By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The Gore Effect has struck again. Al Baby recently visited Canberra accompanied by his usual blizzard to try to convince the tiny band of eccentrics that held the balance of power in the Senate to vote to keep the “carbon” tax that has been pointlessly crippling the Australian economy.
He failed. The Senate upheld the vote in the House to bring the doomed CO2 tax to a timely end. The Australian Labor Party, which had unwisely introduced the hated tax for the sake of clinging on to office for a few more months with the support of the now-decimated Greens, is belatedly trying to whip up support from a skeptical nation for a repeal of the repeal.
Bob Carter, whose measured, eloquent and authoritative lectures all over Australia putting the minuscule global warming of the 20th century into the calming perspective of geological time helped to see off the tax, sends me the following image that the ALP are desperately circulating to their fanatical but dismayed supporters.
The propaganda graphic was accompanied by the usual mawkishly syrupy message from the Labor loonies to useful idiots everywhere:
“Just hours ago, Tony Abbott made Australia the only country in the world to reverse action on climate change.
“Not satisfied with hurting Australians through his cruel Budget, he’s now hurting future generations.
“Labor fought hard to put a price on carbon, and Labor fought hard to move to an emissions trading scheme. Through our climate action policies, investments in renewable energy topped $18 billion and 24,000 jobs in the sector were created. Houses with rooftop solar increased to 2.1 million, and wind-generated energy tripled.
“The Abbott Government and the crossbench in the Senate have taken a wrecking ball to Labor’s action on climate change.
“Let’s show Tony Abbott that we won’t stand for this. We will not give up the fight to securing a clean energy future for our children.”
The Prime Minister’s supporters have not been slow to respond. In no time, they were circulating the following take on the message.
Meanwhile, the tourist postcard industry has not been slow to sense the opportunity for combining celebration of the demise of the tax with some hearty Australian humor. Enjoy!
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This is borderline deceitful. Whether you realize it is another matter. (So I guess it’s not really deceitful as defined, since you need the intent; but it has near the same effect.):
davidmhoffer says:
July 19, 2014 at 10:56 am
For someone who purports to have expertise in physics however, such ignorance is telling. Someone who refers to terms like equilibrium, transient, heat capacity, energy flux, Stefan-Boltzmann, heat capacity as gobbledy gook clearly has no background in physics at all.
I figured it might break down into something silly like this. It doesn’t seem like you have been able to really address, or even realize, my basic points. Thus prompting the same pattern of adhering to anything that discredits, attacks or find fault with most Climate Scientists, Climate Science, and any advocacy that the threat presented by what we call “Climate Change” is very significant.
I never purported anything, other than what I’ve specifically written. None of which you have refuted in substance; just, condescendingly, in terminology and a lot of writing irrelevant to my points, or really, the point. Though next you’ll probably find an otherwise substantively peripheral or similarly misleading exception to that too, right?
You don’t have to bother to answer. If you could see it you probably wouldn’t be trying to refute basic climate science. That is, It seems that when belief strongly drives a view, it causes anything that supports it to appear logical and credible, and anything that does not, to then, appear not logical, and not credible:
Including, for example,the fairly ridiculous yet obviously believed projection that concluding that climate change presents a very significant threat is really driven by a non fact oriented belief, contorting the facts to then fit it. Rather than, quite specifically, the other way around. And what I have repeatedly pointed out examples of. Here’s a good one. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/17/australia-no-longer-a-carbon-tax-nation/#comments And the commenter (DB) from his responses, didn’t even seem to “get it.” (Or, more reasonably, be able to openly acknowledge it. But did then ironically ask me to “man up” and acknowledge that assertions in support of Climate Change posing a significant threat to us, are baseless.) Do you?
I also, more directly, did not refer to any of the terms you mention as gobbledygook. Just the writing, or much of your responses, in particular largely peripheral, and, non substantively responsive comments, in response back to mine.
I say that because while I welcome well detailed explanations, it seems the degree of highfalutin expression varied inversely with the degree of relevance to what I either originally wrote, or what I suggested you got wrong or were construing incorrectly. (As, by the way, I notice to be a frequent pattern. Classic example is this recent article on here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/15/what-an-engineer-finds-extraordinary-about-climate/ ) Hence, gobbledygook.
But at any rate, to conflate the two – is either outright deceit, or, again ,a product of the same highly reinforcing focus on finding ways to discredit anything, anyone, any idea or any thought that supports the general idea that Climate Change poses a significant threat. (And thus keeps you from seeing in the first place that calling your responses, or some of your explanation in direct response, gobbledygook, is in fact not anywhere near calling basic science concepts like equilibrium etc., “gobbledygook.”)
I guess calling some of your response(s) gobbledygook wasn’t the best way to phrase it. But I welcomed, and still welcome, a coherent and accurate explanation, that a dumb guy like me (or maybe a smart guy like me) can understand, as to how the net energy balance of the earth, as I defined it in comments previously – and regardless of how it is technically defined or you wish to define it – is not increasing.
And if it is, then specifically – not peripherally, not with lectures on physics equations, not with address of other otherwise largely irrelevant points but expressed in such eloquent physics terms such that that fact gets lost on most objective readers (and probably yourself) – what it was about the basic substance of the point I’ve made as to why “Climate Change” poses very significant and reasonable probability threats, that you claim is incorrect, and therefore, makes my claim incorrect.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 19, 2014 at 4:40 pm
Mr Carter appears confused about the temperature record. So let us state the facts:
Mr. Carter and NASA and most of the world’ climatologists, and all of the world’s leading climatologists. The record above speaks for itself. Additionally, none of my centrally substantive points have been accurately addressed, if addressed at all; but regarding the temperature record, the claim was made that there was no warming for the past couple of decades. If this referred to the phenomenon we call “Global warming” it evinces a misunderstanding of what the “Global Warming phenomenon” is, as pointed out several times. If it refers to actual, literal “warming,” as in temperatures getting warmer, it is also incorrect, and something not in dispute.
Saying otherwise in a multiple of different ways, doesn’t change that, but is apparently fairly common.
Or, what dbstrealy did (though like you, and unlike Hoffer, he is always polite, so I always like and appreciate both of your comments), which was to say the earth is cooling, then provide a half to quarter term then itself bifurcated chart, all for the attempt of trying to show a different pattern than the longer term trend (see above comment on). And then in response to that point, provide a “Washington Post” chart (from a WP blog) that only covered the past several years. A short term shift (and it wasn’t even that by most charts, which I imagine vary because the time period is super short, and the changes from the previous decade are very slight), off of by far the highest temperature decade in modern record, is only relevant in the context of the full, longer term pattern. Otherwise on its own, as supposition for what the climate is or how it’s starting to change in response to a huge and – several hundred year but geologically near instantaneous – spike in total long lived greenhouse gas concentrations, is nothing but misleading.
