easier than shooting fish in a barrel.

bluegrue

July 13, 2014 3:44 pm

However, neither one of you has posted any so-called ‘corrcted’ graphs.
I linked a proper plot of GISP2 from HOT TOPIC.

dbstealey

July 13, 2014 4:01 pm

bluegrue,
I had to go find Hot topic. What did I find?
This:
THE COLLAPSE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION: A VIEW FROM THE FUTURE
See, that is exactly what I mean. The alarmist cult actually believes that “climate change” is causing a collapse of civilization. Your problem is that there is exactly ZERO evidence for that crazy world view. Nothing being observed is either unusual, or unprecedented. It has all happened before, and tto a greater degree. But I suppose some folks just have a need to scare themselves. That explains the popularity of werewolf movies, no?
I feel like I am debating with swivel-eyed, deranged lunatics who stand on street corners holding a sign:
THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH!
The parable of Chicken Little applies here. Every prediction made by those Chicken Little alarmists sounds like Mrs. Keech’s Seekers:
…anyone who follows climate science will recognise that the chain of disaster he traces, from failing food crops in intense heat waves to unmanageable sea level rise as the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets begin to disintegrate is entirely possible if greenhouse gases continue to be pumped into the atmosphere by human activity.
“Anyone who follows climate science”?? What planet is that jamoke living on? Exactly NONE of those things are happening. But as I keep pointing out, the alarmist crowd cannot ever admit that they were wrong. So they just keep digging their hole deeper. Jehovah’s Witnesses have nothing on climate alarmists.
Please, post more links like Hot topic! It provides plenty of amusement for scientific skeptics.

J Murphy

July 13, 2014 4:37 pm

Well, well, well. So dbstealey has been informed previously about using that graph and yet still carries on using it. I call that deception but I wonder whether the blog owner cares about such underhand tactics being used on his site?
Seems like a good example of The Backfire Effect –
The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.
The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.
(http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/)
More interesting would be to hear what Lewis P Buckingham now thinks, since he mentioned the graph earlier and seemed open to rational and constructive arguments.

bluegrue

July 13, 2014 4:41 pm

I had provided links to the exact post and graph addressing GISP2. You answer with further Gish Gallop.

dbstealey

July 13, 2014 6:21 pm

J Murphy says:
So dbstealey has been informed previously about using that graph and yet still carries on using it.
Since Murphy isn’t an authority on any of this, I feel confident in dismissing his uninformed opinion. In a moment I will deconstruct his belief system. But first, Murphy says:
I call that deception…
How can openly posting a graph be called “deception”? Only in the minds of deluded eco-religionists…
When your beliefs are challenged with facts…
That is a textbook example of psychological projection. Murphy has posted zero credible facts. On the other hand, I have posted numerous charts constructed using empirical data.
Regarding the chart that Murphy questions, this chart of GISP-2 temperatures is the same chart as this chart. Murphy has convinced Louis Buckingham that the latter chart has no provenance, even though it plainly says “GISP-2” in it.
Buckingham trusted Murphy, rather than verifying. Bad move. The charts are the same, with the second one adding a historical overlay. Therefore, Murphy is wrong again. Has Murphy ever been right? Never on this thread.
I will continue using GISP-2 charts whether Murphy likes it or not, because they are based on real world ice core measurements. And I note once again that the best Murphy and bluegrue can do is carp about the links. They don’t post charts themselves. I wonder why not? Most people would be ashamed to be outed like this, but I’ve found that alarmists have no shame.
I think bluegrue and Murphy will regret mentioning GISP-2, because I have a large folder of GISP-2 charts, which debunk their alarmist position. Everything observed now has happened before, repeatedly, and to greater extremes — and during times when there was no anthropogenic CO2 being emitted. Thus, the alarmists’CO2=CAGW conjecture takes another major hit.
This chart shows GISP-2 overlaid with the Vostok ice core. Note that they move in lockstep. They are both in different hemispheres, so what does this mean?
It means that polar temperature measurements are an excellent proxy for global temperatures. Here is another GISP-2 chart constructed from NOAA and NCDC data. It shows that current global temperatures are routine and normal. There is nothing unprecedented happening. Thus, what we are currently observing is entirely natural.
This is another GISP-2 chart. Note that past Holocene temperatures were substantially higher than now. The alarmist cult keeps pointing at the MWP — while disregarding the even higher temperatures earlier in the Holocene, when there were no human emissions.
Here we see another GISP-2/Vostok overlay, showing two ice cores in the northern hemisphere and two ice cores in the southern hemisphere. Since this is a Wikipedia chart, the alarmist gang will have a hard time claiming it isn’t legit. Note that it shows the same thing as all the other GISP-2 charts I’ve posted.
Now let’s compare the Holocene temperature record with the CO2 record. We see that there is no positive causation or correlation, as is constantly claimed by the alarmist contingent. Recall that Murphy says:
The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.
That is psychological projection in action: Murphy’s deepest convictions are being debunked right here, in real time. But my bet is that he will keep digging his hole. Rational debate is not his strong suit.
Next, let’s look at a chart based on Dr Richard Alley’s data. Notice that current global temperatures are nothing unusual. Alley’s data ends in year 2000. Since then, global T has declined, so that chart would show more recent cooling if T since 2000 was included.
Finally, this animation puts the current arm-waving alarmism into perspective. There is nothing either unusual, or unprecedented happening. In fact, we have been enjoying a “Goldilocks” climate for the past century and a half. The “carbon” scare is a complete false alarm, as anyone not blinded by religion can see.
Rational people would abandon a silly argument like climate alarmism. But that doesn’t account for religion. When someone is converted to the new eco-religion, common sense is jettisoned in the same way that Jehovah’s Witnesses jettison rational thought. Empirical evidence means nothing to the new Chicken Little crowd. The only thing that matters is their True Belief — no matter how many times it is debunked with scientific facts.

