Episode 7 of Red Pilled America: Why did Trump say a lot of global warming was a hoax? We follow the biggest science heist in history to find the answer.
It’s is about the Climategate Gang of Four. Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts, Steven Mosher, and yours truly.
Patrick Courrielche has done a brilliant job of tying the story together.~ctm
Be warned, some of you may change your mind about Mr Mosher.
Wow… finally some reality sneaking past the groupthink censors!
Bravo!
+4
It brought goose bumps by reliving the experience. It was a daily read full of intrigue and suspense like a spy novel. I was into the science in the 90s as a result of the Kyoto Protocol and the fact that I used it as therapy to recover from a major stroke and the continuing Aphasia rehab.
Luckily I discovered CA & WUWT as a result of the Petition Project and the Heartland Institute’s 2009 ICCC.
Both the conference and this moment of clarity were unforgettable. Thanks guys.
Yes, great stuff, an excellent review of the whole astonishing tale plus our host as Commander Bond with steel guitar soundtrack. Only missing the sound of an Aston Martin at full throttle and some gasping dolly birds.
Be warned, some of you may change your mind about Mr Mosher.
Not going to happen until he changes his bad behaviors. I’m not holding my breath. His role in climategate is well known in these parts, but he’s lost any good will that brought him through his drive-by nonsense in the years since. He’s earned the way people think about him all on his own.
Wrong! (Sorry, couldn’t resist)
LOL. well played.
But you spelled it correctly and used proper punctuation!
Now that’s just wrong, ha ha ……
…. and don’t forget he outed Gleick’s criminal behavior. That was some excellent sleuthing despite nothing coming of it (YET)
John, sorry…as I wrote sometimes ago: mostly I agree with him.
well then frank, clearly you aren’t changing your mind about him either 😉
John,
+1
If Mother Teresa were to rob a bank to feed starving orphans, despite her previous good deeds and good intentions, she would still be held accountable for breaking the law. There is little excuse for Mosher’s recent behavior, and his past accomplishments don’t atone for his ‘drive by shootings.’
Mosher’s behaviour changed when he was hired as the mouthpiece for BEST.
It was a pity he accepted the job. It has made him a lesser person..
Really?
What date was that?
Lets audit your claim
Seriously, go ahead what day was I hired to be mouthpiece?
Be aware the moderator here know more about the situation than you.
So lets go.. what day what month, what Year?
Steven Mosher December 6, 2018 at 3:21 pm
Hi Steven, Myself I cannot answer any of you questions you asked but I remember an occasion where in exasperation Anthony Watts made a similar statement in regards to you going to work for Best. It was in that thread that I learn (some) of your roll in the climategate e-mail story.
I still do not know what to make of you.
Some will think of you as a Benedict Arnold. But then, without Arnold in the early years of the Revolution the revolt would have failed.
Odd way to look at things don’t you think?
michael
@Mosher
Still in the business of examining the parentage of people you disagree with?
Your comment here showed who you really are:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/17/the-data-thugs/
search for ‘mosher’
Eternal shame on you. I will remind you as long as I have to.
I have no idea who he is nor do I care, in the toxic field of Climate Science he is just another actor with a chip on his shoulder and attitude to boot.
“thread that I learn (some) of your roll in the climategate e-mail story.
I still do not know what to make of you.”
I pretty much dont fit the categories. Not educationally, not workwise, and not when it comes to views on AGW.
As for commenting I would say my style changed when it became clear that long comments were not working. Though they would ( see my posts in 2011) but it was clear that there was no good ROI for long comments.
So? try short ones !
Steven thanks for the reply.
I also read the related older article above the comments. “Craven attention”, your writing.
I was impressed. You are correct name calling only causes ill will.
As for the short comments, at times they seem cryptic and can confuse, frustrate and antagonize the people you wish to convey information to.
I confess there are times I cannot understand the point you are making with the short statements.
michael
As for the short comments, at times they seem cryptic and can confuse, frustrate and antagonize the people you wish to convey information to. I confess there are times I cannot understand the point you are making with the short statements.
Don’t you presuppose there’s any inclination to “convey information” to anyone? For that to be true, first you have to care that your point makes it through. As Steven has confessed, for him it would appear it’s just not worth the trouble given it’s “clear that there [is] no good ROI.” After that, well it’s all pretty much just what seems worthwhile in your own eyes. Or so it seems to me.
sycomputing December 6, 2018 at 8:42 pm
Try being civil it seems to be working for me.
It is easy to see the chip on someone else’s shoulder but never notice the one on our own.
“I still do not know what to make of you.”
I do not know Steven, but have read his posts here for some years.
He strikes me a someone who is a true sceptic, and not one of the many fake ones on here who are really naysayers.
He is sceptical of sceptics.
Most here give any kind of naysayer nonsense echoing “hugs and kisses”.
Witness the great snake-oil seller Lord Monckton (with Classics and Journalism degrees) who purports to have figured out that the maths of ECS is wrong.
Bought hook, line and sinker here, with those that dare to ask question of him being treated with disdain and rudeness, for deigning to withhold the “love”.
Plainly they are not sceptics and to even come up and go with the conspiracy theory of a fraud or scam, and then cheer that down-the-rabbit-hole nonsense
Try being civil it seems to be working for me. It is easy to see the chip on someone else’s shoulder but never notice the one on our own.
Was I uncivil? What chip? Odd that you should make that assumption, given my comment doesn’t need to be seen as a criticism of Steven. Rather, it was an honest question, and in that sense, more a criticism of you for not seeing the obvious.
Who could blame him for being short?
I pretty much dont fit the categories
keep telling yourself that. You behavior fits a category all right, I don’t think you’d find it a flattering category, but you certainly fit it to a T.
Come on, guys, people are complicated. I’ve mete Steve Mosher a couple times when we worked for the same firm. The meetings were incidental to our being in the same lab at the same time. He didn’t strike me as a saint or a sinner at that time. Then I started seeing his rather cryptic comments on WUWT and looked him up, and found out he was the same Steven Mosher that I had met. The I found a copy of Mosher and Fuller, The CRUTape Letters, and read the entire book on a flight back east. Great stuff. (It is in the bookcase above my computer.) And I got to wondering how this guy could be so rough on folks on WUWT and still have written, in a month, this book revealing that the scions of Climate Science lacked both professional and personal integrity, reinforcing the idea that something smelled in CAGW / CCC. And then he “outed” Gleick. What I figure is that Steve is skeptical of everything – he has the soul of a scientist, if not the degrees. And he doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
So, you may not like his drivebys. I read his comments. The longer ones are better, Steve – I read them and reflect on them, so there is some small, marginal ROI. But even the short ones cause me to think about what he is commenting upon.
Try it, you’ll like it.
Maybe he is only trying to get us to think…
Mother Teressa received funds from druglords. When she was alive, BBC interviewer questioned her why did she accepted funds from drug lords? She replied back saying “Has it written on the money that it is from drulords?
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Mother Teresa’s answer is, of course, a rather snarky way of saying that the ends justify the means. Maybe they do and maybe they don’t but it seems like an immoral argument.
It appears to me that she was saying she did not accepted for charity ( aid to others with no selfish motive) financial help without judging the giver. Said judging would be somewhat ludicrous- ” you are a really good person I accept 95 percent of your 100 dollars, you ate quite bad at times, I accept 5o percent of yours, you are terrible, I only accept 5 percent of your donation”
If it was for personal profit, then a different story.
As David A points out you missed the point nw sage. It wasn’t for Mother Teresa to *judge* the people donating (that’s even if she knows who the people donating are, many donations are anonymous). Money is money, it doesn’t magically change depending on the source. A dollar has the same purchasing power whether it comes from a sinner or from a saint. If you hold up the sinner’s dollar next to the saint’s dollar, you couldn’t tell which dollar came from which person.
Dr Reddy, did you say the biased broadcasting ‘corporation’?
Now please go and wash your mouth out with carbolic soap!
Mother Theresa was of course, a famous CAGW sceptic. She once said to me (While we were out having a pub lunch after calibrating some tide gauges off the coast of Combria , England) , ‘EO’, she said (she called me EO)
‘EO, if carbon dioxide is the control knob, I’ll eat my wimple’
+1
We have a winner.
Mother Theresa was a deeply unpleasant sadist who did nothing practical to help the poor people that she rode on the backs of. She also misappropriated donated funds on a colossal scale and was never held to account for it.
Source?
Just enjoyed the 49 minutes listening to the Red Pilled account. It answered many questions I’ve had as a layman, a little more than casually following the climate debate. One big question remains for me… what is the status of research designed to show the actual effect of a doubling of CO2 in the atmsphere. Is it still not narrowed down to less than a wide-range of half a degree to 8 degrees? My instincts tell me it is much closer to half a dregree, just as my instincts tell me that relying on tree rings to determine past global temperatures is a fool’s errand.
This effect cannot be calculated. It has to do with the way the Atmosphere radiates to Space. Increased CO2 raises the altitude at which the atmosphere freely radiates to space, thus lowering the temperature at which the atmosphere radiates to space, thus increasing the amount of heat energy retained in the atmosphere. Exactly what concentration of CO2 remains opaque to outgoing 15-Micron radiation at exactly what altitude is not a trivial calculation, in fact has never been conclusively established.
