Halfway to 2°C – halfway to hell on Earth or just a number?
Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The Met Office is at it again. Just in time for Paris, in a stunt co-ordinated with the unspeakable BBC, it issued a characteristically mendacious press release saying that global mean surface temperature was about to exceed 1 C° above the mean for the reference period 1850-1900 for the first time.
And this, said the excitable David Shukman, the BBC’s pseudoscience editor on the ten o’clock news, was the halfway milestone to 2 C°, which, he said, was generally accepted to be the threshold of dangerous global warming.
Here, in pictures, is the answer to the Met Office’s hysterical press release.
First, the near-zero HadCRUT4 trend for the reference period [1850-1900]:
Next, the warming since 1850:
The Met Office has used the questionable statistical device of subtracting the –0.3 C° baseline anomaly from the single +0.8 C° monthly anomaly arising from the current el Niño, when the correct approach is to determine the least-squares linear trend on the entire dataset since 1850 – whose trend, however, is only 0.81 C°, not 1.00 C°.
How quickly will the trend reach 1 C° above 1850-1900? One indicator is the warming rate since Man might first have had a noticeable influence on global temperature in 1950. The trend since then is equivalent to 0.113 C° per decade. If that warming rate were to continue, it would be the best part of two decades before global temperature reached 1 C° above the 1850-1900 reference period.
How likely is that post-1950 rate to continue? Not very. For the warming rate has slowed to a standstill. For the past 18 years 9 months there has been none at all:
The incurious Shukman did not mention this particular inconvenient truth. Nor, of course, did he mention that the first monthly anomaly to reach 1 C° above 1850-1900 was as far back as 1998. It is this fact, above all, that shows the Met Office’s press release to have been a pure stunt intended to contribute to the pre-Paris mood music.
The BBC has been continuously silent about just how far below prediction the warming rate is. Since the IPCC first made its predictions in 1990, all five of the longest-standing global temperature datasets – three terrestrial and two satellite – have shown warming rates well below even the lower bound of the IPCC’s very wide interval of predicted global warming.
On the graph, the orange zone shows the IPCC’s roughly straight-line predictions from 1990 to 2100. The IPCC’s central estimate is that from 1990 to the present there should have been about 0.72 C° of global warming. However, the observed trend even on the radically tampered-with GISS dataset is only 0.44 C°.
Remarkably, the IPCC’s predicted rate of warming is three times the UAH observed trend of just 0.24 C° since 1990.
How much warming would mainstream climate science lead us to expect between now and 2100? On IPCC’s RCP 6.0 “business-almost-as-usual” scenario, the central estimate is 2.2 C° warming from 2015-2100. However, extrapolating the much-overstated GISS warming rate to 2100 would lead us to expect only 1.45 C° of warming; at the lower bound, UAH would show still less, at just 0.95 C°.
However, one cannot safely use past trends as an indication of future warming, as the Pause demonstrates all too clearly. The IPCC admits that 111 of 114 models over-predicted future warming, not least because they contained a large element of extrapolation from past warming.
Let us apply mainstream climate-science considerations to predict the warming from now till 2100. Climate sensitivity to the 3.71 W m–2 radiative forcing from a doubled CO2 concentration is 3.3 K (AR4, Box 10.2, p. 798).
However, the feedback sum was cut from the CMIP3/AR4 value 1.93 W m–2 K–1 to the CMIP5/AR5 value 1.47 W m–2 K–1, reducing the central estimate of climate sensitivity by a third to 2.1 K.
The anthropogenic forcing from 2015-2100 on IPCC’s “business-almost-as-usual” RCP 6.0 scenario is 2.75 W m–2, about three-quarters of the forcing at CO2 doubling, so that the equilibrium warming from a 2.75 W m–2 pulse of forcing is 1.6 K.
However, only two-thirds of equilibrium response to a pulse of forcing occurs within 85 years, so that the transient response in 2100 to a 2.75 W m–2 pulse of forcing that arose today would be 1.0 K.
However, the 2.75 W m–2 forcing arises not in a single pulse today but in small, near-linear annual increments, halving the in-century warming to 0.5 K.
As the table confirms, the 21st-century warming likely to occur on the basis of the most realistic of IPCC’s four CO2 concentration growth scenarios is two-thirds of three-quarters of two-thirds of one-half of the 3.3 K equilibrium sensitivity to CO2 doubling in IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report: i.e., 0.5 K.
IPCC, of course, says the warming over the rest of this century will be 2.2 [1.4, 3.1] K on the RCP 6.0 scenario. IPCC’s central estimate of warming to 2100 is thus, inexplicably, four and a half times greater than its own mainstream methods, data and results would lead it to expect. So grossly overstated is its central estimate of 21st-century warming that it is actually greater than what it would expect equilibrium warming to be in response to a CO2 doubling.
IPCC’s flagrant and manifestly deliberate overstatement of 21st-century predicted warming has gravely misled the governments that have been foolish enough to believe its predictions. As the step-by-step calculation in the table shows, there is no need whatsoever for any action this century to make global warming go away.
For the 2 C°-above-1850 target that the Met Office and the BBC say we must avoid (though there is no rational scientific justification for what is purely a political target) is not going to be reached this century, even if little or no mitigation of global warming is attempted.
Now, when will the BBC or the Met Office ever admit that the mainstream science outlined above shows just how very little anthropogenic warming we should expect this century?
And when will the nations of the Earth realize they have been fooled by a small clique of well-placed, extravagantly-funded, powerfully-protected fraudsters surrounded by a host of useful idiots?
Pigs might fly.
first – as Paris nears – WUWT is becoming quite problematic to open, navigate & comment.
Lord Monckton: similar thing is happening in Australia. all the MSM is shrieking HEATWAVE:
16 Nov: SMH: Peter Hannam: Three-day heatwave forecast for eastern Australia
“We’re seeing this warmth a bit earlier than usual,” Mr Meyers (Tristan Meyers, a meteorologist with Weatherzone) said…
Bureau charts indicate the hottest period of the heatwave is still expected around 5pm, AEDT, on Thursday, when roughly half the country will be sizzling in 40 degrees or warmer conditions…
While the El Nino event in the Pacific may be one factor behind the heat, early season warmth across north-western Australia is consistent with climate change, ***climatologists say…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/scorching-temperatures-ahead-as-dome-of-heat-shifts-eastwards-20151116-gl05e9.html
***no climatologists quoted.
16 Nov: ABC: AFP: Paris climate talks: France cancels side events as world leaders ‘vow to seek 2C degree climate deal’
But he (French prime minister Manuel Valls) said the conference would “probably” be reduced to the official negotiation.
“We are in the process of looking at that but everything which was outside of the COP (climate talks), a whole series of concerts, of rather festive events, will be without a doubt cancelled,” Mr Valls said…
Leaders of the world’s top economies have vowed to seek a deal to stave off catastrophic global warming at the Paris conference, according to a draft statement drawn up on Monday.
Negotiators at the Group of 20 summit haggled though the night on the text of the statement as Saudi Arabia and India initially refused to include specific climate goals like curbing global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius, sources said…
France, with the backing of the European Union, has worked furiously to make the climate talks a success and Paris officials bristled at the reluctance by certain countries at the G20 to include its basic objectives in the statement.
“At a certain point there was a feeling that we were not living on the same planet,” an exhausted European negotiator told reporters after more than 20 hours of talks with his G20 counterparts.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-16/world-leaders-vow-to-seek-2c-degree-climate-deal-in-paris/6945848
Heatwave? Australia? Not here. We had to light the fire again (slow combustion) last weekend. We live halfway between Sydney and Canberra.
It’s even worse here in NZ. We have had a really cold spring. Today’s temperature is 13 deg C. But I believe Melbourne is as hot as… I know we shouldn’t confuse weather with climate, but surely global warming should manifest itself sometime soon?
New Zealand is surrounded by oceans which mitigate climate extremes, so we should be a good test bed of global warming. But there has been only 0.68 deg warming since 1852 in my city (in spite of some urban island effects), and if the most recent years are taken into account, there has been even less warming or even none.
Hannam is the resident environment editor at the SMH. He now seem to no longer allow comments on his articles because he has been proven blatantly wrong time and time again. I no longer read any of his articles.
Pat says:
WUWT is becoming quite problematic to open, navigate & comment.
Especially re: comments that end up in the wrong place. WordPress time stamps are not working properly. I’ve emailed them, but more input is needed.
Any help appreciated. Please contact WordPress, if you’re not happy about this problem.. Thanks.
Yet another thing to consider when comparing OLS trends in surface temperature is that the “inherent chaos” in surface temperature data can render OLS trends unstable and unreliable. Here is some evidence of the presence of long term memory and persistence in the data
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2689425
Robust tests for trends may be used to overcome the limitations of OLS
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2631298
You can always use a different metric, such as minimizing L1 (absolute deviation) as opposed to L2 (OLS). Matlab and Mathematica have these functions built in. There is no a priori reason as to why we should minimize squares of errors as opposed to absolute values.
Observed reality (green zone) for time being terminates at 2015; its extension beyond the present time makes no sense, even more so as the starting point is taken from 1990.
A fair point: one cannot extrapolate a past trend into the future without making it clear that all one is doing is showing what the position would be if the discrepancy between prediction and reality were to persist for a century. This was not made clear. I do apologize.
Lord Monckton
Thank you for your reply with the explicit clarification.
“And when will the nations of the Earth realize they have been fooled by a small clique of well-placed, extravagantly-funded, powerfully-protected fraudsters surrounded by a host of useful idiots?” ~ C. Monckton
I am afraid that the nations of the earth want to be “fooled”. This “catastrophic anthropocentric global warming” nonsense gives ever more power to the governments of the world — and more reason to control every aspect of our lives. I am not so sure that the nations are really being fooled.
Some bright guy once said something like … it is hard to get a man to see the truth when his status and/or paycheck depends on him not seeing the truth.
We are in a political war against collectivists — not a science debate where the facts and observations count.
Even if you believe this, it will take 200 years to reach 2C. (400ppm / 2ppm per year) at current emission levels. Why the hurry? Given that there has been virtually no increase in temperature, (on the planet, as opposed to in models or data records that have been tampered with), would it not be prudent to wait?
If we are going to spend trillions of dollars, wouldn’t we be better of spending it on thorium reactor or fusion reactor technology that will solve the problem once and for all (assuming a problem actually exists in the first place), as opposed to pouring it down the current alternative energy rat holes?
The hurry is that the whole thing is a scam that is falling apart. When people are freezing because they can’t afford the power to keep warm in winter as cold and snow worsen in the northern hemisphere, it becomes increasingly difficult to convince them about the scam. Polls in western countries show this is happening. They have less and less time to shove fascist idealogy down our throats without sparking riots and revolution. Remember, CAGW is a political and religious matter to greenies, something to always keep in the back of your mind. I used to argue with their converts at the local college where I am taking courses. I don’t bother, anymore because they aren’t open to hearing about real data.
Agree! I would also be more concerned if the CO2 levels were less than 200ppm, too close to plants being unable to photosynthesise, which would be a lot more catastrophic than a fictitious 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature.
Guess.
They must be just trying to rally the troops because the mass of people in the UK don’t give a tinkers cuss about climate change and the majority of them have no more clue what cop21 is than they have about what the G20 or the G8 does. From my position here in France at the moment it does not appear that the French have it as a priority either. 23 people were arrested this morning, 169 searches were carried out and to the best of my knowledge there were no Exxon executives, oil company offices, climate d*ni*rs, climate contrarians or scientists involved. For some reason they have been targeting islamist extremists. (For the benefit of the Americans,,,,that last sentence was irony)
They are dictating the terms of any discussion that might cross a person’s mind.
Nobody in the US cares either except among the far left. Climate change ranks dead last among all issues, if it was an issue. Winters are as cold and brutal as usual, it’s a reprieve when we get a warm one, the Antarctic isn’t melting anytime soon, no nations have been flooded out, still can’t sail the Arctic without an ice breaker nearby. Does anybody think the general American public is that stupid? For a politician to state global warming is more important than terrorists, is the height of stupidity. It’s the left who are in power of the government right now and are leading the charge. They are so far left they’ve made the right look main stream. I’m not enamored with the tea party, but I’m not following the left over the cliff either. Obama care anyone?
Does anybody think the general American public is that stupid?
Gullible is a better word.
Yeah, we get the news over here too. I wonder if any of the searches were conducted in the Muslim no go zones that surround Paris?
Thank you, Ivor, for that information. Good to hear of those arrests!
A lot of time, effort, and data dumps are spent splitting this hair of global temperature. Meanwhile, there is the unsaid premise that this is somehow harmful. I reject that premise from the start.
Amen.
– – – – – – –
jpatrick,
Yes, indeed.
