Channel 4 misrepresented some of the world’s leading climate scientists in a controversial documentary that claimed global warming was a conspiracy and a fraud, the UK’s media regulator will rule next week.
But it is understood that Channel 4 will still claim victory because the ultimate verdict on a separate complaint about accuracy, which contained 131 specific points and ran to 270 pages, will find that it did not breach the regulator’s broadcasting code and did not materially mislead viewers.
The Guardian: Channel 4 to be censured over controversial climate film. Watchdog finds documentary was unfair to scientists but did not mislead viewers
Ofcom will say: “Channel 4 unfairly attributed to the former chief scientist, David King, comments he had not made and criticized him for them and also failed to provide him an opportunity to reply”.In the program, the concluding voice over from the climate change skeptic Fred Singer claimed “the chief scientist of the UK” was “telling people that by the end of the century, the only habitable place on Earth will be the Antarctic and humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic … it would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad”.King has never made such a statement and it is believed Singer confused his views with those of the contrarian scientist James Lovelock.
Related story from The Indpendent on Sunday, 2nd May 2004: Why Antarctica will soon be the only place to live – literally
“Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government’s chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.”
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
So if the report in the Independent from 2004 is correct, Sir David King did say that?
When good scientists need to show AGW support for their existence yet their opposite views are being correctly represented by TGGWS, they are in a bind.
Science is only a bit player in this new religion.
“Sir David said that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – the main “green- house gas” causing climate change – were already 50 per cent higher than at any time in the past 420,000 years. The last time they were at this level – 379 parts per million – was 60 million years ago during a rapid period of global warming, he said. Levels soared to 1,000 parts per million, causing a massive reduction of life.”
WE have several published science papers stating that CO2 rises a few CENTURIES after the temperature does.
Does this mean that far back in history.CO2 was a top notch greenhouse gas.But now a “cool” greenhouse gas today with little role in warming up the air?
This means something else was causing the planets temperature to go up for as long as 1,000 years.Before CO2 would start to go up.
I wonder if King was B.Sing us?
Besides that for over 50 million years.Dinosaurs lived in an atmosphere that was well over 1,000 pm of CO2.
How can he believe his own words.That is plain nonsense?
Hang on, misrepresenting what someone has said is not misleading?
We could live quite happily in a new environment, I guess, but the rate at which we will be changing from one state to the next is, in geological terms, happening in the blink of an eye. Adaptation to such rapid change will be difficult, and we’ll be caught up in the mess. Adaptation also means deaths. That’s how evolution works, the fittest survive, if they get time adapt to change. Will species have time to adapt? Will they have somewhere to go to do so?
Sunset – the whole CO2 lagging ruse is really the greatest drongo argument of all time.
Unless you have something like the PETM or current conditions what else would you expect? Is CO2 suddenly going to wake up one day and decide it’s going to start being different and warm the planet for something to do? How long are you guys going to flog that old yarn for?
And 1000 years go … hmmmm …. well try Ruddiman.
And again with you guys – it’s ALWAYS this or that. No complexity. You can have THIS OR THAT. No interactions. No combinations. No multiple forcings. THIS OR THAT. And always a prehistoric world is pitched as being the same as the current world when there could be a plethora of major differences – like where the continents are for a start.
Do you ever think about any of this for more than 20 seconds?
Well, of course it “Misrepresented Some Scientists, but Did Not Mislead Viewers”.
That is because it was “balanced”.
News is no longer expected to be accurate, but simply to “give both sides”, regardless of who is full of crap.
In this way, lazy or partisan journalists forgive themselves for their waste of ink and paper.
Medusa,
no, tell me, you are an ardent admirer of plate tectonic theory?
As the term continental is usually reserved for Europe, plate tectonics might be interpreted as plate throwing Europeans, but the Greeks beat them at that some time ago.
Medusa,
The whole AGW theory is based on ONE simple assumption – that doubling CO2 in the atmosphere must raise the earth’s thermal state.
Is this correct?
Well Gramps:
(1) gee I’m not smart enough – check with Steve Short and JORC
(2) errr no …
SJT: “Hang on, misrepresenting what someone has said is not misleading?”
Depends on whether it’s an error of attribution or not.
“in geological terms, happening in the blink of an eye”
so what you think is happening is probably not even a issue on geological time scales or even millennial ones. What is the period of Dansgaard cycles for instance and can you really tell if the secular trend since the Holocene Optimum of -.14K/millennium has really turned around on a 30 year trend?
Come, come Luke, grow up. Surely you aren’t that immature? Let’s get this thread back into brain territory rather than butt territory, eh?
Personally, I concur that Moncktons stuff is piffle – he couldn’t even read Lindzens (1007) paper properly. The same applies for a goodly fraction of the other ‘sceptical’ stuff.
But you know – fact is you (and Ender etc) are definitely way, way behind the eight ball when you assert that CO2 doesn’t lag behind the Terminations of the Pleistocene Interglacials. All the body of evidence shows clearly that the lags were about 800±200 years, consistently from cycle to cycle ever since the transition from the earlier 41 ka cycles of the Late Pliocene to Pleistocene to the 100 ka cycles of the Late Pleistocene. I could go on about this stuff ad nauseum but enough already (for now).
Fact is, high CO2 is NOT a pre-requisite for warmth. Some years ago, while at ANSTO, I measured numerous U-Th dates for corals all along the eastern seaboard of Australia to clearly show the 6 ky period 2 – 8 ky ago was pretty damn warm, ’round here’ (fond nod to ‘Counting Crows’).
I simply suggest you guys research the voluminous literature on this issue thoroughly – and I mean very thoroughly – right back to the Pliocene.
To ‘cut to the chase’, everyone here (on both sides) who has a mature interest in these (critical) issues should go away and read, not Monckton’s shite but Gerald’s Marsh’s (much, much smarter) paper in APS because there is hidden gold in it if you are patient and cluey enough to get into it:
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200804/marsh.cfm
Bottom line is ALL climate models give broad probability distributions in temperature for CO2 doubling, with small but finite probabilities of large increases.
Roe and Baker (go read them too) have shown the breadth of these distributions is due to the NATURE of the climate system. The probability distributions associated with such projections are relatively insensitive to decreases in the uncertainties associated with the underlying climate processes. This is why the David Stockwell’s of this world can have their cake and eat it too.
IMHO, it doesn’t really matter all that much to argue endlessly about positive and negative feedbacks, other than for the very immediate future.
The key points are that:
(1) we are now a good 10,000 years into the current interglacial; and
(2) the history of the whole system over the last 2.5 My shows it is a lot more sensitive to EXTERNAL forcings rather than internal ones (like CO2).
Marsh says, keep in mind that the difference between the LIA and current global temperatures is only about 1.1 C. Solar Cycle 25, predicted by NASA to be comparable to the Dalton Minimum, could just as easily be the trigger for a new Ice Age.
I would add a big, big rider to this as follows:
Given that we are now getting VERY CLOSE indeed to the CLEARLY DEMONSTRATED maximum time span of durations of the penultimate and previous Late Pleistocene interglacial peaks e.g.
http://www.maureenraymo.com/2007_Kawamuraetal.pdf
in truth, it is more likely mankind actually needs a period of another 2 – 300 years of artificially elevated atmospheric CO2 levels to get itself in a position to cope, en masse, as a civilization, with highly probable steadily decreasing temperatures over the next 500 or so years.
Now, go away, read the literature, think about it, and tell me, fair and square, why I’m wrong.
What do they say? Those who ignore the past are usually condemned to repeat it. The predictive power of the known past looks far more reliable to me than a flaky 50 year GCM projection. Perhaps that’s because I’m just a grumpy old man?
Medusa
As I only asked one question, but your replied with two answers, which answer should I consider?
Since your first was a tad short on detail, I will accept your second one that increasing atmospheric CO2 does not alter the earth’ thermal state.
10/10.
Come, come Luke, grow up. Surely you aren’t that immature? Let’s get this thread back into brain territory, eh?
Personally, I concur that Moncktons stuff is piffle – he couldn’t even read Lindzens (1007) paper properly. The same applies for a goodly fraction of the other ‘sceptical’ stuff.