GTR says:
July 19, 2014 at 10:08 am
@John Carter – wrote
” the earth right now is warming faster than at any point in at least the last 11,000 years.
[…]
where is the link on 10 degree shifts in a 10 year period in the past 15 k years?”
John – as I understand you have a data about global temperatures extending as far back as 15k years ago, that are presented with a resolution precise enough to catch every possible 10-years spike? Where is that data?
You seem to have read it wrong. See the original comment again. First. I only said that the claim the earth was not warming the last few decades was incorrect. I gave a link to a piece citing a study (a few links now provided) that concluded that during the recent warming trend, the earth has warmed faster than at any point than in 11,000 years. Since it seemed hard to categorize such a thing, I included a “probably.” The 11k thing was a secondary point. Then I linked to the basic graphs showing the modern temperature record.
Someone else then responded and said in the last 15k years, there have been 10 degree shifts in a 10 year period. Seems a short time window, but I asked where those links were, as I would have liked to see them. So, no it wasn’t me, it was someone else, and I was asking about it. And while finding 10d spikes in a 10 yr period doesn’t mean we had to catch every possible 10 year spike or window, I share your general concerns over that (at least without seeing the study) and hence in part, and in part because whatever it derived from it may be really interesting, why I asked the question.
(if on the other hand you’re saying I have no data on a ten year period as a basis for refuting the study I cited, a period an order of magnitude larger – that study looked at century differences – is far more significant, and all ten year period shifts are subsumed into an examination of all 100 year shifts.)
DavidMHoffer
I’m not trying to make you look like an idiot.You’re clearly not, and even if, so what. I’m an idiot for even trying to help show some of the many other facts on the climate issue
What I am trying to show is that you are incorrect on Climate Change.
Not incorrect in the sense that Climate Change is absolutely certain to create what we would consider a wildly problematic to devastating net rise in average ambient temperatures over time (and or an attendant and sufficiently detrimental change in general precipitation patterns, intensity, and volatility). But in the assertion of near the exact opposite.
Namely, that with a radical, multi million year change in the concentration of the molecules responsible for “trapping” (excuse me) radiated heat, to levels not seen for several million years, for very precise, super rapid, and “external” reasons, and that thus absorb and re radiate far more thermal radiation — the very process that keeps the earth from being a ball of ice — are nevertheless absolutely not going to have a major affect now, or the chances are so low it doesn’t warrant being much concerned over.
There seems to be a LOT of confusion over this basic idea. Sure, temperatures have changed a lot over earth’s history. And that’s why they are not “bad.” (Nor is what we are doing “bad.”) But we didn’t evolve under them or with the precipitation patterns that accompanied them. A couple of million year climactic shift, more or less, in ambient temperatures, and much of Florida,U.S.A. and a large amount of the rest of our globe’s exposed land, will be under water.
This isn’t conjecture. It’s more plausible than not. If anything, the argument is stronger for a slightly more powerful affect than than a slightly weaker one, due the large stabilizing capacity of all our (the earth’s) current snow fields and ice sheets, which are showing increasing signs of melting, and are melting, on net, and almost every major affect is almost unavoidable reinforcing (at least until a new stases is reached) other than possibly water vapor, which to the extent it is a negative reinforcement, will probably mean an even more extreme (or at least, extreme in the dry direction, which is bad) precipitation shift.
What’s not plausible is to assume the earth just fine tunes, as if it was some giant GAIA only looking out for mankind’s interests, to keep things within some ridiculously narrow geologic range, and regardless of the incredible magnitude of the breathtakingly rapid (in geologic terms) external forcing indisputably being occasioned.
Note, what is kind of critical to realize, and many people, regardless of Climate Change perspective, etc, don’t seem to (Former Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson does, however http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/opinion/sunday/lessons-for-climate-change-in-the-2008-recession.html ) Harm here equal various ranges of outcome times their chances, added together. Assessing this on the reasonable and objective – not ideologically driven scale – indicates that strategically, not redressing the issue, as I (and most of the world’s leading scientists on the matter) have suggested, is extremely counter productive, and against our interest.
Nor, I want to emphasize again, does addressing it have to be so burdensome, nor in the long term is it a meaningful cost.
Or, ultimately, a real one. Shifting to a far better production and energy system is a benefit. Not a cost. It’s just a challenge to do. A good challenge. One that is in line with why we have to grow our economies in the first place. Namely, produce, thrive, always grow, always build, have nobs available (here, building new energy production and utilization capabilities,among other things) always be “moving forward.” Not a bad challenge, such as dealing with this (climate) issue after the fact, when due to the lag there will be no catch up.
Carter says:
Someone… said in the last 15k years, there have been 10 degree shifts in a 10 year period. Seems a short time window, but I asked where those links were, as I would have liked to see them.
Observe cognitive dissonance: I posted this peer reviewed chart showing exactly that, after Mr Carter questioned it the first time. He did not acknowledge it the first time, and he seems just as clueless now. That is because it flatly contradicts the nonsense he is trying to sell here, so he cannot acknowledge it.
Carter’s comments are full of similar nonsense. When Lord Monckton pointed out that other warming episodes have happened in the recent past, Carter ignored it, and stated just the opposite. Carter shows all the signs of being a religious fanatic. He is scientifically illiterate, but he posts his cut ‘n’ pasted comments to try and look educated. He is not.
Carter says, “This isn’t conjecture,” then he goes on to baselessly conjecture about water vapor. Carter doesn’t understand anything about water vapor; relative humidity has declined over the past several decades, contradicting all the predictions made by the alarmist clique that R.H. would rise due to global warming. It hasn’t. But Carter doesn’t care; he believes, and that is enough for him to invent ‘facts’.
Next, Carter says: …the claim the earth was not warming the last few decades was incorrect.
Say what?? Is Carter actually saying that global warming is continuing? That is a sure sign of cognitive dissonance. Earth to Carter: global warming has stopped. But of course, if you admit that then your entire premise is shot down. So you must continue with your fantasy.
Finally, I posted this chart: http://i.snag.gy/BztF1.jpg It shows at least twenty rapid warming events during the Holocene. They are no different from the current natural warming. But Carter cannot acknowledge that. If he did his entire belief system would be debunked. So he makes up phony ‘facts’ to support his belief.