And I not only reject that hidden premise but I also reject the fundamental reason it’s holders have that premise.
John
Jihadists beleive the West is destroying the world through global warming. Bin Laden even chimed in with a special video. They’ll have to make due with Baghdadi this time.
Rough but true.
I did ponder over the weekend what special mental tunnel vision madness it takes to make a jihadi and to carry out such atrocities but, in its own way, AGW is similarly like a religion to some who show the same tunnel vision and intolerance of all who don’t subscribe to their view. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that jihadis would be happy to adopt this perspective as further evidence of western evil.
The more carefully you select your cherries, the more “special” the pie.
Wow – you just reminded me of the most stupid thing ever said by a human being.
Fond memories of the early days of awakening skepticism.
And now, we have a vast pie containing a select number of very dubious looking cherries.
Personally, I prefer Curry.
Indeed it is true that the believers cherry-pick their data, mentioning only the terrestrial temperature datasets and never mentioning the inconvenient truths shown by the satellite datasets.
That is why I thought it would be interesting to show the outturn in the quarter-century since 1990 on all three of the longest-standing terrestrial dataset as well as both the satellite datasets. One can see clearly just how extravagant and unrealistic the IPCC’s original predictions were. By showing the temperature trends determined on all five datasets, I was able to avoid all allegations that I was cherry-picking.
Of course, the IPCC has since 1990 all but halved its medium-term predictions: but the rate of warming has dropped to zero at the same time. So the discrepancy between prediction and reality continues to widen.
Yes, the short term warming appears to be zero.
Although, I suspect that we may discover a continuation of moderate long-term warning, when we obtain another few decades of satellite data. (Note the proviso, “may”)
But – event this event, should it occur, will tell us little regarding attribution and sensitivity.
Perhaps, in the absence of GHG forcing, the world would be cooling currently. We should admit that we do not know.
I think that it is very important that the skeptic position is not backed into a corner of being held to be reliant on a long term zero trend.
Rising seas and rising temperatures should be expected during the era following glaciation.
So, the reaction to evidence of gradual warming and gradual sea level rise should be, “yes, and so what?”
Somehow we need to get the message out, that warming and sea level rise are not unusual or unprecedented.
Monckton of Brenchley – have you considered obtaining a nice reconstructed map of the coastline of Northern Europe and the British Isles, at 18,000 to 6,000 years ago.
I believe that the general public do not have a firm grasp of the rapidity of change within a relatively short historical timescale. They have been shown graphs, or given explanations containing words such as mesolithic rather than specific timescales in 000’s years.
For most of an audience, I suspect that this material goes in one ear and out of the other.
But a short introduction explaining the recent presence of habitation and culture in areas that are now deep under the waves – would potential aid an audience in seeing why current changes should not needlessly startle them.
My partner and I have greatly enjoyed your talks via Youtube.
And I would like to thank you for these occasions of illumination and entertainment.
Here is the kind of material which I think may aid comprehension and context. Forgive me if you have already included this in presentations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
Is this what Bin Laden told you at your last meeting?
I’ve never spoken with him but, my guess is he would have said anything (told any lie) to stop western growth…wdyt?
What? I’m sure it’s just me but that is mumbo jumbo.
troe, you are at least 5-10 years behind the ordinary person in terms of the importance of CAGW and jihadism. Get real. Jihadists don’t give a damn about global warming. They do share one goal with CAGW proponents: destroy western civilization, destroy democracy, destroy capitalism. Yeah, they would probably sign on to anything that would hasten the result.
Anyone else uncomfortable with “observed reality” extending out to 2100?
But it was a computer that observed it! Has to be so!
/snark
Yeah – “extension of observed/current trend” might be a better label.
When it comes to observing the future, a certain amount of patience is required.
Right now, observations of 2100, seem a little premature.
With EU/UN refugee programs, I wouldn’t extend the trend beyond about 2040 after which your vote may not count.
Mods: Typo alert for the sentence above the first graph.
“First, the near-zero HadCRUT4 trend for the reference period 1850-1990:”
Should be:
“First, the near-zero HadCRUT4 trend for the reference period 1850-1900:”
It’s Not
The United Nations Climate Change Conference, is really, The Mafia Convention on ClimateFurthermore, never ever end an essay with “Pigs might fly!” Firstly, pigs will never fly, so there is no “might” about it. But now that you’ve wrote it, you will be open to an attack against yourself, Mr. Monckton. The morons will think that, you do believe that pigs do have the possibility, i.e. “might”, of flight. Now they can discredit your entire essay. Such is the moron’s thinking process.
Besides that small faus pax, nice work. But you are dealing with liars, thieves, crooks and scum. Truth and reality don’t mean squat to them. They have an agenda, to steal more money from the taxpayers. They will do and say anything so they can get more money. That’s what the Mafia Convention on Climate in Paris is all about; mafiosi coming together in their annual convention to get their fraudulent stories correct so that when they go back home they use each other as references and supporting claims for when they swindle more money through grants funded by the taxpayer.
We don’t need more essays, we need a honest justice and police system: white collar crime is not being punished as blue collar crime. But then, what can anyone expect, the judges and cops are all paid by the crooks in government too. Corruption is rife.
Afterthought: nix the “Pigs fly!” with sarcasm, too, morons don’t understand sarcasm, they confuse it for emphasis! Hmmm, might just explain how this global warming BS all started in the first place….just a thought.
‘might’ has a nuanced meaning (among several) of ‘have permission’ in addition to ‘may’ or ‘strength’. It can also be used sarcastically, etc. I’m sure Lord Monckton could offer more varieties of meanings. Pigs ‘can’ fly is more restrictive.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/might
“The Mafia Convention on Climate”?
I prefer the World Science Fiction Writers Convention myself…
In a recent news bulletin the BBC said that November was the mildest we had since Nov }1946,
one could detect a hint of glee in the announcers voice! I was a small child then and remember
what was one of the worst winters of the 20th century. There were huge quantities of snow and ice
skating on flooded fields and rivers lasted for weeks during which I learned to skate.
Travelling by road and rail was extremely difficult, food rationing was exacerbated by the frost
damaging crops. Then we endured some of the worst floods ever, many lives were lost on the East Coast. People were very relieved when Spring 1947 arrived, followed by one of the hottest summers on record which was very welcome after a winter of power cuts.
As regular readers ofWUWT will know extreme weather conditions never existed until Global Warming began in the 1990s. Just pray and hope we don’t a repeat of 1946/7.
Rudolf Well said, one of the prerequisites to believe in human induced global warming is no knowledge of the past climate, after all the climate only changed in the last half of the twenty century. Dr Mann proved that a long time ago. Yet when you tell them Mann’s work was a sham and that the Romans grew grapes in England as far north as York and you get a blank stare, or a retort that you are now able to grow grapes England again, and somehow today way was due to humans and the Roman warm period was due to god only knows what in their book and it does not matter that the temperatures are returning to past temps after all it got to be humans fault, it could not possible be nature doing it on its own.
Mark, you make a valid point in that most people have scant knowledge of past climate. We climate change junkies are quite familiar with global cooling of the seventies or the rapid warming a century ago. But, your average joe has no such familiarity and is therefor clueless. Such is the nature of the masses. We all have different interests and not everyone is going to be clued into agw (let alone agw skepticism)…
I get a great deal of pleasure from watching the surprised expression on people’s faces when I tell them about the astonishing changes that have occurred in the last 20,000years.
Or when people suddenly grasp that coral atolls must have tracked the ocean surface.
It’s a pleasure to inform. But also interesting to see how people who have formed strong views regarding the threat of “sea level rise” have no idea of the context of currently measured trends, or of their magnitude relative to the recent past. Here’s a nice map, with which to blow the minds of the ill-informed!!!!
http://www.disassociated.com/2013/09/03/there-was-once-a-place-called-doggerland-in-europe-check-this-map/
The irony about the analysis by Lord Monckton is that it doesn’t take into account the fact that climate temperatures and data upon which the predictions are based have been doctored and adjusted to be totally unreliable. Forget all the theory relating to CO 2 having a correlation with global temperature.QED. The theory has failed miserably. The emperor has no clothes and one day someone important will actually acknowledge that. Global Warming alarmism is the greatest moral dilemma of our time. ( although ISIS also is pretty serious)
There is also the error summed up in this quotation: “Never make predictions, especially about the future.” Casey Stengel
In my math classes many decades ago my teacher Pythagoras (just kidding, I’m not that old) deprecated both prediction and interpolation. Boy, the stasis of the last 19+ years have shown how right he was. It shows the climate system is affected by a number of variables, not just CO2.
So how do we get the Emperor to realise he is naked?
Kelvin Duncan:
Your metaphorical “Emperor” wishes for his metaphorical “subjects” to believe him when he claims that the UNIPCC climate models make “predictions.” We can force “him” to realize that he is metaphorically “naked” by proving to his “subjects” that the UNIPCC climate models make only “projections.”
Mr Oldberg may care to read the head posting, in which the prediction made by the IPCC in 1990 is preceded by the words “We predict”.
Monckton of Brenchley:
Thank you for taking the time to respond. That the IPCC said “We predict” in 1990 is not at issue. The issue is whether climate models predict.
Under usage established by Kevin Trenberth circa 2007, a “prediction” is a kind of proposition. Thus, the issue of whether a model makes predictions can be resolved by determination of whether each such “prediction” is a kind of proposition. If not, the proper term is “projection.”
When a “prediction” is a kind of proposition this state of affairs leaves a trail that includes probabilities, relative frequencies, a statistical population, events, sampling units, a sample space, a condition space, mutual information, falsifiability and possible validation. No such a trail is left by the models on which regulation of CO2 emissions is based. It can be concluded that these models make projections.
A model that makes projections is non-falsifiable and insusceptible to being validated. However, it is susceptible to being “evaluated.” In an “evaluation” a selected set of projections is compared to a selected global temperature time series.
Leaving aside the alarmists’ latest pathetic attempt to prove the Sun orbits around the Earth – as it’s beyond contempt, I fully support the above contributor’s suggestion that the world would be better served diverting the horrendous sums of money being wasted on fraudulent CAGW/CLimate Change policies to R&D studies on Thorium Reactors. That would solve all our problems, regardless of whether CAGW is the true religion!
I forgot , though! The Chinese already have such a programme with a target of a full scale operational commercial Thorium Power Station within 15 years.
What do the inscrutable orientalists know and believe that we don’t know and believe?
My experience with Chinese technonology in my field (physical metallurgy, hydrometallurgy) is that their thorium reactor will be an accurate copy (probably just larger scale) of Oak Ridge’s Th reactor of the 1950s. Much of their process industry is built upon US patents – many old ones. I’ve toured plants and in some cases I questioned outmoded steps in the processes and couldn’t get an understanding of why the step was even necessary from the plant manager. Their lithium metal making was something to behold: people in safety, oxygen fed suits in semi darkness moving around antique cells.
I bought a couple of wind turbines from China about a decade ago.
Whoever constructed them had a “creative” approach to engineering.
Suffice to say that they needed significant re-aligning, re-machining and some parts replacing altogether.
One hub had to be replaced by the manufacturer, due to the fact that the hole was way off dead centre.
Somebody needed to but those poor guys a decent set-square and a vernier caliper!!
Anyway – I’m sure that they are catching up fast.
But sometimes by learning on the job.
The Director of Oak Ridge published the definitive text on Thorium reactors, and was sacked because the politicians want reactive by-products for weapons, but these were not given by Thorium reactors.
Kelvin Duncan:
The containment vessels of light water reactors cannot sustain rupture of the reactor pressure vessel. Federal licensing of LWRs is predicated upon the premise that rupture is impossible. Years ago, I published a peer-reviewed article ( http://www.ndt.net/article/v04n05/oldberg/oldberg.htm ) proving that rupture was possible. After being advised of the publication of this article the government ignored it.
Thank you for that! That really makes me feel good. They have just contracted to build the next UK nuclear power station.
This week contains the 6th anniversary of the release of the CRU emails; known as Climategate.
Lest we forget.
John
Meanwhile, the pigs are getting fat at the government trough. See Shukla’s Gold
It’s far worse than that. Shukla is small fry: http://greencorruption.blogspot.co.uk/
It is a bit rich of the BBC to start quoting the Met Office after they refused to renew their weather forecasting contract with them because they could not forecast the weather with any degree of accuracy. And why can’t the met Office get accurate forecasts? Because they have programmed their supercomputer to take into account global warming, which we all know hasn’t been happening for 18.75 years!
I am at a loss to what we are actually measuring in the land based time series thermometer record. as Richard Courtney often points out, it is meaningless.
But how can we make a comparison with 1850, or 1880, when we are not using the same data that was used to collect and formulate the 1850 or 1880 temperatures?
