Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Nigel Lawson on Global Warming as “A Grain of Truth and a Mountain of Nonsense”

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“So the new religion of global warming, however convenient it may be to politicians, is not as harmless as it may appear at first sight. Indeed, the more one examines it, the more it resembles a Da Vinci Code of environmentalism. It is a great story, and a phenomenal best-seller. It contains a grain of truth – and a mountain of nonsense. And that nonsense could be very damaging indeed. We appear to have entered a new age of unreason, which threatens to be as economically harmful as it is profoundly disquieting. It is from this, above all, that we really do need to save the planet.”

from Nigel Lawson’s book ‘An Appeal to Reason’

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. gavin says

    There are people who flog blogs and there those who flog books. Thats the easy stuff hey

    “The readiness to embrace this fashionable belief has led the present Labour Government, enthusiastically supported by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, to commit itself to a policy of drastically cutting back carbon dioxide emissions – at huge cost to the British economy and to the living standards not merely of this generation, but of our children’s generation, too.

    That is why I have written a book about the subject.

    Now, I readily admit that I am not a scientist; but then neither are the vast majority of those who espouse the currently fashionable madness. Moreover, most of those scientists who speak with such certainty about global warming and climate change are not climate scientists, or Earth scientists of any kind, and thus have no special knowledge to contribute”

    -The REAL inconvenient truth: Zealotry over global warming could damage our Earth far more than climate change
    By NIGEL LAWSON

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-557374/The-REAL-inconvenient-truth-Zealotry-global-warming-damage-Earth-far-climate-change.html
    .

  2. Green Davey Gam Esq. says

    Excellent article by Nigel Lawson – good grammar, logic, and rhetoric rolled into one. Unlike Al Gore, who used grammar, rhetoric, but bad logic. Nigel’s daughter is a good cook too, which puts him even further ahead of Al in my estimation. I bet Kerry O’Brien of ABC TV won’t be mentioning Nigel’s book. Nor will Kevin and Penny.

  3. spangled drongo says

    When the AGW religion still relies on and quotes Al Gore and the Hockey Stick, people of sound common sense like Nigel Lawson dont need to be Euclid to apply the old “reductio ad absurdam”.
    Nigella improves his cred too.
    Especially her pears royale!

  6. Claus. E. Witz says

    Shakes stubby, sprays anti-BS foam from CO2-rich beer:

    http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001AGUSM…H31C13H

    http://pt.wkhealth.com/pt/re/tox/abstract.00139709-200524040-00003.htm;jsessionid=LZZYXzh1jGW4G21LbkC1VLXG8spgMQwgZyCxBjyK1pvVymKZtyCy!932896411!181195628!8091!-1

    http://www.inspect-ny.com/hazmat/CO2gashaz.htm#co2colimits

    saunters casually back to CO2-emitting campfire, turns CO2-emitting steak over, opens another CO2-rich stubby…..belches gas etc….

  7. Anon 1984 conspiracy says

    Claus… you need to read the paper… The author discusses the limits you posted.

  9. cohenite says

    From Anon’s link;

    “the safe working level of CO2 is presently set at 5000ppm for an 8 h day 40 h working week, no human ever endures such a level of CO2 in the atmosphere for 24 h a day, 365 days a year, for an entire lifetime nor has any human ever bred off-spring under these conditions.”

    That is one of the wildest statements I have ever read; is the author saying no baby has ever been conceived on the back seat of a car while the motor was running?

  10. SJT says

    “When the AGW religion ” AGW is based on science. It is nothing like a religion. If you can’t understand science, that’s your problem.

  12. spangled drongo says

    Cohenite,
    I used to work a jackhammer inside hollow bridge pylons with centrifugal pumps screaming their heads off to keep the water level at bay, slowly sinking these huge pylons into the river bed.
    We had no oxygen delivery and did it 8 hours a day.
    I also later owned a garden centre and 1000 ppm was a pussycat in comparison.
    Those jobs were about 15 years apart but I recall CO2 was a lot higher in the pylons.