Instead of Carter rambling all over the map, I would like it if he would pick one point, whatever he likes, and debate it to conclusion. But he will not do that, because that is how alrmists lose debates. So Carter will continue posting his pseudoscience, trying to convince readers of his wacky world view. That may work at thinly-trafficked alarmist blogs like SS, but it doesn’t work here. WUWT readers are educated and scientifically literate. Carter could learn a lot from them. But he won’t. His mind is made up, and closed tight.
davidmhoffer says:
July 18, 2014 at 5:29 pm
John Carter;
Here, being the clear warming trend, and one that has been very rapid in terms of recent geologic time.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_hi-def3.gif
Are you quite certain
Your link purports to show the amount of warming relative to longer periods of time in the past. I guess my question is, interesting as the link is, why you failed to see that it’s irrelevant to my statement you recited above – namely, that there is a clear warming trend, and one that has been very rapid in terms of recent geologic time.
By a guy, no less, who is later “logical and smart” enough to conclude I’m not science smart enough to be able to talk physics with,
Sudden selective breakdown in logical capacities suddenly? Or just an extreme bias driving interpretation.
Or a way around both, from your perspective anyway, and continue belief: i.e, undermine the person making the point here, or find another way to angle around it, as is repeatedly done, following the same pattern over and over and over. Then convince yourself that your point above somehow is relevant (let alone relevant enough for the “”are you quite certain?” added after the link provided to discredit the two stated points – clear warming trend, and one that is very rapid in terms of recent geologic time – that is in fact irrelevant to both. That is, even if there is a greater century of warming over the last few thousand years — which, according to the recent study cited by CNN, etc. major sources, there isn’t — it does not mean the current one is not also very rapid.
See what I mean by the pattern yet? It is what is happening, I can assure you.
Also, the data set that little otherwise irrelevant concoction relies upon, relies upon a large mistake (or again, confusion of facts produced by a fealty to the pre-determined underlying idea), and is incredibly misleading, if not ultimately, manipulative.
As one of the more well reputed climate sites in the world points out:
Easterbrook plots the temperature data from the GISP2 core…[and] defines “present” as the year 2000. However, the GISP2 “present” follows a common paleoclimate convention and is actually 1950. The first data point in the file is at 95 years BP. This would make 95 years BP 1855 — a full 155 years ago, long before any other global temperature record shows any modern warming. In order to make absolutely sure of my dates, I emailed Richard Alley, and he confirmed that the GISP2 “present” is 1950, and that the most recent temperature in the GISP2 series is therefore 1855.
This is Easterbrook’s main sleight of hand. He wants to present a regional proxy for temperature from 155 years ago as somehow indicative of present global temperatures. …. a response he gave to a request from the German EIKE forum to clarify why he was representing 1905 (wrongly, in two senses) as the present. Here’s what he had to say:
[Yet] the first data point in the temperature series he’s relying on is not from the “top of the core”, it’s from layers dated to 1855. . emphasis in bold added here http://www.skepticalscience.com/10000-years-warmer.htm
So the person whose data Easterbrook actually took to make his chart even pointed out that Easterbrook had it wrong, yet he continued to insist otherwise.
The above is pretty straight forward. It is not fraud, it is that someone who doesn’t understand the issue concocted something. Then never fixed it. Why would that be? Because fixing it would undermine the purpose it was first designed for?
I’ll add another one. Even using what Easterbrook (mistakenly but then stubbornly? Deceitfully?) postulates as the present, appears to skew the graph he makes, as it cuts off most of the hottest years on record since modern recording began, including the hottest decade, and a followup decade of a few more new top ten global ambient temperature years. (And the trend continues. 2013, depending on what data sets are used, is actually between the top 2 and top 6 on record while also continuing the seeming appearance of a lot of volatility and intense precipitation events http://time.com/1358/snowpocalypse-or-not-2013-was-one-of-the-warmest-years-on-record/).
I noticed several comments dismissing skepticalscience.com out of hand. Why? Is it possibles skeptical science sometimes get things right? Possible that the drive to find whatever negative can be found (or manufactured) about skeptical science comes from the same pattern I’ve been referencing, namely, if unwittingly, to find ways to discredit, undermine or attack anything that supports the bulk of professional climate science, and adhere to anything that does so discredit, or that seems to so do?
Could it be possible, while I’m sure everyone and every site makes mistakes (skeptical science included I imagine), that there a lot of climate myths out there? And that skepticalscience is specifically writing about trying to correct those myths, and correcting those myths sort of undermines much of the case adhered to in order to “rationally” dismiss the climate change issue?
Which, I suggest is not rational to do once there is an (often lacking) fuller understanding of the issue. Which, in turn, is something constant misinformation not only prevents, but continually self reinforces; while then only further strengthening the near automatic tendency to dismiss anything that might not be misinformation, but that serves to support the general bulk of professional climate science.
Skepticalscience also seems to use this very widely known site (named after my own favorite expression), as the source for a lot of its myths. So isn’t it then just easier and more natural to instead believe that skepticalscience is therefore so unreliable as to not even be worth considering, based upon whatever arguments can be gotten? And thus, skeptical science, and its large body of often accurate data and information – though of course as a result it is now not “viewed” as such – voila, is dismissed.
It’s also an interesting article to check out, for the last main paragraph, which is a long quote by the scientist whose work Easterbrook used. http://www.skepticalscience.com/10000-years-warmer.htm
“
John Carter
But I welcomed, and still welcome, a coherent and accurate explanation, that a dumb guy like me (or maybe a smart guy like me) can understand, as to how the net energy balance of the earth, as I defined it in comments previously – and regardless of how it is technically defined or you wish to define it – is not increasing.
John,
The physics I am trying to explain to you is actually your side of the argument. It comes right out of papers from the leading climate scientists in the world. Hanson, Trenberth, Jones, and others. It is in all the IPCC reports. I suggest you begin by reading at least one of them, the most recent being AR5
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
You won’t get very far because most of the terminology will be way over your head. So, to understand what the leading climate scientists in the world are actually saying, you’re first going to have to learn what all the terms mean and how the physics works. I suggest you start with an understanding of Stefan-Boltzmann Law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law
From there you will need to expand your knowledge to understand the difference between a black body temperature and an effective black body temperature of a body with a planet. You’ll also need to understand the difference between an equilibrium response and a transient response, and what heat capacity means.
This is not to avoid your argument, but to explain to you that your argument is predicated upon assumptions about the science that are incorrect, and not just by my measure of things, but by that of the official climate science of the world and the leading climate scientists of the world.
body with a planet.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
my apologies, I meant:
planet with an atmosphere.
Carter says:
I noticed several comments dismissing skepticalscience.com out of hand. Why?
Comments that I have made at SS have been changed by deleting parts of them, which resulted in an entirely different meaning. No notice was posted of that underhanded action. Other coments that I made, usually just posting a chart like this, were censored out of existence without comment.
SS does not want readers like you to see both sides of the debate. You are being controlled, and you don’t even know it.