All attempts at calculating Climate Sensitivity are based on the NON-Scientific assumption that all of the supposed increase in Global Average Surface Temperature since 1880, or 1850, or so
me year, are caused by increased CO2 in the atmosphere. We really do not have much data about temps worldwide before the 1960’s, and even then mostly just for the Northern Hemisphere.
So good luck with that…
You said “thus lowering the temperature at which the atmosphere radiates to space, thus increasing the amount of heat energy retained in the atmosphere.”
One minor problem with that, as CO2 has increased so has the IR to space thus cooling the Planet faster.
This information was presented to the 2013 AGU meeting.
ACO,
Was there some part of my simple explanation that was unclear to you? Yes a slightly warmer planet sheds more IR, else we would melt. I was discussing the effect of a higher CO2 concentration. If you are referring to the CERES satellites, what they measure is IR from everywhere, the surface, lower in the atmosphere, not just the TOA which is the effect I describe.
At equilibrium, the planet sheds as much energy as it receives plus a tiny bit more due to geothermal heat.
Assume, for sake of argument, that the atmosphere acts as an insulator and that increased CO2 increases the insulation value. The surface temperature will rise somewhat such that the same heat flux flows through the atmosphere on its way to outer space. At that level, it’s pretty darn simple.
A doubling of atmospheric CO2, ignoring feedbacks, will result in a non catastrophic temperature increase of a little over one degree centigrade. That’s not controversial.
To generate alarmism, Dr. James Hansen postulated positive feedback and provided approximately zero justification for doing so. The mechanism he postulated has been shown not to work. CAGW should be dead, dead, dead. The reason that it isn’t dead is that belief in CAGW is mostly predicted by a person’s political alignment. CAGW is totally not about science. /rant
CommieRobert,
A pronouncement, with no physics behind it.
OK, have you added to our knowledge?
RedRobert,
” At equilbrium?”
Or not…
“Increased CO2 raises the altitude at which the atmosphere freely radiates to space, thus lowering the temperature at which the atmosphere radiates to space, … yahdah, yahdah, yahdah.”
Oh no, not that tired, faulty simplification !
That’s just another exercise in mathematical sophistry, … forcing a sense of averaging, using SB Law inappropriately, etc., etc. … It should not even be cited anywhere in an argument to counter climate alarmism. … There should be no acknowledgement of it, because, as I see it, it’s garbage that adds nothing to a skeptic’s defense.
Why would even an average height of emission change height, if the mass of the atmosphere stayed virtually the same, hence the center of mass of the atmosphere stayed virtually the same ?
Unless a tiny percentage of CO2 could miraculously increase atmospheric mass by a HUGE percentage, then I do not see, at all, how even a simplified average height could increase? — it would stay exactly where it is, while the distribution of the atmosphere’s mass would remain as before, even with the tiny, tiny, tiny (relatively speaking) additional mass of any added CO2.
Kanoodler,
Umm, because CO2 is opaque to 15-micron radiation, which is emitted by the atmosphere where it is around -80 C? That is why.
No sophistry here, just physics, which it strikes me might be a bit beyond you…
If you are correct Mr. Moon, then the specific heat of the atmosphere must have changed due to the increased concentration of CO2. Please tell me the new value.
I say your explanation is incorrect.
RKelly,
the specific heat of the atmosphere has nothing to do with radiation. However, since the concentration of CO2 increased from 280 to 403 ppm, the specific heat actually did change, in the fourth or fifth decimal place, not that it matters.
Knock off the ad hominem. A lucid explanation would serve you better, otherwise people might reach a conclusion that you wouldn’t like.
CO2IsNotSimple,
did you not know that all matter above Absolute Zero radiates all the time? If you think that N2 and O2 do not radiate to space, then I have wasted my time.
Back to school for you.
CO2Mann,
You laid such an egg, do you not know that All Matter, including Gases, Radiates All the Time if over Absolute Zero, and you come back?
“There are more thing in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy…”
Buena Suerte…
Moon
But what is the emission spectra at 300 ppm and that at 600 ppm?
MODTRANs shows these to be virtually unchanged, eg:
That being the case, how, in any meaningful way, will a doubling of CO2 going to increase the height at which the atmosphere radiates to space?
RV,
Because, the atmosphere thins out as altitude increases. At some altitude the layer of CO2 is not sufficient to absorb 15-micron radiation, which subsequently escapes into space. Did any of you guys study this in school? I did, and it was the most difficult course in my four-year ME degree. I got a B+.
richard,
Yes, the height that the radiation leaves is meaningless. What matters is how much more surface emissions will be captured by the atmosphere if CO2 doubles and then about half of this will be added to the incident energy and offset by higher emissions due to a higher temperature and the remaining half will leave into space. The increase in absorption from doubling CO2 is about 3.7 W/m^2, per the IPCC and I see about the same from HITRAN based simulations.
If you accept the IPCC’s nominal ECS of 0.8C per W/m^2 and reject the 50/50 redistribution of absorption up/down, 3.7 W/m^2 translates into 3C. If you also accept the 50/50 split, this drops to 1.5C. If you apply the same sensitivity applied to the last W/m^2 of solar forcing and honor the 50/50 split, the increase is a little over 0.5C and insignificant relative to natural variability.
The only reason this is controversial is because the truth doesn’t support the existence of the IPCC in support of the UNFCCC/World Bank agenda of applying climate reparations as a means to redistribute western wealth to third world countries without any real accountability for where it goes or what it’s spent on.
CO2 SatanNotEvil,
Fundamentals of Transport of Heat and Mass,
The altitude at which the Atmosphere is freely able to radiate to space, because CO2 is no longer opaque to 15-Micron radiation, determines the temperature at which the atmosphere freely radiates to space. The Temp determines the Flux. Lower Temp means Lower Flux, duh.
Apparently none of you guys have actually studied this in school. Continue. When anyone says anything that makes sense, I will respond…
CO2SatanNot Evil,
Do you understand that the atmosphere is cooler at higher altitudes? Do you understand that CO2 absorbs radiation emitted from the atmosphere at around -80 C? Do you understand that the amount of heat retained in the atmosphere can be affected by the altitude at which the atmosphere freely radiates to space? Do you understand that a higher concentration of CO2 raises the altitude at which the atmosphere can radiate past this opaque layer of CO2, which means the temp at which the atmosphere radiates is slightly lower, which means slightly less energy is radiated to space?
Pearls before swine, Every Single Thing I said here is factual, but none of you studied this in school.
Look it up, it will take you months….
Michael Moon December 6, 2018 at 11:21 pm
CO2SatanNot Evil,
Do you understand that the atmosphere is cooler at higher altitudes?
Really? And lose the self rightest name calling act. No it is not cooler it is hotter.
don’t be so quick to insult other when you don’t understand what you are saying
I guess the following link was not covered in your “class”
https://scied.ucar.edu/shortcontent/thermosphere-overview
michael
The fact that the stratosphere is markedly cooler than the mesosphere shows that IR radiation cannot be the main transporter of heat through the atmosphere. Convection is, and the convection rarely goes above 10,000ft.
Meanwhile, Kirchhoff’s Law of Thermodynamics (There are no one-way thermal devices) also applies to greenhouse effect. A greenhouse gas is equally able to absorb or release heat by way of IR. Having more CO2 in the stratosphere is bound to have a cooling effect by providing a way for the bulk gas to release heat to space, which O2 and N2 cannot do by IR. Thus we don’t really know if CO2 has a net warming or cooling effect on the planet. All models assume that the near-surface absorbtion effect predominates.. but we don’t actually know that.
Michael Moon
“Do you understand that the atmosphere is cooler at higher altitudes?”
Ha ha ha!
Michael, have you ever looked at a chart of the atmosphere showing temperature v.s. altitude?
Do that first, then come back to criticise the knowledge of others.
Michael,
You don’t seem to understand the differences between the energy transported by matter and the energy transported by photons. Only the later can contribute to the RADIANT balance whether we are talking about the atmospheres RADIANT balance to space or its RADIANT balance with the surface. Do you understand that RADIANT means photons?
You’re obsessing about how surface emissions previously absorbed by the atmosphere are redistributed within the atmosphere before ultimately escaping into space or returning to the surface. Odd that you don’t get redistribution, as this is the motivation for all the broken science in the first place.
I get that the IPCC’s self serving consensus doesn’t understand the differences either and this is one of the many reasons for why they are so incredibly wrong about their presumed ECS that otherwise violates first principles physics in multiple ways.
BrightBoys,
When I said Atmosphere I meant Troposphere, where all significant quantities of heat are lost to space.
SatanicCO2,
Radiation is best considered as both a particle(Photon) and a wave(Light). The radiation in CO2’s absorption bands is fully absorbed and thermalized at an altitude around 10 meters above the surface. Increasing CO2 lowers this altitude a few mm, trivial effect. Increasing CO2 also absorbs and re-emits radiation at the TOA. This radiation is not thermalized because the density is so much lower the molecule has time to re-emit before a collision with another molecule. This is not a trivial effect, as this determines the altitude at which the Troposphere is free to radiate to space, determining the Temperature at which the Troposphere is able to radiate to space, determining the Flux between the Troposphere and Deep Space, usually considered to absorb radiation at 3 K.