But you know – fact is you (and Ender etc) are definitely way, way behind the eight ball when you assert that CO2 doesn’t lag behind the Terminations of the Pleistocene Interglacials. All the body of evidence shows clearly that the lags were about 800±200 years, consistently from cycle to cycle ever since the transition from the earlier 41 ka cycles of the Late Pliocene to Pleistocene to the 100 ka cycles of the Late Pleistocene. I could go on about this stuff ad nauseum but enough already (for now).
Fact is, high CO2 is NOT a pre-requisite for warmth. Some years ago, while at ANSTO, I measured numerous U-Th dates for corals all along the eastern seaboard of Australia to clearly show the 6 ky period 2 – 8 ky ago was pretty damn warm, ’round here’ (fond nod to ‘Counting Crows’).
I simply suggest you guys research the voluminous literature on this issue thoroughly – and I mean very thoroughly – right back to the Pliocene.
To ‘cut to the chase’, everyone here (on both sides) who has a mature interest in these (critical) issues should go away and read, not Monckton’s shite but Gerald’s Marsh’s (much, much smarter) paper in APS because there is hidden gold in it if you are patient and cluey enough to get into it:
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200804/marsh.cfm
Bottom line is ALL climate models give broad probability distributions in temperature for CO2 doubling, with small but finite probabilities of large increases.
Roe and Baker (go read them too) have shown the breadth of these distributions is due to the NATURE of the climate system. The probability distributions associated with such projections are relatively insensitive to decreases in the uncertainties associated with the underlying climate processes. This is why the David Stockwell’s of this world can have their cake and eat it too.
IMHO, it doesn’t really matter all that much to argue endlessly about positive and negative feedbacks, other than for the very immediate future.
The key points are that:
(1) we are now a good 10,000 years into the current interglacial; and
(2) the history of the whole system over the last 2.5 My shows it is a lot more sensitive to EXTERNAL forcings rather than internal ones (like CO2).
Marsh says, keep in mind that the difference between the LIA and current global temperatures is only about 1.1 C. Solar Cycle 25, predicted by NASA to be comparable to the Dalton Minimum, could just as easily be the trigger for a new Ice Age.
I would add a big, big rider to this as follows:
Given that we are now getting VERY CLOSE indeed to the CLEARLY DEMONSTRATED maximum time span of durations of the penultimate and previous Late Pleistocene interglacial peaks e.g.
http://www.maureenraymo.com/2007_Kawamuraetal.pdf
in truth, it is more likely mankind actually needs a period of another 2 – 300 years of artificially elevated atmospheric CO2 levels to get itself in a position to cope, en masse, as a civilization, with highly probable steadily decreasing temperatures over the next 500 or so years.
Now, go away, read the literature, think about it, and tell me, fair and square, why I’m wrong.
What do they say? Those who ignore the past are usually condemned to repeat it. The predictive power of the known past looks far more reliable to me than a flaky 50 year GCM projection. Perhaps that’s because I’m just a grumpy old man?
Did leading colloid chemist Sir David King complain to The Independent about being ‘misrepresented,’ which is where Fred Singer took the quote from????
Well gramps – talk to Steve Short about the lie of plate tectonics and the answer to your question “The whole AGW theory is based on ONE simple assumption – that doubling CO2 in the atmosphere must raise the earth’s thermal state.” is
“errr no”
That’s better Jan – if only Louis would come up with something more serious as debating points.
What a complete beat-up. I didn’t realise that AGW dopes were this thin-skinned.
The article seems to revolve around two points:
1) David King, who did once say that: “the last time the Earth had this much C02, the only place habitable was the Antarctic” being represented as saying: “the only habitable place on Earth will be the Antarctic and humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic”. Well, goodness me! That must be a hanging offence.
2) Dr. Carl Wunsch complaining that he had been taken out of context. For God’s sake, the good doctor is older than Louis. According to our resident loony, anyone that old is well and truly past his use-by date.
So what’s the big deal? Your AGW ‘science’ is this shaky that every time an opposing view is aired, all the hounds have to be set loose?
Grow a brain!
I think if I were Fred I would counter sue. King said what he said. It’s in print.
Someday Fred and David will swap stories of being misrepresented, Singer in Wikipedia and King in the Guardian, and everyone will have a big laugh.
Medusa
It’s not? So CO2 has no bearing on AGW theory? because that is the implication you make. What other factors exist to support your assertion?
Medusa, (dealing with your reply point by point) you seem to have an issue with Steve Short?
As far as plate tectonics is concerned, my position is that expressed at http://www.ncgt.org.au
That written, I have never accepted plate tectonics as a plausible explanation observation principally because there is no plausible physical mechaanism.
For it to be true requires it to disrupt the MOHO boundary, which it doesn’t.
So let’s read your opinion on this topic.
Oh I don’t have any problem with Steve – he knows much more than the rest of us so we need to be mindful of that.
What’s this media regulator? Unless King or Singer were serepticiously photographed while in the shower, (and I hope this is the case, even if the thought of naked wrinkled up white guy as page 2 fodder is a bit offputting), because the other explanation for a “media regulator” is that Britain maintains a division of thought police (I hear Canada has the same problem).
Media regulator – one of the reasons we celebrate the 4th of July.
“the last time the Earth had this much C02, the only place habitable was the Antarctic”
Is that true? 380ppmv? Aside from the fact that CO2 has been shown to lag temperature change in the past, isn’t King’s claim nonsense?
“Is that true?”
Paul – I don’t know. I just quoted from the article. However, I assume that since everything else out of the AGW camp is bull$hit, this must be too.
But it is ironic – make a quote which is complete nonsense, and then complain that it is taken out of context.
Sheeesh. What drug are these guys on?
Medusa
So when Steve corrects you, you will humbly stand corrected and acknowledge it.
Peergate?
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/moncktons_triple_counting.php#commentsArea
Oh No! Not Deltoid! In which journal was his climate sensitivity calculation published?
Luke has sunk to the bottom of his barrel of arguments in citing Deltoid. If we are going to mention “Peers” lets talk about the “Wegman Report”.
You can do better, Luke!
CoRev, editor
http://globalwarmingclearinghouse.blogspot.com
“Aside from the fact that CO2 has been shown to lag temperature change in the past,”
We weren’t around in the past, were we?
Humans were around in the past – they are not a 20th century phenomenon, and nor is climate change.
“Humans were around in the past – they are not a 20th century phenomenon, and nor is climate change.”
I thought we were talking about CO2 ‘lag’.
“Oh No! Not Deltoid! In which journal was his climate sensitivity calculation published?”
You have a non peer reviewed response to a non peer reviewed paper. Seems fair enough to me.
Can’t wait until INCONVENIENT TRUTH is put on trial!
We were talking about whether or not Antarctica was the only habitable place on earth when Co2 was 380ppmv in the past. Since CO2 hasn’t been shown to drive climate in the past, one wonders what point King was making, and is it true that Antarctica was the only habitable place on earth when CO2 was previously 380ppmv? Anyone have a reference?
The paper was reviewed – hence the amendments made by Monckton in response to the review. Deltoid has no reveiwed response. As usual he is cheer leading for climate alarmism.
Deltoid obliquely references a Sherwood etal (via Realclimate) that pretends to install the necessary tropical tropisphere warming by assigning a hidden heat signature derived from windspeed. Is that standard climate science?
Antarctica. Maybe those people down in MacMurdo will need to be issued sunscreen and t-shirts.
Paul asked http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2008/04/350-most-brain-dead-campaign-of-your.html
Here you go.
It looks like the last time co2 was as low as 350 ppm was during the carboniferous to permian transistion, about 300 million years ago.
“Did leading colloid chemist Sir David King complain to The Independent about being ‘misrepresented,’ which is where Fred Singer took the quote from????”
Exactly. If King made no effort to correct the record in 04, then he has no reason to complain about Singer in 08.
It’s a case of “You can misquote me if you are on my side, but don’t you dare if you are making a point for the opposition.”