Simon

July 13, 2014 7:41 pm

Dbstealy
“Next, let’s look at a chart based on Dr Richard Alley’s data”
I am pleased you are so keen to quote Dr Richard Alley. That would be the Dr Richard Alley who had this to say about some of the issues raised in this thread…

Clearly he does not think the Medieval anomaly was as warm as today. He also comments on why we know it is not other factors contributing to the recent warming. It is well worth watching, if nothing but for the guys passion. One smart man. In stark contrast to the Neanderthal politician asking him lame questions. Is this guy Rohrabacher for real?

dbstealey

July 13, 2014 8:00 pm

Simon,
I commented on Richard Alley’s data, not on his subsequent conversion. He is one of many scientists who understands where his bread is buttered.
That said, I wonder what he — or you — would say about the Holocene in general. The MWP was the most recent warming prior to the current warming. But there were several warming episodes prior to the MWP that were much warmer. How do you explain that?
Maybe it was CO2 being teleported back in time? Or maybe someone fabricated the Holocene record? Or maybe there was a gang of technological Indians who had learned to emit lots of CO2?
Of course the rational explanation is the simplest: CO2 just does not have the claimed effect. Radiative physics shows that almost all of the warming effect from CO2 occurs in the first 20 – 100 ppmv. At current levels of about 400 ppm, any warming effect is so small that it is unmeasurable.
The entire “carbon” scare is based on the failed notion that rising CO2 levels will result in runaway global warming. The real world shows that to be nonsense. Whatever your argument is, it is not based on the real world, and it does nothing whatever to contradict my post above.

Steve Milesworthy

July 14, 2014 2:32 am

Thanks all for the useful discussion. The evidence suggests that the GISP2 site *may* be as warm or warmer than was during the MWP, which is quite a surprise to me.
Presumably one of the reasons that some modern proxies do not appear to show modern warmth is because they are not all fully up to date, and that some are low frequency proxies that need a bit more time to show up the warmer temperatures.

J Murphy

July 14, 2014 3:08 am

dbstealey wrote:
—“Regarding the chart that Murphy questions, this chart of GISP-2 temperatures is the same chart as this chart. Murphy has convinced Louis Buckingham that the latter chart has no provenance, even though it plainly says “GISP-2″ in it.”
So, leaving aside the conjecture as to what someone is supposed to have done to someone else (wherever that came from, who knows), once more we are presented with a chart without references or citations. But because it says “GISP-2” on it and has a red line stuck on the end of it, apparently that means it is acceptable for some people, who will then believe it and forward it on hoping that others will join in with the belief. I thought this was a site for so-called sceptics…!

