Bob Carter Warns of Likely Global Cooling
Posted by Bob Carter, January 20th, 2009 - under Opinion.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change
THE National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that October in the US was marked by 63 record snowfalls and 115 lowest-ever temperatures.
Over the past few years, similar signs of colder than usual weather have been recorded all over the world, causing many people to question the still fashionable, but now long outdated, global warming alarmism. Yet individual weather events or spells, whether warmings or coolings, tell us nothing necessarily about true climate change.
Nonetheless, by coincidence, growing recognition of a threat of climatic cooling is correct, because since the turn of the 21st century all real world, long-term climate indicators have turned downwards. Global atmospheric temperature reached a peak in 1998, has not warmed since 1995 and, has been cooling since 2002. Some people, still under the thrall of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change’s disproved projections of warming, seem surprised by this cooling trend, even to the point of denying it. But why?
There are two fundamentally different ways in which computers can be used to project climate. The first is used by the modelling groups that provide climate projections to the IPCC. These groups deploy general circulation models, which use complex partial differential equations to describe the ocean-atmosphere climate system mathematically. When fed with appropriate initial data, these models can calculate possible future climate states. The models presume (wrongly) that we have a complete understanding of the climate system.
GCMs are subject to the well-known computer phenomenon of GIGO, which translates as “garbage in, God’s-truth out”.
Alternative computer projections of climate can be constructed using data on past climate change, by identifying mathematical (often rhythmic) patterns within them and projecting these patterns into the future. Such models are statistical and empirical, and make no presumptions about complete understanding; instead, they seek to recognise and project into the future the climate patterns that exist in real world data.
In 2001, Russian geologist Sergey Kotov used the mathematics of chaos to analyse the atmospheric temperature record of the past 4000 years from a Greenland ice core. Based on the pattern he recognised in the data, Kotov extrapolated cooling from 2000 to about 2030, followed by warming to the end of the century and 300 years of cooling thereafter.
In 2003, Russian scientists Klyashtorin and Lyubushin analysed the global surface thermometer temperature record from 1860 to 2000, and identified a recurring 60-year cycle. This probably relates to the Pacific decadal oscillation, which can be caricatured as a large scale El Nino/La Nina climatic oscillation. The late 20thcentury warming represents the most recent warm half-cycle of the PDO, and it projects forwards as cooling of one-tenth of a degree or more to 2030.
In 2004, US scientist Craig Loehle used simple periodic models to analyse climate records over the past 1000 years of sea-surface temperature from a Caribbean marine core and cave air temperature from a South African stalactite. Without using data for the 20th century, six of his seven models showed a warming trend similar to that in the instrumental record over the past 150 years; and projecting forward the best fit model foreshadows cooling of between 0.7 and 1 degree Celsius during the next 20-40 years. In 2007, the 60-year climate cycle was identified again, by Chinese scientists Lin Zhen-Shan and Sun Xian, who used a novel multi-variate analysis of the 1881-2002 temperature records for China. They showed that temperature variation in China leads parallel variation in global temperature by five-10 years, and has been falling since 2001. They conclude “we see clearly that global and northern hemisphere temperature will drop on century scale in the next 20 years”.
Most recently, Italian scientist Adriano Mazzarella demonstrated statistical links between solar magnetic activity, the length of the Earth day (LOD), and northern hemisphere wind and ocean temperature patterns. He too confirmed the existence of a 60-year climate cycle, and described various correlations (some negative). Based on these correlations, Mazzarella concludes that provided “the observed past correlation between LOD and sea-surface temperature continues in the future, the identified 60-year cycle provides a possible decline in sea-surface temperature starting from 2005, and the recent data seem to support such a result”.
Thus, using several fundamentally different mathematical techniques and many different data sets, seven scientists all forecast that climatic cooling will occur during the first decades of the 21st century. Temperature records confirm that cooling is under way, the length and intensity of which remains unknown.