Paul – read the full set of comments on Deltoid – Monckton has been shunted. He’s goooone IMO ! Let’s not muck around here – one physicist had a look at his paper. The end. 3 appropriate referees would be normal. It’s the APS’s show – if they totally disagree with his position it’s their gig – but they still publisheded it. It’s a newsletter not a journal. Their position has been clearly stated to minimise and ambiguity – i.e. what you guys will quote later as authority.
Deltoid isn’t “cheer leading” for alarmism. Where is the alarmism? He’s exposing bad science.
But Moncky’s still in print and one can make of it what they wish. i.e. free speech and all that
James – that’s not a scientific reference – that’s some bloke down the pub (local bar).
And think it’s time we put error bars on all this paleo bunkum too. Plus or minus heaps ?
“Sunset – the whole CO2 lagging ruse is really the greatest drongo argument of all time.”
LOL,
But of course you have no rebuttal against at least 3 published science papers.That have not been refuted.
“Unless you have something like the PETM or current conditions what else would you expect? Is CO2 suddenly going to wake up one day and decide it’s going to start being different and warm the planet for something to do? How long are you guys going to flog that old yarn for?”
Again you ignore several published science papers.Which essentially states.That CO2 rises in the atmosphere CENTURIES after the temperature did.
It is not flogging at all and you know it.Otherwise you would not be blubbering.
I doubt you even know what those 3 science papers are anyway.
“And again with you guys – it’s ALWAYS this or that. No complexity. You can have THIS OR THAT. No interactions. No combinations. No multiple forcings. THIS OR THAT. And always a prehistoric world is pitched as being the same as the current world when there could be a plethora of major differences – like where the continents are for a start.
Do you ever think about any of this for more than 20 seconds?”
LOLOLOLOLOL,
You are desperate since your camp have long tagged CO2 as the main culprit for warming.
“I don’t know. I just quoted from the article. However, I assume that since everything else out of the AGW camp is bull$hit, this must be too.”
That just about sums up the intellectual stance of you lot.
Try doing the most basic bit of PETM research Sunset.
I’m not ignoring papers suggesting for many transitions that CO2 lagged temperature. What ELSE WOULD YOU EXPECT for transitions controlled by solar insolation changes. You have not thought about the issue for even 5 seconds Sunset.
Feedback from CO2 warming still occurs and furthermore recent research even puts the 800 years as far too long in some cases.
Pathetic rebuttal Sunset. I’m far from desperate – I’m just stunned how wishy washy your basic thinking is.
Looks like more Monckton rebuttals. Oh dear.
http://duoquartuncia.blogspot.com/2008/07/aps-and-global-warming-what-were-they.html
Article concludes ”
Monckton’s best case here is simply the alleged lack of mid-troposphere warming. All the maths stuff is so badly flawed that it detracts from the shreds of what argument might be salvaged. The issue of troposphere warming will continue to be a focus of interest and debate; but skeptics invariably fail to take proper account of the large error bars on the old troposphere temperatures they invoke; and with the recent work on wind shear this argument, which was never strong, is looking more and more dubious.”
INCOMING !!
I look forward to the days of to and fro argument defending the indefensible.
Luke: “Looks like more Monckton rebuttals. Oh dear.”
I thought this thread was about TGGWS, so how many threads do you need to hijack for your propaganda?
Well this thread is a perfect illustration of how a discussion runs off the rails.
Seems Sir David said what was claimed apart from the “breeding pairs” bit which would be implied if human life did survive in the Antarctic by 2100. At least according to that newspaper report.
Jan – I now look forward to you policing this rule with your side as well. Will you be rigorous and fair in your approach ? I doubt it. But carry on and apologies for the intrusion.
Luke: I spent quite a few moments between bike races on TV looking at one particular graph in Jan’s www archive and wondering where this supposed CO2 lag is clearly indicated. Then I tried a few old instrument graph reading tricks like shifting start and end points and came up with this conclusion, the last few years seems to be doing something silly according to those ice core records regardless of the overlay.
Jan: The only way to confirm the given matching is to work backwards from present with an expanded recent time axis for the ice core data.
“Can’t wait until INCONVENIENT TRUTH is put on trial!”
It was. Apart from nine points out of hundreds, the judge found the science uambiguously vindicated the show’s main claim, AGW is real is a problem for us.
For example, on glaciers. Gore mentioned about nine glaciers as evidence for AGW, the judge found that one of them was not definite enough to be used as evidence. 8 out of 9 for Gore. Not a bad effort, and no scientists had to accuse Gore of misrepresenting them.
“8 out of 9” indeed, SJT. My bull$hit canary
just fell off its perch again. What about all the other falsehoods, like pacific island sea level refugees etc. You really have no shame, do you?
Since when has media coverage of the climate change/global warming issue been balanced? Everywhere I turn I have the green message rammed down my throat like a swan choking on a Tesco’s plastic bag.
And remember, this is Channel 4. This station is funded from advertising, not from our taxes. Being an independent broadcaster I believe it is their fundamental duty to stimulate debate and offer a vehicle for views differing from the mainstream. You could say the same about the BBC, but then they never have got to grips with the idea of ‘balance’ in any area of their reporting.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe that there are strong arguments backing the global warming theory. However, I would be much more sympathetic if I was sold the argument rather than lectured, and if the authorities were be less keen to stamp on those wishing to put forward an alternative point of view.
While the film itself may not have been balanced, it did represent a much needed cry in the wilderness from the already much persecuted climate sceptics.
Really Luke?
Here’s a list of that bloke down at the pub’s publications.
http://www.scotese.com/scotesepubs.htm
It would take all day to list the problems with AIT. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html
Monckton saves us the time, and I thank you.
Yes James most impressive – but irrelevant – still don’t have a reference with error bars on the estimate.
James – Monckers has been debunked – learn quick and walk away quietly – http://duoquartuncia.blogspot.com/2008/07/aps-and-global-warming-what-were-they.html
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/moncktons_triple_counting.php
Ofcom rules that The Great Global Warming Swindle was biased and unfair
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/ofcom_rules_that_the_great_glo.php
Funny how reluctant ALL the AGW enthusiasts are to read and comment on Gerald Marsh’s recent paper despite my various posts in the other threads!
http://www.gemarsh.com/wp-content/uploads/ClimateStabilityPolicy2.pdf
I’ll say it again. Ender and Luke are dead wrong about the lack of lag of CO2 rise at the glacial terminations. Their understanding of the nature of insolation-forced ice retreat and the way released CO2 feeds back on that is technically primitive.
There is a BIG literature base on all this – it is well known to be 800±200 years for the Late Pleistocene 100,000 year Milankovitch cycles, more uncertain for the 41,000 Late Pliocene to Pleistocene terminations, strangely probably even longer for those but come what may is invariably there (when the O-18, paleothermometer and CO2 data is handled correctly).
Note well, both the penultimate and previous interglacial peaks lasted no more than about 8 ky before the subsequent long slow slide into the following glacial.
As you would logically expect, the whole earth homeostatic biogeospheric system is far more unstable to external forcings rather than adapted internal ones such as CO2. By definition no such system can adapt over time to quasi-periodic external forcings. I have already answered Ender elsewhere on this (but then he scarpered).
We are already 10 ky into this interglacial! Sea temperatures were warmer 2 – 8 ky ago – I did host of U-Th dates on east coast coral while at Ansto.
Solar Cycle 25 could even be the beginning of the slide – refer the NASA sites and discussions. In my view the probability of a slow slide towards the next glacial commencing within the next several hundred years is extremely high.
The next LIA will not terminate in the memories of mankind except those off-planet.
Regardless, 2 – 300 years of global warming due fossil fuels CO2 may be just what is required to give civilization time to cope with the coming slide.
IMHO this is much more important than arguing about current yet-primitive GCM outcomes with new complexities and hitherto unknown negative feedbacks popping up all over.
I have many more recent references on this issue but am having chronic problems with posts getting rejected.
Luke, you better read the OFCOM ruling. It is definitely different than what is being posted in the believer blogs. Perhaps the best analysis is here at EU:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/07unprecedented-amount-of-scrutiny.html
yes mmmm … but the current situation is not like understanding an ice age termination. More like a mini-PETM?