dbstealey

July 14, 2014 9:29 am

J Murphy says:
…once more we are presented with a chart without references or citations.
Wrong, as always. You are batting 0.000.
Every GISP-2 chart I posted looks the same. All have provenance. Have you run so low on arguments that you nitpick identical charts? If you have a GISP-2 chart of the Holocene that contradicts the numerous, identical charts I have posted, then produce it. Otherwise you are just floundering around, looking for a way to argue.
J Murphy, you have lost the debate. Planet Earth — the only real Authority — shows that you are flat wrong. During the Holocene, global T has been much higher than at present. The biosphere teemd with life and diversity during those beneficial warm spells.
Warm is good. Cold kills. You are on the losing side of the debate.
===========================
Steve Milesworthy says:
The evidence suggests that the GISP2 site *may* be as warm or warmer than was during the MWP, which is quite a surprise to me.
Now there is a man with an open mind. Evidence is produced, and he thinks about it instead of having a knee-jerk rejection of anything that does not fit the alarmist narrative.
Skepticism requires an open mind. Honest scientists are skeptics, first and foremost. This site caters to scientific skeptics. But once in a while someone like J Murphy pops up. Unfortunately, he has a closed mind, so he is not willing to think about the evidence provided. It contradicts his belief, so it is automatically rejected on the flimsiest of pretexts. Sad, really.

Phil.

July 14, 2014 9:42 am

dbstealey says:
July 13, 2014 at 3:30 pm
If it were not for baseless assertions, bluegrue and Phil. wouldn’t have anything to say here.
I posted numerous graphs. However, neither one of you has posted any so-called ‘corrcted’ graphs.
I’ve told you what’s wrong with them for ~4yrs, you think you’d have got the message by now!
The corrected graphs are those that haven’t added any false statements but you won’t post them because they don’t agree with your agenda.
All you are both doing is whining. You are about as credible as a computer climate model. You say I “stubbornly keep trotting out the same graphs.” But what do you post? Nothing of substance. You just object, that’s all. Weak objection noted, either start posting verifiable facts, or move on.
That’s exactly what I have been doing for 4 years, you just won’t take your blinkers off. Constructive criticism coming up.
dbstealey says:
July 13, 2014 at 6:21 pm
On the other hand, I have posted numerous charts constructed using empirical data.
With numerous errors and misrepresentations on them which you refuse to change. They’re even listed in the WUWT “Incorrect/Falsified Graphs Section but you just keep churning them out.
Regarding the chart that Murphy questions, this chart of GISP-2 temperatures is the same chart as this chart. Murphy has convinced Louis Buckingham that the latter chart has no provenance, even though it plainly says “GISP-2″ in it.
Neither of them does have any provenance. The first one is a correct plot of the Alley data minus some arbitrary constant which is not identified (the blue curve) ending in the correct place (1855 AD if the time axis is in AD, it’s not stated). What’s the red curve, which appears to try to attempt to bring the data up to the present day? There’s no provenance for that data, just something that an anonymous author has added. Even Mann told us where the data that was added came from! Previously you’ve argued that it’s appropriate to add global average instrument data to the Greenland data rather than the actual Greenland instrument data because it fitted your bias better.
The second graph you linked to is unidentified too, claims to be relative to current temperature which it certainly is not and identifies the pre 1855 data as ‘Mann Hockey Stick’, which it clearly isn’t.
This chart shows GISP-2 overlaid with the Vostok ice core. Note that they move in lockstep. They are both in different hemispheres, so what does this mean?
That following the D-O events the climate changed at both poles about 10-20 thousand years ago plus or minus a few thousand, not very relevant to what we’re discussing. In any case it’s isotope frequency changes not temperature and according to the lines (black) drawn by the anonymous author (you?) he or she has a very flexible idea of what constitutes ‘lockstep’.
Here is another GISP-2 chart constructed from NOAA and NCDC data. It shows that current global temperatures are routine and normal. There is nothing unprecedented happening. Thus, what we are currently observing is entirely natural.
It shows nothing of the sort, it is constructed using the same Alley data unto 1855 AD by another anonymous author who has added an arbitrary 0.5º via a dotted line which purports to account for the last 150 yrs warming in Greenland, more unsupported nonsense. For good measure it has an added CO2 plot which is completely fictitious and unattributed with a nonsensically compressed scale, if Mann did that everyone would be all over him on this site.
This is another GISP-2 chart. Note that past Holocene temperatures were substantially higher than now. The alarmist cult keeps pointing at the MWP — while disregarding the even higher temperatures earlier in the Holocene, when there were no human emissions.
The only accurate plotting of the Alley data you’ve given without embellishment so what do you do? You claim that it shows something it does not, presumably pretending that the data in 1855 represents today’s temperatures at the Summit camp?
Here we see another GISP-2/Vostok overlay, showing two ice cores in the northern hemisphere and two ice cores in the southern hemisphere. Since this is a Wikipedia chart, the alarmist gang will have a hard time claiming it isn’t legit. Note that it shows the same thing as all the other GISP-2 charts I’ve posted.
No it doesn’t, it shows isotope abundances not temperature and indicates that something major changed between 10-20 years ago not like the altered Alley charts you keep posting covering the last 10,000 years up until 1855.
So there’s something of substance for you to chew on, hopefully this time you’ll actually do something about it and stop posting the same old nonsense.