Yet in spite of this, governments across the world – egged on by irrational, deep Green lobbying – have for years been using their financial muscle and other powers of persuasion to introduce carbon dioxide taxation systems. For example, the federal Labor government recently spent $13.9million on climate change advertising on prime time television and in national newspapers and magazines.
Similarly, the London-based Institute for Public Policy Research advised the British Government “ultimately, positive climate behaviours need to be approached in the same way as marketeers approach acts of buying and consuming … It amounts to treating climate-friendly activity as a brand that can be sold. This is, we believe, the route to mass behaviour change.”
Introduction of a carbon dioxide tax to prevent (imaginary) warming, euphemistically disguised as an emissions trading scheme, is a politician’s, ticket clipper’s and mafia chief’s dream. All will welcome a new source of income based on an invisible, colourless, odourless, tasteless and often unmeasurable gas. No commodity changes hands during its trading, and should carbon dioxide emissions actually decrease because of the existence of a carbon dioxide market (which is highly unlikely), the odds are that it will have no measurable effect on climate anyway. Nonetheless, the glistening pot of gold which beckons to be mined from the innocent public is proving nigh irresistible, and it is going to need a strong taxpayer revolt to stop it in Australia.
The present global financial crisis should be inducing politicians not to squander money on non-solutions to non-problems. Yet to support their plans for emissions taxation Western governments, including ours, are still propagating scientifically juvenile greenhouse propaganda underpinned only by circumstantial evidence and GCM computer gamesmanship.
Perhaps a reassessment will finally occur when two-metre thick ice develops again on Father Thames at London Bridge, or when cooling causes massive crop failure in the world’s granary belts.
***************
Bob Carter is an adjunct professor of geology at James Cook University and studies ancient climate change. His many publications are listed at his home page here. This article was first published in the The Australian and is republished with permission from Prof Carter. The photograph of Prof Carter was taken in Brisbane in October 2008 by Jennifer Marohasy.
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205 Responses to “Bob Carter Warns of Likely Global Cooling”
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Will,
Here are some symptoms which will help you work out who the cranks are
“have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs — even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate.
1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. The integrity of science rests on the willingness of scientists to expose new ideas and findings to the scrutiny of other scientists. Thus, scientists expect their colleagues to reveal new findings to them initially. An attempt to bypass peer review by taking a new result directly to the media, and thence to the public, suggests that the work is unlikely to stand up to close examination by other scientists.
One notorious example is the claim made in 1989 by two chemists from the University of Utah, B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, that they had discovered cold fusion — a way to produce nuclear fusion without expensive equipment. Scientists did not learn of the claim until they read reports of a news conference. Moreover, the announcement dealt largely with the economic potential of the discovery and was devoid of the sort of details that might have enabled other scientists to judge the strength of the claim or to repeat the experiment. (Ian Wilmut’s announcement that he had successfully cloned a sheep was just as public as Pons and Fleischmann’s claim, but in the case of cloning, abundant scientific details allowed scientists to judge the work’s validity.)
Some scientific claims avoid even the scrutiny of reporters by appearing in paid commercial advertisements. A health-food company marketed a dietary supplement called Vitamin O in full-page newspaper ads. Vitamin O turned out to be ordinary saltwater.
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. The idea is that the establishment will presumably stop at nothing to suppress discoveries that might shift the balance of wealth and power in society. Often, the discoverer describes mainstream science as part of a larger conspiracy that includes industry and government. Claims that the oil companies are frustrating the invention of an automobile that runs on water, for instance, are a sure sign that the idea of such a car is baloney. In the case of cold fusion, Pons and Fleischmann blamed their cold reception on physicists who were protecting their own research in hot fusion.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. Alas, there is never a clear photograph of a flying saucer, or the Loch Ness monster. All scientific measurements must contend with some level of background noise or statistical fluctuation. But if the signal-to-noise ratio cannot be improved, even in principle, the effect is probably not real and the work is not science.