That is enough. I did not make a mistake. If you have not gone through the engineering courses, I assure you none of this is intuitive, all highly technical.
Michael,
“is fully absorbed and thermalized”
This is the source of your cognizant dissonance. Quantum Mechanics doesn’t support the idea that GHG absorption in the atmosphere is wholly converted into the translational energy of molecules in motion within any distance from the surface. Collisions may result in the emission of a photon, but will definitely not increase the velocity of colliding molecules. If you think it’s via the conversion into rotational states, then you fail to understand that this conversion is bidirectional, equal and opposite, hence the fine structure on both sides of vibrational resonances.
You also seem to misunderstand the nature of wave-particle duality. I can explain your errors, but it’s clear that you won’t comprehend, so I won’t waste my time.
You may understand non-pneumatic tires, but you definitely don’t understand Quantum Mechanics or how the climate works. I suggest that you stick to what you know.
SatanicCO2,
Thermalization has nothing to do with quantum mechanics. CO2 is a linear molecule which is capable of receiving an induced dipole moment. When it does it can absorb 15-micron IR. When it does, if it is low in the atmosphere this energy is almost instantly transferred to a colliding molecule. High in the atmosphere the energy will be re-emitted.
Do not tell me what I do and do not understand.
MM,
A 15u photon excites a vibrational mode which adds a quantum of energy to the electron shell of the CO2 molecule as a resonant state. It’s dipole moment is irrelevant, except for how it aligns in an electric field. This quantum of energy must be removed all at once as the molecule returns to the ground state, not little bits of energy at a time after each collision. Quantum mechanics is all about quantized energy states as opposed to a continuum of energy states and molecular absorption of photons is all about quantized states.
If as you claim, the absorbed 15u photon is converted into the linear kinetic energy of molecules in motion upon a collision, what’s the origin of the 90 W/m^2 or so of energy at TOA in the GHG absorption bands? Your hypothesis predicts that the energy seen in the absorption bands will be zero and that this absorbed energy will get redistributed into the transparent window of the atmosphere. This is not what we observe.
You may try to claim that these emissions are coming from GHG’s high in the atmosphere, but how did those GHG molecules become energized when all the photons that could excite them have already been absorbed and converted into the energy of translational motion (thermalized) within the bottom 10m of the atmosphere? The molecular velocities are far too low for any excitation consequential to a collision and N2/O2 doesn’t emit photons under normal atmospheric conditions.
Ian Macdonald December 7, 2018 at 12:44 am said
“The fact that the stratosphere is markedly cooler than the mesosphere ”
This just isn’t true. From 70km to 80 km up the mesosphere is colder than the stratosphere.
The whole point behind the Warmista argument is not, however, that the amount of heat retained in the atmosphere by additional CO2 is a causes enormous, dangerous, cataclismic over-heating. It is that the CO2 mystically produces positive feedbacks that kills us all. WHat those positive feedbacks are has never been demonstrated or explained to my satisfaction. Indeed, I suspect these are fictitious. And, my exhibit for that is any other system. Any system with positive feedback almost immedeiately goes to maximum or minimum output qunatityl it’s the nature of positive feedback.
Exhibit A, your honor: How long has the Earth been around, and life?
They can’t explain how positive feedback can amplify the next W/m^2 of forcing into 4.3 W/m^2 of surface emissions, while each the other 239 W/m^2 from the Sun is only amplified into 1.62 W/m^2 of surface emissions. They’ve been able to obfuscate this with so many layers of nonsense, even many skeptics are confused and can’t see this obvious falsification of the IPCC’s insanely high ECS. Maybe some don’t realize that 1 Watt is 1 Joule per second and that COE must also apply to average flux densities expressed in W/m^2.
They also fail to understand that a consequence of the Bode stability criteria is that when the feedback becomes positive and exceeds the input (forcing), the system becomes unconditionally unstable. Even the minimum 0.4C per W/m^2 claimed by the IPCC requires more positive feedback than forcing (1 W/m^2 of forcing + 1.2 W/m^2 of feedback). The climate system is missing the implicit power supply, so as a passive system, it will be unconditionally stable under all conditions.
The problem is that the linear feedback amplifiers that the climate feedback model is based on have absolutely no correspondence to anything related to the climate.
Michael M wrote:
“All attempts at calculating Climate Sensitivity are based on the NON-Scientific assumption that all of the supposed increase in Global Average Surface Temperature since 1880, or 1850, or some year, are caused by increased CO2 in the atmosphere.”
This ASSUMPTION provides an UPPER-BOUND ESTIMATE OF CLIMATE SENSITIVITY (CS) TO INCREASING ATMOSPHERIC CO2 – and that upper bound of CS is about 1C/(2xCO2). The actual value of CS is highly unlikely to be more than ~1C/doubling and is probably less, possibly much less. This is the best available estimate because it is a full-Earth-scale analysis, absent scale-up errors. At CS=~1C/doubling, there is no dangerous global warming crisis.
Regards, Allan
References: Christy and McNider 2017, Lewis and Curry 2018.
Allan writes: “This ASSUMPTION provides an UPPER-BOUND ESTIMATE OF CLIMATE SENSITIVITY (CS) TO INCREASING ATMOSPHERIC CO2.”
Nonsense. Unforced variability can ADD TO or SUBTRACT FROM the forced warming produced by anthropogenic GHGs and partially negated by aerosols. If you assert that only 50% of warming might have been caused by forcing (and the rest was unforced or natural), I can assert with equal validity that 150% of warming was caused by forcing and 1/3 of that was negative by unforced variability.
If the actual value of ECS is unlikely to be more than 1 degC, then why is the central estimate for Lewis and Curry 2018 1.5 degK/doubling?
Christy and McNider report a TCR to the bulk troposphere of 1.15 K (similar to L&C’s 1.20 K), so their estimate agrees with L&C18. (Unfortunately, satellite temperature has been corrupted by orbital drift and their is no consensus on the best way to correct this problem.)
Lindzen and Choi did publish an estimate for ECS below 1 degC. Unfortunately the SWR feedback they observed was positive with no lag and negative with a three-month lag (with a modestly better correlation). Whether ECS is less than 1 degC depends on the choice of lag. (I personally don’t think either choice is correct and that SWR feedback occurs on many time scales.) And it isn’t obvious to me how they can claim this is a global response, rather than the tropical response.
Specious nonsense from Frank.
First, the accuracy of the CS estimates is approximate – “about 1C” and 1.5C are essentially the same and NEITHER SUGGESTS ANY CAUSE FOR ALARM.
The rest of his argument is more specious blah blah, especially the falsehoods about UAH orbital drift and aerosols. UAH is the ONLY credible temperature dataset, unaffected by false “adjustments” that have ALL exaggerated warming.
Christy and McNider corrected for aerosols, and I have done considerable work on that subject. Your post is corrupted Frank, and shameful.
There is no cause for alarm in both full-Earth-scale analyses by Christy and McNider 2017 and Lewis and Curry 2018.
There is ample evidence that the much-higher CS estimates used by climate modelers have negative credibility, and are primarily chosen to create false alarm.
Earth cooled from ~1945 to ~1977, despite strongly increasing atmospheric CO2. The calculated CS for this period is about MINUS 1C/doubling. Recently, “The Pause” suggests about 0C/doubling.
Pick your favorite CS, calculated from full-Earth-scale data and RELAX, BECAUSE THERE IS NO CAUSE FOR ALARM.
Alan wrote: “The actual value of CS is highly unlikely to be more than ~1C/doubling and is probably less, possibly much less.”
Now he considers it shameful that I correctly reminded him that this two references calculated a central estimate of 1.5 degC (50%) and the 95% confidence interval extended from 1.05 to 2.5 K. The upper limit is 150% higher and the lower limit is not possible much less than 1 degC. Once you reach an ECS of 2 degC or higher, there is some reason to begin to limit emissions
Then there is the possibility that LC18 has been influence by unforced variability. And the possibility that climate sensitivity varies as the planet’s temperature changes. I’m sure you realize that the planet switches from glacials to interglacials with negligible change in global irradiation, suggesting that the climate feedback parameter isn’t strongly negative (stabilizing) in the colder direction.
The ECS exhibited by individual AOGCMs doesn’t carry much weight with me because those models are tuned with some idea of how tuning will influence ECS. Ensembles with perturbed parameters do show that arbitrarily chosen parameters tend to produce models with high ECS, but that could simply reflect the limitations of large grid cells.
Alan wrote: “UAH is the ONLY credible temperature dataset, unaffected by false “adjustments” that have ALL exaggerated warming.”
If I understand correctly, all of your false “adjustments” (some of which are needed) only add about 0.2 degC to about 1 degC of warming. None of those adjustments are present in BEST, the only adjustment they made was to split records at obvious discontinuities and use the data between those discontinuities to create a regional expectation by kriging. I you believe – like I do – that some of these discontinuities were caused by maintenance or station moves that restored unbiased measurement conditions after a bias gradually developed, then both homogenization and splitting records at discontinuities discards needed corrections. Something is wrong when the average station record contains a dozen discontinuities. If you know of some argument showing why the latest UAH corrections for orbital drift are better than RSS’s correction, I’d like to read it.