dbstealey

July 14, 2014 10:00 am

Phil. says:
…The corrected graphs are those that haven’t added any false statements but you won’t post them
Apparently you won’t, either.
As I wrote above: “All you are both doing is whining.” Phil. responded:
That’s exactly what I have been doing for 4 years…
Finally, we agree!
I note all the opinions about the numerous charts from the numerous different sources that I posted. Phil. doesn’t like any of them, because they contradict his belief. But I also note that Phil. doesn’t post any charts himself. He just says that everyone and everything is wrong, if it does not fit in with his beliefs.
I told Murphy that the only real Authority is Planet Earth, and that is true. Planet Earth disagrees with the catastrophic AGW narrative that Phil. and others promote. Despite the steady increase in [harmless, beneficial] CO2, global warming has stopped. And not just recently. Global warming stopped many years ago.
So, to summarize:
Phil. disagrees with Planet Earth.
Planet Earth disagrees with the alarmist crowd.
So who should we believe? Phil.? Or Planet Earth?
Because they cannot both be right.

bluegrue

July 14, 2014 12:41 pm

Regarding the chart that Murphy questions, this chart of GISP-2 temperatures is the same chart as this chart.
That statement is at variance with the truth. The first chart (hologisp2.png) has the GISP2 data correctly ending in about 1850. The second chart, which was the GISP2 plot you put up first, contains three lies.
a) The data has been shifted along the time axis by 50 years and pretends the data ends in about 1910 (you can verify by pixelcounting).
b) The period 1790-1850 is labeled “Mann Hockey Stick”. The blade of the actual MBH98 hockeystick starts about 1910.
c) The 1850 temperature is labeled “current temperature”.
And I note once again that the best Murphy and bluegrue can do is carp about the links. They don’t post charts themselves.
That, dbstealey, is a bald-faced lie, if I have ever seen one: In my very first comment on this post I linked this GISP2 plot, which shows the data on a proper timescale.

Simon

July 14, 2014 12:43 pm

dbstealey
“Planet Earth disagrees with the alarmist crowd.”
According your hero to Dr Alley (I’m assuming you watched his movie) the planet is telling us loud and clear we have a problem.

Phil.

July 14, 2014 12:50 pm

dbstealey says:
July 14, 2014 at 10:00 am
Phil. says:
“…The corrected graphs are those that haven’t added any false statements but you won’t post them”
Apparently you won’t, either.
As I wrote above: “All you are both doing is whining.” Phil. responded:
“That’s exactly what I have been doing for 4 years…”
Finally, we agree!
Thereby proving your dishonesty to all and sundry!
I note all the opinions about the numerous charts from the numerous different sources that I posted. Phil. doesn’t like any of them, because they contradict his belief.
No I disagree with the graphs of Alley’s data which you’ve posted because they either misrepresent the original data, are unattributed or contain falsehoods. I quote facts about their misuse which you chose to pretend are ‘opinions’. The only temperature graph based on Alley which you’ve posted and is honest is:
http://mclean.ch/climate/figures_2/GISP_to_11Kybp.gif
His discussion of the data isn’t however.
If you want to talk about the Alley data go here:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
Don’t use anonymous third-party graphs that misrepresent it.

richardscourtney

July 14, 2014 12:54 pm

Simon:
At July 14, 2014 at 12:43 pm you say

dbstealey

Planet Earth disagrees with the alarmist crowd.

According your hero to Dr Alley (I’m assuming you watched his movie) the planet is telling us loud and clear we have a problem.