Thousands of published papers in para-psychology, for example, claim to report verified instances of telepathy, psychokinesis, or precognition. But those effects show up only in tortured analyses of statistics. The researchers can find no way to boost the signal, which suggests that it isn’t really there.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. If modern science has learned anything in the past century, it is to distrust anecdotal evidence. Because anecdotes have a very strong emotional impact, they serve to keep superstitious beliefs alive in an age of science. The most important discovery of modern medicine is not vaccines or antibiotics, it is the randomized double-blind test, by means of which we know what works and what doesn’t. Contrary to the saying, “data” is not the plural of “anecdote.”
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries. There is a persistent myth that hundreds or even thousands of years ago, long before anyone knew that blood circulates throughout the body, or that germs cause disease, our ancestors possessed miraculous remedies that modern science cannot understand. Much of what is termed “alternative medicine” is part of that myth.
Ancient folk wisdom, rediscovered or repackaged, is unlikely to match the output of modern scientific laboratories.
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation. The image of a lone genius who struggles in secrecy in an attic laboratory and ends up making a revolutionary breakthrough is a staple of Hollywood’s science-fiction films, but it is hard to find examples in real life. Scientific breakthroughs nowadays are almost always syntheses of the work of many scientists.
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. A new law of nature, invoked to explain some extraordinary result, must not conflict with what is already known. If we must change existing laws of nature or propose new laws to account for an observation, it is almost certainly wrong.
I began this list of warning signs to help federal judges detect scientific nonsense. But as I finished the list, I realized that in our increasingly technological society, spotting voodoo science is a skill that every citizen should develop.
Robert L. Park is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland at College Park and the director of public information for the American Physical Society. He is the author of Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud (Oxford University Press, 2002).”
Will,
Point 3 – is applicable to the AGW hypothesis, so who really are the cranks.
Well i suppose i should acknowledge, if it hasn’t already been apparent on Jennifer’s blog, that i’ve spent most of my life studying visual art and culture. From this perspective and from early childhood i’ve always understood science to be external to culture full stop and quite the most humbling experience we should adopt. For this reason it is always worth contemplating again and again what Richard Feynman says ….
“Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Science for most of the 20th century was largely about belief in specific causality, which tends to be not unlike the cosy belief in a specific religion, or fashion or culture which can only be maintained by restricting experience. How else can we explain the stooopidity of this finite big bang nonsense? However with the internet as a global hyperlink to a 360 degrees meeting place, are we not seeing the unbinding of tightly held cosy, worship systems to an open, democratic infinite meta-narrative always connected ….. lateral plus lineal and neither a system but an environment. This has intensified the contradictions carried by the old traditional cocksure, mainstream media causing millions to question traditional “cosy” beliefs.
Fortunately, the result of all this outside influence will be the development of a new international philosophy free from the contradictions with a move to demystify science because it is not worship anymore but the love to find out for oneself with a great deal of suspended judgement i.e. general causality. i.e the bigger picture.
When I look at the aa index of geomagnetic activity I simply see as clear as day that our largest plasma discharge formation, the sun drives earth’s climate ….. it gives the best indication of what has happened since 1884, is better than sun spot numbers and solar radiation. AND yes, the aa index as a measure of the earth’s geomagnetic stability is correct BUT our earth has a strong internal magnetic field. However, does it occur to obsessed warmers that the solar wind is able to modify this field, creating a cavity called the magnetosphere? Just what do confined AGWers think this cavity does to the surface of the earth? Do you know that it is filled with plasma much of which originates from sunnyboy? Would this influence climate, perhaps?
My chief point here is the strange thing that there are exceptions and of course my humble understanding is that prediction is ever more complicated than one can contemplate because there are NO experts.
So, nobody has answered my question. Was Bob Carter one of those people pushing the idea of global cooling back in the 1970′s?
“Well if the good prof Carter is such a flake as the alarmist whingers would have us believe he at least sure knows how to push their buttons.”