Many others here have reported similar censorship and deletions. Now SS has its own sidebar classification: “Unreliable.” They are simply dishonest. Why would you keep visiting a dishonest blog? They are feeding you propaganda. Please stop linking to SS. WUWT is an honest site, and we do not need to see more climate propaganda. There is already too much.
Next, your TIME link repeats the preposterous meme that a colder climate is caused by global warming. They must think you are extremely gullible to believe that. Maybe they’re right.
Finally, you can make your points using half the words. Try it.
John Carter, here is your proposal:
There are several huge difficulties with this idiotic plan.
1. Neither you nor anyone else to date has provided any evidence that CO2 is a “problem”, in your terminology.
2. Neither you nor anyone else has provided any evidence that CO2 is the secret mystery knob that controls the climate. Indeed the current pause in warming is good evidence that it does NOT control the climate. The failure of the vaunted Tinkertoy climate models to predict the pause is also evidence that CO2 is NOT a big factor in the temperature.
3. Driving up the cost of energy impoverishes, harms, and kills the poor. If the cost of gasoline goes up, you and I can live with it. Our unlamented ex-Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, following your foolish lead, seriously said he wanted gasoline prices to go up to European levels of $8.00 per gallon. He didn’t care, he had his government car and driver and enough money to buy all the gas he needs.
On the other hand, a single mother living twenty miles from her job with no public transit and three kids will be harmed by any fuel cost increase. She’s already living on the edge. Any money that goes to fuel comes out of her kids’ mouths … hope you feel good about that, because that’s what you are proposing.
A single mother in India may see her children killed by your mad war on carbon. Already, your brand of lunacy has led the World Bank to refuse to fund coal fired power plants in India, and without cheap energy, rural clinics don’t have refrigeration for vaccines. One guess what that means …
I saw the cost of expensive fuel in the Solomon Islands during the time when fuel prices went through the roof around 2008. Fresh fish disappeared from the market because the fishermen couldn’t afford to fish. And fish is often the only protein in the islands. As a result, the kids suffered.
What you are proposing is to impoverish, sicken, and kill the poor today, in the HOPE, not the certainty but the hope, that it will make their lives better tomorrow.
I find this attitude supercilious, thoughtless, cruel, and despicable. It astounds me that someone of your education would propose such a destructive path for even one instant.
History will not be kind to those who, like you, propose driving the poor deeper into poverty today by driving up energy costs, merely so that you can play at science. Folks like you will be seen correctly as being both stupid and heartless.
Like I said, I hope you feel good about the damage and deaths that your proposed policies have already caused. You are killing the poor, and you think you’re the good guy? Get a clue, my friend. The problem is not CO2.
The problem is you.
w.
Mr Carter’s posts here are predicated on the notion that there is a “consensus” among “mainstream” scientists in climate and related fields to the effect that manmade global warming will prove dangerous unless very large sums are spent on shutting down most of the world’s generating capacity and transport systems.
First, he should know that argument from consensus is a species of feeble-mindedness condemned by Aristotle 2350 years ago as one of the dozen commonest logical fallacies in human discourse. The reason why arguing from consensus is fallacious is that just because we are told that a great number of people say they believe a thing is so, that statement does not demonstrate that there are a great number, or that they say what they are said to have said, or that, even if they do say they believe it they believe what they are said to have said they believe, or that even if they believe what they are said to have said they believe they are correct in their belief.
The mere assertion that there is a consensus, therefore, tells us nothing about whether the proposition to which the consensus is said to adhere is true or false.
Nor does it help to say, as Mr Carter does, that the consensus is a consensus of experts. For the argument from appeal to the authority of the person making an assertion, rather than to the merits of his argument, is another of the dozen feeble-mindednesses codified by Aristotle.
With that necessary minimum of philosophical background, let us review the facts about the supposed “consensus”. First, it is necessary to formulate the proposition to which the “consensus” is said to adhere. Mr Carter says the consensus adheres to the propositions not only that the world is warming but that we are the primary cause and that the rate of warming, if unchecked, will prove dangerous.
The proposition that the world is warming requires greater specificity. There has been no warming to speak of, over and above the combined measurement, coverage, and bias uncertainties, over the past couple of decades. Mr Carter says the consensus does not think this statement is right, but offers no evidence for the existence of any consensus on his point. He may care to follow my monthly updates on the global temperature data, where he will find the basis for the facts about recent global temperature change that I presented earlier in this thread.
I have already demonstrated, for instance, that the warming of the 20th century (around 0.8 K since 1900) is not unprecedented even in the instrumental temperature record. I determined this fact by examining the Central England Temperature Record, after first establishing that it is a reasonable proxy for global temperature change. The CETR shows a rate of global warming from 1694 to 1733 of 4.33 K/century equivalent. That is well over twice the fastest supra-decadal rate of global warming since the Industrial Revolution began. Mr Carter may prefer in future to obtain his science directly from the data, or from the learned journals, rather than relying on reports in the news media.
The world has in fact been cooling since the medieval warm period, which was in turn cooler than the Roman warm period, which was in turn cooler than the Minoan and Egyptian Old Kingdom warm periods, which were in turn cooler than the Holocene Climate Optimum (optimum because it was warmer). During at least two-thirds of the past 11,400 years, the weather was warmer than the present. Therefore, there is nothing unprecedented either about the rate of global warming or the absolute global mean surface temperature. These are the facts.
Next, the vexed question of the extent of Man’s contribution to the warming of the 20th century. At the recent Heartland climate conference, an informal survey of the 650 participants by show of hands demonstrated 100% support for the proposition that some of the global warming since 1950 may have been caused by us. However, there is little support in the scientific literature for the IPCC’s notion that most of it was caused by us. A recent survey by the people who write the “Skeptical” “Science” propaganda blog found that out of 11,944 scientific papers reviewed only 64, or 0.5%, said recent warming was mostly manmade. Yet the paper in which the authors published their results did not record this inconvenient truth, and a subsequent paper by one of them said they had found 97.1% “consensus” in support of that proposition, when in fact they had found only 0.5% consensus for it. You may like to read Legates et al. (2013), in which the artifices by which 0.5% consensus was falsely turned into a 97.1% consensus are meticulously explained.
Finally, the question whether the manmade contribution to the small warming since 1950 is likely to prove dangerous if we continue to add CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the air. Here no one has tested the scientific consensus. The “Skeptical” “Science” team were careful not to ask that question, because they knew perfectly well that there is no consensus in the scientific literature on that point. Of the 64 papers saying that more than half the warming since 1950 was manmade, only half a dozen – call it 0.05%, or 1 in 2000, of the entire sample – went on to say it was dangerous.