Predicting another ice age is pretty courageous stuff – given http://amper.ped.muni.cz/gw/articles/html.format/orb_forc.html
and http://amper.ped.muni.cz/gw/articles/graphs/ins-5-2.png shows a formal calculation of the orbital insolation doesn’t look to go near low enough.
And it is more complex than we think – indeed Caillon et al Science March 2003 reminds us that at Termination III CO2 lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 years BUT preceded the northern hemisphere deglaciation !!!
in detail they say “Combining this uncertainty with the uncertainty
introduced by ice accumulation (800
0.2, i.e., 160 years), we obtain an overall uncertainty
of200 years, indicating that the increase
in CO2 lags Antarctic warming by 800 200
years, which we must consider a mean phase lag
because of the method we used to make the
correlation. We cannot think of a mechanism
that would make 40Ar lead the temperature
change, although a lag is possible if the temperature
or accumulation change affects the nondiffusive
zone (27). This result is in accordance
with recent studies (9, 30) but, owing to our new
method, more precise. This confirms that CO2 is
not the forcing that initially drives the climatic
system during a deglaciation. Rather, deglaciation
is probably initiated by some insolation
forcing (1, 31, 32), which influences first the
temperature change in Antarctica (and possibly
in part of the Southern Hemisphere) and then the
CO2. This sequence of events is still in full
agreement with the idea that CO2 plays,
through its greenhouse effect, a key role in
amplifying the initial orbital forcing. First, the
800-year time lag is short in comparison with
the total duration of the temperature and CO2
increases (5000 years). Second, the CO2
increase clearly precedes the Northern Hemisphere
deglaciation (Fig. 3).”
“Finally, the situation at Termination III differs
from the recent anthropogenic CO2 increase.
As recently noted by Kump (38), we
should distinguish between internal influences
(such as the deglacial CO2 increase) and external
influences (such as the anthropogenic CO2
increase) on the climate system. Although the
recent CO2 increase has clearly been imposed
first, as a result of anthropogenic activities, it
naturally takes, at Termination III, some time
for CO2 to outgas from the ocean once it starts
to react to a climate change that is first felt in the
atmosphere. The sequence of events during this
Termination is fully consistent with CO2 participating
in the latter 4200 years of the warming.
The radiative forcing due to CO2 may serve
as an amplifier of initial orbital forcing, which is
then further amplified by fast atmospheric feedbacks
(39) that are also at work for the present day
and future climate.”
Add any more than 3 urls without the http: prefix. System won’t accept more than 3 links with http:’s.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/climate-program-swindled-viewers/2008/07/21/1216492357002.html
Eh!!!!!!I’m alarmed… again!
Come now Luke – quoting Jan Hollan 18 December 2000, in effect twice (once directly and secondly via his insolation graph on an old IPCC site!) does not a rebuttal make! There are known problems with Hollan’s work.
There has been well over 50 papers on ice age Terminations, studies of precessional etc effects on insolation etc etc since end 2000. Naturally, I have a goodly selection on file.
Caillon et al.Science 2003 is a good paper. Nothing you quoted there do I have an issue with.
Have you read the full Gerald Marsh (Argonne National Laboratory) paper yet (since I posted the web reference late Sunday night)? I think not. Have you read a goodly selection of the papers on these subjects published since 2000? I think not.
While at ANSTO I did quite a few 230Th/234U dates on old dead Holocene sub-tropical corals along the east coast, still sitting largely in or near to growth position right down to the NSW south coast. Common knowledge to scuba divers. There is no doubt that approx. 2 – 8 ky ago there were warm sea conditions well down the eastern coast of Australia. Remembering SH lags behind NH due to the greater ice mass of Antarctica, the equivalent absence of modern coral extent along this coast suggests to me that the Roman warm period, the MWP and the LIA were actually ‘ripples on the downside’ of the current interglacial. This is supported by all sorts of obscure lines of evidence right down to the Southern Elephant seal relict Holocene skeletons on the coast of Antarctica as I’ve mentioned before.
The whole question in the literature right now is just which of the past Late Pleistocene Terminations does the most recent one resemble most closely, and why, and what does this tell us about the likely ‘temperature shape’ of the current interglacial.
Somehow I think that Marsh is likely a little more across the probable ultimate temperature shape of the current interglacial than the IPCC lobby (or yourself).
Simple inspection of the durations of the interglacials since the transition to the 100 ky cycle strongly suggests that we are now living on borrowed time. More to come.
From SMH: it was pointed out that graphs purporting to show temperature rises being affected by sunspots excluded contradictory evidence.
I can’t believe that a newspaper said that with a straight face. These are the same people who cheered for AIT and a string of Michael Moore flicks.
Hollan made that longer period one-off graph after some recent discussions !! Is there anything wrong with the insolation calculations – formal calculations – not playing with squiggly lines?
Hand waving and making a faux pretense about an imminent ice age is no argument either. Make an accurate prediction where we actually are in the orbital positions?
If anything insolation is due to be trending upwards.
And no – the NH warming in my example is implied to have occurred after the SH warming. Caillon 2003.
Trying to compare interglacials with the present is like divining tea leaves. You’ve got major differences in land use feedbacks – dust – aerosols – all manner of things. And atmospheric CO2 – ahem…
As far as east coast currents go, the Tasman has been warming quite well in recent years
From duoquartuncia.blogspot.com/2008/07/aps-and-global-warming-what-were-they.html
“The first and major step is a look at radiosonde data for warming in the troposphere. This is a notoriously difficult area, as the radiosonde record has well known systematic errors, which have been discussed now for decades. A couple of recent papers have come out just this year which address many of the issues by using wind shear information. Specifically: Allen R.J. and Sherwood S.C. (2008) Warming maximum in the tropical upper troposphere deduced from thermal winds, in Nature Geoscience 25 May 2008 DOI: 10.1038/ngeo208”
ME: the warmers sure would like to “adjust” that inconvenient radiosonde data.
“Here I confess to sharing a concern with Monckton. I’ve been looking at these papers now for a couple of months now for another discussion, and I also have tripped up on how this parameter [no-feedback sensitivity] is defined. I’ve been reading the same references Monckton gave in his paper (Soden, Bony, Colman etc) and I don’t really get how the value of -3.2 is obtained. I can understand the -3.7. If anyone reading this would put a comment or a pointer to help clarify, I’d appreciate it!”
ME: and they don’t understand how the IPCC arrive at their sensitivity paramaters either.
errr perhaps as they are not actually parameters?
And James – do you not think that satellite data are processed and adjusted heaps as well?
“gee is that right?”
Luke
“Hollan made that longer period one-off graph after some recent discussions !! Is there anything wrong with the insolation calculations – formal calculations – not playing with squiggly lines?
Hand waving and making a faux pretense about an imminent ice age is no argument either.”
GOTCHA
I’m sorry – but that is utterly egregious rubbish!
The EXACT GRAPH which you claim was made into a (quote) “longer period one-off graph after some recent discussions/….” actually appears precisely, in its entirety i.e. same period (up to – 500 ky – actually very slightly longer) but in MIRROR IMAGE format in the original Jan Holman December 2000 paper!
All one needs to is follow the directories of the .png graphic file back to the file of the original (December 2000) Holman paper (file = orbital force.pdf).
http://amper.ped.muni.cz/gw/articles/orb_forc.pdf
Presumably you are aware it is not actually possible to change the origination date of a file in Unix format pdf?
I though that graph looked very familiar to me!
Been around just a little longer reading this stuff I think….
Woo, hoo, (to use one of your expletives) hey everybody – I just caught Luke making an outright lie!
Sigh …. sigh …
You ought to know better.
I was in contact with Jan Hollan on 3/10/2007
He said in part “If you run into Steve Short tell him he’s not that good and Royer thinks he sucks ” OK – I made that up.
He actually said “Some other people asked me too about info on future glaciation.