Throughout this time series data sets, the number of stations, their locations and spatial coverage is a constantly moveable feast that we are never comparing apples with apples.
In 1850 there were less than 300 stations, and I think less than a dozen in the Southern Hemisphere. By about 1880 this had grown to a little under 500 stations with a little over a dozen in the Southern hemisphere. Gradually, in the 1950s/60s the number of stations peaked at somewhat less than 6000. and then from the 1970s it fell in number and is now down to about 2,500.
If we wanted to make some comparison with the 1850s, we would have to identify which stations were then in existing and reporting temperatures and then look at the data from these stations and only these stations throughout the entire period to 2015. Obviously, some of these stations will have dropped out and will not have continuous records throughout the entire 165 years. may be there will be only a couple of hundred that have continuous records, and one would have to evaluate the data just from those stations, and consider the impact of siting issues and UHI, and possibly TOB.
We would have to do something similar if we wanted to make a comparison with the 1880s, or the 2930s.
One would need a series of time series data sets, each one covering a different period but being based only on data from stations that have reports covering the entire period. So you have the same station data throughout the entirety of the period over which one is making a comparison.
In any event, the claims regarding global temperatures is farcical. In the 19th century we have all but no information on the Southern hemisphere. heck, even today, we are not measuring the globe but instead we are looking at very poor spatial coverage heavily biased to the USA and North West Europe. See for example:
👍
Again, a well written accurate and meaningful assessment by Lord Monckton. But it’s beside the point. Dr. Thomas Sowell wrote a book “Knowledge and Power” some years ago. One item covered was what appears to be “crazy” decisions or policies. If a decision appears to be divorced from reality, then you don’t know the reality wherein the decision was made. While there may be true cultist believers, I believe that CAGW is a convenient fraud to take billions of dollars away from stupid people and give it away to third (and first) world kleptocrats. The science is beside the point.
In response to Jon Jewett, the truth will reassert itself faster if we speak it than if we don’t, and we should not be fearful of speaking the truth merely because the truth is transiently unfashionable with the governing elite. The science is by no means beside the point: the science is the point. It is by science that the scaremongers and profiteers of doom will be driven squealing and sniveling back into their noisome lairs.
Paris climate change conference will be given all its asked for and more, President Hollande calls the conference itself a moment of “Hope and Unity” any thing less than complete capitulation will be deemed as negligence.
It’s no wonder soldiers are expected to toe the warmist line – if they it don’t it’s dereliction of duty.
ADMINISTRATOR MCCARTHY: “I think if you go up to anybody in the military who’s been paying attention as well, they will tell you that one of the biggest challenges to national security is the challenge of climate change. And, they are partnering with us to make sure that they’re delivering on their promise of addressing national security by changing the work they’re doing to reflect a change in climate as well.”
https://youtu.be/KLZ-LRWZ1A4
oops!!
It’s no wonder soldiers are expected to toe the warmist line – if they don’t do it, it’s dereliction of duty.
ISIL will get and use nuclear material. That is when governments will come together and push for wartime control. Co2 emissions will skyrocket. War is the great political leveler.
With loss of human life Co2 may just stay level as it does seasonally.
The juxtaposition of an ISIS attack in Paris and an idiotic world climate meeting to seek agreement to end civilization, might suggest to some observers that European open door immigration policy, and the low indigenous fertility rate could make global warming moot long before halfway to 2100, no matter how warming plays out. If it gets another LIA on top of it, it will be more than a strain on civilization.
I would second that. I certainly don’t deny that the climate changes.
And I would like to propose that we should be alarmed.
But not about the climate.
Thank you, Lord Monckton. You always give an entertaining and very informative analysis.
For more coverage of the BBC’s climate folly, the high priest of public funded alarmism, Roger Harrabin, is hosting a three part series ‘Changing Climate’ at 8pm on BBC Radio 4 this evening.
Put all loose objects in a drawer and and, if you’re prone to self harm, tie yourself up. The BBC are letting the lunatics run the asylum for an hour.
I can’t bring myself to listen. I don’t have the strong constitution required.
It’ll make “thought for the day” look like a refuge of sanity and clear minded wisdom.
It was appaling. The only sceptic interviews were a few heavily edited Matt Ridley quotes and someone who believes in creation. The rest was all scaremongering and speculation against a end of days soundtrack. Standard BBC bias and why I don’t pay the licence fee.
Nooooooooo!!! I can’t bear it anymore.
I used to listen to BBC radio 4, whilst working from home.
Slowly, it began to annoy me more and more. Until now, when I can not risk turning it on for even a few minutes in case somebody says something so palpably daft that it spoils an entire day!!
I tend to agree with David S above. People here and elsewhere keep using the doctored surface data to prove that its NOT warming significantly. Please use only CET, satellite or radiosonde data ONLY otherwise we are feeding the AGW trough everytime
‘Met Office’s press release to have been a pure stunt intended to contribute to the pre-Paris mood music.,’
which is exactly what you expect them to do , while the BBC has no ability and less interest in question any PR they are handed and there is much more to come .
Christopher Monkton,
Thank you for a stimulating essay, as usual. It is a pleasure to see the ideas created from it.
I think the “host of useful idiots”, which undoubtedly exists, does not communicate any trustworthy statements. The “small clique” of “fraudsters” meme has vanishingly small credibility plus it is a cartoonish stereotype that does not appear to even exist and, actually, I do not think the clique exists. It looks to me like it’s all just useful idiots all the way down and clique-less.
John
A vast number of people, blinded by shared warped incentives, perhaps. Not small and not a clique.
Sadly. Since were it so, then we would not face a problem of such a grand scale.
No single specific conspiracy to detect. We could blow the lid off a thousand individual cases of corrupt practice and the great machine would continue to move blindly forward. All that we can do is remonstrate and watch and wait.
The International Geoethics Committee is considering the establishment of a fraud investigation team to examine those aspects of the climate story-line that appear to be deliberate deceptions. It is in practice very difficult to get fraud convictions: one has to demonstrate not only the intent to deceive but a second intent: to gain for oneself or to cause gain or loss to others. But some of the frauds are sufficiently serious and damaging, and the evidence of the identities of the perpetrators so clear, that there may be a prospect of prosecuting one or two of the fraudsters. The rest would run a mile and the scare would collapse quite quickly.
Christopher Monckton,
First, I apologize for misspelling your name as Monkton over the last week or so. The spelling auto-correct feature on my iphone has recently started taking the ‘c’ out of your last name.
There is a traditional philosophy of modern science, one that is based in the concept of valuing only objective oriented epistemological processes. It will assess a significant number of those climate focused researchers/authors who are intentionally biased toward CAGW centric findings as deceiving and committing fraud.
There is also a newer philosophy of ‘post’-modern science that says exterior (social/political/economic) subjective ideals should be involved to inform the input and processes of researchers. Also, it asks subjective ideals to inform a screening to select the outcome of research. In that kind of subject philosophy of modern science the apparent fraud and deceit is seen by the researchers to be a feature/benefit of their subjective school of the philosophy of science.
I think that those you call the “host of useful idiots”, are just those educated and shaped by their similar thinking communities into being servants of the subjective school of the philosophy of science. Within that school they are complying with its principles and values. In that sense, I think there is no situation of a “small clique” of “fraudsters”, but rather the “host of useful idiots” came from and is acting within the context of their subjective based philosophy of science. The subjective school of the philosophy of science is, unfortunately, endemic of late in climate focused research areas.
What is needed is to focus on the pseudo-ness of the subjective with objective valued processes.
John
I investigated one or two interesting scientific frauds for HM Government. I could not, of course, demand prosecution for public officials, for I was one of them at the time: but in one case I suggested that a fraud victim should take the defalcating ministry to court, where he won a million dollars.
There is a small number of identifiable fraudsters at the heart of the climate scam. It is those we shall target, in a businesslike way, assembling sworn evidence, getting the best scientists to check it, and then putting together a case for submission to the prosecuting authorities.
Monckton of Brenchley on November 18, 2015 at 12:42 pm
– – – – – – – –
Christopher Monckton,
I can see benefits in your pursuit of that kind of strategy which includes the legal option.
Other strategies might include non-legal approaches. One such could clearly be the strengthening of the core of the scientific community that still respects effective self-correction. It can be expedited by efforts to refocus some capable media resources toward them.
John
Once again Lord Monckton takes a perfectly good proposition, in this case, that even under IPCC assumptions this century’s warming won’t be too great, and undermines it by dodgy arguments that don’t bear examination. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was part of a fifth-column operation whose purpose is to make skeptics gush at his cargo-cult logic and thereby appear ridiculous.
Please don’t embarrass fellow skeptics by disseminating the head post’s table any further than it already has been.
Joe Born:
You say of the excellent logic always applied by Lord Monckton
If you did want to check that then you could ask your fellow fifth-columnists if they think he is one of you.
Richard
I’m one of me. If that helps. I can’t speak for anyone else here.
indefatigablefrog:
Joe Born posted three smears of Lord Monckton; viz.
(a) the untrue assertion that Lord Monckton provides “cargo-cult logic”,
(b) the unsubstantiated assertion that Lord Monckton provides his posts as self-agrandisement,
and
(c) the untrue assertion that Lord Monckton is part of the fifth-column undermining “skeptics”.
I threw those smears back at Joe Born and you have replied to my doing that by saying in total
I fail to understand how your reply relates to the smears of Lord Monckton from Joe Born or my having thrown them back at him.
Richard
I’m not trying to treat this blog as a debating society. Unnecessary privation, illness, and death are direct results of the catastrophic-global-warming hoax. That is serious issue, and I take it seriously. So from time to time I try to alert this site’s denizens to the fact that some—not all—of what Lord Monckton produces is rubbish and that people who gush at it show their ignorance and tend thereby to bring the skeptic side of the debate into disrepute.
Commenter richardscourtney is a good example of the lightweight following that Lord Monckton attracts.
I never once said or implied that “Lord Monckton provides his posts as self-agrandisement [sic].” Mr. Courtney made that up out of whole cloth—just as Lord Monckton did some of his “Irreducibly Simple” paper’s contents. Now that Mr. Courtney brings it up, though, self-aggrandizement would partially explain Lord Monckton’s refusal to admit errors in his work.
Nor did I say that Lord Monckton is part of a fifth column; I said that I’d have thought he is if I didn’t know better. Unlike Mr. Courtney, any reasonably intelligent native speaker would have recognized the use of the subjunctive, contrary-to-fact mood.
As to cargo-cult logic, no, I didn’t substantiate my assertion in the comment above, but anyone of an analytic bent already knows that Lord Monckton’s writings are full of it. For example, look up the citation Lord Monckton provides for his table’s “x 1/2” line and search for anything there that says the ramp response at 85 years is half of what the step response would have been. He gives the appearance of supporting assertions, but he relies on fanboys like Mr. Courtney not to notice he hasn’t actually done it. The spectacle puts me in mind of Hillary Clinton’s relationship with the mainstream media.
Sure, one could make an argument for Lord Monckton’s “1/2” entry. If you assume a one-box model, for example, the ratio would be 0.59, i.e., not much more than a half. But Lord Monckton didn’t do that; as I said, he instead cited a graph that didn’t support his assertion. Moreover, the previous line in his table relied on the Roe paper, which instead didn’t use a one-box model; the Roe models have a diffusive component that could easily have made that ratio more like 0.8.
Actually, I admire Lord Monckton’s bandwidth and his ability to summon such a large volume of factoids at will. I even recognize that the Latin spouting can be useful in impressing a certain type of pseudo-intellectual. Those attributes would all be to his credit if he weren’t so cavalier with the truth. As it is, those qualities instead have the effect of duping too many in the skeptic camp.
Joe Born:
You say
Obviously not. Your smears, innuendoes and falsehoods would be forbidden in any debating society.
And you add to smears, innuendoes and falsehoods in your original untrue attack on Lord Monckton when you now say
You never implied that Lord Monckton’s posts are “self-agrandisementt”!?
You wrote
What is his activity as “a fifth-column operation whose purpose is to make skeptics gush at his cargo-cult logic” if not his self agrandising?
And what “errors in his work”? That is merely another of your untrue smears, and you hint at them being in some unspecified ““Irreducibly Simple” paper”.
You deny that you said Lord Monckton is part of a fifth-column. Yes, your suggestion was more cowardly than that because your “if I didn’t know better” clause enabled you to pretend you had not made the suggestion: YOU DID make the suggestion and in this and in my previous post I have quoted your words that made the suggestion.
All your assertions are egregious but the worst of them is this
“Cavalier with the truth”? You provide no evidence – none, zilch, nada – that Lord Monckton has provided any falsehoods. The nearest you come to such evidence is this nonsense
So, you admit your falsehood that Lord Monckton uses “cargo-cult logic” is an unsubstantiated and egregious assertion that YOU made and which you now attempt to justify with irrelevant waffle about Hilary Clinto and etc..