  13. spangled drongo says

    SJT

    “AGW is based on science. It is nothing like a religion.”

    Would you go me halves and settle for the black and white minstrel show.

  15. Ivan (841 days & Counting) says

    “AGW is based on science. It is nothing like a religion.”

    It is actually demonstrable that AGW is a religious belief, and has absolutely no basis in science – and here is a simple test to prove the point.

    Go to the AR4 Synthesis Report and search on the word “projected” — by my count it is used 102 times. What this means is that AR4 is completely worthless as a scientific treatise: there is nothing in it that is postulated with anything like certainty.

    The dictionary defines “project(ed)” as “to calculate, estimate, or predict”.
    The dictionary also defines “shaman” as “a person who acts as intermediary between the natural and supernatural worlds, using magic to cure illness, predict the future, control spiritual forces, etc.”

    QED.
    AGW is a religion, which relies on a group of shamans to proselytise and convert the unwashed.

  16. bazza says

    Louis,
    “AGW is based on pseudscience – not science” . Louis, why bother with all your evidence free rants. Science is about evidence. All you have is beliefs. If your scepticism is based on beliefs you are sadly badly delusioned. Clean your slate and start again.

  17. bazza says

    Ivans leaps of logic, I am in awe of, not. WOW.
    Shamans project the future.
    Shamans are religous.
    AR4 projects the future.
    Therefore AR4 is religous.
    So says Ivans terrible test. Typical tho.

  21. mel says

    Yes, well, as Aunty Doris used to say, “Nigel always knows best”.

    I wonder who Nigel thinks will win the FA Cup.

  25. Gordon Robertson says

    spangled drongo said …”I used to work a jackhammer inside hollow bridge pylons…”

    How long ago was that? I live in Canada and that’s called a ‘confined space’ in our construction lingo. They wouldn’t let you down there without a safety harness and a crane to pull you out, and there would be air pumped in with a guy running around with a ‘sniffer’, testing the air.

    Anything deeper than waist height is treated the same.

    BTW…how’s your hearing, and have you stopped shaking yet? 🙂

  27. Gordon Robertson says

    Ian…thanks for your report.

    I liked your graph with the expanded temperature scale (Figure 5). Sure look flat, doesn’t it? It would be nice to see the surface temperature superimposed on there to demonstrate how much cooler the troposphere is compared to it.

  28. Louis Hissink says

    Bazza

    AGW is based on Arrhenius’ theory which has never been verified. A scientfic thoery based on a sciemtofically untested assumption is known as pseudoscience.

    Since your immediate ploy is to shoot the messenger, then one concludes you are another proselytising climate clown.

  29. Patrick B says

    “saunters casually back to CO2-emitting campfire, turns CO2-emitting steak over, opens another CO2-rich stubby…..belches gas etc….”

    Expends excess energy with rapid, waist level hand movements …

  30. Jan Pompe says

    Gordon: “How long ago was that? I live in Canada and that’s called a ‘confined space’ in our construction lingo. They wouldn’t let you down there without a safety harness and a crane to pull you out, and there would be air pumped in with a guy running around with a ‘sniffer’, testing the air.”

    40 years ago I was the guy with the sniffer (draeger tubes & pumps) at that time adherence to and policing of OH&S issues was a little more patchy than it is today. BHP who I worked for at the time were careful about it in the mines and holds of ships the same could not be said of all construction companies.

    I was the guy with the jack hammer and gelignite a couple of years before that I’ve had tinnitus ever since but I can’t really say if it was the jack hammer or the rock band that I played in was the cause.

  31. gavin says

    Ian: “I have been following the GW thing for a while…” so have a few others here

    A good summary at a glance but I have to say your arguments against 5.2 Excuses 1-5 could fall apart if there is considerably more CO2 emitted recently in the NH versus the SH. And “If the aerosols suppressed warming” we will see the barn door open as the permafrost melts.

