I received the following email from a Fletcher Christian. In some of the email exchange associated with getting his approval to post this comment he signed off “Gotta go put Bligh in the long boat.”
Anway, he clearly believes that readers of this web-log are not getting the whole story when it comes to global warming/climate change.
And he writes:
“I note only that mainly anto-global warming dissent gets reported on your blog and any pro-evidence is discarded. Seems pretty selective.
It’s also fascinating to see how “certain” all the anti’s are in this debate; and how the any “uncertainty or caveats” from proponents is jumped on as AHA ! – WEAKNESS.
I’m sure you’re not concerned about what happening out there is terms of temperature changes, freak weather, species movements and Arctic melt.
I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational alternative explanation – it’s just that nobody has come up with one yet. Nor cited any mechanisms except the climate has changed in the past so….
umm …errr… that must be it – yea that’s it….
But we all know what IT COULDN’T POSSIBLY BE true don’t we. We’re all sooooo sure.
Anyway on a few comments to various classics that do the rounds on your blog. And most anti sites.
10,000 years between ice ages. Sorry – wrong – 50,000 to 100,000 years for next one – see NOAA’s site for some intelligent papers on the subject.
10,000 years is a persistent urban myth from mis-reporting popular press of the 1970s – the science journals haven’t said ice age.
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/milankovitch.html See the references quoted within.
Hockey stick – note you guys have given up on this since the independent confirmation – see as usual proponents turn to http://www.realclimate.org for the news.
and we find – http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2005/ammann.shtml hmmm independent verification – whoops…
anyway that will start you all up again. But remember even if the hockey stick was wrong – who cares. But it ain’t…
On Landsea doing a dummy spit. Well boo hoo. Pity he didn’t hang in and help the process.
But it is interesting that we have had those record breaking 300 km/hr plus storms in the Pacific and off WA in recent years.
And gee that South Atlantic storm (hurricane) certainly looked weird.
And did you note our recent tropical cyclone Ingrid’s speed and track – 300 km/hr again and very unusual track across the top.
And have you wondered where all the coast crossing Qld cyclones have gone.
And strangely despite some commentators saying our annual rainfall has increased (well maybe our average overall may have – what a useless statistic)
But everywhere people live and we have agriculture – SW WA, eastern Australia, SE SA, eastern Tasmania, central Queensland seems to have dried up over decades.
Where has all the rainfall gone ?
Any mechanisms come to mind – perhaps annular mode changes in Antartica.
Journal of Climate: Vol. 14, No. 10, pp. 2238�2249
Science, Vol 296, Issue 5569, 895-899 , 3 May 2002
Nah – couldn’t be – it will just be one of those coincidences.
and nothing on those physics stories that confirm the greenhouse flux is pretty well what you’d expect
http://www.iup.uni-heidelberg.de/institut/studium/lehre/Uphysik_Litertur/scholl.ppt
– whoa there – let’s not get technical now.And nothing on the latest Scripps ocean studies
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4275729.stmAnd if anyone says – all the models are wrong without some reasoned comment we’ll all be very cross.
And is anyone says cities have warmed and the heat island effect etc we’ll be evener crosser…. yes they don’t use city data. Jeez.
And no mention of the Christy satellite data story getting reviewed with some different findings.
http://www.climateark.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=36988No mention of Wall St journal getting it totally wrong.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?s=wall+stor Crichton’s State of Fear book telling a few porkies
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74or Bellamy going berserk and getting his maths wrong
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/05/10/junk-science/And also no mention of Oliver North type in the Whitehouse editing the climate change documents from IPCC to water things down ….
Here’s the rebuttal story – yep I believe it – sure ….. http://www.waterconserve.info/articles/reader.asp?linkid=30672
Anyway off to check my oil shale shares, through another whale steak on the barby, and have a fag (smoking doesn’t cause cancer – I simply don’t believe it so it must be wrong).
What’s whale taste like – stronger than dolphin but not as tough as koala. 🙂
Fletcher”
end of message.