YOU are the only person here who is “cavalier with the truth”.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a concern troll as being
This thread is about the contents of the above essay by Lord Monckton but you write
What you are seems clear.
Richard
richardscourtney:
Please share with us the argument by which you prove your conclusion that excellent logic is always applied by Lord Monckton.
Terry Oldberg:
You ask me
Easy. Unlike you, he was trained in logic and he always applies it because it is his most powerful ‘weapon’.
And, also unlike you, he can say what he means by an “event”.
Please – at long last – state your definition of an “event” which you have repeatedly claims proves the IPCC does not make the predictions which it does make.
Richard
richardscourtney:
Your argument is not of the form of a syllogism. This fact is sufficient to demonstrate that your conclusion is not proved.
Q.E.D.
Wow. This richardscourtney guy makes it too easy to demonstrate Lord Monckton’s fanboys’ lack of reasoning ability. There’s no sport in showing this guy up. But I’m not doing this for my amusement, so I’ll mention in response to his comment an example error and falsehood to help warn any possible lurkers against blindly believing what Lord Monckton writes.
An example error: If you went by his paper’s Equation 1, you’d conclude that closing the faucet (faucet flow being the forcing) would cause a bathtub to empty (the temperature anomaly to become zero) instantaneously, no matter how much water it had accumulated while the faucet was open. Any basic-controls-systems student could recognize with little effort that the equation accordingly is nonsense. When he was confronted with that problem, Lord Monckton falsely contended that the error wouldn’t make any significant difference on the time scales his paper dealt with—even though I demonstrated that indeed it does.
An example falsehood: The caption of that paper’s Table 2 says its entries were all derived from the Roe paper. In fact, though, that table’s first two rows are inconsistent with the Roe graph from which they were purportedly derived. Pressed to explain in light of that inconsistency how those values could possibly have been derived as claimed, Lord Monckton merely repeated that the zero-feedback values would all be unity—even though I had demonstrated that such a result was inconsistent with Roe’s graph.
Hey, Lord Monckton and his colleagues wandered in over their depth. No big deal; it happens sometimes. But he was disingenuous in responding when the resultant problems were pointed out. That isn’t the mark of a disinterested seeker of truth. Look, I don’t know what’s in his head. Maybe he’s not dishonest. Maybe he’s just a muddled thinker. After observing his defense of his paper, though, I’m inclined to think he’s both.
None of this will convince the richardscourneys of the world. But anyone who considers himself an independent thinker owes it to himself to investigate what I’ve said before he relies on much that Lord Monckton says.
Joe Born:
I wonder if your name really is Joe Born. Your repeated use of the word “fanboy” suggests you are another person who uses it a lot.
And I am not a “fanboy” of Lord Monckton: I am a person who objects to trolls.
Richard
Mr Born is, as usual, arrogant, spiteful, dishonest, and wrong, and others here have detected these facts. I am particularly grateful to Richard Courtney for putting Mr Born – a new and subtle species of troll – back in his box. It was Mr Born who, in response to a previous posting, dishonestly accused me of not having responded to a request from him for data, when in fact he had sent me no request for the data. He was called out on that, and has now been called out in fine style by Richard Courtney and others.
So let us do the math. Mr Born’s latest attempt at viciousness says that instead of using the fraction 0.50 in one of the calculations in the head posting I should have used the fraction 0.59. On the assumption ad argumentum that Mr Born’s unevidenced value is correct, the mainstream-science calculation in the table would lead us, instead of expecting 0.5 [0.5, 0.6] K anthropogenic warming between now and 2100, to expect 0.6 [0.5, 0.7] K. Compare either of these results with the IPCC’s 2.2 [1.4, 3.1] K. Why is Mr Born not far more concerned with the IPCC’s manifestly excessive prediction, which the head posting shows to be a wild, inexplicable and indefensible exaggeration?
When I presented the argument in the head posting to the climate monitoring panel of the World Federation of Scientists this summer, Professor Lindzen said he would have preferred it if, instead of generously assuming that two-thirds of equilibrium warming would occur within 85 years of a pulse of forcing, I should assume that only half of it would occur within 85 years, and he kindly sent me a couple of papers in support of his contention.
However, I decided to be generous to the IPCC on that particular quantity. If Mr Born thinks I have been insufficiently generous to it on another quantity in the same calculation, the two probably balance out. Either way, the IPCC’s pretense that there will be significant warming this century on its business-almost-as-usual scenario is unjustifiable; that was the point of the head posting; and Mr Born’s characteristically irrelevant and malevolently-expressed quibble does not in any way undermine either such value as the head posting may have to the skeptical argument or the truth of the head posting’s conclusion.
Lord Monckton’s response is typical; he evades my objection either by characterizing it as something other than what it was or by ignoring it altogether. He trades in obfuscation.
I did not object, as he pretends, that the value he gave for the ratio of ramp response to step response is wrong; I don’t know what it should be, and I never contended that I do. As I said, the ratio depends on what you think the model should be. What I objected to, as I clearly stated, was his attaching to that number (1/2) a citation that doesn’t support it. The cited graph says nothing about the ratio; it merely indicates that forcing increases gradually.
This is reminiscent of the disingenuous way in which Lord Monckton dealt with my question last winter about the “transience fraction” values. I did not, as he pretended, contend that I knew better what the particular values should be. What I objected to was the paper’s false statement that they had all been “derived from” Roe. They hadn’t. He merely postulated first-row values inconsistent with Roe, and he somehow chose the second row’s to be somewhere between the first and third rows’.
Despite numerous opportunities, he has never admitted that his attribution of those values to Roe was false.
And, incidentally, that part of his paper was really just a diversion anyway. That paper’s Fig. 6, which is the one used in the press release and the one the authors based their claim of skill on, didn’t really come from any of that transience-fraction stuff or, really, from anything new in their Equation 1; that was just a lot of mumbo-jumbo to impress people like richardscourtney. The result represented by their Fig. 6’s 0.09 K/decade arrow was based only on a number that Lord Monckton pulled out of the air. (Actually, he pulled two numbers out of the air: -0.5 and +0.1, took their average, and decreed that the result should be the loop gain when the open-loop gain is taken to be the IPCC’s value for what he calls the “climate sensitivity parameter.”)
When you apply the resultant closed-loop gain to the forcing trend for the last 67 years, you get something quite a bit less than that interval’s observed 0.11 K/decade temperature trend shown in Fig. 6. So the paper’s authors had to use a forcing-trend value significantly higher than what actually eventuated. That still placed their computed trend value no closer to the observed value than the IPCC’s 2013 final-draft value was.
Not a very creditable effort.
Joe Born,
I have a lot of respect for your technical/mathematical analysis and most of your contributions are to be valued. However, you make one suspect that you are still bearing hurt into new territory after the strong words you and Monckton exchanged on the electronic feedback metaphor discussion of many months ago. Your thin skin could suggests that your offerings were, indeed, for self-aggrandizement (they use ‘s’ in UK instead of ‘z’). Let it go Joe.
In debating a scientific issue a participant should not characterize his opponent for a characterization is irrelevant and distracting. A result from following this rule can be the happy state in which opponents remain friends while attacking each others bad ideas.
Terry Oldberg:
You have yet again forgotten to define what you mean by “event”.
Richard
richardscourtney:
That is a deliberate misrepresentation. As you know, on countless previous occasions I have referred you to the literature of probability theory for a definition of “event.”
Joe Born:
I think a correction to your offensive diatribe is warranted. You say
To be true that should say
But anyone who considers himself an independent thinker owes it to himself to ignore unsubstantiated smears and personal remarks such as those you provide, and should consider evidence and argument such as that Lord Monckton provides.
Richard
If you really did appreciate my posts regarding his paper, then you must recognize that the positions I took there were not just opinions; they were objective facts, and Lord Monckton was objectively wrong on each and every single one of them yet he failed to concede the point on any of them. And if you look closely, you’ll see that it was Lord Monckton, not I, who initiated the acrimony.
And, no, I’m not “hurt.” I assure you that in my business that type of thing was just another day at the office.
But I will confess to a degree of disillusionment. I had known that Lord Monckton has a tendency to over-egg the pudding and to be more bombastic than necessary, but I’m afraid I had tended to cut him some slack since it was all in a good cause. The disillusionment came from the lengths to which he went to twist what I said in the posts about his paper and to evade the issues I raised. They made it hard for me to avoid the conclusion that he is not very much interested in the truth.
If you did indeed understand those posts’ subject matter, I defy you to identify a single mathematical or physics position I took on which he was right and I was wrong. Just one. Go ahead, try; I yearn for a worthy interlocutor. You may find this hard to believe, but at my age I no longer feel much of a need to justify myself, so I’ll admit it if you hit pay dirt. If you really understand the relevant linear-systems or circuit-analysis concepts, though, you should realize that Lord Monckton has demonstrated he would not.
My disillusionment had two further aspects. In the threads that accompanied those posts, I can think of very few instances in which a commenter betrayed any comprehension of the relevant subject matter at all. The remaining commenters responded only to atmospherics; the threads were dominated by shooters from the hip. So one aspect of my disillusionment concerned the general knowledge level of this site’s readers.
The other was a strengthened suspicion that, no doubt unwittingly, Mr. Watts tends to filter out views that are not congenial to his more-popular contributors. Lord Monckton called my intellectual honesty into question by asking, “Has [Joe Born] gone through our worked examples using a sub-unity transience fraction, as someone who was genuinely interested in the truth might do?” So I submitted a proposed post containing just such an exercise, but Mr. Watts rejected it on a flimsy pretext. I think his real reason was that he thought the proposed post’s content was incorrect. In other words, I don’t think he really understood the subject matter; he was just going by what Lord Monckton and his apologists said. And I have reason to believe that this was not an isolated instance. It’s understandable that he doesn’t understand everything, but the consequences are still lamentable.
I highly value the work that Mr. Watts does, and I am particularly impressed by his ability to keep the site popular by avoiding “dead air”; I can’t imagine being able to do that myself. But since not all readers thoroughly vet everything we read, this site’s readers should be made aware of this blog’s limitations as well as its strengths. Hence these lengthy comments.
(Oh, by the way, I wasn’t flagging the British spelling; independently of whether it’s spelled with a z or an s, “aggrandizement” has two g’s, not one.)
Joe Born
November 17, 2015 at 3:46 pm
“If you did indeed understand those posts’ subject matter…”
I am an engineer Joe, but not an electronic, sound or communications, one. I do highly regard the Le Chatelier principle, though, in its broader application (it was thought true as a principle in chemistry when it was discovered but has since found much more universal application). In simple terms it may be defined as:
Any agent of change in a dynamic system prompts an opposing reaction in the responding system to at least reduce the change.
Newton’s laws of motion, back EMF in an electric motor, behaviour of a gyroscope, feedback in electronic systems are of this kind, Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson identified it in the effect of price on supply and demand. I, and independently I learned from Werner Brozek, Lubos Motl argued this was an almost certain effect in Global Warming, i.e. negative feedbacks, which have been marginalized by warming proponents, must be centrally important in the climate system. Indeed, it should have been one of the first conjectures at the outset of a study of climate science that the system is strongly stabilized by negative feedbacks. Evidence: a billion years of an unbroken chain of life and hundreds of millions of years of development of encephalopods and gastropods among many others living creatures despite impacts of numerous huge bolides, hot sun, cold sun, ice free epochs and snowball epochs any of which would otherwise have resulted in ‘tipping points’.
I realized that Monckton’s climate model was an ersatz construction of a climate model using an electronic circuit which I know makes it vulnerable to detailed criticism, but I recognized its congruence with the Le Chatlelier Principle. Nearing 80, my math is somewhat rusty so, if you mean could I have offered the detailed type of critique you gave and opined on its correctness or not, I plead no contest.
Terry Oldberg:
I don’t know why posts by Lord Monckton attract trolls like good meat attracts flies, but they are swarming to this thread perhaps because it is good.
In ridicule of your illogical assertion that you had proved another of your silly assertions, I wrote,
You have repled,
WE BOTH KNOW THAT IS A LIE.
You have repeatedly asserted that what you mean is somewhere in some unspecified literature, and when I eventually managed to get you to cite a paper which you claimed says what you mean by “event” it did not mention the word and contained nothing pertinent to what you mean by the word.
However, your nonsense does not deflect from the jealous temper tantrums with which Joe Born has interrupted this thread with blatant attempt to damage discussion by smearing Lord Monckton.
Richard
richardscourtney:
You reach the conclusion that “WE BOTH KNOW THAT IS A LIE” by a narrative description that distorts reality. I did not refer you to “some unspecified literature” for a definition of “event” but rather to the literature of probability theory. It is in this literature that “event” is defined.