Alan wrote: “Earth cooled from ~1945 to ~1977, despite strongly increasing atmospheric CO2. The calculated CS for this period is about MINUS 1C/doubling. Recently, “The Pause” suggests about 0C/doubling.”
All Alan has proven is that unforced variability can overwhelm the small amount of forced variability expected for these short periods. CO2 was increasing about 1 ppm/yr in the 1960s. 30 years, about 30 ppm, about 1/10 of a doubling, about 0.12 degC of forced warming using the TCR from LC18. During the recent Pause, CO2 was rising about 2 ppm/yr for about half as long, another 0.12 degC.
My favorite range for ECS is 1.5-2.0, but it could be worse.
Frank wrote:
“My favorite range for ECS is 1.5-2.0, but it could be worse.”
And it could be lower – as low as 0.5C or even less.
Repeating from above:
“… the accuracy of the CS estimates is approximate – “about 1C” and 1.5C are essentially the same and NEITHER SUGGESTS ANY CAUSE FOR ALARM.”
Even 2C is not that scary – what IS scary is global cooling, even moderate global cooling, which I think is imminent.
We are discussing the physics of radiation here. Do you know what the phrase First Principles means? If you do, say something that relates. Doubting it though…
Alan wrote: “And [ECS] could be lower – as low as 0.5C or even less.”
Based on what evidence? The 95% ci for Lewis&Curry18 is 1.05-2.45 K with a central estimate of 1.5 K. To get a central estimate of 0.5 K, 2/3rds of warming since 1880 needs to be unforced variability. For 0.5 K to be at the lower limit of the 95% ci, one half of the warming observed since 1880 needs to be unforced variability. I don’t see much evidence in 100 centuries of Holocene climate supporting the possibility that most of the recent half-century of warming could be unforced or natural variability. (When looking a polar ice cores, remember that the amplitude of fluctuations is roughly doubled by polar amplification.)
When I look at feedbacks, I find lots of evidence that WV+LR feedback is positive and big enough to put ECS in the 1.5-2.0 K range. For example, the observed LWR response to seasonal warming is -2.2 W/m2/K from both clear and cloud skies. A -1 W/m2/K in SWR feedback (enough negative feedback to get back to an ECS of 1.15K) represent a -1%/K change in reflected SWR. An ECS of 0.5 K requires overall feedback of -7.2 W/m2/K. That would require -5 W/m2/K of negative SWR feedback or a 5%/K change in reflection of SWR. At the last glacial maximum (-6 K), that would translate into 30 W/m2 less SWR being reflected back to space despite the ice caps! FROM THIS PERSPECTIVE, it is unlikely that ECS can be below 1 K and 0.5 K is off in fantasyland.
On the other hand, I don’t find the SWR and cloud LWR feedbacks produce by AOGCMs convincing. AOGCMs disagree with each other about the feedbacks that occur during seasonal warming. There is no reason to believe that the positive cloud feedback they report is real. This is my personal interpretation of the data in Tsushima and Manabe (2013). (IMO, there are lagged components in the SWR response that prevent the slope of the SWR vs temperature plot from being interpreted as a feedback relevant to global warming.)
https://www.pnas.org/content/110/19/7568
+1
There cannot be a range for ECS! If it cannot be computed from First Principles, which it cannot be and never has been, then it is an UnKnown based on faulty assumptions. Let us destroy prosperity because we are certain of a number which might or might not be the case? Really?
My professors taught me to Never right down a number which I could not back up.
Many here seem willing to do this, as does, clearly, the entire field of so-called “Climate Science.”
Moon
Michael Moon: Here is a useful way to think about climate change without starting with the concept of ECS (which has an uncomfortably wide range and is intangible). Suppose we were able to quickly cool the planet 1 degK by bringing up water from the deep ocean or warm the planet by stopping upwelling from the deep ocean. How much less or more LWR and SWR would our planet radiate and reflect to space. This is called the [global] climate feedback parameter and has units of W/m2/K. Let’s assume it is constant for small changes in temperature.
A gray body with an emissivity of 0.61 and a temperature of 288 K has a “climate feedback parameter” of -3.3 W/m2/K. W = -oeT^4. dW/dT = 4oeT^3 = -3.3 W/m2/K. However, the Earth isn’t a graybody. Rising humidity with temperature means that not all of the increased LWR emitted at the surface escapes to space. ie emissivity goes down. A lower lapse rate means more warming in the upper atmosphere than at the surface. Emissivity goes per degK of surface warming. There are also changes in the amount of SWR reflected back to space – ie in albedo. Climate scientists call these changes feedbacks, but in physics we would call these changes in emissivity and reflectivity.
If 2XCO2 slows radiative cooling to space by 3.6 W/m2, then the planet will warm until it emits an additional 3.6 W/m2, restoring a steady state. If the climate feedback parameter is 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0 W/m2/K, then a steady state will be restored after warming of 3.6, 1.8 or 1.2 K.
So you are correct – there can’t be a range of values for the climate feedback parameter – these changes in emissivity and reflectivity have some fixed value. The reciprocal of the climate feedback parameter is ECS in units of K/(W/m2). We just don’t know whether the climate feedback parameter is near -2 W/m2/K (energy balance models) or -1 W/m2/K (AOGCMs).
(Life gets much more difficult if temperature change is different in different locations.)
As I stated above, I prefer full-Earth-scale analyses because there are no scale-up errors, which can be huge when one scales up from molecular-scale to full-planet size. We do not even know all the important physical mechanisms that are occurring between molecular-scale analyses and full-Earth-scale realities.
As I stated above, I prefer full-Earth-scale analyses because there are no scale-up errors, which can be huge when one scales up from molecular-scale to full-planet size. We do not even know all the important physical mechanisms that are occurring between molecular-scale analyses and full-Earth-scale realities.
We are preoccupied with the notion that CO2 drives global warming, and only argue about “how much” – the unending argument about the magnitude of Climate Sensitivity CS to increasing atmospheric CO2.
We must therefore ignore the awkward observation that from ~1945 to ~1977, CO2 emissions increased strongly while Earth cooled significantly, even alarmingly.
We must also ignore the awkward observation that CO2 trends lag temperature trends in the ice core record, and also in the modern data record. This does not seem to bother most analysts, who are apparently arguing that the future is causing the past. Well, OK, and how exactly does that work? Oh – it’s a feedback effect? …and what does Occam’s Razor say about that?
I leave you with a plot from Humlum et al 2013, which is prettier than the ones in my originating paper of January 2008.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1551019291642294&set=a.1012901982120697&type=3&theater
And to all, especially to Les Giletes Jaunes in France:
Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année! 🙂
FRANK What are you scared of? We have had 1C warming in 168 years. That is because the earth is still coming out of the LIA. No one knows what causes this. We have had only a 94ppm increase in CO2 in the atmosphere in last 60 years. This despite increases of CO2 emissions worldwide of more than 4x increase since 1960. The UAH long ago corrected their satellite drift problems. Their trend is still 1.3C per century and that is because they started in 1979, a period of cooling. Argo floats show that the oceans are not heating up. The Danish meterological insitute run by the Danish government shows that there is more ice in the Arctic on this date than there was 4 years ago. I live in Ottawa Canada and tonite December 8, 2018 which is not the coldest part of winter , the temperature as I type this is -16C. That is 16 degrees below freezing. Most of Canada is freezing our asses off like here in Ottawa. greenland is losing only 1/1000 th of its ice per year and there is no ice mass loss acceleration. Antarctica in 8 of the 11 temperature stations( representing 95 % of have shown no warming for the 60 years that they have been measured. The only 3 that do show warming are on the Antarctica peninsula close to Chile and supposedly that is because of a volcanic ridge underneath.
Alan T. We have had 0.85 K of warming in the past 50 years, a little less according to UAH and a little more according to RSS. (There are two publishable ways of correcting for orbital drift and I haven’t seen a compelling reason for choosing one correction over the other. I certainly trust surface temperatures more than the radiosonde temperatures used to correct UAH!) That is a TCR of about 1.3 K. The warming rate over land is 50% higher.
The ARGO floats show that 0.7 W/m2 of heat is flowing into the ocean, so ECS is higher than TCR.
Most economists think that the 1 degC of warming we have experienced has been net beneficial, but future warming will not be. It certainly will be beneficial in Canada.
Sea level rose 120 m as temperature rose roughly 6 K as the last ice age ended. From this perspective, the 1 K of warming we have already experienced is a big deal. As ice caps retreat towards the poles, there is less ice on land to melt, but any SLR measured in multiple meters per degC is a concern. Current estimates are that SL was 7 m higher and temperature was 1 degC warmer than today. We know there were trees in Southern Greenland during the last interglacial.