Mr Carter, therefore, holds passionately to a belief that only an insignificant minority of those writing in the reviewed journals express. He is, of course, entitled to his belief, but he may begin to suspect from some of the facts that have been given to him in this thread that in many material respects his belief may be ill-founded. It is certainly not as widely shared among scientists publishing in the learned journals as he may until now have imagined.
The unassailable fact is that the climate scare is founded chiefly not upon observations – which show very little occurring that has not occurred before – but upon predictions: in particular, the prediction (made by James Hansen before Congress in 1988 and by the IPCC in its first assessment report in 1990) that global warming would have occurred in the quarter-century since then at a rate at least double that which has actually been measured. Indeed, warming has occurred over the past 25 years at a rate appreciably below even the lowest rate then predicted by the IPCC. The computer models on which the panic was based were wrong. As John Maynard Keynes used to say, “When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?”
Hello everyone, late to the party.
I see in one post John Carter touting that CNN report on…..Marcott? That piece of garbage!
JC, you need to upgrade your research skills.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=marcott
http://climateaudit.org/?s=marcott
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/04/01/were-not-screwed/
“The latter was an apparent discovery that 20th-century warming was a wild departure from anything seen in over 11,000 years. News of this finding flew around the world and the authors suddenly became the latest in a long line of celebrity climate scientists.
The trouble is, as they quietly admitted over the weekend, their new and stunning claim is groundless. The real story is only just emerging, and it isn’t pretty.”
——–
dbstealey says:
July 20, 2014 at 5:15 am
Carter says:
Someone… said in the last 15k years, there have been 10 degree shifts in a 10 year period. Seems a short time window, but I asked where those links were, as I would have liked to see them.
_____
Observe cognitive dissonance: I posted this peer reviewed chart showing exactly that, after Mr Carter questioned it the first time. He did not acknowledge it the first time, and he seems just as clueless now.
I did not “acknowledge it the first time, and…? Here is what I originally wrote btw, in contrast to how you characterized it above “Re your other comment above, where is the link on 10 degree shifts in a 10 year period in the past 15 k years? That’s interesting stuff. (also, kind of a short time frame so hard to put into context.)
But regardless, even though it really wouldn’t be relevant to anything if I had, ever possibly dawn on you I had not seen it?
Ditto for the next comment, when I did in fact reference it. But, again, either way, so what. It wasn’t remotely relevant to my response to GTR. See near end of comment http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/17/australia-no-longer-a-carbon-tax-nation/#comment-1690318 Was only pointing out to him that I didn’t make claims re’ a 15K year period; but had only asked about an interesting link some one else (you) had referenced.
Why would someone possibly turn a non issue into an issue, attack and write extremely negatively about it, and be wrong, all at the same time?
Sorry about bold all over last comment. Unintentional.
dbstealey says:
July 20, 2014 at 5:15 am
When Lord Monckton pointed out that other warming episodes have happened in the recent past, Carter ignored it, and stated just the opposite. Carter shows all the signs of being a religious fanatic. He is scientifically illiterate, but he posts his cut ‘n’ pasted comments to try and look educated. He is not.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Didn’t ignore anything. Also didn’t state the opposite, or anything like it. More importantly, am not debating what warmings occurred, haven’t occurred, or how to define them. It sidesteps the real issue, which raises questions why you and Monckton keep trying to turn it into the issue. I was responding to his claim that there hasn’t been any “global warming” the last couple decades. Global warming, though I agree it is often misconstrued as our current temperature trend by people who don’t know a lot about the issue (and sometimes the media), is not about that.
As for just pure “warming” as in temperatures, NASA states that nine of the ten warmest years in modern times have occurred in the 21st century. That is, since 2000. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/13 (I’m sure others state a little different. Again, doesn’t matter, so don’t go – as has been the pattern – turning that into yet another false litmus of whether “CC” – meaning the significant threat of a marked shift in response to a marked geologic forcing – exists. )
I posted a chart of temperatures showing the clear trend up, also a link re’ a study that tried to put the current (most relevantly “current,” not last ten or forty years) warming trend into some sort of recent context. (Iffy conclusion without a time frame, with the longer the time frame – up to matching the current warming frame – the more relevant the conclusion. But now as you and Hoffer do you are going to take the word “iffy” out of context, misrepresent on that, and once again try to denounce the idea of a significant threat of a geologically significant shift over time in response to the current geologically powerful external forcing, with something that isn’t the issue, and or simply castigate or discredit anyone trying to advocate any such consideration. As, I have repeatedly pointed out, and you keep actually doing in response, has been the consistent pattern.)
That study concluded that the earth has warmed faster than at any point in the last 11,000 years or more. Whether or not that’s technically wrong or right I don’t really care. (That comment’s not now going to be also taken out of context or misrepresented also, right?) It was just pointing out that not only has the earth warmed the last 100 years, but that it’s a relatively strong amount in comparison to most (if not all, according to that study at least) 100 year periods. If Monckton has better data than the CNN and Christian Science Monitor referenced study, great, it doesn’t matter. “One of the faster warming 100 year periods” in the last 10,000 years is still significant. Anyway, was also, and more importantly, peripheral. (That bold intended.)
That is, and was only (and very clearly) responding to the claim that there’s been no warming the last couple decades. I don’t know what charts you’re getting your information from, or why, or from where (re charts, see my above(?) posted comment to Davidmhoffer that references Don Easterbrook’s, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/17/australia-no-longer-a-carbon-tax-nation/#comment-1690348 it’s pretty enlightening and raises the question why Easterbrook would blatantly misrepresent data to get a far different impact, and keep doing it), but the 90s were the hottest decade on record since we began global temperature record keeping in the late 1800s. (Gonna also pick issue with the phrase global temperature record keeping now, too, or something else such, as if that is relevant to the issue of CC, sort of like the pattern of everything else?)
Then, many of the hottest years since 1880 record keeping began, have occurred since then, in the 2000s. So overall, yes, the last couple of decades have “warmed.” And the longer term trend illustrates that more consistently. But again, I don’t care. (Another phrase to cherry pick and misconstrue on and once again turn the issue into something it’s not.) Don’t try to turn minutiae of small proportions in 2000-2010 average ambient temperatures – several years of which happened to still be among the top 10 warmest years since modern record keeping began – into the Climate Change issue. (Which you first did with a chart that halved to quartered the overall period, and then was bifurcated again, then misleadingly – or manipulatively – castigated that observation as “denigration,” then did with a Wash’ Post blog chart of only several years.)
Somehow, no matter what I do or say, you have turned that 11,000 warmest period secondary, and peripheral, point into “THE” debate on whether on not Climate Change is a significant threat or not. Which means you are either not being entirely honest, or are misconstruing what the real issue actually is. The issue not as defined by you, but why the climate scientists who are concerned are concerned; and, in commenting in response to me, why I am concerned.