    BTW one has to be patient when posting on Jen’s, wait a while for the blog to turn it over on the thread

  32. Ian says

    Gavin,

    “Excuses 1-5 could fall apart if there is considerably more CO2 emitted recently in the NH versus the SH.”

    Ahhh, but you are forgetting the claim that CO2 is “well mixed” i.e. it is the same concentration all over the world.

    Ya, sorry for the double post. I got a 500 system error the first time and so assumed it didn’t go through …

  33. gavin says

    Jan: “I can’t really say if it was the jack hammer or the rock band that I played in was the cause”.

    Late 1960’s RMIT and the Trade Unions conducted a deafness study on workers in Melbourne who were likely to be exposed to high noise levels every day. After some time before the Arbitration Commission we won the first industrial award for compensation via an hourly penalty. As you might guess; every industry in the country went to those initial hearings with Commissioner Clarkson. Some of the workers were in it for the duration too.

    Deafness can be a cruel thing from any cause. Many of my male peers had measurable hearing deterioration that could be directly attributed to their particular environment. Most had lost considerable sensitivity to their home stereos and that’s where I first became involved while sorting amps, turntables, speakers and phasing. Screaming vacuum pumps and refiners in the factory had done their job but it was the welders and boilermakers who suffered most from nearly constant hammering in the workshops.

  34. gavin says

    Ian; I used to think CO2 was “well mixed” however current NH conditions including temp v the SH indicate a lag then more lag re the oceans.

    note Jen’s blog is bogged!

  35. Jan Pompe says

    Gavin: “Late 1960’s RMIT and the Trade Unions conducted a deafness study on workers in Melbourne who were likely to be exposed to high noise levels every day. After some time before the Arbitration Commission we won the first industrial award for compensation via an hourly penalty.”

    Yes i remember it and by then I was the guy running around with the draeger tubes in the holds of ships, coal mines and blast furnaces. The results of those sorts of studies and commission findings take time to implement it doesn’t happen instantaneously. In any event I could not definitely prove my tinnitus was not entirely self inflicted with the musical instruments.

    I had to quite a job in a hospital where the patients call bell sounded approximately the same as my tinnitus and I couldn’t hear it unless someone pointed it out that it was ringing.

  36. Green Davey Gam Esq. says

    As examples of Wittgenstein’s ‘bewitchment by language’, I recommend two articles on Nigel Lawson in UK newspapers. One is in the right-wing Telegraph, by Christopher Booker, the other in the left-wing Guardian, by Julian Glover. I tried pasting the URLs but no luck. You will Google them easily by (nigel+lawson+telegraph) and (nigel+lawson+guardian). Are they talking about the same person?

  37. Tilo Reber says

    Nice article by Nigel, but he needs to change some of those “percent” to “deg. C”.

  38. Steve Short says

    Gavin

    “Ian; I used to think CO2 was “well mixed” however current NH conditions including temp v the SH indicate a lag then more lag re the oceans.”

    “Current” NH conditions? Surely you jest?

    I started a thread on this issue for the great Southern Ocean back on 4 June (which ran moderately well) but you wouldn’t know by comments like these. All the necessary NOAA-coordinated CO2 levels from a host of stations has been freely available for years.

    Regional heterogeneity of atmospheric CO2 levels has been known about since 1957!

    Trends in those heterogeneities and the reasons behind those trends them is where the real story of at least the last decade lies.

    Yet another example of the blinkered view which on the one hand piously claims it’s all due to rising CO2 but is actually obsessed with temperature trends, ‘adjusted’ or not, and blithely ignores the actual real world behaviour of CO2 itself, both in the air and in the oceans.

  39. gavin says

    Jan: In brief re hearing loss, any avoidable loss of function is regrettable, each one of us is affected differently, tinnitus can be a big nuisance when trying to sleep after a long day but most of us can switch it off after any interesting distraction. Also, I don’t recall using draeger tubes to measure noise (smile).