I sometimes suspect he is a troll.
Jeremy C
“Was Bob Carter one of those people pushing the idea of global cooling back in the 1970’s?”
Categorically no.
Following is his publication record http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_4.htm which is called “evidence”.
It’s quite easy to find as well.
SJT: “I sometimes suspect he is a troll.”
Who Bob Carter?
Easy writing that hiding in coward’s castle in the AGO, isn’t it SJT.
About time you were outed as well, don’t you think, but alas you have already crossed your Rubicon, so expecting you to fess up personally isn’t one of the options. Perhaps your status is such that doing so would be equivalent to constructing mountains out of anthills, metaphorically that is.
Ahem… Will, the philosophy of science is often called epistemology.
I’m just saying….
Btw, I notice your name links to an office supply store. Can you get me a good deal on a scanner/fax machine? It has to port with Linnux though.
Thanks Louis for that evidence on the academic side but does this mean he definitely wasn’t talking about it in the media in the 1970′s?
Erm Wes George your comment:
“Ahem… Will, the philosophy of science is often called epistemology.
I’m just saying….”.
Epistemology is:
–>
“–noun
a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.
Origin:
1855–60; < Gk epistm(ē) knowledge” Thats from dictionary.com or this from Wikipedia (sorry to use Wikipedia)
“It is a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge.” <–
A contributor to a blog on Real Climate brilliantly described the way denialists argue on the subject of climate change as an epistemological breakdown. Even if you object to being labeled that way you must admit its a brilliant decription that could be applied to the way many arguments and debates are carried out in our society.
Jeremy C,
You are, quite frankly, a mischievous little twit – what on earth would a geoscientist beavering away in soft rocks need to chat up the media on global cooling during the 1970′s for?
Given Schneider’s position of global warming now, and global cooling then, and then taking Carter’s contra stand, I would have though he might have been batting for global warming then, and global cooling now.
Watch a scientist (in this case, Roy Spencer), make a beginners mistake with basic calculus.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/a-bag-of-hammers/#more-1435
In other news, 1=1.
So Louis:
“Given Schneider’s position of global warming now, and global cooling then, and then taking Carter’s contra stand, I would have though he might have been batting for global warming then, and global cooling now”
if what you are saying is accurate then is that all Carter is, a professional contarian, regardles of the issue or evidence? If I want a professional contarian all I need to do is go down to my local pub here in London, stand at the bar and as I’m ordering a drink mention how I’m originally from Australia and someone will take it upon themselves to tell me what the truth is about my home country and then spend the next two hours contradicting any evidence I put to them about god’s ‘own. This of course depends what mood I’m in.
Jeremy C,
I think you might have a more serious issue to worry about now that the UK is close to National Bankruptcy – your pitter patter here sounds much like changing the deck chairs on RMS Titanic.
Isn’t socialism grand!
Jeremy C,
As you cannot find any evidence, nor I, for any public utterance made by Bob Carter during the 1970′s, (I think he and I are the same age), then there might be a good reason for it. Both of us were probably unimportant, hard working, young geoscientists with head down, nose to the grinding stone trying to gain enough experience to know what we were doing professionally. I don’t think any of the media would have taken any notice of either of us.
So your question remain a piece of mschievousness character assassination.
SJT:Watch a scientist (in this case, Roy Spencer), make a beginners mistake with basic calculus.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/a-bag-of-hammers/#more-1435
In other news, 1=1.”
This could be described as a surrealistic post, given Tamino’s previous critical baloney.
Carter’s empirical approach to climate prognostication strikes me as very Ptolemaic. My money is staying on the Newtonians.
Yeah Louis,
If by using socialism in the context of the UK then I can imagine a few labor politicians here coughing with helpless laughter at that. But you’re right things are uncertain here as the UK (like Australia) has been living off the tick for so long. But you might be best placed to tell me. Isn’t Australia going to end up the same way as the UK is now, just later, because off our reliance on selling off raw materials. If so perhaps there might be some cheap places for sale in Perth soon. I do get the impression there is a certain amount of smugness in some quarters back home o the misplaced idea that our smarts have kept us from what is happening elsewhere.