Regarding the projection of religious fanaticism – it’s yet another way to dismiss climate science. And the fact that some people who think CC is a problem may say silly things or not have a lot of knowledge, is an extremely poor reason to then castigate strong concern as anything other than what it is, let alone for what it has been repeatedly castigated as. And which you ultimately resorted to as well. Ironically, any zealotry here, let alone fanaticism, has been exhibited in some of the comments in response to mine. Maybe yours, I dunno. That’s for you to consider in light of the evidence.
dbstealey says:
July 20, 2014 at 5:15 am
DBstrealey
Next, Carter says: …the claim the earth was not warming the last few decades was incorrect.
Say what?? Is Carter actually saying that global warming is continuing? That is a sure sign of cognitive dissonance. Earth to Carter: global warming has stopped. But of course, if you admit that then your entire premise is shot down. So you must continue with your fantasy.
Aside from all the hysteria, I think you managed to get every single sentence wrong;, many, ludicrously (if not a little ironically – see last paragraph of last comment – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/17/australia-no-longer-a-carbon-tax-nation/#comment-1690771 )
The fact that our current temperature trend just happens to be one of the rare fairly rapid warming (and as far as the longer – by far the more relevant – term trend goes, a generally increasing one) periods in recent geologic time, is certainly not inconsistent with the underlying phenomenon, and likely a mild corroborative reflection of it. [Though I warrant it’s being confused for IT.]
But again, CC or GW (or AGW) is not that; it’s not about current temperatures, or 10 or 20 or even 30 years in isolation,;or the current state of conditions; or some idea that conditions now reflect what has and will change (or some abstraction therein mixed in with normal long term randomness) and that will then in turn (again mixed in with normal long term randomness) go up in arithmetic proportion therein with any increasing net atmospheric [gg] levels.
If you don’t know this, then there is no way to have a valid opinion on the issue, since (as is common and yet ironic in a world full of – as you put it – full of not just opinion but almost religious like “conviction” of a perception in lieu thereof), you don’t really know what the real issue is.
You say you do. But if you do, then your comments in response (of which the above quote in italics is only one example, albeit a very strong one) are either disingenuous, or completelly illogical. (Both of which would then beg the original question as to why, and for which I’ve suggested a pervading reason.)
Yet I see not only opinion, but such self righteous zeal that, for example, you have been writing almost anything (no matter how mis-constructed) to dismiss or attack my points, supposedly, and me. Rather than instead, simple reflection and consideration of them, and what they mean.
And as for temperatures, here is the temperature chart from 1880, back when record keeping began. Notice how it goes upward. http://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/warming_world (But an effective way to to attack CC, but a manipulative or ill informed one otherwise, is to quibble with that, too.) Also, as for recent periods, the 90s were the hottest decade in modern record, and since then, again, several (up to nine if NASA’s data is used) of the ten warmest years on record have since occurred.
Including last year, which was somewhere between the 2nd and 6th warmest year on record..(Again http://time.com/1358/snowpocalypse-or-not-2013-was-one-of-the-warmest-years-on-record/ ) (4th according to NASA). And, though year to year meaningless, interesting to note, seemed to have continued the trend of increasing volatility.
Which volatility, by the way, would also mean more temperature period changes and extremes. Yet in otherwise irrelevant response to that Time article link (being linked to just to show the point that 2013 was also one of the very warmest on record) you mocked the idea that “Climate Change” is at all relevant to a period of bitter cold a large region experienced around the time of the article, illustrating that you don’t really know what Climate Change is: Yet not only have an opinion on it, but a fervently held one. Maybe instead of always finding ways to reassess (or, well, really, attack) Climate Science, and my comments, it’s time to actually re-assess (not attack) your own views. Speaking of your “manning up,” as it’s a man up thing to do. Hard, which is what makes it so.
By the way, aside from confusing “climate” with “cold front” (which is sort of like confusing bathtub with ocean) you called the idea of increased weather volatility “preposterous.”
Next, your TIME link repeats the preposterous meme that a colder climate is caused by global warming.
Maybe the idea of increased weather volatility is “preposterous,” and the coincidental (not probative, but certainly somewhat corroborative) increase in actual weather volatility, is also, if you really believe all the things you’ve written and that appear in here. And “preposterous” is an adjective. But it still seems very misapplied here, don’t you think?
You might believe that a geologically radical external forcing, sufficient to change the level of long lived gg gases in the atmosphere to levels not collectively seen on earth in several million years, and do so in a period of time which is almost all but geologically instantaneous, would not lead to increased volatility as part of the developing longer term climate; but to view the very idea as preposterous, is another matter altogether.
Mr Carter appears to be laboring under the misapprehension that a long-term warming trend is present in the temperature data. It is not. A warming trend is evident over the past 104 years, but that (in geological terms) is the very near term and (in IPCC terms) is the medium term. The long-term trend over the past 10,000 years has been a definite cooling trend. This is best demonstrated in the GISP2 ice-core record in Greenland, which shows the summit of the Greenland ice sheet to have been 2.5 K warmer 8000 years ago than today: and yet the Greenland ice sheet did not melt (except at the coastal margins). For an understanding of why it did not melt, study the thermal inertia of ice masses and, in particular, the very large amount of energy required to achieve a phase-transition from the solid to the liquid phase of H2O.
Allowing for polar amplification, the world may have been about 1.5 K warming 8000 years ago than today, and the GISP2 record shows a gentle decline since then. Precisely because there was a decline, periods of warming such as the 20th century are rarer than periods of cooling such as the 16th century. However, they are still frequent. Ljungqvist et al. (2010) show a reconstruction of the global temperature record from the peak of the Roman warm period to the present warm period. From the onset of the Dark Ages cold period in 400 AD until the peak of the medieval warm period there were five warming periods similar to those that terminated the Little Ice Age and the Victorian minimum. There is, as I have said, nothing in the least exceptional about the rate of warming in the 20th century, nor about its absolute magnitude.
Mr Carter says many of the past ten years have been among the warmest in the instrumental record. Well, after more than 300 years of global warming, where would he expect the warmest years to come? This, too, is not a surprising circumstance. What is surprising is that, notwithstanding record increases in CO2 concentration, there has been little or no warming distinguishable from the measurement, coverage and bias uncertainties in the global temperature datasets for approaching two decades. To demonstrate this, Mr Carter may like to take the least-squares linear-regression trend on the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite anomalies over the 20 years ending in May 2014. He will find that the trend is one-sixth of a Celsius degree: and that is barely outwith the measurement uncertainties.