    How smart are as we get older? Who thought of asking Drongo if he was working an “air” tool down in the hollow pile? The case for CO2 being harmless remains fishy on that score hey

  40. Jan Pompe says

    gavin: “Also, I don’t recall using draeger tubes to measure noise (smile).”

    i don’t recall the context shift mostly used draeger’s for CO detection but I can tell you with some certainty that even though the company was concerned about the build up of toxic gases (CO2 was not a consideration) no-one was wearing ear plugs/muffs even though the forklifts were moving steel around the hold of the ships – a rather noisy operation.

    I didn’t see electric jack hammers about until a decade or two later (doesn’t mean they didn’t exist).

  41. gavin says

    If Shorty goes way back I bet he will find more than one comment I made on Jen’s about the mixing of CO2 in the atmosphere.

    There was a time 1960’s when I measured local CO2 in calibrating hand held instruments on a daily basis. It led to lots of discussions with certain authorities. They were probably as interested in the atmospheric environment as we were. Vic EPA weren’t as easy to get on with but the arguments ceased after Cape Grim was built.

  42. Glen says

    Hey Guys, I was recently reading of the melting of the arctic summer ice. It really worried me.

    Then I remembered this blog! Obviously the people here can fully explain why the arctic ice melting isn’t caused by global warming. So I look forward to someone explaining why here.

    Thanks in advance guys, I look forward to the responses.

  43. Steve Short says

    All the necessary NOAA-coordinated CO2 level data from a host of stations has been freely available for years, including Cape Grim.

    Spent plenty of time myself measuring O2 and CO2 myself – in wood chip heaps, coal wash and coal stockpiles. A little matter of ‘spon com’.

  44. gavin says

    Jan: At our Melbourne mills all the indoor fork lift trucks were converted to gas to minimise emissions. The paper conversion warehouse operated with large numbers of people and forklifts in close proximity. Guess I developed a good nose for clean air with constant monitoring.

  45. Steve Short says

    Nice to see at least Gavin can always get away with describing his ‘bona fides’ without bringing on a massed troll attack. Must have ‘connections’.

  47. Louis Hissink says

    Steve/Cohenite

    I recollect a short discussion with William Kinninmonth about atmosphereic IR – it seems that measured downwelling IR radiation to the earth’s surface is much higher than from its surface – and given that the only source of IR in the atmosphere are so called GHG, then it’s a logical conclusion that the measured IR “must” be due to CO2. (WK reckons there is a serious problem in explaining this data, and the IPCC are ignoring it).

    Hence the current hysteria.

    The problem is thinking within one or two paradigms, gravity and gases etc.

    In the plasma physics area weather is regarded as a complex electrodynamic interplay between the earth, as an electrically charged sphere, and space plasma. Electric currents , generally in plasma dark current mode, are thought to power the winds and cyclones/hurricanes/tornadoes.

    The enormous Birkeland currents entering into and out of the earth’s polar regions, coupled with the homopolar motor system that powers the earth’s rotation around its’ axis, are all enormous energy inputs into the earth system that are totally ignored by the current paradigms.

    The anomalous downwelling IR is thus not due to CO2 but more likely to dark-current mode electric currents in the atmosphere that no one sees, and therefore are never searched for.

    In addition since no one believes that electricity has any role to play in weather, apart from being interpreted as a dangerous after-effect, it is little wonder so much is made from the interpretation of a trace gas in the atmosphere.

    Brian Tinsley http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/faculty/tinsley.html

    has some important research on this topic.

  48. Glen says

    Hey guys, dont forget me, I really need an explanation for the disappearing arctic summer ice. Obviously you skeptics have worked it all out – whats the reason?.

    Again, thanks in advance.

  50. Gordon Robertson says

    Glen…re Arctic ice.

    there are many theories on what’s happening in the Arctic and I don’t have them all down pat.