In reviewing your work product in this thread I find that no argument of yours is of the form of a syllogism. This has the significance that all of your proofs are by the fallacious process of “proof by assertion.” None of this work would be publishable in a competently edited scientific journal.
Joe Born:
You claim you submitted an essay that our host rejected for inclusion as a Guest Essay.
From your description, your submission was an attack of Lord Monckton. If so – and if it was similar to your posts in this thread – then there was no good reason for our host to have presented it on this – his – blog.
If you want your views to be published then set-up your own blog to publish them. Among your views that you could bore people with could be an entire page on alternative spellings.
But if – as you have in this thread – you interrupt discussion on WUWT with your temper tantrums then expect objections from those of us who value rational discussion.
You add this
You admit you could not establish a blog with the quality of WUWT but say the reason for your childish temper tantrums in this thread is your frustration that our host refused to publish something you could have published on a blog of your own. Incredible!
Richard
Terry Oldberg:
I am enjoying this: I always enjoy exposing fatuous pretenders, and you are the most fatuous of all the pretenders I have come across.
You lie saying to me
Well, that fits exactly with the “narrative description” (i.e. factually accurate account) that I provided.
You have again claimed what YOU mean by an “event” is somewhere in the entire literature of probability theory. Well, we both know that in reality your claim is a falsehood, but – for the amusement of onlookers – I will humor you by pretending you are telling the truth.
Please reference and link to the paper in the literature that says what you mean by an “event” and quote what it says is an “event” according to your usage of the word.
I look forward to the meaningless verbiage that you will claim is your excuse for yet again failing to explain what YOU mean by an “event”, and I am willing to open a book on whether that meaningless verbiage includes the word ‘syllogism’.
Richard
richardscourtney:
While skilled in construction of ad hominem arguments you are evidently unwilling or unable to construct a syllogism in support of a conclusion about the climate system. Thus, your contributions to reasoned debate are nil. If in this thread you constructed a syllogism kindly provide me with a citation to it. Otherwise, please burden me no more with proofs by assertion, irrelevancies, demands for tutorial services and personal attacks.
Terry Oldberg:
You yet again demonstrate your ignorance of logic and logical reasoning. I have made no ad hominem. It is not ad hom. to point out that you lied and to state the lie.
I gave you a chance – indeed, I challenged you – to prove that you had done what you claimed you had done by repeating it. But, of course, you could not repeat what you had not done: you have not cited literature explaining what you mean by an “event” and you lied when you claimed you had.
I wrote saying to you
Well, nobody had sufficient stupidity to gamble on your limited vocabulary so I made no money. Your reply was this meaningless verbiage that demonstrates – yet again – that you cannot define what you mean by “event” in your nonsensical assertions that the IPCC does not make the predictions it does make.
I will give you another chance.
Will you at long last state what you mean by an “event” or, alternatively, apologise for your blatant lie that you have stated what you mean by an “event” by reference to literature?
I anticipate you replying with more meaningless verbiage that is as condemnatory of you as is your meaningless verbiage I am answering. And I point out that the only “attacks” of you are your meaningless verbiage that attempts to excuse your lies. But, of course, to understand that you would need to learn how to reason logically.
Richard
PS I am still enjoying encouraging your pompous proclamations that you are a fatuous pretender.
Gary Pease:
In reviewing this thread I realized that I had failed to notice the comment in which—if I am not misinterpreting you—you say that your math is too rusty to judge whether I or Lord Monckton has the better of the argument. Although as you may infer from my previous remarks I am disappointed at being unable to converse with someone knowledgeable on the subject, I completely understand; for my part, I don’t consider my purchase on Le Chatlier’s Principle secure enough to discuss it with authority.
That being said, I still think you should be able to make an assessment if you’re really interested. The question isn’t really difficult. Check out my comments regarding Monckton et al.’s Fig. 6. By reading the Monckton et al. paper (and its Sec. 8.3.2 in particular), you will be able to see that what I said about the authors’ just making up the loop gains upon which their flagship Fig. 6 is based is incontrovertible. Lord Monckton pretends to justify one of those loop gains by calling it “process engineers’ design limit,” but despite repeated criticisms from engineers he has failed either to justify that characterization or explain why it’s relevant to climate. Your experience should tell you that he would have provided such a justification if it existed.
As to the difference between circuits and the climate system, it’s true that they exist, but you should also be able to recognize that Lord Monckton has failed to identify anything in that difference that makes the basic equilibrium feedback equation I gave elsewhere in this thread invalid for his climate model. In other words, when he says of his paper that it demonstrates that the IPCC climate models use the wrong equation, he’s just blowing smoke.
If you have any specific question about anything I’ve said, just ask. You will find that I will give you either a clear answer or an admission that I don’t know what the answer is. I won’t try to snow you with big words or oracular statements.
Richard –
In an attempt to close out at least part of this ongoing difficulty you’re having with the definition of an “event” as used in probability theory I’ll offer:
“In probability theory, an event is a set of outcomes of an experiment (a subset of the sample space) to which a probability is assigned.”
There are other more formal definitions with examples and exercises in references like Box (“Statistics for Experimenters”, which is a favorite of mine) but my books are packed while I’m moving to a new house. That one’s from Wikipedia and in my experience it should work fine.
Not trying to take sides or anything, It’s only that I’ve seen this come up many times in many threads and it is a commonly used term. I hope this helps.
Bartleby:
Your definition of “event” applies only to the case of a univariate statistical model. In the case of a multivariate statistical model the sample-space is joined by the condition-space. In the latter case, an “event” is a subset of the Cartesian product of the condition-space with the sample space.
An example of a condition-space is {cloudy, not cloudy}. An example of a sample-space is {rain in the next 24 hours, no rain in the next 24 hours}. The Cartesian product of the two spaces is the set {(cloudy, rain in the next 24 hours), (cloudy, no rain in the next 24 hours), (not cloudy, rain in the next 24 hours), (not cloudy, no rain in the next 24 hours)}. For the global warming models that provide the basis for governmental attempts at controlling the climate-system neither the condition-space nor the sample space exists.
Claude Shannon’s measure of the intersection of the condition-space with the sample-space is called the “mutual information.” A model that provides a government with mutual information assigns values to conditional probabilities but for existing climate models these probabilities do not exist. As they do not exist, values cannot be assigned to these probabilities. It follows that the mutual information is nil and that Earth’s climate is not controllable on the basis of existing climate models. As they persist in attempts at controlling the climate, governments evidently think they have mutual information when they have none.
Terry –
I understand your clarification of context, what you’re referring to as a condition space is what I believe I think of as a response surface, at least it is as you’ve described it. My background is in industrial experiment design and I’m mostly familiar with Taguchi’s methods for efficient multi-variate experiments, but I believe it’s virtually the same concept.
Richard, I was not defending anyone, only attempting to understand why the question kept coming up in so many contexts, it seemed a relatively minor concern easily dismissed, allowing the more serious questions room for attention and, for me at least, it was distracting. No offense was intended, I hope none was taken.
Bartleby:
I do NOT have any “difficulty” with the meaning of an “event” as used in probability theory.
I am continuing to ask the ludicrous Terry Oldberg what HE means by an “event” in his daft assertions that the IPCC does not make the predictions that the IPCC does make.
The definition of “event” that you provide is clearly NOT the definition that Oldberg is using. Indeed, if it were then Oldberg would have said it is.
Please don’t try to defend Oldberg: it encourages the Great Pretender when an end to his nonsense is needed.
Richard
richardscourtney:
FYI:
The transcript reveals that my definition of “event” is identical to Bartleby’s as amended by addition of the notion of a condition-space when the model is multi-variate. A multivariate model would be required for control of the climate as the mutual information of a univariate model is nil.
Bartleby:
I took no offense at your attempt to get a response from Oldberg. And I congratulate you on your amazing success at obtaining some clarification from Oldberg because many people (e.g. Eschenbach, Brown, me) have asked him for a clarification over several years and all with no success.
The real problem is Oldberg’s interruption of threads by his providing logical fallacies, and I was ridiculing his latest interruption by pressing him on the clarification which he has refused to provide over the years.
Richard
richardscourtney:
You conclude that “The real problem is Oldberg’s interruption of threads by his providing logical fallacies…” Let us see your proof of this conclusion.
Terry Oldberg,
Well said. A principle like that adds to keeping ideas in focus.
Terry, I read your comments with interest. Your perspective provides the possibility of a much wider view of the problems in climate focused science. With a different kind of perspective, rgbatduke’s comments also provide a wider view.
John
Mr Born asserts that he was right in his attacks on our paper of January this year. He is entitled to his opinion, but in several postings and comments here I have had to correct his many elementary errors. He is not an expert on feedback systems, and does not appear to have consulted any. He displays little or no understanding of the difference between a closed-loop gain and an open-loop or system gain, or of the difference between a dynamical system such as an electronic circuit, in which the output (voltage change) does not play any part in equilibrating the system after a perturbation and in which the current changes direction at a closed-loop gain of unity, and on which little or no homoeostatic influence bears, on the one hand, and, on the other, a dynamical system such as the climate, in which the output (temperature change) is the instrument of the system’s self-equilibration, and in which the direction of temperature change does not alter at closed-loop gains >1, and on which numerous thermostatic processes bear.
Mr Pearse says the model in our paper used feedback mathematics from electronics and applied it to the climate. We did this because that is what the IPCC and the models do: but we fairly pointed out the weaknesses in that approach. I have since published a further, more detailed paper addressing the inapplicability of the Bode system-gain equation to the climate; and, though my paper is not the first to raise concerns about Bode’s applicability to the climate object (see e.g. Bates, 2007), it is one of the most detailed. The reviewers were kind enough to express great interest in it, and one of them was a specialist in this field.
Professor Bates has now concluded, very much in line with our own published conclusion, that Bode is not applicable simpliciter, particularly at high net-positive feedback sums, and that in any event temperature feedbacks bearing on the climate must be strongly net-negative. He gave an excellent talk on the subject in Moscow earlier this year (a powerful reason, perhaps, why Mr Putin has become something of a climate skeptic). Professor Bates disagrees with us only in the magnitude of the negativity. Where we expect approximately 1 K per CO2 doubling, he – albeit by a different approach to teedbacks than that of Dr David Evans – comes to a conclusion identical to that of Dr Evans: that climate sensitivity cannot exceed 0.4 K per CO2 doubling, and is probably less than that.
If Dr Evans is right, and if Professor Bates is right, and if indications at the World Federation’s meeting that the incorrect representation of line-shapes in the models has led to an overstatement of the CO2 forcing and hence of climate sensitivity by some 40%, then the likelihood is that the results from our own simple model will come far closer to the truth than those of the general-circulation models whose many defects our simple model was intended – however inadequately – to illuminate.
That’s a perfect example of Lord Monckton’s stringing together boxcar words to frighten the natives with arrant nonsense. There are, of course, plenty of differences between the climate system and an electric circuit, but Lord Monckton has identified none of them that bear out, say, his contention that IPCC “used the wrong equation.” The IPCC may very well may have used the wrong equation somewhere, and perhaps Lord Monckton does indeed have a good demonstration of that fact but has so far refrained from sharing it. If so, I’ll be happy to be enlightened when his decides to reveal his discovery. But so far we have seen only unsubstantiated claims and name-dropping.
Despite my having explained the basics to him, Lord Monckton still thinks that “the current changes direction at a closed-loop gain of unity.” What does that even mean? By “closed-loop gain of unity” he apparently means a loop gain of unity, not the (infinite) closed-loop gain that results. But, as a number of us have attempted to get through to him–and as he is apparently unable to comprehend–unity loop gain causes no reversal either in an electrical circuit or (if it were to occur) in the climate.
The problem appears to be that Lord Monckton misunderstands the hyperbola in his own paper’s Fig. 5. That hyperbola doesn’t mean that current or anything else reverses in a unity-loop-gain system. As I previously explained, the output In a unity-loop-gain system just increases without bound (until, of course, in real life unity gain no longer prevails); no reversal is involved. Lord Monckton should go back and study that post. Apparently for him it’s tough sledding, but I’m sure Scotland has engineering students who could walk him though it; I’ve dealt with Scots engineers on occasion, so I know they exist.
No, I’m no expert on feedback systems, but my college did make me take some math courses, so I know that the hyperbola in Lord Monckton’s paper is merely a locus of the equilibrium states associated with respective loop gains. Those to the right of unity on the loop-gain axis are unstable, while those to the left are stable. (What he labels “unphysical” isn’t really unphysical; it’s just unstable.) The closer a greater-than-unity-loop-gain system’s loop gain is to unity, the more negative its (unstable-) equilibrium output is. The closer a less-than-unity-loop-gain system’s loop gain is to unity, the more positive its (stable-) equilibrium output is. But none of that has anything to do with reversing current.