Apologies to everyone as this is off the topic.
Lol @ naive fanatic! oh will in your Ivory tower of a planet of 2 billion fanatics on each side, and your one wise true self in the middle of it all:) Or was I jsut making up the numbers? I’m such a freaking moderate on climate that only on this blog could I come across as a fanatic!
And Graeme – I’ve obviously touched a nerve there sorry mate – better pop a few more blood pressure pills… maybe ring the bell so nursey comes to calm you down eh? Seriously what a pile of immature ranting – do you carry tissues to clean the spittle off your computer every 5 minutes? obviously you forgot and posted pretty much the same thing twice… sorry I must have really upset your afternoon sleep with all that bitterness welling up. FUnny stuff you crazy old festering nutbag;)
How very schadenfreude of you JC, but it is topical; I suspect a delight in the imagined come-uppance of all those greedy capitalists who are despoiling the environment is common amongst greens.
Wes – huh? Seriously dude – you’re not even on the page I’m afraid. You’re just rambling. Try to get out of waffly rhetoric mode and into science mode for once.
Hello cohenite,
You said:
“that link about land warming has no author”
Thanks for reading part of the link. You must not have made it to the end. The author’s name is at the very bottom of the article:
“Author Information: Shoapeng Huang, Deptartment of Geological Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; E-mail: shaopeng (at) umich.edu”
I did enjoy reading the paper by Compo and Sardeshmukh. Very thought provoking.
Do you agree with their assertions then, that the ocean has warmed, and the land has warmed during the last few decades?
(“The general warming trend of near-surface temperatures since the late 19th century appears to have intensified since the mid-1970′s and emerged unambiguously from a background of simulated natural variability after about 1990″)
Should you inform Bob Carter that his opening statement about general cooling in all the indicators is directly contradicted by the evidence?
What is the increase in heat content of the climate system over the last decade? In joules.
Anyone?
because since the turn of the 21st century all real world, long-term climate indicators have turned downwards.
this is simply FALSE!
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:2000/trend/plot/wti/from:2000
the “long term” trend (in the 21st century…) is UP!
and Bob, please find a single scientists, who agrees with 8 years being “LONG TERM” in climate science..
Sod,
You might want to check notes with team leader Hansen.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2009/20090113_Temperature.pdf
He is now down to 2 years as a significant period of measurement.
And, by the way, your assertion about the validity of temperature trends is spot on, except for the data:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/08/3-of-4-global-metrics-show-nearly-flat-temperature-anomaly-in-the-last-decade/
Yes, I know; only people who agree with AGW are qualified to an opinion on it, but those pesky facts keep getting in the way and confusing people.
You might want to check notes with team leader Hansen.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2009/20090113_Temperature.pdf
He is now down to 2 years as a significant period of measurement.
as an adult, you are responsible for your own education (or lack of). you can t blame it all on Hansen.
the claim that we will see a new temperature record in 2 years does NOT change the significant period to spot a TREND in climate.
read and learn!
And, by the way, your assertion about the validity of temperature trends is spot on, except for the data:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/08/3-of-4-global-metrics-show-nearly-flat-temperature-anomaly-in-the-last-decade/
i know, you guys LOVE to cherry pick 1998 as a starting point of any analysis you do. but in this case you can t cherry pick 1998 because that year is NOT in the 21th century!
the “longest” trend in the 21th century was shown in my graph above. the graph includes all 4 major measurements of temp. and the “longest” 21th century trend is UP!
sorry, but it is a fact.
Yes, I know; only people who agree with AGW are qualified to an opinion on it, but those pesky facts keep getting in the way and confusing people.
look, you are confused about what year is in what century. the problem is not with my opinion, but with your qualification!