As I see that the -400 ka glaciation is discussed, I’ve added a graph showing the relevant period in more detail, at the end of
http://amper.ped.muni.cz/gw/articles/
The bottom line is: we should not extrapolate past trends (like decline in summer insolation, or the shape of the past glaciation cycles). We should look at reliably computed past, current and future forcings instead. It’s evident we have almost reached the near-future insolation minimum already.
Before the atmosphere returns to normal (thousands of years), we will be on the increasing part of the insolation curve again…
cheers,
jenik”
If you look at Fig 6 and the graph I cited here http://amper.ped.muni.cz/gw/articles/graphs/ins-5-2.png there is some more history in the latter. Mirror image.
I may not have remembered the conversation properly but far from a lie. My intent was to imply that he was treating the material as current as far as he was concerned.
So – so-called Dr Steve Short – I think you’ve just been punked !
Woo-hoo ! hey everyone come and see Steve with his pants down and astonished expression.
I just don’t believe you.
The Holman (2000) graph has a vertical scale listed as units of 10 W/m2 ( range 42 – 54) and a horizontal scale listed as units of 100 ka (+7 to -2.5) i.e. 700,000 years to -250,000 years.
The separate .png graph which you claim is different and more recent has a vertical scale listed as units of 1 W/m2 (shown range 420 – 540) and a horizontal scale listed as units of 1000 years (shown range -500 to +200) i.e. -500,000 years to -200,000 years.
The former Holman (2000) graph purportedly hindcasts ~300,000 years and forecasts ~700,000 years and the more recent graph purportedly hindcasts 500,000 years and forecasts 200,000 years.
But there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of the use of any data or mathematical techniques post 2000 that was not available to the person preparing the 2000 version!
The mathematic basis for preparing the data for both graphs was clearly precisely the same (and existed at 2000). They are in effect based on the same method of computation (or prior data) but simply covering different windows in time.
In other words, the information available to the person making the graphs was regarded as being sufficient and complete at the year 2000.
That is the key point.
For you to imply that the 2nd graph is somehow more up-to-date science or understanding of what triggers or terminates glaciations (or indeed affects their intensity – see below) is simply sophistry.
So let us look at your basic insinuations here.
Firstly, the insinuation is that because, on the basis of data, mathematical techniques and all other information about what, in terms of insolation forces Terminations of glacials and subsequent decays from the interglacial towards the next glacial AS KNOWN IN 2000, we can be absolutely sure, right now 8 years later that it is still true?
First insinuation – dead wrong!
Secondly, the next insinuation here is that somehow, on the basis of this 8 year old data we can expect that insolation-driven changes in the present will be similar to those about 400,000 years ago. Well, buddy, even if that were true (and even now, 8 years later it is still under considerable debate, much less 8 year ago) you still hoisted up on a yard arm of your own making.
Surprise, surprise, almost exactly 400,000 years ago the planet passed through an interglacial which had a Termination just before it as sharp as the most recent one and an interglacial which in terms of a peak duration over a human civilization equitable temperature range (certainly by IPPC-type logic) was barely different to the last interglacial i.e. about 10 – 15,000 years.
Why? Because as is now very well known, especially 8 years later and only another few thousand papers later, insolation is NOT the whole story e.g.
Elkibbi and Rial, 2001; Huybers and Wunsch, 2005; Loutre et al., 2004; Paillard, 2001; Raymo and Nisancioglu, 2003; Maslin and Ridgwell [2005] Bol’shakov, 2003b; Rial, 2003b; Berger et al.; and I could go on, and on….
And I’d bet anyone a six pack that Luke also knew that fact very well!
I am getting Luke’s measure now.
He relies on a lack of literature knowledge and the over-referencing factor. Not to mention cooking up fake conversations with a researcher creatively chosen from the long past with a pathetic publications CV. The above exercise shows he really will twist and ‘faux creatively’ debase any reference to single mindedly pursue the cause of his religion.
So woo, hoo, everyone come and see what a creative (but still nasty) little fairy story teller Luke is.
BTW, have you noticed how these AGW religion characters still regurgitate their much loved childhood anally oriented references? We’ve already had the ‘back passages’ stuff and now we are on to the ‘pants down’ stuff. Says a lot.
THE RISE AND RISE OF CLIMATE BLASPHEMY
by Brendan O’Neill
Today’s Ofcom ruling on The Great Global Warming Swindle strengthens the censorious forcefield around climate change experts.
– – – – – – –
The blasphemy laws are dead and buried in Britain. Courtesy of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act, which passed into law on 8 July 2008, it is no longer a common law offence to speak or publish any contemptuous, reviling, scurrilous or ludicrous words relating to God, Jesus Christ or the Bible. Thank Christ (or whoever) for that.
You can say what you like about Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but say anything reviling, scurrilous or ludicrous about a climate change scientist and you will be punished. You won’t receive a literal lashing, but you will get a metaphorical one. Speak ill of a climate expert and you’re likely to be stuck in the stocks of the public media and branded as a fact-denying, truth-distorting threat to public morals…
From CCnet
I didn’t bother reading your response past a few lines and don’t intend to.
Hollan was standing by his analysis as of that date. I did not say it was a novel form with new data.
It is as I said.
Email Jan Hollan and ask him. Remind him 3/10/2007 22:41 AM EST with cc’s to Jiri and gw
Your tirade tells me all I need to know. Bright people don’t like being done ! Fatal flaw.
Erratum: 2:41 AM
No tirade. Just bringing it back to the facts of the matter rather that the twisted version invariably designed by you to drive the official AGW line, come what may, with all the punters here.
Facts:
(1) The glacial prior to Termination V was as deep as the prior one and as deep as the following four.
(2) The glacial following the interglacial after Termination V was as deep as the two prior ones and the three following ones.
(3) The temperature peak of the interglacial following Termination V was as warm as the following four interglacial including our current one.
(4)Best estimate is that Termination V started at 430 ka.
(5) It is true that the following interglacial was relatively long at ~28 ka but it was characterized by a slower rise both to and fall off the peak than the most recent Termination I. It took ~20 ka to get above about approx. -2 C.
(6) Further, in terms of the duration of that interglacial between (say) – 2 and +1 C there is not much to distinguish it from the subsequent interglacials and the resolution is beset by ‘noise’ in the various proxies.
(7) Our last Termination I which is generally dated to the to Greenland Stadial 2c was at 21.2–19.5 ka BP. Let us say 20 ka BP.
Go figure.
Of course the AGW lobby would say we don’t have to worry about declining temperatures at the end of the current interglacial and will say anything to convince people it is “10,000 years away”.
After all, they are intent in rolling back CO2 emissions (and Third World development) so that the slow slide in temperatures on the downside of the Holocene peak is not delayed and only the rich and powerful of this world will ever be in a position to deal with falling temperatures when they do start to bite.
The only thing to guarantee delay of that is rising CO2 emissions. Voila!
There is a hell of a lot of closet Malthusianism driving the AGW religion. Most of it’s original theoreticians were espousing population control in the 1970s and 80s.
Of course the numerous foot soldiers like Luke are happy to drive that agenda. Apocalypse Now is much more fun!
Steve: Our Dr Bob Birrell has put population back on the agenda
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/population-time-bomb-ticking-on-emissions/2008/07/22/1216492448158.html
Based on a number of proxy records from various climate archives it has often been claimed that among the Pleistocene interglacial intervals Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11 was an exceptionally long warm climatic period. However, several studies of late Pleistocene full interglacial intervals in the polar North Atlantic region, i.e., MIS 11, 5e, and 1, indicate comparatively reduced advection of heat and moisture to the high northern latitudes within MIS 11. This may suggest regional differences of the climate conditions during MIS 11 and demonstrates the need to further specify the development of the oceanographic and climatic conditions of this interglacial period. Here we present a set of high-resolution sedimentological, geochemical, and micropaleontological records of MIS 11 from two adjacent deep-sea sediment cores (PS1243 and MD992277, both 69°N and 6°W) from the central polar North Atlantic. From our results it can be proposed that the glacial Termination from MIS 12 into MIS 11 was very long and pronounced showing repeated pulses of massive ice-rafted debris (IRD) input at the study region. As soon as IRD deposition ceased, full interglacial conditions rapidly developed. A marked increase in carbonate content and also in the amount of subpolar planktic foraminifers can be observed, parallel to a rise of both benthic and planktic oxygen isotope values to a level typical for the late Pleistocene interglaciations of the study area. Peak warm conditions are only established after the maximum in planktic isotopes had occurred. For this interval all parameters point to a substantial influence of Atlantic surface waters at the study region. This full interglacial period of MIS 11 lasted in the northern North Atlantic region for about 10,000 years, thus questioning the idea of an extremely warm and long lasting MIS 11 at least on a global scale.