Since the lapse rate over central Antarctica average, there is no GHE or enhanced GHE there. However, surface melting isn’t the concern. The concern is warming of the ocean at base of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that is below sea level. The usual map showing the Antarctic coast actually represents where the coast line would be after the ice melted and the last rose due to glacial isostatic rebound. A large amount (perhaps half?) of bedrock inside this coast line today is below sea level. See the maps in the Wikipedia article on Antarctica.
dave, read this: https://www.nicholaslewis.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/LewisCurry_The-impact-of-recent-forcing-and-ocean-heat-uptake-data-on-estimates-of-climate-sensitivity_JCli2018.pdf
Thanks. Will do.
Dave, as I see it, the official IPCC range in ECS has stubbornly stayed at 1.5 – 5.0 (deg C per doubling) for 30 years. It is in part I think an effort to keep them in business. If the ECS is determined to be really be 1.5-2.2, the IPCC’s reasons for existence and future funding become much weaker than if the ECS was 3 – 4. Back in 2011, I read that a study accepted for AR4 used as a Bayesian Prior estimate of ECS as a 0.0-18.5 uniform distribution. It is a method to seed an uncertainty analysis with a start. Buy why choose something as high as 18.5? And why “uniform” such that 17-18 is just as likely as 1-2? I can only conclude that the high probability given to the high value priors was to preserve a resulting range in the >3 value of ECS.
From Nic Lewis in 2014 Use of a uniform prior for ECS in Bayesian climate sensitivity studies has remained common after AR4, with the main alternative being an ‘expert prior’ – which tends to perpetuate the existing consensus range for ECS.
If I understand correctly, the IPCC stopped using a Bayesian approach with Otto (2013) and AR5. All but one of the authors on Otto (2013) were authors of AR5 (and Nic Lewis was the other). They found an ECS of 2.0 for 1970 to 2010, a period when there was little change in aerosol forcing (which is the greatest source of uncertainty in Lewis and Curry’s papers. As best I can tell, with Otto (2013) the IPCC consensus accepted that energy balance models afforded central estimates for ECS that are far below those of climate models and began looking for reasons that energy balance models might be wrong.
The IPCC sensitivity was nothing by a stake in the ground to show an effect large enough to justify their creation in support of the UNFCCC/World Bank’s agenda to equalize the developed world with the developing world by dragging the developed world down.
They can’t correct it because if they did, their reason to exist evaporates and if a useless bureaucracy is good at anything, it’s self preservation.
Dave wrote: “My instincts tell me [doubling CO2] is much closer to half a degree.
Do your instincts tell you the Earth is flat? Does the sun circle the Earth? Do objects gradually slow down and stop when no force is placed on them. Einstein’s instincts told him that God “doesn’t play dice with the universe”. Instincts are for supporters of the IPCC consensus, not skeptics. True skeptics may decide what claims are worth investigating based on instinct, but following your instincts merely leads to confirmation bias, not knowledge.
The laws of physics, incontrovertible logic and multiple sources of confirming data tells me in no uncertain terms that the power sensitivity is 1.62 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing or about 0.3C per W/m^2 and that even the theoretical upper limit of 2 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing is less than the 0.4C per W/m^2 claimed by the IPCC as the lower bound which requires 2.2 W/m^2 of incremental surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing.
Bode’s stability criteria infers that once the feedback becomes positive and exceeds the magnitude of the forcing, the system is unconditionally unstable and even the 1.2 W/m^2 of ‘feedback’ required to support the lower bound is more than the 1 W/m^2 of forcing claimed to cause it. Of course, this also requires the implicit power supply that’s assumed present but is actually missing from the climate system …
The IPCC is so wrong about so much, it’s an embarrassment to all fields of science. It’s amazing how powerful political bias can be as it turns otherwise intelligent people into bumbling idiots ready to destroy the developed world in the name of an illogical cause. The failures of climate science are just one of many examples illustrating this kind of cognizant dissonance.
CO2isnotevil doesn’t realize that the power supply for the Earth is the sun. The Earth’s present temperature is current about 288 K, not 255 K, because GHG’s in the atmosphere slow radiative cooling from 390 W/m2 at the surface to 240 W/m2 at the TOA.
The planet starts with a Planck feedback of -3.3 W/m2/K. W = -oeT^4. dW/dT = -4oeT^3 = -3.3 W/m2/K. Unless feedbacks total at least +3.3 W/m2/K, the planet’s equilibrium temperature is stable. The IPCC thinks feedbacks total about +2.3 W/m2/K, which is still a stable system.
Your limited knowledge of the physics underlying climate change is embarrassing to other skeptics. (Your numbers don’t come from temperature change, they come from moving to different locations on the planet. Local temperatures are due to both the local vertical heat fluxes (that determine climate sensitivity) AND to meridional heat fluxes. You can’t learn about climate sensitivity from the usual plot you show.)
Frank,
The Sun is the forcing, not the power supply. It can’t be both. The broken climate feedback model is equivalent to connecting the power cord and the audio input to the same thing. The existence of the implicit power supply also distinguishes an active system from a passive system. The climate, while dynamic, is not an active system per Bode’s definition of one.
The point of the implicit power in feedback amplifier analysis is to isolate the forcing from the output. In an amplifier, conservation of energy doesn’t apply between the input and output, as the forcing is only measured to determine how much output power to deliver from an IMPLICIT source.
For the climate feedback model, the output power originates from the input forcing and the necessary COE constraints are not applied which is why you think that the ‘feedback’ can be so much larger than the forcing. Again, I will refer you to Bode’s stability criteria which applies to all feedback control systems.
The bottom line is that Bode’s linear feedback amplifier analysis has no correspondence to how the climate system operates. The whole concept of feedback has absolutely no relevance to Earth’s climate system. The fact that the IPCC considers net feedbacks to be 2.3 W/m^2 per W/m^2 of forcing is absurd, irrelevant and just plain wrong. The system is indeed stable, but the stated amount of feedback illustrates complete ignorance of the supporting analysis.
I listened to the whole podcast and am now more informed than before. I am also more pissed off than before. There are historic precedents showing scientists misbehaving, and some even got away with it even after being discovered. I personally examined a cinder cone near Barstow, California which had reported significant amounts of platinum group elements and was of great value, guess what? My hidden samples didn’t have anything but the ones collected openly, and analyzed by the company, had a lot. How this whole sordid scam drags on is only explainable by somebody still making money from it. Thanks for Anthony and the whole gang for shining the light on the cockroaches.
How does Barstow come in?
Barstow?
“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.”
Hunter S. Thompson
Curious, the Santa Fe Railroad had private sections along the railroad near Barstow and one of them had a young cinder cone on it. They leased it for many years to provide road sand to be used during icy conditions (further north I imagine) and then sold the private section. The buyers “discovered” the cinders were loaded with platinum group metals and sold stock on that basis. There were great spindle-shaped flying cinders included in the cone and I collected some of them, wonder if they have platinum in them? I’ll sell you one but not cheap.
Ron Long,
I could tell you an interesting story about an attempted scam by a guy in my thesis field area in Trinity County (Calif.). The bottom line is that such scams prey on the ignorant and depend on their greed.
For me it was all about Steve McIntyre. Mosher in that period was a different beast, still prone to flyby dumps but was more anti AGW than now. There were a lot of commenters who ended in the Moshpit.
Steve brought a huge amount of dignity to the debate while also hanging onto his opponent like a british bulldog. He has a brilliant analytical mind and an in depth knowledge of statistics that I had not seen before or since.
Sadly, mosher has lost the plot since being in contact with the other twat, Holthaus? at BEST.
I predate the release of the e-mails, by about 14 months.
The “Ohio State Paper” by McIntyre appeared on the web the same summer we transitioned from dial-up to DSL. Doing much of anything prior to the faster connection required more time and wine than I had. That’s 10 years of reading and following these issues.
I do not remember whether WUWT pointed me to Climate Audit, or the other way round.
I did buy a hard copy of the ClimateGate book when it came out.
This is the first time I’ve heard the full story about the Climategate affair. We owe Anthony et al a great debt. Keep fighting on, chaps. Our future depends on it.
“Please reference and use the audio version for exact quotes.” If it sounds like a bad joke, it probably is. Why not use the transcript? I can read much faster than listen.
Ditto
Yep!
It is remotely possible that there might be an unintentional error in the transcript. The audio record is the “ground truth”. Referencing the audio record is merely being honest. (Gosh, what a concept!)
An incredible story! I was taught that Materials and Methods is always, ALWAYS, the most important section in a scientific paper. And, as I have studied this part of climate scientist, even as a biologist, its been the methods used that have caused me the most concern. The reported way tree ring data were used and analyzed, which I certainly understand, puzzled me and that puzzlement has expanded as I have learned more about the methods used to gather and analyze temperature data.
Thanks to this Gang of Four and many others who continue to spend time and energy (and probably money) to provide a scientific perspective to this area of study. Truth will come out.
Thank you for providing a link to the transcript. Reading is a lot more efficient than listening.
That’s why the well read are so much more informed than the television/radio spenders of leisure time.
I think Patrick should have placed more emphasis on the fact that Steve McIntyre has an undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of Toronto and is truly a super-master of statistical analysis.
Agree with that. His statistical competence has been invaluable, IMO.
Heartfelt thanks for this information, even if one knows a lot about Climategate, there’s nothing like hearing / reading it in this way.