Since Mr Carter seems readily impressed by what he considers to be a “consensus”, and since we are told that the IPCC represents that consensus, he may like to know not only that the IPCC’s original projections of 1990 exaggererated the global warming to date by 100% but also that the IPCC has itself realized that it got its sums wrong. Between the pre-final and final drafts of its Fifrth Assessment Report, it responded to suggestions by expert reviewers such as me by cutting drastically its near-term global warming projection. It has also almost halved its estimate of the amount of anthropogenic radiative forcing since 1750. In 1990 it projected that there should have been 4 Watts per square meter by now. In 2013 it acknowledged that the forcing had been only 2.3 Watts per square meter.
More significantly still, it accepted one of the most important points established over and over again by paleoclimate analysis (see e.g. Scotese, 1999; Petit et al., 1999, Zachos et al., 2001; Jouzel et al.., 2007): namely, that in recent geological time global mean surface temperature has varied by not more than 1% (or 3 K) either side of the 810,000-year mean. Accordingly, and again at the suggestion of expert reviewers such as me, the IPCC has revisited its estimate of the feedback-sum to equilibrium, cutting it from 2 Watts per square meter per Kelvin to 1.5 W/m^2/K. That, in turn, should have mandated a cut in climate sensitivity from the previous report’s 3.26 K (IPCC, 2007, p. 798, box 10.2) to just 2.2 K. However, instead of admitting the startling fact that the previous central estimate of climate sensitivity had been too high by half, the IPCC instead said that it was not willing to give a central estimate – yet that is the chief purpose of its multi-thousand-page reports.
Further examination of the IPCC’s models by Monckton of Brenchley et al. (2014, submitted) shows that a more realistic central estimate of climate sensitivity is in the region of 1 K (see also Monckton of Brenchley, 2008, 2010; Lindzen & Choi, 2009, 2011; Spencer & Braswell, 2010, 2011) and a host of other papers in the reviewed literature, where the trend is moving inexorably towards settling on a climate sensitivity of only 1 K per CO2 doubling. Is that going to bring Thermageddon about our ears? The answer, sir, is No.
John Carter [a sock puppet who also posts under the name Ivan Steele] is apparenty riled by comments I made, because he has responded with multiple verbose replies.
To boil Carter’s arguments down to their essence, he seems to be saying that:
1) Global warming is continuing. As support for that wrongheaded belief, Carter says that recent decades have been warmer than ever. Well, I am 6’2″ tall, and I am taller now than I have ever been. But I suppose next week I could be 7’2″ tall, you never know.
2) The Consensus is that skeptics are wrong. Global warming is continuing:
“It is what is happening, I can assure you.”
Carter doesn’t understand that assertions made on the basis of appeals to authority are only valid if the authority is legitimate. Carter’s ‘authorities’ are self-serving alarmism by people with an agenda, and are thus they are illegitimate.
John Carter is either an evil person [per Willis, above], or he is completely deluded, and impervious to reason. I don’t like to think of him as evil. Rather, he is a religious fanatic whose mind is made up and closed to anything but cherry-picked items that support his preconceived confirmation bias. He believes in the so-called Consensus, but the universal consensus here is that Carter is flat wrong — another example of his confirmation bias: one Consensus is A-OK because it supports Carter’s belief, but another Consensus is wrong, because it doesn’t.
Carter refuses to acknowledge what everyone here knows: global warming has stopped. Because if he admitted to that fact, his entire argument is debunked.
John Carter is a case study in cognitive dissonance. His arguments are crazy, and they convince no one. I doubt that Carter can understand that the cAGW scare is running out of steam, because the real world contradicts it. Glaciers could once again cover temperate latitudes, but Carter would still be making his lunatic arguments. His mind is made up, and no facts can change it.
John Carter says:
July 21, 2014 at 12:24 am
Including last year, which was somewhere between the 2nd and 6th warmest year on record
RSS came in 10th and Hacrut4 came in 8th.
RSS
1 {1998, 0.550},
2 {2010, 0.472},
3 {2005, 0.33},
4 {2003, 0.32},
5 {2002, 0.315},
6 {2007, 0.256},
7 {2001, 0.246},
8 {2006, 0.231},
9 {2009, 0.222},
10 2013 0.218
11 {2004, 0.202},
12 2012: 0.187
Hadcrut4
1 {2010, 0.547},
2 {2005, 0.539},
3 {1998, 0.531},
4 {2003, 0.503},
5 {2006, 0.495},
6 {2009, 0.494},
7 {2002, 0.492},
8 2013 0.486
9 {2007, 0.483}
10 2012 0.448,
[snip -policy violation nothing but an ad-hom attack – mod]
philjourdan says:
July 21, 2014 at 8:48 am
@John Carter – Did you read dbStealey’s response at all? Did you even bother with a link or 2? Your rebuttal indicates you either did not, or could not understand what he wrote. He cites raw data, you cite opinion pieces at news sites.
Try reading what he wrote the next time – and following the links. You made a fool of yourself by ignoring them this time.
A fool of myself to who? The world for thinking that any main commenter on this site might actually reasonably consider any of the many centrally relevant and often pretty reasonable points I’ve made? Agreed
To those who don’t want to believe anything other than CC does not pose a significant threat, and so therefore will find any way to view me as a fool and what I write, or the concerns I raise thus nonsense? Agreed?
I did read what he wrote, did follow the links. Didn’t ignore a thing, and responded to them, peripheral as they were, when I did see them. But this tactic (unrecognized as such) is common, constantly turning the CC issue into something it is not. Which your comment here above only continues as well as another tactic, find any way possible to take issue with someone making substantive points you obviously don’t want to consider, since I have not seen any substantive consideration of them, or any reasoned, substantive response back that either goes to a peripheral issue, or gets things mistaken.
Stealey cites raw data which is selected from amongst a lot, most of it is peripheral, to chart a particular view, and I’ve cited plenty of data, you just ignore it.
Ultimately Climate Change is not a data driven issue, by the way.
@John Carter – no a fool of yourself. You may believe anything you want. But in a debate/argument/discussion, you have to REPOND to what is written. You have failed to do so at every turn. So much so that I have stopped reading your responses. I really do not care if you believe in sky dragons and unicorns. But the only thing you are convincing others of is that you are either dishonest or severely disabled in your reading comprehension.
Again, keep your faith. But do not pretend you are in a discussion or you are doing anything other than making yourself look foolish.
John Carter;
Ultimately Climate Change is not a data driven issue, by the way.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
ROFLMAO, gasping for breath, tears rolling down cheeks, might lose consciousness…
@davidmhoffer
Actually he is being honest for once. To him it is a matter of faith, not science.