Oh, and as for “the output (temperature change) being an instrument of self-equilibration,” the greenest electrical engineer could tell him that with voltage taking the place of temperature that’s precisely the description of a negative-feedback amplifier circuit’s operation.
Lord Monckton would be well-advised to refrain from discussing circuitry in public until he has learned a little more about it.
Joe:
What are “boxcar words”?
Mr Born tells us he has “taken a few math courses”. They taught him little. Let us give him an elementary lesson in feedback terminology. The closed-loop gain factor is unitless and, even in the IPCC’s fevered imagination it cannot much exceed 1. It cannot be infinite, as he suggests it may be. And the open-loop or system gain factor, also unitless, is the quantity by which a direct output is multiplied to yield the final or equilibrium output.
Next, he says the output voltage in a negative-feedback system equilibrates the system. Yes, which is precisely why Bode is applicable without significant error in modelling a negative-feedback climate system. Not so, however, for strongly net-positive feedbacks.
Then he says negative voltages do not occur at loop gains > 1. He is entitled to his inexpert view, but the expert whom I consulted, who has four degrees in the subject, consulted various papers on feedback-induced oscillation to confirm his knowledge that the voltage does indeed become negative at closed-loop gains > 1. Temperature change, however, does not become negative at a loop gain > 1. And not one but three papers by me on this topic have passed peer review without the slightest objection from any reviewer, and the third such paper was reviewed by an expert in the field, for the paper was exclusively devoted to the problem posed by the Bode system-gain equation’s application in the climate-sensitivity equation. Indeed, he was kind enough to suggest a useful addition to the argument, which I gladly adopted. Also, when I made the same point before a group of IPCC lead authors in Tasmania three years ago, not one objected, and one interrupted to say, “You must publish: this changes everything.” Also, Professor Bates, who specialises in feedback mathematics, wrote to me after a debate in which I had made the same point and, far from disagreeing with it, sent me a paper of 2007 in which he had himself expressed doubts about the applicability of Bode to the climate.
Now it is possible that the inexpert Mr Born, after being made to take “a few math courses”‘, knows better than all of these experts. But he must not sneer at me for thinking they may be right.
Elsewhere in this thread, he again quibbles that in our January paper in the Science Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences we said that our values for the transience fraction were taken from a diagram in a previous paper. What we actually said said was that they were derived from it. We had already explained plainly that in the absence of any feedbacks we were taking the transience fraction to be 1. That value was adopted ad cautionem to be a little on the high side in the early period after a forcing, but is self-evidently the correct value at equilibrium. That was line 1 of our table of values for the transience fraction. Lines 3-5 were read straight from the diagram from which we said they were derived, and line 2 was derived by taking values that fell between line 1 and line 3. All of this was entirely transparent, which, no doubt, is why not one of our three reviewers and not one of my three co-authors had the slightest difficulty with it.
If Mr Born wants perfection, let him find an angel.
Ah, more vintage Monckton.
He again distorts what I said and then argues against the distortion. Of course I never said there were no negative voltages at loop gains that exceed unity. The issue was that Lord Monckton was relying on his theory of reversing currents in unity-feedback systems to contend that the basic feedback equation doesn’t apply to climate. In my post I demonstrated that no current reversal need occur in an electric circuit whose loop gain exceeds unity.
With all his experts and all their degrees, you’d think he’d be able to demonstrate by circuit analysis that the circuit analysis I provided was wrong. But he isn’t; all he can do is continue with the conclusory statements. He’s all hat and no cattle.
And he treats words like a nose of wax. In his view “derived from Roe” is equivalent to “made from whole cloth.” He may as well say that the output of a random-number generator is “derived from” thermometer readings. It’s misleading, to say the least, to characterize those table entries as “derived from” Roe when they not only didn’t come from Roe but are also inconsistent with the values Roe did depict. In the Roe paper, different-feedback-level step responses don’t intersect; greater feedback always yields a greater output. In Monckton et al.’s paper the step responses do intersect; in their paper, applying less feedback to a system sometimes makes its output greater. And I doubt that any reader of the Monckton et al. statements that the less-than-zero-feedback transience-function values were derived from Roe and that the values (thus allegedly derived) can safely be taken as unity understood him to mean that, as actually happened, he made up values inconsistent with Roe.
Lord Monckton dismisses my objecting to the authors’ thus withholding those Table 2 entries’ provenance as “quibbling.” Well, elsewhere he said, “To allege that authors of a scientific paper have deliberately withheld requested information is to make a very serious allegation of professional misconduct.” Be that as it may, there may be a sense in which it is quibbling, because, despite what casual readers may have thought, the transience-fraction discussion really had nothing to do with the paper results they showcased in their Fig. 6; as I said elsewhere, that was instead based on two loop-gain values—which he also just made up.
Moreover, he doubles down on his view of feedback nomenclature. Frankly, I’m more concerned with substance than with the names people give to things, but I know the terms that experts I’ve spoken with use. They use “open-loop gain” to refer to the gain g that prevails before feedback is applied; without feedback, the relationship between the stimulus x and the response y is y = g x. When a feedback element of gain f is added, the stimulus x in the open-loop equation is replaced by the sum of the stimulus x and the feedback fy, so y = (x + fy) g, implying that y = gx/((1-fg): the resultant “close-loop gain” h such that y = hx is given by h = g/(1-fg).
And they use “loop gain” for the gain fg in the path from the summing junction’s output port to its feedback input port. You can think of the loop gain as the ratio that the feedback element’s output would bear to the summing junction’s output if the path from the feedback element to the summing junction were severed. When loop gain fg is unity, closed-loop gain h = g/(1-fg) is infinite. The “few math courses” that Lord Monckton disparages are more than adequate for derivation of the basic equilibrium feedback equation. Anyone who doubts that there are those who share my view of the nomenclature term need only Google “loop gain.”
Terry Oldberg: “What are ‘boxcar words.”
Sorry for being obscure. Boxcar-size words. I should have just said “big words.”
Joe Born:
I write to ask a favour.
In your attempts to derail this thread you repeatedly make an erroneous statement and when Lord Monckton corrects your error you assert you said something else before making another erroneous statement.
To provide clarity so all can enjoy laughing at you nonsense, when you claim Lord Monckton has addressed something other than you said please provide verbatim quotes of
(a) your original statement
and
(b) what you assert is Lord Monckton’s misrepresentation of your original statement.
This will assist everybody to enjoy your wriggles from what you actually said to what you claim you meant when your nose is rubbed in what you actually said.
Richar
Monckton of Brenchley November 18, 2015 at 1:30 pm
– – – – – – –
Christopher Monckton,
You posted your comment as a sub-thread comment under my comment (John Whitman November 17, 2015 at 11:20 am) but your comment appears to be addressed to Joe Born. So, I will not respond directly to your comment.
ASIDE NOTE: I am interested in Joe Born’s very critical dialog contribution because I am concerned about the question of limited usefulness or lack of usefulness of electric/electronic circuit analogies to the Earth Atmosphere System. Indeed I am very critical of how one can justify use of analogy in scientific argument; a use of analogy which tries to explain one physical phenomena by using an entirely different physical phenomena as a ‘likeness’. Clearly, the two subject physical phenomena are totally different phenomena with different properties, qualities and natures. Rather than analogy why not just explain climate phenomena exclusively in terms of climate natures/constituents only and therefore to derive the math of climate dynamics from within the study of climate systems only.
John
John Whitman:
You say
The analogy is basic to the methodology of climate modelling applied by the IPCC and Lord Monckton is addressing flaws in the IPCC method.
Importantly, your comment I have quoted here is difficult to equate with your repeated attempts to pretend the IPCC is a scientific – n.b. not a political – organisation. If, as you propagandise, the IPCC is a scientific organisation then you would be greatly “concerned” at the feedback mechanisms the IPCC asserts.
Richard
richardscourtney,
Two points:
1) A mathematical model of a complex of physical phenomena, which is written based only on the current physics of the specific physical phenomena within the complex of phenomena in order to understand and exploit the specific complex physical phenomena, is not an analogy. Analogy is rhetoric device.
2) None of my comment was focused on the IPCC. Irrelevant to my comment (John Whitman November 19, 2015 at 12:01 pm) is your IPCC reference in your above comment that was directed to me. However, since you initiated the IPCC topic, I have a suggestion if you wish to continue our longstanding fundamentally diametric dialog about my longstanding views of the philosophical cause and philosophical effects of the IPCC’s use of the concepts of a particular flawed school found in the history of the philosophy of science. Let’s go to a WUWT post that contains one of our many past discourses concerning my views on a certain school of the history of the philosophy of science and lets continue it there. OK? If you agree then I’ll post a link to our last dialog on it so we can continue it there. I do have a high priority interest about that topic here at WUWT’s wonderful intellectual environment so I hope you wish to continue!
NOTE to Christopher Monckton => I really would like your thoughts my comment above (John Whitman November 19, 2015 at 12:01 pm) that I directed to you. I would appreciate your circumspect views.
John
John Whitman:
Forgive me for butting in, but I hope I can shed a little light.
The complexities of the climate system are, I confess, beyond my ken. Also, we all recognize that climate and electrical circuits are not the same. But, to the extent that what we do know about the climate is characterized by feedback, we know that the basic feedback equation y = gx/(1-fg), as I explained elsewhere on this thread, applies.
The problem is that f, g, and h are not necessarily the constants I implied in my simplified explanation; they may be functions too complicated for me to explain here. Also, x and y are functions of time and may not be scalars. Yet the basic feedback equation applies. And that’s the “analogy” that remains valid despite the differences between circuits and climate.
In a sense, that doesn’t tell us much. But it does give us a background against which to judge the Monckton et al. authors’ contention that the IPCC used the wrong equation.
Again, I don’t contend that this tells you a lot. But it may tell you something.
John Whitman:
I pointed out that your attempt at ‘damage limitation’ in support of the egregious Joe Born contradicts your repeated propaganda that the IPCC is a scientific organisation and not the political organisation it is decreed to be by it Rules, Role, Principles, and practices.
Your response adopts the methods of Joe Born that ‘verbose BS baffles brains’ and assertion that you have been criticised for saying other than you did. Both methods fail, few bother to read verbose BS and you demonstrate you are disingenuous by making blatant misrepresentations.
Your response says
Your first point demonstrates your ignorance of the scientific method.
It is normal when investigating a system to initially adopt a model of a different but understood phenomenon and to amend the adopted model as knowledge accrues. For example, Newton constructed orbital mechanics from a model of the ballistic trajectory of a hypothetical projectile fired from a large canon on a mountain-top of a spherical planet, and electromagnetic radiation was and – sometimes is – modelled as being waves or particles depending on circumstances, and etc.. Your complaint about “analogy” is an assertion that Newton, Maxwell and etc. did not know how to develop a “mathematical model of a complex of physical phenomena”.
Whether or not “Analogy is rhetoric device “, it is an essential part of the scientific method when attempting to obtain scientific understanding of a phenomenon such that a mathematical model can be constructed of the understanding. Unless, of course, you care to claim that Newton, Maxwell and etc. were not scientists.
Your second point is classic ‘bait and switch’.
I did NOT claim your “comment was focused on the IPCC”: to use the language of your ‘companion in arms’ Joe Born, you made that up out of full cloth.
I wrote
“Focussed on” is very different from “difficult to equate with”. Having misrepresented what I said, you use your misrepresentation as an excuse to avoid what I said!
Your response is to pretend that your comment did not refer to the IPCC so should be conducted elsewhere. NO! In this thread the discussion is of the IPCC method for modelling climate feedbacks.
It is not reasonable for
(a) you to claim IPCC so-called science is irrelevant (i.e. merely “rhetoric”) when shown to be wrong
and
(b) you to elsewhere claim the IPCC is a scientific organisation.
Those two claims combine to be more of your pro-AGW propaganda.
This sub-thread began when the egregious Joe Born suggested Lord Monckton may be part of a pro-AGW ‘fifth column’, and I retorted that he could check that by asking other members of the ‘fifth column’. Subsequently, when the ludicrous Terry Oldberg joined the sub-thread I wrote
And now you have tried to distract from exposure of Joe Born’s comments as being nonsense. He clearly appreciates your effort at such damage limitation because he writes to you to in attempt “to shed some light” (which attempt would be a first if successful).
Richard
richardscourtney( Nov. 20 at 12:36 am):
Your post contains nary a syllogism nor reference to one. This feature of the post makes posting it a waste of your time and mine for though you draw conclusions from arguments you prove none of them.
Terrry Oldberg:
Your most recent meaningless verbiage yet again fails to define what YOU mean by an “event”.