It’s interesting but I got into this because of the money. Many of the listed perpetrators simply refused to return information to their grant providers about what they were spending money on. Millions of dollars from the US to the British researchers and EPA and other government entities refused to make them return required documents. And then when they did, it was all hidden from FOIA. Over and over again people say “Follow the money”. It appears to be true in this instance.
Follow the money is true everywhere at all times. call me a cynic, i don’t mind. I told my son who has just graduated in mechanical engineering that he’ll stay sane if he just accepts the follow the money premise and he is already realizing it is true.
The continuing hoax is that hypothetical computer simulations which don’t match real world observations are being treated as an unquestionable and certain representation of future climate. If they can get away with this kind of mass delusion they can get away with anything!
I don’t like saying it is a hoax. Hoax connotes something harmless, mostly done for fun. CAGW should be called what it is, a scam, perpetrated for personal gain by a host of miscreants.
Gary,
No, the term is “fraud”, which can persist for years, like Bernie Madoff’s (non)investment schemes.
Gary
The alleged danger of CO2 is a
science-free hoax.
People who profit from the hoax,’
whether gaining political power,
or getting science grants, or taking
alternative energy subsidies,
are cheating the taxpayers,
whether they know it or not.
But this legal because the official
goobermint position on CO2
is not accurate (adding CO2 to the air,
with clean burning fossil fuels
benefits our planet).
As long as the goobermint defines CO2
as a pollutant, making money off that
false claim is perfectly legal
= not a scam / fraud.
Trump has had two years to learn
a little about CO2, and get the CO2
endangerment finding reversed.
Most presidents accomplish most
of what they want in the first two years.
On the subject of climate science,
Trump was, and remains,
a DING DING DING bat,
and there is no sign
he will ever educate himself.
On the subject of climate change,
Trump has had the good instincts
to not believe CO2 is dangerous crowd,
most likely because humans
have been adding CO2 to the air
for centuries, and Trump can’t identify
any CO2 “victims”.
Nor can I.
Like it or not, AGW skeptics are CONSPIRACY BELIEVERS.
The liberal propaganda machine (MSM) along with our liberal indoctrination centers (i.e. Public Schools and Universities) are propagating provable factual lies at worst and unsupportable scientific conclusions at best. The universities are now awash in funds so long as the (mostly unscientific) AGW studies keep “proving” AGW.
The daily parade of bad science revealed here on WUWT chronicles the activities of the conspirators.
Most unfortunately, mainstream science has sold its soul for the grant money…mostly for the money but also because most of them in academia like the idea of international socialism. And it is shameful that even most of the “neutral” scientists are willing to remain silent in the face of obvious transgressions against “good science”.
About 20 years of cooling (not terribly unlikely – though very costly and undesirable) may be needed to save our great institutions of science. These institutions will deserve the public’s skepticism (and the lack of support for funding) for many years to come.
Nice to see that the CRU emails are not forgotten.However those emails revealed a simple fact that I find unpalatable:That the agencies of government are at war with the citizen.
WestMinister government clings to a set of procedure and principles that allow an elected body to govern.
Foremost is evidence based policy making .Complete with access to that evidence.
Climategate and especially the political reaction to those revelations,such as :”A blinder well played”.
Demonstrated that policy based evidence manufacturing is the preferred method by which a parasitic bureaucracy will rule.
Those riots currently roiling France seem to be a reaction to government policy;”The peasants are revolting,let us replace them”.
Now being extremely comfortable living as I do,the naked fact that my “government” is my enemy, causes me to become very uncomfortable.
Do I believe them?
Or do I run for cover?
Fight or flight is a mighty unstable human condition.
You say, “I find unpalatable:That the agencies of government are at war with the citizen”. The little climate scam pales compared to what the FBI, DOJ, CiA and DNC are doing with their efforts to frame Trump. It can only get worse as long as “we the people” fail to collectively demand punish for political wrongdoing.
Someone should make a movie out of this!
…So that the moviegoing public will find it cinematically real and adopt the idea? I’ll give that the old “snowball in hades” chances.
Any candidate for Mr. FOIA, Richard Kiel, perhaps? Only he has sadly left us.
It would be fun to see some Frankenstein-copy hacking his way through a British university.
Thanks for this. I have been following this for years but the details of how this happened I had not heard before.
Thanks
Mac
Macusn,
Mosher’s book “Climategate: The CRUtape Letters” (2010) tells the story in much greater detail. It’s a very good read.
Jan
Thanks for the tip!
Mac
Thank you Anthony, this a great idea…you could have a weekly broadcast with those who can think, and opinions count.
That was great reading. I learned a lot from that transcript. A very well presented history of Climategate. I am going to recommend that podcast extensively.
Myninterest post dates Climategate by two years. i was two years into theresearch of what became Ebook Gaia’s Limits. The chapters on food and water depended in part of predictions about AGW and climate change, so had to start researching. Soon discovered a Congressional briefing by NRDC on very negative food impacts. NRDC deliberately mislabeled an NAS chart. The worst prediction on that chart was a ‘famous’ paper studying county level corn and soybean yields for over 30 years. The negative predictions made themprofessors somfamous they started to blog, and one posted State by state results for corn—graphical summary of the underlying data. The graph PROVED in three different ways tht the analysis was not only faulty, it was DELIBERATELY faulty. The multiple regression deliberately (discussed in the paper, with a nonsense arguement) a crucual covariance term.
That accidental discovery of scientific misconduct occaisioned my first guest post here in 2011. Its not only the paleomproxy gang that is up to no AGW good.
The CRU Mails
http://michaelkelly.artofeurope.com/cru.htm
Thanks for posting the transcript, CTM. It brought back a lot of memories for this member of the back-when-it-was-live audience, watching it as it was happening at the time.
Cheers,
Bob
Be warned, some of you may change your mind about Mr Mosher.
Fair enough, but as Steppenwolf wisely sings in “Move Over”:
Things look bad from over here
Too much confusion and no solution
Everyone here knows your fear
You’re out of touch and you try too much
Yesterday’s glory won’t help us today
You wanna retire?
Get out of the way
Best analysis of Climategate emails was by John Costella:
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/climate-change/climategate-emails.pdf
The URL you attempted to access has been identified as a security risk to our environment.
The URL you attempted to access has been identified as a security risk to our environment.
Also, wuwt told me this was a duplicate submission the first time I submitted it.
Great podcast. I didn’t know that the whistle blower hacked into Real Climate and posted the info there.
I think this part is understated and missing the bigger picture: “So climate scientists started a blog called Real Climate to debunk their detractors.”
Real Climate is\was a propaganda site, set up and run by Gavin Schmidt. Jim Hansen, Gavin’s boss at GISS (which is part NASA), admits this in one of the Climategate emails.
Excellent and hard-hitting story-telling, of the best kind: it’s all true.
It reads like a movie script. To be played by unknown actors since the current crop in HW have all butter on their face.
“Why did Trump say a lot of global warming was a hoax? ”
Because he’s a malignant ignoramus who both falls for and spreads misinformation?
What part do you find to be misinformation about this? Everything in podcast is true. Did you even listen to it?
Examples please.
It’s obvious you don’t like him. What did he do, threaten your welfare payment?
Surely you josh? Try “because it is”.
I have been reading again Emerson’s lecture at Amory Hall concerning reformers of another era: “The reason why any one refuses his assent to your opinion, or his aid to your benevolent design, is in you; he refuses to accept you as a bringer of truth, because, though you think you have it, he feels that you have it not. You have not given him the authentic sign.”
I miss Jeff Id’s commentary, too.
I also admired Mosher’s title for his book, “The CRUtape Letters.” An apt description of the whole Climate Scientist industry.
Just looked it up. Now that IS a clever title. Hats off to you for that, Steven.
Did Mr. Mann ever release the code and the data used to produce the original hockey stick?
No. He claims he has a copyright on it.
Great story, I hope it goes viral, interesting timeline.
A nice synopsis of the story so many of us followed on these pages. Thank you Anthony, Steve, Steven and Charles for having the fortitude, not to mention cajones, to set this thing free. And a special thank you to Mr. FOIA as well. Your efforts gave rise to a small army of skeptics who continue to call out bad science where we find it.
When a cause converges far more on socialistic solutions and government involvement than on the problem itself, the you know you are dealing with a Progressive excuse that is composed of more lies than truth.
>>
It’s is about the Climategate Gang of Four.
<<
Typo alert: there’s a redundant verb in that sentence. Either it should read: “It’s about . . .” or “It is about . . . .”
>>
. . . some of you may change your mind about Mr Mosher.
<<
Probably not. However, I wasn’t aware of how much a role Mr. Mosher played in the Climategate emails.
Jim
“However, I wasn’t aware of how much a role Mr. Mosher played in the Climategate emails.”
It went straight to his head, and is still inflating.
I have just listened to your podcast, thank for all your time and effort in this chaps. Just think our society getting bombed back to the Stone Age because a temperature gauge is getting artificially heated by the Fire Chief’s truck.
I work with a lot of Marine Biologists who seem to spout this AGW stuff verbatim, depressing to say the least.
To Mr. FOIA if you’re reading,
Thank you! You will never be forgotten. I would be proud to shake your hand and buy you a beer.