Re Luke
quote Published online: 21 December 2008 | doi:10.1038/ngeo390
Unprecedented recent warming of surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean
Jessica L. Conroy1, Alejandra Restrepo2, Jonathan T. Overpeck1,3,4, Miriam Steinitz-Kannan5, Julia E. Cole1,4, Mark B. Bush2 & Paul A. Colinvaux6
unquote
Unfortunately I can’t get at the paper, which is frustrating — I’m very interested in SSTs and the Folland & Parker ‘bucket correction’. Could you summarise, please — just the method used and a brief summary of the results. Here will do fine. TIA.
Or do you have another address which I can actually read?
JF
sod,
1998 is a great starting point becuase the AGW promo industry made it the bell weather year- the year the fingerprints were on the smoking gun of man made climate apocalypse.
You are stuck with it.
Like the delusion you guys sell about the European heat wave, you live by promoting weather events as *proof*, you die by the same.
Hansen is your #1 guy, your Mr. Big, your team captain. No supporter or promoter of AGW gets to disown him.
I blame on Hansen only that he has never had the integrity to admit he was way off base, and has instead sought to make his apocalyptic obsessions pass off as science.
But you deal with him. He is yours.
To ignore the lack of warming worldwide is to simply strut around like the naked emperor.
You guys predicted storm strength and were wrong.
You guys predicted hot spots that aren’t there.
You guys predicted warming oceans that are not.
You used a hockey stick that was fabricated.
Yet you persist in refusing to even consider that maybe the climate is more complex than Hansen/IPCC claim it is and that maybe they ahve important parts of it wrong.
Why?
I am not confused. I am enjoying your performance.
Spin on, good sir.
sod,
Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, reluctantly admitted to Reuters in January 2008 that there has been no warming so far in the 21st Century. Jennifer reported it here. Since January 2008 the trend has been down.
“1998 is a great starting point becuase the AGW promo industry made it the bell weather year- the year the fingerprints were on the smoking gun of man made climate apocalypse.”
No, it didn’t. It was well know it was a big El Nino, it was a remarkable spike, but there was no claim that 1998 was setting a trend.
sod,
1998 is a great starting point becuase the AGW promo industry made it the bell weather year- the year the fingerprints were on the smoking gun of man made climate apocalypse.
whatever.
you can NOT use 1998 as a starting point for a 21st century temperature trend.
is this too difficult for you to understand?
sod,
Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, reluctantly admitted to Reuters in January 2008 that there has been no warming so far in the 21st Century.
this claim is from an opinion piece in the national post.
http://www.nationalpost.com/most_popular/story.html?id=525590
i am unable to find the original reuters story. please help me out.
until you do, let us stick to the facts:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:2000/trend/plot/wti/from:2000
jennifer reported it here. Since January 2008 the trend has been down.
Jennifer has been wrong. a lot. again, i gave you the numbers above!
Sod,
1998 is a great year to start a trend for the last 10 years or so.
I frankly think any trend of less than 60 years or so is pretty pointless in climate. But your side decided to reduce the focus down to seasonal variations.
Why pick any year as a starting point? Again, becuase 1998 was the alleged start fer sure of what was predicted to be a long trend leading to the Earth becoming uninhabitable.
From a cliamte pov, the climate does not give a rat’s rear end what we call a year, does it?
You AGW guys are left sputtering around starting points, and hoping to ignore the long list of failures of the apocalyptic predictions.
Dissembling works for the high level guys like Hansen, because they can get away with imperiousness and just ignore their failures, so far.
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL1171501720080113?sp=true
i ll do this very slow again. just for you.
here is what Bob said:
because since the turn of the 21st century all real world, long-term climate indicators have turned downwards.
so you can NOT use 1998, because it was before the ” turn of the 21st century”. this is not difficult, is it?
From a cliamte pov, the climate does not give a rat’s rear end what we call a year, does it?
you might want to google “climate” and “seasons”. you will notice that there is a strong connection between climate and year.
your lack of understanding is embarassing. please do more reading and less posting.