Please undertake a course in basic principles of logic because your illogical drivel pollutes threads with nonsense.
Richard
Sue the bastards, win or lose does not matter. It will bring attention to all and sundry, hopefully.
Regards
Climate Heretic
The BBC is at it again.
In the UK, we’re getting November weather – some storms, some rain.
As we’re now naming storms [since last week, conveniently], we now have Barney, following Abigail.
the item on
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34834799
– talking about Barney, indicates that Abigail caused widespread damage.
not how I recall the news, so I followed the link.
The Watermelons at the BBC mention one overturned car, one tree down, and some flooded fields as consequences of Abigail.
There probably was more, as the City of York was preparing for floods yesterday lunchtime/afternoon, as the river was rising.
Now, that’s not ‘widespread damage’.
That’s propaganda.
Auto
It is all a PR stunt to increase public concern over Climate Change, which change, is simply not happening, and there needs some form of PR indoctrination to make people feel that Climate change is real and happening..
The Met Office decided to promote the idea that the public should name storms (not hurricanes or typhoons) so as promote Climate awareness, and by stealth help the campaign about weather weirdening and there being more extreme weather events.
The Met Office are now suggesting that winter may have a sting in its tail because of the warming and the additional impact of El Nino. A cold spell and snow is now forecast for the end of winter. I have not looked at the forecast in detail, but I guess they mean late January/early February. this could be nasty if this cold spell is accompanied by a lack of wind, since spare grid capacity in the UK is almost non existent.
I was not asked to name these moderate storms capable of flipping one caravan. Were you? Who were these people invited to start naming UK storms?
I propose retrospective names for real proper storms that have hit the UK in the past – starting with Oct ’87 “Storm Jeeeeeeeezus Christ!”.
<a href="http://dailygael.com/storm-abigail-upgraded-to-normal-hebridean-weather/"Storm Abigail upgraded to “normal Hebridean weather”
Far worse than this – a person would learn much from investigating the keen interest that the BBC took in spreading the meme that “dredging doesn’t work”.
This is not just overlooking the cause of Somerset flooding, but actively working towards obstructing the return to the good practices of drainage management pre-1990 whereby the most severe flooding to prevented and the upland water carried to the sea.
So the BBC is not only exaggerating, it is keenly working in the aid of creating more severe discontent and misfortune. All of which can then be blamed on the climate.
Doubtlessly they are unaware that they are doing this. But that is the very nature of useful idiotry.
Meanwhile they failed to inform the nation that an in depth study by the Environment Agency has since shown that the belief that “dredging doesn’t work” was simply wrong.
Advance maintenance could have saved 90% of the homes that were flooded, and reduce the time over which flooding occurred:
http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Better-pumps-dredging-stop-floods/story-27574691-detail/story.html
As they are not examples of propositions, the article’s “predictions” are mislabeled.
Terry Oldberg on November 16, 2015 at 11:23 am
– – – – – – –
Terry Oldberg,
One concept of ‘proposition’ is something that is stated in the form: If X then Y. Is that your concept of ‘proposition’?
John
John Whitman:
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify. My concept of “proposition” is logical. In the classical logic, every proposition is associated with a variable that is called the “truth-value” of this proposition. The truth-value takes on the values of “false” and “true.” In the generalization of the classical logic that is called the “probabilistic logic” the truth-value of a proposition is replaced by the probability that this proposition is true.
“It will rain in Chicago in the next 24 hours” is an example of a proposition that is also an example of a prediction. As it is a proposition “It will rain in Chicago in the next 24 hours” has a truth-value under the classical logic and a probability of being true under the probabilistic logic. The probabilistic logic reduces to the classical logic in the circumstance that the values of the probabilities are restricted to 0 and 1.
Good shot, JW – you sank his battleship.
Even more fun is this notion of ‘taking on a truth value’ which can be ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘maybe so’.
When we have multiple varieties of truth, we must also have multiple varieties of logic.
So if you thought logic was the non-contradictory identification of truth, now you know about ‘probable truth’, which is composed of subinformative particles such as half-truth and micro-truth and nano-truth all the way down to the quantum level where truth is anything at all, depending on the persistence of the observer.
We also learn that a proposition is a simple declarative sentence that has an indeterminate truth value.
I’m going to see if there’s anything in Poe’s Law describing these subtleties but until then I’ll mark this down on the refrigerator and use the black highlighter. It may lead to untold discoveries such as ‘dark truth’ that could explain many things.
gnomish:
What do you mean by “battleship” and what do you mean when you say it was “sunk”?
The IPCC’s words in 1990 were “We predict”. Mr Oldberg should not quibble futilely.
Monckton of Brenchley:
The IPCC lied. Rather than join them in this lie, people of good will should call them out it, don’t you think?
The math showed quite clearly why ” we predict” . CAGW wasn’t trying to say anything other than that if the government didn’t take action that we wouldn’t have to wait till 2100. … they weren’t mincing words like some are now. They weren’t saying this might happen, they were saying it will. Everybody remembers the hockey stick graph. This is the history of co2 for millions of years. Am I right? That’s what the IPCC said. Temperatures are rising faster than they ever have because we’ve put so co2 into the atmosphere. Ok, it’s 25 years later, where’s the proof? Where did Al buy his house that should be underwater by now? Do they remember the conversation about that? Ice isn’t the only thing that’s rotten. As if Al actually believed this AGW, he believed he could make a ton o money. You know those pretty pictures representing where areas will be flooded? That’s where he bought.
The 14 inches of “rare and exciting” isn’t just weather, it’s the climate for this area and it hasn’t changed. Winters last hurrah! ? Maybe next June. They also remember those headlines, don’t they? Right before they started naming snowstorms?
rishrac:
“We predict” is the false conclusion that was drawn from a fallacious argument ( http://wmbriggs.com/post/7923/ ).
Of course it was. The math the IPCC uses to substantiate AGW is wrong. They either stand by it and try to explain the last 18 years (or cover it over), or admit it was wrong. They aren’t going to admit they are wrong, are they.
Oops, I meant to type “call them out on it.”
Terry, this is ivory tower, dead philosophers’ egghead, self-aggrandizement fluff, fine for the annual debate at Oxford students union but it is a blunt instrument indeed to try to wow real people with – they can see who you are. Too much book-reading tends to rot the mind, you know. For we lesser folk who make up the 99% below you, perhaps you could climb down and give us a fuller exposition, if I’m correct that you are only trying to inform us. Please at least tell us how the “predictions” should be labeled.
Gary Pearse:
I’ll ignore your rant but address the question that is embedded in it. The “predictions” of the IPCC’s climate models should be labelled as “projections” for to do otherwise is to dress up a pseudoscience to look like a science. I make this argument in the peer-reviewed article at http://wmbriggs.com/post/7923/ .
If Mr Oldberg wants to quibble about the IPCC’s use of the words “We predict”, he must not disrupt this thread with his quibbles. The topic of this post is the extent to which the IPCC’s predictions have proven overblown, not what the should be called. And his article at a website is not a peer-reviewed paper.
Monckton of Brenchley would like it if I were to cease boring the audience for our debate with semantic quibbles. The article at http://blog.nikhilkrishnaswamy.com/2013/06/28/in-defense-of-semantic-quibbling/ addresses the issue of semantic quibbles in a scholarly way. According to the article:
“Quibble,” since the 1610s, has been a cute term for “pun, play on words” with the dismissive association of a flimsy argument not worth considering. Semantics is the study of meaning, ultimately from the Greek semainein, to show or signify. So when you say “don’t quibble about semantics,” what you’re saying is “don’t bother me about what things mean.” Yeah, let’s not worry about what things mean, that’ll improve communication!
The article goes on to say:
Claiming to be concerned about higher things than mere “semantics” is a thought-terminating cliché people use when they get caught in a bad argument or are afraid of a little contention. Don’t give me that crap.
In the case under consideration, acting on Monckton’s aversion to semantic quibbles results in application of the equivocation fallacy and resultant drawing of false or unproved conclusions from fallacious climatological arguments. Should we base public policy on false or unproved conclusions from fallacious climatological arguments? I don’t think so. To terminate this kind of thinking may be why Monckton recites a thought-terminating cliché.
Regarding Monckton’s claim that “his article at a website is not a peer-reviewed paper,” two of my papers in the literature of global warming climatology were peer-reviewed prior to being published in blogs. “The Principles of Reasoning” was reviewed by the chair of Earth Sciences at Georgia Tech, Judith Curry, and published in three parts in her blog; the third part, subtitled “Logic and Climatology,” exposes the role of the equivocation fallacy in leading people to draw false or unproved conclusions from climatological arguments. The other paper, “A Common Fallacy in Global Warming Arguments” provides an update on this topic; it was reviewed by the statistician, meteorologist and professor of statistics at Cornell University Matt Briggs prior to being published in his blog.
In an ad hominem facet of his argument for cessation of semantic quibbles Monckton alleges that I have made multiple logical errors thus exhibiting a weak grasp of logic. Though I have requested from him a list of these errors he has not yet produced one. Have the alleged errors disappeared upon further consideration by Monckton?
Terry Oldberg on November 16, 2015 at 12:16 pm
– – – – – – –
Terry Oldberg,
Thank you for your concept of ‘proposition’ which appears to be consistent with the concept in traditional formal logic.
John
Mr Oldberg has contradicted himself. In one posting he says a prediction is not a proposition; in another he says a prediction is a proposition. In fact, a proposition is a declarative statement; and, since the IPCC’s declaration “We predict …” is manifestly equivalent to a proposition in due logical firm, with a subject and a predicate commencing with “is” or “are”, it is a proposition. Mr Oldberg got it right second time around. However, Mr Oldberg’s quibble about whether the IPCC’s prediction is a proposition is irrelevant. And his suggestion that they were lying in using the words “We predict …” Is nonsense. It’s a free country. Anyone can speculate about the future. In thus speculating, he is making a forecast or prediction,
The IPCC was certainly incorrect in expressing confidence that it’s models had captured all essential features of the climate system, and consequently incorrect in its predictions. But if Mr Oldberg says the were lying, let him address a complaint to the secretariat.
Monckton of Brenchley (Nov. 18 at 10:37 pm):
As you observe there is a contradiction in which a prediction is and is not a proposition negating the law of non-contradiction (LNC). The LNC is one of the classical laws of thought. That this particular classical law of thought is negated is a state of affairs that you support and I oppose.
Negation of the LNC is a result when “prediction” is polysemic such that it references an entity that is a proposition and an entity that is not. Negation of the LNC can be avoided through a disambiguation that renders “prediction” monosemic and assigns the remaining meaning to “projection.” Calling this move a “semantic quibble” you oppose it.
Mr Oldberg continues to disrupt this thread with meaningless waffle. I have defined “prediction” and “projection” carefully, while he has merely burbled about the two without providing any reason in logic why the IPCC should not call a prediction a prediction.
Anyway, it is off topic. The subject of the head posting is the predicted magnitude of global warming, not meaningless semantic quibbles. Please get on topic.
Monckton of Brenchley:
To define “prediction” and “projection” carefully is necessary but not sufficient to expose a fatal error in the structure of modern global warming climatology. For exposure of this error there must a monosemic term for a prediction that is a kind of proposition and a different monosemic term for a prediction that is not a kind of proposition. In attempts at communicating your error you I’ve used “prediction” in reference the first meaning and “projection” in reference to the second but the identity of the terms of reference lacks logical significance.
If we disambiguate the language in which climatological arguments are made in this way then the fact emerges that the climate models upon which policy is based make predictions that are not propositions. Two of the consequences are: a) a lack of falsifiability of the models and b) a lack of information flowing to policy makers about the outcomes from their policy decisions. The climate is not controllable but policy makers persist in attempts at making policy due to applications of the equivocation fallacy in which a distinction is not made between the two terms. Among those who refuse to make this distinction thus fostering applications of the equivocation fallacy is you.
By the way, the ad hominem arguments which you customarily use in drawing conclusions from your own arguments are illogical. If you were to stop making them this would greatly assist me in communicating your error to you.
gnomish,
I see that Terry Oldberg has given a traditional formal logic response to my inquiry.
The alternate concept of ‘proposition’ that I offered is more of a hypothetical.
Why make less than respectful remarks toward Terry Oldberg, who is quite even toned and civil in commenting situations that I have been involved in? It erodes the discourse.
John
No, he didn’t and don’t break something in the semantic gymnastic competition. terry already won.
No, a definition is not hypothetical in any way as I am sure you know. Why pretend otherwise?
I chose to make jokes about absurdities. it’s called ‘sense of humor’. TO illuminated a vein of humor wherein I found computers built with ‘maybe gates’ with nanobytes of write only memory and cpu operating in base 1.