I liked this part of the transcript:
“Charles Rotter: Holy sh*t is what was going through my mind. It was a real treasure trove showing what was essentially just activist science operating. Not objective, not reasonable. I’m not gonna call it completely fraudulent or a hoax, but it was like activist scientists, as we’re now experiencing with activist journalism. Yes, people are still telling facts, but they’re telling it from such a skewed perspective, you might as well call it lies. It was the cause. They were actually saying, ‘If this guy says this it’s not going to be helpful to the cause.’ That’s not scientific inquiry.”
The Cause.
CAGW scaremongering is definitely a religion. The Cause takes precedence over The Science for these guys.
Thanks Mr. FOIA. You are a true hero. Tell us who you are one of these days, when the climate is a little more benign. 🙂
My opinion of Mosher has now changed but only by .04% , what I can’t understand is that when you know one group is lying to you and you have evidence of it why pick up their cause and defend them it has me baffled .
Unless there is a monetary return .
I too am baffled by Stephen Mosher. He seems to want to defend the undefendable. If you were one of the very few lawyers who refuse to take a case when you know your client is guilty and you just stumbled across the whole subject of climate science and the 2 sets of climategate emails and read everyone of them like Mosher has, could you in all good conscience defend those climate scientists in court? I can forgive Stephen Mosher for 1000 outbursts and ad hominem attacks by sloshing them off as “heat of the moment” outbursts, but I can’t forgive him for his defence of CAGW (knowing what he knows about what has happened in the last 30 years). If Mosher was stupid I could forgive him for this, but he is extremely intelligent. The only thing I can think of why Mosher insists on that defence is that religion holds an unbrakeable stranglehold on one’s logic. If Stephen Mosher doesn’t believe in CAGW, then he is doing a good job of hiding that fact. The only reason this matters is we skeptics waste a lot of time replying to people like Mosher to point out where their religion is letting them down. People like Nick Stokes provide a service to skeptics sometimes by keeping skeptics honest. However Mosher knows the insides of this whole sordid affair.
I do have a prediction though. He seems to be very good friends with Richard Muller of Berkeley. When Muller retires I believe he will come over to the skeptic camp. Muller is a very intelligent man who will have nothing to do with Michael Mann and has said so publicly. Once Muller has nothing to lose, he will see the light and truth. After that Mosher will change his tune also.
Here is a challenge to Mosher:
My bottom line is that if all the ARCTIC ice melts completely , then I will go over to the alarmist side.
Stephen Mosher : What is your bottom line? It obviously wasn’t the climategate emails. I won’t be too disappointed if you don’t answer this because the alarmists always refuse to give their bottom lines.
Steve Mosher is a true skeptic. He followed McIntyre’s investigations into climate reconstructions from proxy data (the hockey stick) and concluded most of that work was unreliable and that the major players who did the work weren’t behaving like responsible scientists. Steve’s book on Climategate (The CRUtape Letters) is worth reading.
Some of those same scientists were responsible for creating the major temperature indices used by the IPCC and they were hiding that data. When Steve joined BEST, he may have expected to find that warming had also been exaggerated. However, BEST found more warming, not less. And they found the same amount of warming using only stations from rural areas (without UHI).
A true skeptic cares more about the process by which an answer has been obtained, than the answer itself. Was the work done correctly? Did they consider all of the sources of error and caveats? Was all the data made available for others to check? If so, one should change their view. That may “deserting a cause”, but not if your cause is the pursuit of truth.
IMO (and I’d guess Steve’s), too many commenters here have deserted the cause of reliable, transparent science that he joined at ClimateAudit (and I observed) more than a decade ago. Now opposition to the consensus is highly politicized or polluted with bad science. If you listen carefully, the heroes of this story – McIntyre, Watts, Mosher and probably Charles – were likely left-of-center politically and driven away by bad science and bad behavior. In other words, their motives weren’t those of many WUWT readers today.
Like Mosher, I first encountered Steve McIntyre’s name at RealClimate. When David Archer tried to convince me Gore’s AIT hadn’t done anything seriously wrong when confusing correlation with causation (CO2 and temperature in ice cores), I also decided it would be worth checking out what the hated McIntyre had to say. It was thrilling to relive that period through this interview.
However, Steve doesn’t waste his time writing long comments like this one, because he knows no one will listen. Confirmation bias makes it nearly impossible our minds to accept new information that is inconsistent with our deeply-held beliefs. This is true for both for skeptics and supporters of the consensus. Only those dedicated to the process of science (read the section on integrity in Feynman’s Cargo Cult Science) have a real chance of learning something that contradicts their current beliefs.
Anyone who is a true skeptic should admire Steve for following the scientific method and adjusting his views based on the results of his personal scientific journey.
Well said. Let’s take the politics out of this – completely out of control – and focus on the core scientific principles but … unlikely to happen in this politicised world we live in.
“Steve doesn’t waste his time writing long comments”
Right. What would be in them worth reading? Seriously.
Andrew
Unfortunately Steve M has exhibited a condescending arrogance that turns many off. Even our polite host, Anything W had chastised him many times.
There are also very legitimate criticisms of BEST.
What are you scared of? We have had 1C warming in 168 years. That is because the earth is still coming out of the LIA. No one knows what causes this. We have had only a 94ppm increase in CO2 in the atmosphere in last 60 years. This despite increases of CO2 emissions worldwide of more than 4x increase since 1960. The UAH long ago corrected their satellite drift problems. Their trend is still 1.3C per century and that is because they started in 1979, a period of cooling. Argo floats show that the oceans are not heating up. The Danish meterological insitute run by the Danish government shows that there is more ice in the Arctic on this date than there was 4 years ago. I live in Ottawa Canada and tonite December 8, 2018 which is not the coldest part of winter , the temperature as I type this is -16C. That is 16 degrees below freezing. Most of Canada is freezing our asses off like here in Ottawa. greenland is losing only 1/1000 th of its ice per year and there is no ice mass loss acceleration. Antarctica in 8 of the 11 temperature stations( representing 95 % of have shown no warming for the 60 years that they have been measured. The only 3 that do show warming are on the Antarctica peninsula close to Chile and supposedly that is because of a volcanic ridge underneath.
As for Best data, there was an article in WUWT that examined it and concluded that the BEST temperature data was made up to agree with the average of the computer models.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…
I remember the Climategate affair but did not know about the “CRUtape Letters book”. I see that it is still available as a Nook Book, so I bought a copy and will have some interesting reading tonight. Thanks to Steve Mosher, Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts and CTM for giving us this glimpse into a dark corner of Climate Science.
Be warned, some of you may change your mind about Mr Mosher.
=====================
Nope
Why would anyone even care what he has to say at this point? I didn’t care what he thought at the beginning, and still don’t, he’s got nothing to do with anything that matters.
Well it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, it’s changed nothing.
I used to troll the internet for years before this happened with a few papers I had composed with variations of answers(with legit links) prewritten for comment sections. I’d already researched everything from polar bears to sun cycles, experiments in a closed system, Albedo, atmospheric chemistry and nuclei in cloud formation AND limitations of computer modeling and spatial statistics GIS, etc.
I found out about Climate Audit BLOG from trolling Real Climate( got banned) and got the opportunity to read Steve McIntyre working through the hockey shtick with some very smart commenters. Waaaaaaaay smarter then me! And found WUWT.
Climategate broke( and the https://climateaudit.org/2009/11/23/the-harry-read_me-file )
… I thought this scam would come to an end…..soooo many times.
It won’t, sorry don’t mean to be a bummer, but it won’t.
Now I’m going shopping for a yellow vest! :p
“Honest liberty June 19, 2018 at 8:14 am
Alan, would you be willing to collaborate on a short expose I want to build off this information? I plan on submitting it to James Corbett initially. Your assistance would be greatly appreciated. If you would kindly reach out to me via WordPress, I’ll give you my personal email and we could embark upon getting this some exposure.
This is of critical import, as you know, especially because if the globe cools we ought to see a return to more frequent severe weather, as I understand it. They can then claim it was co2 instead of natural variability. We must go on the attack and get this exposed before it gets mainstream, so we can point the faithful back to this prophetic example.”
I just read the above comment now. I don’t know how to reach out to anybody by using WordPress. I don’t have a blog. The only talent I have is logical thinking.
I messaged him for you Alan. If it’s the right wordpress? hehe
Thanks
He’s messaged me back and is very interested, not to sure how to pass along a e-mail address without making it public. Maybe a mod or admin can send your e-mail add to him?
Cheers
Lance
“The biggest science heist in history” – wow that is some title …
which of course is completely unfounded. There are fellow travellers like myself who are determined to push back against what can be deemed sceptic ‘misinformation’. Roland Vincent is one such colleague from WordPress. He is a vegan and has been around the block so can teach a sceptic a thing or two. Check out his blog and support him – he is a radical thinker: https://armoryoftherevolution.wordpress.com/2018/12/06/greenhouse-gas-emissions-accelerate-like-a-speeding-freight-train-in-2018/
Ivan, you continually amaze with your delusions which perhaps provide some amusement here, as well as insight into the klimate koolade-crazed “mind” of the True Believers, but you are no “fellow traveller”. More of a leech, wart, or carbuncle.