Helmke, J. P.; Bauch, H. A. The Climatic Development of MIS 11 at High Northern Latitudes
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005. Publication Date: 12/2005
Similar orbital geometry and greenhouse gases concentrations during Marine Isotope Stage 11 (MIS 11) and the Holocene make Stage 11 perhaps the best geological analogue period for the natural development of the present interglacial climate. Results of a detailed study of core MD01-2443 from the Iberian margin suggest that sea-surface conditions during Stage 11 were not significantly different from those observed during the elapsed portion of the Holocene. Peak interglacial conditions during Stage 11 lasted nearly 18 kyrs, indicating a Holocene unperturbed by human activity might last an additional 6-7 kyrs.
de Abreu, L.; Abrantes, F.; Voelker, A.; Shackleton, N. J.; Tzedakis, P.; McManus, J.; Oppo, D.; Salgueiro, E.; Hall, M. Ocean Climate Variability in the Eastern North Atlantic During Interglacial MIS 11: A Partial Analogue to the Holocene?
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005. Publication Date: 12/2005
Abrupt climate change during warm interglacials is an area of special interest as it may relate more directly to an understanding of recent and future climate change. With this in mind we have focused our efforts on documenting millennial-scale climate change from sediments deposited at ODP Site 980, northeast Atlantic Ocean during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11. Our MIS11 results are then compared to compatible records from MIS5e and the Holocene. Our detailed IRD record from around 418 kya to 382 kya reveals a remarkable lack of even trace amounts IRD input into sediments at ODP Site 980. Ice Rafted Debris (IRD) concentration abruptly drops and remains 0 to trace amounts per gram as soon as benthic delta O-18 values fall to and remain at < 3.5 per mil at the onset of MIS11. Only three very small amplitude IRD events are observed over the entire 35 kyr interval. The earliest 8 kyr of MIS11 is completely devoid of any IRD, despite the fact that the relative abundance of the polar species N. pachyderma, left coiling, after dropping from near 90% to below 10% at 418 kya, rises to as high as 30% during this early MIS11 time interval. This seems to indicate the influx of non-ice bearing colder polar waters to the region above Site 980 that don’t seem to be influencing the N. pachyderma, right coiling isotope record in a simple way. The MIS11 IRD record significantly differs from our records from MIS5e and the Holocene, particularly when we focus on the earliest 12 kyr of MIS11. Both the approximately 10 kyr long MIS5e interval and the last 11 kyr of the Holocene exhibit a series of between 6 and 9 discrete small amplitude increases in IRD against a background of little or no IRD. At the same time relative abundances of N. pachyderma, left coiling are considerably less during both MIS5e and the Holocene when compared to the first 10 kyr of MIS11. The evidence presented here suggests that MIS11 surface water conditions above Site 980 were somewhat different from conditions recorded in sediments from two other warm interglacial intervals, MIS5e and the Holocene and that its use as an ancient analog to modern and future climate may be less straightforward than previously thought.
Arvin, T. A.; Cullen, J. L.; Oppo, D. W.; McManus, J. F. A Detailed Record of Changing Surface Water Conditions From Sediments Deposited During Marine Isotope Stage 11, ODP Site 980, Northeast Atlantic Ocean.
American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2004. Publication Date 05/2004
In this paper we reconstruct hydrological variability in Lake Baikal during Marine Isotope Stage 11 (MIS 11) (427-362 ka BP) from oxygen isotope analysis of diatom silica. Highest 18Odiatom values are found during MIS 11.3, highlighting the dominance of hydrological input from rivers flowing into the south and central basins of Lake Baikal, especially the Selenga River. Hydrological input from south basin rivers dominated for over 30 ka. However, there is evidence from both biogenic silica and 18Odiatom records for an abrupt cooling event at ca. 390 ka BP. Stadial conditions at this time are coincident with an iceberg discharge event into the North Atlantic. The decline in 18O diatom values suggests increasing proportion of hydrological input from rivers to the north of Lake Baikal, due to greater influence of winter precipitation and snow-melt.
Mackay et al. Reconstructing hydrological variability in Lake Baikal during MIS 11: an application of oxygen isotope analysis of diatom silica. J.Quat. Sci. Vol. 23(4) 365 – 37 (2008)
Not quite the smoothly long-lived interglacial it is dogmatically claimed to be and therefore as an analogue less certain.
And to think this all started with:
“Sunset – the whole CO2 lagging ruse is really the greatest drongo argument of all time.”
Which of course is a non sequitor i.e. the quote itself is drongo science.
But let’s flit on and hopes no one remembers anything.
“Sunset – the whole CO2 lagging ruse is really the greatest drongo argument of all time”
I don’t think any is arguing that CO2 did lag in that past, just that the point has no bearing on what is happening now.
“Sunset – the whole CO2 lagging ruse is really the greatest drongo argument of all time”
I don’t think any is arguing that CO2 did lag in that past, just that the point has no bearing on what is happening now.
Well it still is a drongo argument. The lag issue is used by sceptics to suggest that the temperature rise in the last glacial sequences rose before CO2 did, so CO2 could have had nothing to do with the warming.
First point is why would CO2 suddenly awaken an Earth slumbering in an ice age. Why would it. Insolation changes caused by interaction of 3 Milankovitch mechanisms start the warming. Oceans outgas CO2, the biosphere cranks up and the warming proceeds. There are probably complex oceanic and atmospheric circulation changes in play as well as dust transport issues. So OK – AGW types assert that CO2 starts to feedback and contributes to the warming.
I find it remarkable that Steve being a “lukewarmer” and giving CO2 some role would not therefore think that CO2 had some effect. “I am a “lukewarmer” who concedes CO2 sensitivity may be as high as about 1.5 C ”
So on his thread he seems not to think that.
Given the insolation changes are the product of 3 interacting cycles, Hollan advises us to make a formal calculation on the 65N insolation and not assume that because previous cycles had some repeatability that this should continue. There may be other factors at play and I was willing to be advised of that – but given I have been called a liar on this thread I’ve turned off all receptivity to Steve’s advice. Totally and hacked off to the max.
And I wasn’t aware I was quoting IPCC at all actually.
So I see no significant trend in current TSI observed at TOA – I see Foukal suggesting that TSI changes have been too small in the last few 100 years to appreciably influence climate, yet Steve is making a “maybe I did, maybe I didn’t” claim that we might be going down into a glaciation. Sounds pretty alarmist to me.
Where exactly are we on the orbital forcing curve? What science are you going to use with the current quiet Sun to drive the climate model in your mind? Mechanism is? Where are we in the glaciation slope? Got an accurate fix?
Surely the PETM is an example of CO2 preceding temperature. And the example I quoted above – why did the NH warm later?
The only way to work all this through properly would be an appropriate model. I communicated with Berger hoping he had done such (although Steve would probably call me a liar) but alas all I could glean was that in his modelling work he was not able to get the Earth to enter a glaciation with CO2 high.
So yes – need a modelled outcome that says you cannot derive the temperatures experienced without CO2 feedback. However to imply that CO2 should lead temperature after a Milankovitch transition still seems a drongo argument to me.
Hey guys, I’ve got a suggestion:
Now we have satellites measuring all sorts of climate variables to a level that’s significantly more accurate than land based stations, why don’t we sit back for the next 5-10 years and analyse real data rather than relying on inaccurate computer models that have already screwed up on predicting the current stall in warming/cooling.