A mass of absurd verbiage is like a rorschach test that may elicit any manner of responses which do not necessarily register on the dimension of ‘respect’ at all.
Gary Pearse November 17, 2015 at 10:24 am has a perfectly valid interpretation, too.
Yours is not random, either.
Ain’t analysis fun?
gnomish:
Huh?
Mr Oldberg, whose grasp of formal logic seems uncertain at best, is wrong on many counts. The IPCC itself, in its First Assessment Report, used the words “We predict” to preface the predictions mentioned in the head posting. The IPCC’s predictions are thus logically equivalent to the premise, proposition or declarative statement “The warming that we predict is” …, followed by the predicate.
Since the IPCC itself used the words “We predict”, Mr Oldberg’s quarrel is not with me but with the IPCC, and he should take up the matter with them. They will have very little patience with the semantic quibbling with which he so often clutters these threads, inferentially in an attempt to bore readers into going elsewhere.
Monckton of Brenchley:
You err in representing the “predictions” of the IPCC climate models to be examples of propositions. It is easy to demonstrate that they have the wrong properties.
Also, to disambiguate the language of an argument is to prevent application of the equivocation fallacy. Only a person who stands to profit from applications of this fallacy would find it to his advantage to disparage disambiguation by equating it to “semantic quibbling.” For global warming climatology effects from disambiguation include: 1) exposure of global warming “science” as a pseudo-science and 2) proof that regulation of CO2 emissions is currently impossible because the information provided by the models to policy makers about the outcomes from their policy decisions is nil. Given your past support for a sound basis for policy making it is surprising to find you disparaging disambiguation by characterizing it as “semantic quibbling.”
Finally, to give me a chance to defend my professional reputation from unwarranted disparagement, please share the “many counts” on which you claim I have been wrong and the basis for your remark that my “grasp of formal logic seems uncertain at best.”
Mr Oldberg again contradicts himself. Earlier upthread, he said a prediction was not a proposition. Then he gave an example of a prediction on all fours with the IPCC’s species of prediction and labelled it a proposition. Now he again asserts that a prediction is not a proposition. I must now ask him to stop disrupting these threads with his high-sounding, off-topic, half-assed, self-contradictory nonsense.
Let us define a proposition in logic. It is a declarative statement comprising a subject and a predicate beginning with “is” or ” are”. Since the IPCC’s declarative statement “We predict…” Is self-evidently equivalent to “Our prediction is…”, it manifestly and undeniably qualifies as a proposition in logic. And, even if it did not thus qualify, the IPCC would still be entitled to make it, provided that it had a sound scientific basis for making it.
Mr Oldberg waffles about disambiguation when the IPCC is entirely clear that it is making a prediction. The common usage of that term is that it is saying what it thinks will happen in the future. So stop drivelling about disambiguation, and about the imagined distinction between a prediction and a projection. A projection is a prediction contingent upon the truth of certain assumptions. The IPCC had made it quite plain in 1990 that its prediction was based on various assumptions, so that it was by implication also a projection; however, in outlining the assumptions on which its prediction was based and then using the words ‘we predict”, it was if anything avoiding the tautology that would have then been implicit in the use of the words ‘We project”.
From the foregoing, Mr Oldberg will, I hope, have learned that in logic the precise definition of terms is essential, as is clarity of expression. And he should also know that his introduction of manifest irrelevancies to an argument is an instance of the fundamental fallacy of logic labelled by the mediaeval schoolmen as the argumentum ad ignorationem elenchi.
The warming rate last century if maintained will only be half this century. (0.4 c) Although this will only occur in one ~30 year period during the middle of the 21st century. The other two periods either side will show cooling (satellite & balloon data) or pause (tampered surface//modeled/estimated data) This will likely lead to very little warming during the 21st century despite increasing CO2 levels.
The natural climate sine wave falling into this century will have two cooling periods and one warming period reflecting something similar below. Although the cooling periods probably won’t be as much and the warming period should be a little more like described above. If solar activity significantly declines then something like below could become a reality for the 21st century.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/scale:-1/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/scale:-1/trend
The CAGW has been falsified years ago, but the propaganda alarmist money grabbers still persevere their religion of faith. No positive feedback from CO2, no CAGW and that is a science fact. No CAGW then humans don’t require to squander trillions on any slight warming that will be beneficial. We don’t have any detectable sign of any positive feedback demonstrated during the satellite era over multiple decades. This will not change because any affect from CO2 has already been shown over recent decades.
Any record warm year is down to strong El Nino not humans thanks very much alarmists. Excluding tampering data to the surface sets because that is down to humans. If satellites had shown a record warm year without an El Nino then CAGW may have took off for real. Less than 1 c warming per century and much less warming this century due to the way the climate oscillation fits this time, means nothing to worry about at all.
Her’s a link to Ken Stewart’s latest post on the UAH V 6 data.
The globe hasn’t warmed for 18 yrs 6 mths and OZ is now 18 yrs 1 mth. Perhaps the IPCC should follow a better data base.
https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2015/11/11/the-pause-october-2015-update/
Neville:
While the proposition is true that “the globe hasn’t warmed in 18 yrs 6 mths” the proposition is also true that “the globe HAS warmed in 18 yrs 6 mths.” These mutually contradictory propositions are both true because the phrase “global warming” is defined in such a manner as to violate the law of non-contradiction. I’ve proved this contention in several previous blog posts.
Terry, this is what I meant! Proponents ‘defined global’ warming as a direct relation to the control knob CO2 – a rigid mathematical relation (including feedbacks) – hey, when we don’t see it, it has gone underground into some fanciful ‘pipeline’. To elevate a falsified hypothesis to a legitimate proposition is a way to gridlock further development of science. Yours is semantic nonsense. To offer “projection” which was a pirouette the of IPCC when they could no longer sustain the idea of “prediction” that they were 95% confident about.
And now that you have legitimized their deeply flawed work by making the failed hypothesis predictions into projections with your sophistry, they can take some airy fairy “agreement” by say China and show that the ~1C temperature increase by 2100 is proof of the both the truth of their theory and the efficacy of the mitigation because it is 3.5C below what it would otherwise have been based on their 2015 projections!! I’m afraid your “erudition” in formal logic is greatly misplaced in this dogs breakfast of a science. I withdraw my remark about it being eggheaded, because in the classic use of that term it is a compliment.
Gary Pearse (Nov. 17 at 4:41 pm):
That’s a continuation of your rant. Do you claim to have constructed a proof of a conclusion? If so, please present this proof and its conclusion.
As you should know, you only get proofs in mathematics and logic. In science you get failed hypotheses when they don’t jibe with observations as the closest thing you can get as proxy for proof. Why do you think there are so many clinically depressed CAGW proponents – it is because they are in classic psychological D’Nile of a reality they can’t face. Why do you think there is so much footwork to erase the dreaded “pause” that is not supposed to be there and which is making them sick. Rhetoric should be enough, but to be clear, its because these proponents themselves recognize, at least subconsciously that their hypothesis has been falsified.
Let me turn the impossible task you were offering me to do and ask you what gives you confidence that proponents have it right?
Oh, and point out to me where this is a rant. It is without ad hom and it takes you to task for your misplaced thoughts. CAGW is Bertrand Russels teapot in orbit that you are musing on.
Gary Pearse: (Nov. 17 at 6:08 pm):
Contrary to your representation, the proponents of CAGW and their opponents are both wrong as the conclusions of the arguments of both groups were reached illogically.
Matt G makes an excellent point based on the fact that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation has warming and cooling phases lasting about 30 years each, and that the 21st century began with a cooling phase. However, one would expect some anthropogenic warming, given that CO2 concentration will continue to rise quite rapidly as China brings onstream the numerous coal-fired power stations it has been building in recent years so as to beat any moratorium that the international negotiations may eventually inflict.
What is important in the run-up to Climat Paris 2015 is the Headlines. Headlines are all that people remember, facts, graphs and statistics are far too complicated for them. Daily forecasts in Australia are regularly presented as likely to be 2 degrees over what the BoM knows is likely to be. People remember the forecast temperature and cannot notice a two degree discrepancy. The Headline is the Propaganda and the Propaganda is what counts.
Indeed. As in Australia we have BoM forecasts of “15c above average” for this w/e. Completely meaningless.
Patrick:
As “15c above average” is not an element of a sample space it is an example of a “projection” rather than a “forecast.”
Memo to Paris:Please check your Astrology charts before making decisions.
https://alabe.com/freechart/
Climastrology charts coming soon.
Judy Curry has a new post looking at warming over the past 400 years. Co2 forcing doesn’t seem to be very convincing.
Borehole proxies show strong warming for around 400 years.
http://judithcurry.com/2015/11/16/400-years-of-warming/#more-20437
A little off topic, but I wanted everyone to experience this ” rare and exciting event “. It’s probably ” winters last hurrah”. They just opened a new hotel at Denver International airport for your enjoyment. Of course space is limited and many people will be experiencing it from the airport terminal. It’s only the second time this winter, so who knows when they will see it again. It maybe anywhere from 12 to 20 inches. So hurry! Space is limited! It’s SNOWING, wow!
The GISS anomaly for October at 104 smashed the previous all time mark of 97 from January 2007.
However with RSS, its October value of 0.440 was beaten in 1998 at 0.461. Furthermore, all of the first 10 months of 1998 beat 0.440.
UAH6.0beta3 did have its highest October on record at 0.427. However all of the first 9 months of 1998 beat that mark.
Werner
Have you been looking at the UAH data for this month?
I checked around November 12th, and for the first 12 days, it was suggesting that the November anomaly would be lower than the October anomaly. I do not know how things have changed over the last 5 days, and of course, we are only just half way through November.
But the fact that the start of November has not shown an increase over the October anomaly makes it even more difficult that the 1998 year anomaly will be beaten this current year.
I consider that we can be fairly confident that 1998 will not be beaten in the satellite record. We will have to see how 2016 shapes up, how the current strong El Nino peaks, and whether a La Nina begins to develop at the end of 2016.
I do not know how good channel 6 is at predicting the final result. I wish it were better. However it seems very clear that the November anomaly will be way lower than that of 2014 if their plots give a good indication. As for beating 1998 or even 2010, that clearly cannot happen any more. Even if there should be a huge spike in November and December, there simply are not enough months left to even get to second place.
It would have to average 0.84 over the next two months to reach second. The all time record for UAH is 0.742.
Richard, 2015 could beat the 1998 record with a little help from its friends.
Here’s me looking at the Paris Global Climate Fraud Conference:
Knowing that there is no escape from THE FOUR LAWS WITHOUT WHICH NOTHING WHATSOEVER IN THE UNIVERSE THAT HAPPENS, HAPPENS – and cannot be overruled by edicts from whoever, be it Dalai Lama, Pope, Obama, Merkel, IMF, UN, EU, IPCC, PIK, the Supreme Court, EPA, or anyone, it is high time to remember Alexius Meinong: TRUTH IS A PURELY HUMAN CONSTRUCT BUT FACTS ARE ETERNAL. My result of following this tenet is at: http://tinyurl.com/qjxakew
I think it is important to start understanding what sort of person and why they find the global warming theory so attractive. My explanation is that as we move away from activities where a mistake causes death, we lose contact with reality. A captain or seamen on sailing ships only survived because they made the correct decision, failure to do so caused death. Historically, many people left school at 14 and took up employment where a mistake could be seen, for example bricklaying. Two world wars meant responsibility was thrust people at young age: a 17 year Midshipman won the Distinguished Service Cross at Dunkirk and men were majors in combat units at 24. However WW created a massive civil service which controlled much of the state. Since the late 1960s, the massive expansion of universities, especially in the Arts and also environmental ( as opposed to physical sciences and engineering ) has created a a large group of people of who have spent years a universities but in fact poorly educated ( Shakespeare left school at 16 with a good knowledge of Greek, Latin, Divinity and Arithmetic) who are under employed and in fact useless but need to justify their existence.
A well trained electrician or plumber would be of more use to society than the vast majority of these arts graduates . Deep waters run quietly but the shallows make the noise.
Our society is like many family firms once the third or later generations are running it. There are more useless than useful members . The useless family members like living off the dividends but do not like obtaining useful skills and working hard to earn money. Large civil service type organisations are attractive to people who lack initiative, drive, fortitude, technical skills and where failure is impossible to judge because they can never be seen to make a mistake( as compared to a bricklayer, pilot or a captain of a ship ), sacking is almost impossible but who desire status and salary.
There are many types of vanity but if somebody believes they are morally and intellectually superior it is very difficult to disprove.
Memo to Paris: Admit that long period cycles are important in climate change, that they are irregular, and that models have not sufficiently accounted for them. Or explain why the omission of these uncertainties persists.
The graph really tells the story but should the Observed Reality part extend beyond the present?