Sorry, Anthony. Could I at least say that Monckton has no right to call Al Gore ‘Al Baby’? In many minds, that kind of disrespect has nothing to do with the science. If this is an impartial forum for climate debate, then why is one side allowed to disrespect, and the other side is ad-hom?
[try using your argument on why climate sceptics should not be called “deniers” without cause -mod]
Mr Carter says “Climate change is not a data-driven issue.” In fact, however, the physical sciences, including climatology, are inescapably data-driven: for the scientific method starts with observation and measurement, applies pre-existing theory to them, and thereby improves the theory.
It is true that many who take an apocalyptic view of the consequences our altering a mere 1/2500 of the composition of the atmosphere over the next 100 years are belief-driven rather than data-driven. But the science is data-driven: and the data to date do not show the world warming at anything like the predicted rate. Nor is there any sound theoretical reason why we should expect the large warming predicted by the computer models or by the IPCC. Expect little more than 1 K manmade global warming this century. There are many more pressing environmental problems than a littler warmer weather.
Reblogged this on OCCUPYMELBOURNE.NET and commented:
Today was one of the coldest days in recorded history for several Melbourne suburbs, hrmm where is all this global warming?
Today, one of the coldest days in recorded history in Melbourne, Australia. There is no global warming.
davidmhoffer says:
July 21, 2014 at 4:56 pm
John Carter;
Ultimately Climate Change is not a data driven issue, by the way.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
ROFLMAO, gasping for breath, tears rolling down cheeks, might lose consciousness…
It may be completely data driven in the mainstream public’s eye, but perception of the issue does not define what the actual problem is, only how people most easily relate to it. And since science is observation > theory, driven with then > observation and data, scientists also, understandably, look to data; and should, as part of our understanding. Unfortunately here we’re not trying to understand CC after the fact — which is when the issue becomes data determinative — but understand it before the fact, so we know what most sensibly to do (if, in theory, anything), in response. (And again, the most important data is not temperature changes, but changes in more stable earth systems.)
If the issue was a concurrent (immediate) change in total climate in response to any change in gg levels, then it would be a data driven issue. But that’s not the issue, though this idea keeps getting completely pushed aside. Ultimately, again, this issue may be predominantly data driven after the fact. But after the fact is largely irrelevant, isn’t it?
What’s relevant is in understanding how the general climate is likely to respond over time. Not how it has, though looking at how it has so far can help further hone understanding.
My suggestion, and again the one also agreed with by the great bulk of professional atmospheric physicists who study the issue (which does not make the argument, but supports consideration of it), is that radically changing the long lived greenhouse gas concentrations of the air to levels not seen in millions of years on earth presents a significant threat of increasingly radical affect on the climate, until the new climate more accurately reflects the fact that the same processes responsible for warming our globe, now re radiate far more heat that would otherwise emit out to space, and which is slowly warming the earth as a result (see, for instance, the oceans, increasing net melt of enormous reservoirs of ice, etc.), and the earth comes into a new balance.
Yet that idea has been labeled crazy and worse by a few commenters, one in particular, who keeps taking issue with me, calling me all sorts of names, and continues to misconstrue my comments.
The concurrence thing is not only central to the issue, it is essentially THE issue:
Climate can not immediately change over to whatever general new stases level it is going to ultimately be at, in instantaneous response to any forcing or radical externally induced (such as anthropomorphic) change to long lived atmospheric gg concentration levels. There are stable systems which over the long term help shape what climate is (ice caps, permafrost, oceans) that simply can not change instantly, or, even – at first anyway – very quickly. (Particularly in geologic terms, which is seemingly glacial to us in the 10 second twitter age.)
But they would change over time, in very likely long term trend increasing and accelerating fashion. (The phrase long term is italicized because decade to decade keeps getting mistaken as an arbiter on what CC: rather than just something that serves to increase the relevance of what total long term data information we do have – because there is more of it, and over more time.) That is, they would likely do so in response to an increase in net outer earth surface heat (or loosely put, earth/lower atmosphere system), which is exactly what is slowly happening in the permafrost surface and subsurface, and in the oceans, and probably in the huge polar sheets of ice that make up much of our two poles.
Central to this, commenter and apparent WUWT insider dbstealey says I keep ignoring his points. I haven’t. I have sometimes pointed out when they are erroneous, or when they misconstrue my points. The latter of which has occurred in nearly comment he has written in response to mine, and I haven’t even had time to respond to many of them.
And the concurrence idea has been central to this as well. In order to disregard anything I’ve (and others, outside of this site) suggested (raising the question why it has to repeatedly be called such pretty outlandish names as is exhibited in a few of the comments above)as this commenter does here and numerous places elsewhere, there’s been a singular adherence to the fact that over a climatically irrelevant period of time (recent year) temperatures have been well above recent geologic historical ambient norms but have not shown a consistent year to year short term rise.
Again, this largely misconstrues what climate is, and more particularly, how – in an earth /lower atmosphere system that continues to accumulate energy decade by decade and has underlying relatively stable, but changeable, and now slowly changing, climate determinative systems (ice caps, oceans) – any sort of geologic shift in response to a large external forcing over time would take place. Again, it would not be concurrent, but lagging. (While at the same time we would expect to see some rise in general ambient temperatures at first, along with large rises in the levels of the long lived atmospheric gases that re radiate heat, which has now been seen over an increasingly relevant (i.e, longer) term period.)
Again, since this is not even being considered, but seemingly labeled with all sorts of pejorative adjectives, it is worth emphasizing that almost every professional non ideological climatologist professionally studying this issue generally agrees with that assessment.
That does not itself make the assessment (in direct contrast with what commenter Lord Monckton, in beautifully written prose, so eloquently otherwise argues above), but it does warrant the idea that instead of being simply dismissed out of hand, it be legitimately considered.
John (Carter), thank you for responding to many people’s objections to your claims. I note that you haven’t replied to mine, so I thought I repeat part of it:
Please understand that I don’t think that you are a bad person for your support of a plan that inevitably harms, impoverishes, and even kills poor people, and is doing so today as we speak.
I think you haven’t thought it through.
When I was a kid, cheap electricity was seen as the savior of the poor farmer and the poor housewife.
And rightly so, because it is that. It has lifted us out of poverty, allowed enterprise, taken the load off of the farmer, and made it so we don’t spend a day a week bent over a washboard. Cheap electricity is the reason our lives are not dark, brutish, exhausting, and short.
That is my objections to this mad war on fossil fuels. You claim the solution is to make electricity cost MORE? What part of cheap electricity saving the farmer and housewife are you not seeing? Truly, my friend, always remember that driving up the cost of energy has a corresponding human cost in pain, suffering, and death.
Call me crazy, but I want all kinds of fuels to cost less …
w.