China, India and Russia are not going to stop building scores of fossil fuel burning power stations so there’s no point in the West panicking – there’s very little it can do that make any real differnce to CO2 emissions (most of which are natural anyway)
James Annan was bitching over this issue, so I took his link and went to the site of the complaint. I went to the index, and this is the first complaint that I clicked on. I posted this with Annan also.
2.2
Palaeoclimatic Temperature Reconstructions of the Past
[Narrator]
We are told that the earth’s climate is changing. But the earth’s climate is always changing. In earth’s long history there have been countless periods when it was much warmer and much cooler than it is today: when much of the world was covered by tropical forests, or else vast ice sheets. The climate has always changed; and changed without any help from us humans.
[Comment 35: The narrator is trying to make the public believe that previous warming and cooling periods have been overlooked by climatologists; and they are therefore mistaken in their theory of greenhouse warming. Yet the entire field of palaeoclimatology is a study of historical climates. The documentary makers actually make reference to these historical climate studies in discussing ice-core data, so they must be aware that climatologists are aware that the climate is always changing. For the narrator to try to mislead viewers in this way is a clear breach of the Broadcasting Code.]
So now the sheer idiocy of the complaint becomes immediately apparent. The narrator makes four statements of fact.
A. The earth’s climate is always changing.
B. It has been much hotter than today.
C. It has been much cooler than today.
D. It achieved these changes without any help from mankind.
The commentor is then not able to contradict anything that the narrator has said, but the commentor can read the narrators mind and finds that the error is in the commentor’s evil intention. The commentor concludes that the narrator is trying to tell the public that climate scientists don’t know that it has been hotter and colder in the past. Now this is clearly the most idiotic mind reading trick on the part of the commentor that I have ever seen. You really have to ask yourself, why would a commentor invent such a perverted, conspiritorial and idiotic motivation for the narrator?
The reason that the narrator gives us this information should be clear to any 5 year old. Part of the effort to sell AGW has been to point out again and again how unusual 20th Century climate is. Warmers act like most of the planet has been at a comfortable room temperature, with no variation, for most of the history of mankind. Of course they know the real historical record. But they never expose this information to the public when they are making their case for AGW. The people who are really trying to mislead us, then, are the alarmists. The fact that the commentor so strongly objects to four simple, undisputed statements of fact shows that he doesn’t want the public to be exposed to anything but the selected, guided, and agenda driven information that the alarmists are selling the public. I’m surprised that Annan isn’t ashamed to associate himself with such a clear case of suppression of free speech and such moronic objections to simple statements of fact. The assertion by these people that they are not against free speech is a bald faced lie.
“the warmers sure would like to “adjust” that inconvenient radiosonde data.”
LOL. I read that blog. Not only is the radiosonde data inconvenient, but the sattelite data along with it.
So someone comes out with some tortured wind shear data to give the warmers what they desperately need and then they all embrace it as their savior and throw the direct measurements away. The alarmists would be a beautiful comedy show except for the fact that too many politicians see them as a gift from heaven.
Bickers: “Now we have satellites measuring all sorts of climate variables to a level that’s significantly more accurate than land based stations, why don’t we sit back for the next 5-10 years and analyse real data rather than relying on inaccurate computer models that have already screwed up on predicting the current stall in warming/cooling”
Sitting back leaves the job to others who have to run with whatever advice is on hand. Analysing data after the event is the easy bit. Science that merely follows a trend is hardly clever.
Sure in design considerations it’s generally wise to look for the bottom line before building however the population at large demands progress regardless. Who stands in the way of a sprawling city?
“Sitting back leaves the job to others who have to run with whatever advice is on hand.”
Why do they have to run with whatever advice is on hand? What do you think is going to happen if we collect data for another ten years?
The only reason for an emergency is that the warmers want the fascist legislation in place before the reality of no substantial warming is exposed.
Luke:
“However to imply that CO2 should lead temperature after a Milankovitch transition still seems a drongo argument to me.”
Ah hah, the old switcheroo!
“Ah hah, the old switcheroo!”
No, you just misunderstood what Luke was saying.
“LOL. I read that blog. Not only is the radiosonde data inconvenient, but the sattelite data along with it.”
It’s been not so much inconvenient, as wrong. Satellite data seems to have some magical aura around it.
Satellite data is not a direct measurement, it is inferred from other data and manipulated to what the scientists think is the correct reading, along with adjustments that have to cope with satellite drift, heights, etc. Already, Christy and Co have had to eat humble pie, when the models were right and their techniques were wrong. That’s a simple fact that is often overlooked.
Luke:
“…– indeed Caillon et al Science March 2003 reminds us that at Termination III CO2 lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 years BUT preceded the northern hemisphere deglaciation !!!”
SJT:
“”Ah hah, the old switcheroo!”
No, you just misunderstood what Luke was saying.”
Yeah, right! What a whacker…
“Ah hah, the old switcheroo!” – huh?
The AGW scam is now on the way to being a busted flush:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/850566/an-inconvenient-ruling.thtml
Sums the AGW believers position brilliantly:
http://www.rightsidenews.com/200807231515/energy-and-environment/climatology-versus-climatism.html
“who says he wrote the carbon accounting model”
The carbon accounting model? That’s nothing to do with climate modelling, and everything to do with just accounting for a commodity, standard commercial fare.
Both these pieces by Philip Stott are brilliant, highly intelligent and incisive explanations of the AGW mythology and I believe answer Jim Peden’s question: where’s the crisis
http://parliamentofthings.info/climate.html
From the Babylon of Gilgamesh to the post-Eden of Noah, every age has viewed climate change cataclysmically, as retribution for human greed and sinfulness.
In the 1970s, the fear was “global cooling.” The Christian Science Monitor then declaimed, “Warning: Earth’s climate is changing faster than even experts expect,” while The New York Times announced, “A major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable.” Sound familiar? Global warming represents the latest doom-laden “crisis,” one demanding sacrifice to Gaia for our wicked fossil-fuel-driven ways.
But neither history nor science bolsters such an apocalyptic faith.
History and Science:
Extreme weather events are ever present, and there is no evidence of systematic increases. Outside the tropics, variability should decrease in a warmer world. If this is a “crisis,” then the world is in permanent “crisis,” but will be less prone to “crisis” with warming.
Sea levels have been rising since the end of the last ice age, most rapidly about 12,000 years ago. In recent centuries, the average rate has been relatively uniform. The rate was higher during the first half of the 20th century than during the second. At around a couple of millimetres per year, it is a residual of much larger positive and negative changes locally. The risk from global warming is less than that from other factors (primarily geological).
The impact on agriculture is equivocal. India warmed during the second half of the 20th century, yet agricultural output increased markedly. The impact on disease is dubious. Infectious diseases, like malaria, are not so much a matter of temperature as of poverty and public health. Malaria remains endemic in Siberia, and was once so in Michigan and Europe. Exposure to cold is generally more dangerous.
So, does the claim that humans are the primary cause of recent warming imply “crisis”? The impact on temperature per unit CO2 goes down, not up, with increasing CO2. The role of human-induced greenhouse gases does not relate directly to emission rate, nor even to CO2 levels, but rather to the radiative (or greenhouse) impact. Doubling CO2 is a convenient benchmark. It is claimed, on the basis of computer models, that this should lead to 1.1 – 6.4 C warming.
What is rarely noted is that we are already three-quarters of the way into this in terms of radiative forcing, but we have only witnessed a 0.6 (+/-0.2) C rise, and there is no reason to suppose that all of this is due to humans.
Indeed the system requires no external driver to fluctuate by a fraction of a degree because of ocean disequilibrium with the atmosphere. There are also alternative drivers relating to cosmic rays, the sun, water vapor and clouds. Moreover, it is worth remembering that modelers even find it difficult to account for the medieval warm period.
The Real Crisis:
Our so-called “crisis” is thus neither a product of current observations nor of projections.
But does it matter if global warming is a “crisis” or not? Aren’t we threatened by a serious temperature rise? Shouldn’t we act anyway, because we are stewards of the environment?