“admitted to Reuters in January 2008 that there has been no warming so far in the 21st Century. “
is some stretch of
said he would look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century.
again, as i showed above, there has been warming in the 21st century.
Depends on what measurements you use – here’s RSS
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2000/trend/plot/rss/from:2000
plateau means FLAT!
Brad; don’t be snarky; I saw the References heading and gave up; how was I to know that the author’s name was tucked away after the References? Any way, you didn’t read my comment about the 1976 and 1998 step-ups did you, but at least we got a WFT graph from sod; hurrah!; here are the step-ups; 1976;
http://i38.tinypic.com/16aa03o.jpg
1998;
http://i36.tinypic.com/14sc108.jpg
I’ll do a graph for silly sod in the next post.
Wes:
“Ahem… Will, the philosophy of science is often called epistemology.”
No, epistemology is a specific sub-branch of philosophy focused on understanding the nature of truth and meaning and how we can ‘know what we know’. Philosophy of science is a particular academic discipline focused on studying scientific methods and practices as currently conducted, and historically. There are probably better definitions out there than mine, if you google them.
“Btw, I notice your name links to an office supply store. Can you get me a good deal on a scanner/fax machine? It has to port with Linnux though.”
I have no association with an office supplies store, although sometimes people get mixed up and send me emails asking for office supplies. You’re not the first to make that mistake.
Well, that’s terrible news, Bob Tisdale ahs removed his 1998 UAH step-up; bring it back Bob, please; anyway, here is his RSS 1998 step-up, which shows a spike of 0.12C [UAH showed 0.14C];
http://i35.tinypic.com/110drw6.jpg
And here is for sod;
2001-current;
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2001/to:2009/trend/plot/uah/from:2001/to:2009
plateau means FLAT!
the difference is easy: the claim “there has been no warming in the 21st century” is FALSE. i provided the numbers above.
looking into an apparent plateau, on the other hand, is a reasonable thing to do.
hundreds of scientists do it, and they didn t change their opinion.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/97_of_active_climatologists_ag.php
Depends on what measurements you use – here’s RSS
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2000/trend/plot/rss/from:2000
even RSS shows WARMING. small, but it is there!
Sod,
Do you see what the AGW community is down to?
Quibbling over a starting point to defend what they claimed was a relentless, dramatic clear pattern of CO2 and temps.
Hansen in 1988 made a set of predictions, A, B, C. They were all wrong.
The AGW promo industry was all over the sea ice, but that is not so good now- those pesky currents and all.
The AGW claim was, that unless the weather agrees with us, it does not count, but people are shivering and tired of hearing that one ad frigidarus, so to speak.
Now we are down to your team captain betting on a two year pop in temps. If 1998 is no good for a starting point, then why is 2011 a good point? Oh yeah, because then it will agree with Hansen.
The real pitiful truth is that the entire temp data set is not only corrupt and faulty, but the result Hansen is telling us *proves* we are near a Venusian tipping point is in reality a sparrow’s fart of change.
But we need skeptics tried and jailed, taxes raised, coal industry shut down, and ugly windmills all over the place because of it.
And when will any AGW promoter ever show in history that anything like a run away tipping point driven by CO2 has ever actually, you know, happened?
Your side has gone from great climate prophets to weather guessers, hoping to get lucky enough in a coupl;e of years to keep people fooled long enough.
And to work feverishly behind the scenes to get the great political clowns to sign the friggin’ check.
“Here are some symptoms which will help you work out who the cranks are
“have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs — even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate.”
“1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.”
AGW was not pitched directly at the media. The work is published largely in academic journals…
“2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.”
That would apply more to scientists who disagree with AGW than AGW scientists, as they are mainstream at present.
“3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.”
With a definition like this, virtually all of current physics and cosmology must also be pseudo-scientific…
“Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.”