Alley is not my “hero” and the planet is giving no indication of any kind that there is a global warming problem. Indeed, there has not been global warming for nearly 18 years and previous warm periods were warmer.
You can proclaim any “hero” you choose but that will not affect the planet’s indications in any way.
Richard

dbstealey

July 14, 2014 2:39 pm

bluegrue says:
That, dbstealey, is a bald-faced lie, if I have ever seen one
Oh, get off your high horse. So I missed a comment, one out of more than 400. That certainly does not make me a “liar”; I do not lie, ever. Like anyone, I can make a mistake, or miss a post. You, bluegrue, are just a presumptuous ass.
Next, Simon says:
According your hero to Dr Alley…
Dr. Alley is no hero of mine. Testable, measurable scientific evidence is my hero. Planet Earth is my hero. Also, I note that Alley has been furiously backing and filling regarding the “carbon” scare <–[I wonder what Phil. thinks of that chart?]. Alley’s earlier work makes it very clear there was in fact a medieval warming period — and several even warmer periods before that during the Holocene. But now Alley is tapdancing; trying to make sure his funding is not cut off, as has happened to other apostates of the global warming religion. I liked Alley’s early work, but I am no fan of tapdancers who ride the gravy train by dishonestly fanning the flames of CAGW. There is no catastrophic AGW, and if AGW exists, it is simply too minuscule to measure.
Next: Simon, do you actually believe that “the planet is telling us loud and clear we have a problem” ??
You seem to have zero understanding of the Null Hypothesis; a corollary of the Scientific Method. Ignoring the Null Hypothesis is a hallmark of climate alarmists everywhere. They desperately want to believe in climate catastrophe. But it just isn’t happening, sorry about that.
Our present global climate parameters have been exceeded in the past, and by quite a lot. Global T has been much higher, and lower, than over the past century and a half. We have truly been living in a “Goldilocks” climate. Yet you see a catastrophe. How is that? You are seeing something that is just not there.
There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening. Can you understand that? It doesn’t appear that you do.
Next: So Phil. finally agrees with this chart. Now we’re getting somewhere. Note that there have been regular warming episodes during the Holocene. The MWP was relatively minor warming; prior warming events exceeded both the current global T, and the MWP. That happened when CO2 was relatively low. Thus, CO2 has no measurable effect on T.
But skeptics already knew that. The alarmist crowd got their causality backward. They thought that CO2 was the cause of global warming, when all the availble evidence shows that temperature changes are the cause of CO2 changes. Because they got their initial premise backward, their conclusion will obviously be wrong. And that is exactly what happened.
One more time: the planet is proving the alarmist crowd wrong. People can believe their CAGW nonsense, but that only indicates they are low information voters. The intelligent folks are the scientific skeptics, who have repeatedly shown that climate alarmism is 100% wrong.
And once again, since no one is willing to answer this:
Who should we believe? The always-wrong alarmist contingent? Or Planet Earth? Because they cannot both be right.

bluegrue

July 14, 2014 3:23 pm

So I missed a comment, one out of more than 400.
You replied to that comment. Your reply is even right beneath it. Am I to assume that you do not actually read the comments you are replying to?

dbstealey

July 14, 2014 5:20 pm

@bluegrue,
So I didn’t recall the graph you posted. That doesn’t make me “a balddfaced liar”, and you are still a presumptive ass.
You keep avoiding the central issue: Planet Earth is debunking your religious Belief system. The planet is showing everyone that you are wrong. No wonder you keep avoiding the only important point in the debate.
You have decisively lost the debate. Your belief in catastrophic AGW fails: there is no scientific evidence supporting that errant nonsense.
When skeptics are wrong, they generally admit it. If global warming had started up again, I would reassess my thinking. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I missed something. But that has not happened. Global warming stopped many years ago.
But when alarmists are wrong, they back and fill, and they pontificate, and they argue incessantly. They never admit they were wrong, even when everyone else can see it. That’s the case with your own CAGW nonsense. It has been thoroughly debunked. But you are incapable of admitting it.
There is no catastrophe happening, as I have repeatedly demonstrated: the Null Hypothesis has never been falsified. Further, every alarmist prediction has failed. ALL of them are wrong. That makes you wrong. But you will never admit it. Glaciers could once again cover Chicago a mile deep, and you would still be spouting your globaloney nonsense.
Tell us: why is that? Why are you incapable of admitting that you are wrong about CAGW? Are you that insecure? Did your mommy treat you bad? What, exactly, would it take for you to admit that your runaway global warming nonsense has been debunked? Because it has been, in spades.
Get back to us if you can think up an answer…

wpDiscuz

Watts Up With That?

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