Herein lies the moral danger behind global warming hysteria. Each day, 20,000 people in the world die of waterborne diseases. Half a billion people go hungry. A child is orphaned by AIDS every seven seconds. This does not have to happen. We allow it while fretting about “saving the planet.” What is wrong with us that we downplay this human misery before our eyes and focus on events that will probably not happen even a hundred years hence? We know that the greatest cause of environmental degradation is poverty; on this, we can and must act.
The global warming “crisis” is misguided. In hubristically seeking to “control” climate, we foolishly abandon age-old adaptations to inexorable change. There is no way we can predictably manage this most complex of coupled, nonlinear chaotic systems. The inconvenient truth is that “doing something” (emitting gases) at the margins and “not doing something” (not emitting gases) are equally unpredictable.
Climate change is a norm, not an exception. It is both an opportunity and a challenge. The real crises for 4 billion people in the world remain poverty, dirty water and the lack of a modern energy supply. By contrast, global warming represents an ecochondria of the pampered rich.
We can no longer afford to cling to the anti-human doctrines of outdated environmentalist thinking. The “crisis” is the global warming political agenda, not climate change
That’s a very insightful comment, Bickers. Very eloquently and concisely written. You’re one of the reason I return to this site over and over again. Thank you.
I would only add that the AGW prophets of doom have exactly (if unconsciously) copied the ancients who manipulated sin and guilt and fear of catastrophic divine retribution, i.e. great floods, great fires, plagues, starvation and mass exile. As you note, therein, lies the subconscious mytho-sociological power of the AGW meme.
Like the ancients, today’s demagogues who manipulate the tautology of “climate change” do so to amass immense political power in the hands of a very few. Their success is a sign of the failure of our education system to teach classical humanities and history. Today we are ahistorical, living from sound bite to image and back again. The past isn’t part of our cultural calculus.
Please note, that those promoting the AGW hysteria do not need to be consciously aware of the great harm that they do. If they were, the moral dissonance would be so great as to destroy a normal person.
No great evil is required at this point, simply the ever-present strange attractor of concentrated political power. The Stalins and the Maos come later in the Hegelian cycle of history. For now we are content with the moralistic clowns, the Bob Browns, Clive Hamiltons and the Tim Flannerys. They are Eric Hoffer’s True Believers… the precursors to the Weimar Republic’s voting itself out of existence. Forgive them for they, for the most part, know not what they do. They won’t have that excuse for long, however.
To actually control the direction of the climate (never mind for a moment the nonsensical nature of such a proposal) entails centralized authoritarian control over every aspect of energy usage in society.
Seizing control of energy usage rights is the latest strategy of the authoritarian collectivist impulse to crack the individualist tendency towards increasing liberty, which has had the upper hand since 1944.
Democracies are constitutional and often fitted with bills of rights and multiple layers of protection for civil liberties. However, there are no clauses in any bill of rights that protects one’s liberty in regard to the consumption of energy. Yet, energy is the primary driver of all the other civil liberties we value so highly. Too bad the founding fathers weren’t physicists!
AGW hysteria is a neat way for that ever present authoritarian streak in humanity to make an end run around the common law legal framework a thousand years in the making.
We take our economic and civil liberties for granted at our peril!
“I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.”……Alexandre Dumas
SJT
Satellite data don’t have the urban heat island effects and a host of other surface factors which bias measurements. That said I do hope Roy Spencer and John Christie are aware of the presence of Langmuire sheafs or plasma double layers in the region where the satellites make the measurements. There is more going on up there than most realise, and, there is one zone – the mesosphere where we have little or no data – balloons can’t get there, and its too low for satellites to sample, let alone the manner orbiters.
“Sums the AGW believers position brilliantly: ”
No, it doesn’t. Not at all. A nice work of polemic, but if you want to know what the AGW position is, you will have to look elsewhere.
To the AGW propogandists: I’m sorry but you’ve only yourselves to blame for not allowing un- biased/evenly funded research science to run its course!
The Greens are Going Crazy
By Alan Caruba (07/27/08)
It’s hard to ignore the fact that the Greens are going crazy, not just in the United States, but around the world. They are increasingly frantic over the opposition being voiced against global warming, one of the greatest hoaxes in modern history.
The Greens have bet everything on global warming as the reason for giving up the use of long established sources of energy such as oil, coal and natural gas. The object has been to slow everything the modern world calls progress.
In India, a spokesman for that nation of one billion people has flatly refused to accept the global warming hoax. China shows no sign of yielding to the global warming lies. The greatest agricultural and mercantile economy to have ever existed, the United States of America continues to thwart its own growth by yielding to the lies.
Recently the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, said that “coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick. It’s global warming. It’s ruining our country. It’s ruining our world.”
No, what makes us sick is listening to such preposterous lies. A Rasmussen telephone survey taken after Sen. Reid’s absurd statement found that 52% of voters surveyed rejected his views about coal and oil, double the amount of those who agreed.
What is troublesome, however, is that the same survey found the voters evenly divided on whether global warming exists or poses a threat. Fully 47% of those surveyed believe that human activity affects the climate. Both candidates for President are publicly committed to the global warming hoax by varying degrees.
Despite an intense, decades-long propaganda campaign, coupled with indoctrination in our nation’s schools, the truth is beginning to emerge.
In March, an international conference on climate change organized by The Heartland Institute brought together over 500 of the world’s leading climatologists, meteorologists, economists and others for three days of seminars and presentations that completely refuted the pronouncements of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and disputed the lies of Al Gore’s famed “documentary.”
As recently as July 8, the Space and Science Research Center held a news conference in which it stated that the warming that has occurred since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850 was completely natural, i.e., had nothing to do with human or industrial activity.
More significantly, the Center went on record saying that, “After an exhaustive review of a substantial body of climate research, and in conjunction with the obvious and compelling new evidence that exists, it is time that the world community acknowledges that the Earth has begun the next climate change.” The current warming period is not only at an end, but a distinct cooling cycle has begun and will bring “predominantly colder global temperatures for many years into the future.”
Just how crazed has the environmental movement become? On July 7 it was announced that Argentine scientists have been strapping plastic tanks to the backs of cows to collect and measure how much methane gas they produce.
Methane, like carbon dioxide, is a minor component of the Earth’s atmosphere. Methane is also released from swamps, landfills and other sources. If it and CO2 played a significant role in determining the world’s climate, it would be a cause for concern, but it is the Sun that primarily drives the Earth’s climate cycles. Solar activity has gone quiet in recent years as fewer and fewer sunspots, magnetic storms, have been seen.
To maintain the global warming hoax, thousands of events and natural phenomena have been blamed on it. A recent example is the floods in America’s mid-West. The National Wildlife Federation released a statement on July 1 blaming global warming.
Climate experts at The Heartland Institute were quick to respond. Dr. Joseph D’Aleo, Executive Director of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, said, “Alarmists have adopted the can’t-lose position that all extremes of weather—cold, warm, wet, or dry—are all due to global warming”, adding that, “The record snows, severe weather, and heavy rainfall have been the result of rapid cooling in the northern tier of the United States and Canada, not global warming.”
Early in July, Bret Stephens, writing in The Wall Street Journal, called global warming “a mass hysteria phenomenon”, noting that “NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world’s oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years…”
The global warming hoax has never been about the climate. It is about competing economic theories. “Socialism may have failed as an economic theory,” wrote Stephens, “but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism.”
The United States Senate refused to consider the UN Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change that requires massive reductions in carbon dioxide emissions based solely on the global warming hoax, but other nations did sign on. None have ever met their obligation to limit CO2 emissions, nor need they have bothered.
At the recent G8 conference an international agreement to cut CO2 emissions was given serious consideration despite the fact that the Earth is now a decade into a cooling cycle likely to last several decades or longer. The impact of this proposal on the lives of ordinary citizens will prove needlessly costly. Proposals in some nations for various taxes based on global warming are a form of fraud.
The sensible refusal by leaders in emerging economies such as China and India would make it impossible for any limitations on carbon emissions by Western nations to have any impact, even if such reductions had anything to do with the realities of the Earth’s climate.
The only thing that can be predicted with certainty is that the Greens will become increasingly unhinged and crazed by the failure of the global warming hoax.