That is the starting point for most scientific enterprises. Are you arguing that medical case studies have no scientific validity? There is a place for such evidence, but obviously the results of well controlled experiments have more power in a number of respects.
“5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.”
This is exactly the reason why relativity, evolutionary theory, etc., are so credible. They have withstood 50+ years of criticism. One would expect they’ll largely withstand centuries of criticism also.
“6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.”
Kepler, Einstein, Newton…
“The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.”
Kepler, Einstein, Newton…
The problem with such lists is that every one of your rules of thumb can be applied easily to mainstream science.
You may happen to believe that AGW is bad science, and possibly it is, but it is done by scientists and it makes testable predictions. Like it or not, it’s science.
BTW, my definition of ‘crank’ would simply be someone who speaks with confidence on technical topics he has no expertise in, who at the very least makes no attempt to hedge his assertions or express his uncertainties.
hundreds of scientists do it, and they didn t change their opinion.
in the same fashion if you asked the hookers of Kings Cross if they believe in safe sex 97% would no doubt say yes, their job depends on it!
Interestingly only 58% of the public agree with them.
Sod – here is the survey you referred to
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
Note: The climate scientists who publish 50% of their work on climate change only account for 79 individuals of the 3146 who completed the survey which only covered the US and a bit of Canada. I’m sure had they added Oceania and Europe the figures may have been different but who cares?
There were only two questions:
1. When compared with pre-1800s
levels,
do you think that mean global temperatures
have generally risen, fallen, or
remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant
contributing factor in changing
mean global temperatures?
to answer No to question 1 you’d have to be brain dead.
Most people would answer yes to question 2 although the degree of influence is what the damn debate is all about!
pathetic survey IMO.
Janama,
At first the two questions you posted struck me as reasonable. However, after another moment’s thought and if the survey was aimed at scientists, than the word “significant” has a particular technical meaning perhaps not obvious the public: statistical significance.
Something can have [statistical] significance… if that is the case, then even I would have to answer ‘yes’ to both questions and I am not exactly regarded in most circles as a global warming alarmist.
It is hard to believe that the person who constructed this survey could not be aware of this fact. In which case the survey is intentionally deceptive. Typical behaviour I’ve seen repeatedly, unfortunately…
“Many researchers use the word “significant” to describe a finding that may have decision-making utility to a client. From a statistician’s viewpoint, this is an incorrect use of the word. However, the word “significant” has virtually universal meaning to the public. Thus, many researchers use the word “significant” to describe a difference or relationship that may be strategically important to a client (regardless of any statistical tests). In these situations, the word “significant” is used to advise a client to take note of a particular difference or relationship because it may be relevant to the company’s strategic plan. The word “significant” is not the exclusive domain of statisticians and either use is correct in the business world. Thus, for the statistician, it may be wise to adopt a policy of always referring to “statistical significance” rather than simply “significance” when communicating with the public.”
http://www.statpac.com/surveys/statistical-significance.htm
Janama,
You are so right. The correct answer to both questions is:
“The debate is not about what people think, but about what the factual evidence shows”.
And a fuller deconstruction of the second of the second sentence might read (similarly to the point that you have made):
“That entirely depends by what you mean by significant; if “significant” means measurable, then human activity has not been shown to be a contributing factor in raising global temperature”.
The survey, like most similar surveys, is utterly worthless.
Cathy
“Significant” to any normal working scientist means “has a measurable effect” (regardless of size).
In that context, I am not aware of a single (non-crank) sceptic who would not be forced to answer ‘yes’ to both questions. The style of the questions (if you have stated them accurately) is definitely suggestive that the person constructing the survey was not very confident in what the response of the scientists may have been. Interesting.
If PHD’s were handed out to persons who repeatedly link to wikipedia or link to scientific articles they have no understanding of, there would be a’plenty handed out here.
didn’t stop Sod and Tim braying about it on Deltoid.
“jennifer reported it here. Since January 2008 the trend has been down.”
These trend times get shorter and shorter