Seems like the leeches, warts and carbuncles are in the majority then – and long may it continue.
Certainly the leeches, warts and carbuncles like to think so, or that in science, the “majority rules”. All part of their dysfunction.
The idea you have, and that is common here – is that the majority are either wrong, it’s a scam, or there is no majority for the consensus side.
Maybe that’s a function of coming here and thinking that like minds on the Interweb constituting your bubble (confirmation bias) is a majority. Whereas advocates of the science largely keep quiet and get on with things (well because that’s science), denizens pour loving kisses on the few deluded naysayers worthy of any climate credentials ( that does not include Monckton).
Hint.
The balance of probability overwhelming supports the proposition that a consensus be correct, especially in the field of AGW where the science has been known of for ~ 120 yrs.
To think otherwise is a psychopathy.
And to say the words you have above is evidence of it.
You see “true believers” gives it away. Science isn’t belief – it’s about evidence.
It is your “belief” in there being no evidence, that constitutes a “true believer”.
That you will never parse that is of course, part of the psychopathy.
And that you feel the need to pour vitriol on the one of the few who come on here to defend that shows that you have nothing but hand-waving and “belief” in your naysaying.
But if you say so my friend.
Science doesn’t care what you think or what this Blog thinks.
Pissing into the wind even though here is none down a rabbit-hole.
The balance of probability overwhelming supports the proposition that a consensus be correct, especially in the field of AGW where the science has been known of for ~ 120 yrs.
To think otherwise is a psychopathy.
Agreed. I just can’t get over the fact that these moron doctors aren’t still bloodletting. And this after 3000 years of consensus science and practice!
Well done Anthony Banton. Well done.
Anthony Banton
You said, “… especially in the field of AGW where the science has been known of for ~ 120 yrs.”
That statement makes it obvious that you don’t understand the problem. While a fact about the IR absorption of CO2 has been known, it is not the totality of atmospheric science. What is critical is how all the dynamic elements of the system interact, not just how one part behaves. It is obvious that there are numerous feedback loops, which are almost certainly negative in sum or else after 4.5 billion years the system would have runaway.
Re changing minds about Mr Mosher.
I only ever had issue with his drive by snipes type of posting, and fallacious arguments.
Otherwise I am sure he is a fine fellow, at least, I have no reason to believe he is not.
Certainly Steven is not in the same category as people like Holthaus, Gill, Hayhoe, Schmidt and even Zeke (Zeke has told demonstrable lies)
The topic has been a popular political football since at least Al Gore’s 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
– not true. It started a long time before this.
I cannot in good conscience support a deal that punishes the United States…while imposing no meaningful obligations on the world’s leading polluters.
– not true. 198 countries have committed to reducing their CO2 emissions. Trump likes to make the US the ‘scapegoat’, but this is just to support his political populism lapped up by his base.
Sceptics question the magnitude of climate change:
Well, lets add up all the millions of cars, trucks, aircraft, ships, power plants, factories, farmed animals etc. on this planet and then try to work out where all the CO2 emissions go and what impact they are causing on the planet’s atmosphere and oceans.
Whose analysis is based on emotion? Mann’s? – I don’t think so.
Why such emotional terms – Mosher says the climate scientists “were railing” against him
So one climate measuring thermometer that has exhaust fumes blowing into means tht all climate measuring thermometers are incorrect?
All this information about the CRU is commonly available information so why is it being rehashed here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy
The results:
Eight committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged by the end of the investigations. However, the reports urged the scientists to avoid any such allegations in the future, and to regain public confidence following this media storm, with “more efforts than ever to make available all their supporting data – right down to the computer codes they use – to allow their findings to be properly verified”. Climate scientists and organisations pledged to improve scientific research and collaboration with other researchers by improving data management and opening up access to data, and to honour any freedom of information requests that relate to climate science.
Anthony Watts:
“I believe that carbon dioxide does have an effect on the temperature of the Earth. The only real scientific question is: How much? And that question has been in flux and unanswered for over thirty years. It hasn’t been nailed down. How much temperature increase do we get for a doubling of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere? And the estimates range in science anywhere from a half a degree to eight degrees. There’s no actual number where everyone can say, ‘This is it. This is the right number.’ They’ve not nailed that down in thirty some years of climate science. And with something that’s that uncertain, how do you plan for the future? How do you say we’re in a crisis or not? And that is the big question. And so yes I believe carbon dioxide has some effect. How much, is still the question.”
The climate scientists attending this event are providing the answer to this question: https://cop24.gov.pl/news/
Will Trump review its results? The guy apparently doesn’t like to read …
“So one climate measuring thermometer that has exhaust fumes blowing into means tht all climate measuring thermometers are incorrect?”
Indeed Ivan:
And conversely one satellite sensor (AMSU onboard NOAA15) is correct when only processed by UAH (was RSS before going to V4).
It’s hypocrisy writ large.
Double standards.
Done “because we trust Christy and Spencer”
Ivan Kinsman , I just don’t care.
I suspect he doesn’t either Lance, and neither do I that you don’t, as I know that is the stance of the naysayers on here.
As I said above …. it’s part of the psychopathy.
Huh? A naysayer and a psychopath? You forgot about Nazi you condescending no nothing .
I don’t give a sheet about what you think you know. I…. DON’T…. CARE. Get it?
“you condescending no nothing .”
FYI: A “Psychopathy” is not as synonym for a “psychopath”.
“… from psych (soul or mind) and pathy (suffering or disease)…”
It is an all embracing term to describe a condition of the mind.
Did you say “no nothing?
I think you did.
Bless.
Ivan,
Right you are. It started just as the impending ice age scare was petering out.
A fresh bogie-man was required.
Countries like Vanuatu looking for reparations for fantasized damages. And where the biggest emitter, China, continues to increase emissions.
Still haven’t narrowed down the sensitivity to CO2 doubling in 28 years (since FAR 1990) despite billions spent.
Mann’s emotion is clearly displayed in the climategate emails. Dispassionate scientist, I don’t think so.
Mosher was/is understating the vituperation that was/is directed at those questioning the anointed ones.
There was many more than just “one” corrupted station. And then homogenization is applied perhaps sullying the good station records. And then there are vast tracts of earth with no temperature records where temperatures are divined from locations more than a thousand kilometres away. But they can accurately measure the earth’s temperature to .01C.
Because the climategate release was a seminal event. It showed noble cause corruption at perhaps its ugliest. It lifted the veil from our eyes. Scientists are no less venal than your average Joe.
Firstly, the “committees” did not review the science in any serious manner. You did not name those particular committees but the ones dissected in detail by Climate Audit were overt whitewashes.
The IPCC 2018 report has not narrowed the sensitivity to CO2 doubling from the previous reports. You think that someone has had a revelation since then?
Maybe Trump knows shite when he hears it.
I always had a lot of respect for Mr. Mosher coming here and making his case. Also have a lot of respect for Mr. Watts and the Mods. for letting everyone have their say! Thnx guys and gals on both sides! I hope I can read WUWT for many, many years. Regards from the Swiss mountains, Fred
It’s fun to talk about personalities, but somehow Climate Science is still a steaming pile of dung.
Andrew
Charles: I really enjoyed listening to this interview. It brought back those glorious days when there were new and shocking revelations at Climateaudit every week, if not every day. Unfortunately, IMO scientific integrity is an even more foreign concept to Trump than it is to Gore or the Hockey Team. Mr. Trump calls global warming a hoax because it is politically – no personally – convenient, not because of any real understanding of Climategate or what parts of CAGW are dubious. When this position is no longer convenient, he will say that investigations cleared those scientists of wrongdoing.
Frank, Climate Science itself is dubious.
Andrew
It was indeed an enjoyable listen. A story well told.
I hadn’t previously read that Trump was much informed about the Climategate events.
Regarding Trump’s views about it being a “hoax”, I thought he was more specifically charged with saying that it was a “Chinese Hoax”. I merely took this as another case of Trump talking from the hip. Supporters tend to listen to what he means, while his opponents like to focus on what he says. He is rather careless, it seems, about the latter.
I took his reported statement to mean that the global-warming malarkey is so configured that it could easily appear as a hoax engineered by China because it works to their great advantage, not that it actually was engineered by China. I find this more believable because Trump is undoubtedly more focused on the trade and economic consequences, not the scientific aspects.
Also, don’t forget others such as Roger “Tallbloke” Tattershall. As I recall, his association with people and events earned him an unexpected home visit from ~13 or so of Her Majesty’s garçons-dans-bleu, who took away his computers under one of the prevention-of-terrorism-acts. At the time they were enacted, I’m sure we were told not to worry about the misuse of such powers granted to the police. That they might be used against global-warming skeptics was certainly not discussed in public.
Fortunately the police involved were clearly not much interested in misusing such powers, but it seems that someone higher up was. I guess the finger probably pointed at the green-bat-shit-crazy Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. Luckily for us, he later got to spend time at Her majesty’s pleasure in HM Prison Wandsworth and HM Prison Leyhill for perverting the course of justice over a speeding offence. Like other green hypocrites, he clearly should have been riding a bicycle.