There looks like a fair bit of reading at the end of some of those links. Thanks Fletcher for taking the time to compile all this information.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Hmm,
with a noms de plume like that plus a few Freudian slips, one suspects some of us have a rather tenuous grasp of reality.
His reference to Monbiot is interesting -= Monbiot innumeracy has been seriously demonstrated by Professor Brignell on the nmumber watch.
All in all, AGW seems much like pathological science as defined by Nobel Laureate Irving Langmuir.
Incidentally Mac Dickens, geologist, passed away recently. He was the driving force behind the New Global Tectonics Group which, for those who don’t know, is a large group of geoscientists who have effectively disproved Plate Tectonics. But you would not read about it in the usual sources.
Dear Fletcher, If you would care to enlighten all the readers more…. look up a piece of history,1976 I think saw during one of the Geneva dissarmament talks between the good old USA and USSR ban specifically 11 types of weather as weapons of war! This was the year Miami had “snow” the Sahara was flooding and I believe a cyclone which was going away from Australia came back and got Darwin. The theory was that both USA and USSR were playing with standing waves of electro magnetic energy effectively channelling weather!!!! Another Tesla discovery he was experimenting with at the close of 1945. Where has all this technology gone????? John
Exactly what I have been saying.
Set the frequency to 7.8 Ghz and implement styrolosis. But nobody will believe you.
I feel among friends at last.
Gee whiz, this post has certainly coaxed the nutcases out of the woodwork. What fun!
Finally the rebuttal on the hockey stick case…
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=172
I RECEIVED THE FOLLOWING EMAIL:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=172
The Hockey Stick scientists have responded IN FULL to the US House Committee. I commend the above URL to your readers.
So now the accusation is now for a conspiracy by global warming scientists but but by vested interests and government itself. Same in Australia. Where’s Ollie North when you need a patriot?
AND ALSO THIS NOTE:
The US Congress attempt to enquire into the Mann et al.
hockey-stick, and force full disclosure, is bubbling along
merrily. USA Today ( http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2005-07-18-warming-congress_x.htm ) has a good summary with links
to (i) Mann et al.’s replies, and (ii) a very useful (but pro-
GW) summary on RealClimate, which has other good links to
letters of protest that have been sent to Congress about
the “witch hunt” aspect of the affair.
I find myself torn between (i) delight that someone has
finally brought the Mann et al. group, and GW propaganda more
generally, to account, and (ii) apprehension, as voiced by
many of these letters, that it is not a good idea for a
national political body to act as a Starr Chamber on matters
of science.
“brought the Mann et al group and GW propaganda to account” … huh … what …. now that’s spin…. these respectbale scientists have wiped the floor with their reponses. Note full disclosure of all data. The anti-argument usually presents no data at all. And their “propaganda” seems now to have been duplicated by another lab and their opposition seems to have made some fundamental maths errors….
Jen – this exposes the opposite side of your coin – paid hits by right wing lobby groups and/or big business trying to counteract the “green” opposition. It’s just as bad as junk science in the opposite direction.
So how do you suppose we find “the truth” of this possibly very important matter. Or do we just keep bagging each other’s position??
David,
I probably shouldn’t comment until I have read all of Fletcher’s links. Which I haven’t done yet because I am trying to finish a submission amongst other things.
Also, there are bits of information I get really interested in – usually real measurements, even if this is a necessarily reductionist approach.
I have always had trouble getting excited about the ‘hockey stick’ (pro hockey stick and hockey stick is wrong arguments) perhaps because the debate seems to be all about a model which has all the data but I am not sure what data.
To be honest, the extent of the ‘pulling rank’ and appeal to ‘the consensus’ from ‘the believers’is enough to turn many people into skeptics – add CSIRO climate modelling and associated media releases and you have to wonder.
But I agree the issues are important and I wish there was less game playing from both sides.
There has been a lot written in the latest 3 climate related blogs.
It is very important to make some attempt to read the references and the explanations. Just closing your mind and offering glib comments won’t provide you with any new information.
And climate change research keeps evolving. New papers and refinements of our undertstanding seem continual. So if you want to do the debate you need to keep up. e.g. independent validation of Mann is this year (recent)is new.