    I have just finished reading two books, one on the Arctic and one on the Antarctic. The Arctic book is by Henry Larsen, who was captain of the St. Roch, a Canadian police boat that was first to sail the Northwest Passage both ways in the 1940’s.

    When he sailed from Vancouver to Halifax in 1940, he took Amundsen’s route and got locked in the ice along the north coast of Canada. It took two years to reach Halifax. According to Larsen, Arctic ice is greatly affected by wind and it can blow the ice onto the coast or right out into the Atlantic.

    On the return voyage in 1944, they went further north and sailed through to Vancouver in 86 days. That’s a trip of over 7500 miles. They hit some ice along the way, but the St. Roch is a small supply ship, not an icebreaker. Most of the way was clear sailing and they didn’t get locked in the ice once. Anyone visiting Vancouver can see the boat in the Maritime Museum.

    The Antarctic book is Shackleton’s aborted mission to walk across the continent. They had exactly the same problem with pack ice, they were completely dependent on the wind direction since it blew the packs around, blocking their way. Eventually, they were trapped in a pack for the winter and it demolished their ship in the end.

    The thing that surprised me was their ability to survive during an Antarctic winter without much fuss in 1914. I had heard Antarctic winters get as cold as -60 F with wind-chills below -100 F. They were reporting temperatures no lower than -40 F at worst.

    Here’s another take on it:

    http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/09/reports-record-arctic-ice-melt-disgracefully-ignore-history

    According to the article, serious studies did not begin in the Arctic till 1972, and it wasn’t till 1979 that we got visual coverage from satellites.

    Another article:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/goddard_polar_ice/

    This one explains how James Hansen had predicted high melt levels for both the Arctic and the Antarctic, but now he claims the melting in the Arctic is due to soot blackening the snow.

    Finally, here’s another:

    http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/01/03/arctic-fingerprint-doesnt-match/#more-296

    It’s about a ‘vertical structure of Arctic warming’. From what I understand, warm air from the tropics moves up into the Arctic region at higher elevations, which is opposite to what models predicted. I remember Lindzen talking about that. Heat in the tropics doesn’t escape vertically into the atmosphere, it is transported north first.

    A Swedish study, which is cited in the article, claims that ‘variations in atmospheric heat transport from the lower latitudes into the northern high latitudes (via atmospheric circulation patterns) are largely responsible for the enhanced warming of the Arctic atmosphere’.

    Apparently things are getting back to normal in 2008.

  51. gavin says

    LOUIS, Louis, louis…..your last post is tragic if not entirely daft. Sorry but I read through before looking down below the line.

    “The problem is thinking within one or two paradigms, gravity and gases etc”. Good folks here will know I have that problem too…nuf said hey

  52. Gordon Robertson says

    Jan Pompe said “I was the guy with the jack hammer and gelignite a couple of years before that I’ve had tinnitus ever since but I can’t really say if it was the jack hammer or the rock band that I played in was the cause”.

    I’ve done my time in bands but nothing deafening. My hearing is still very good and I credit that to the recording I’ve done. When you concentrate on adjusting frequency responses in recordings, it helps you identify sounds you might otherwise miss. A lot of the sounds in hearing tests are high frequency at a low level, and unless you know the sound of such a frequency, you might ignore it.

    Worst deafness I got was from an Iggy Pop concert, if you want to call Iggy’s work a concert. I could not hear a thing for hours afterward. I met some friends afterwards and all I could do was try to read lips.

    I read an article a while back by a guy doing work with people who were plagued by tinnitus-type sounds. He claimed you could train your brain to tune them out. I imagine if they are due to actual damage in the ear, it might be a problem.

    You might try hypnosis. I know it works well for dealing with problems that have a psychosomatic origin.

  53. Gordon Robertson says

    ps. just noted the posting time of my post. It was August 7, 2008 03:50 PM. It’s August 06, 2008 on the west coast of Canada and the time is 10:53:06 PM.

    You guys in Oz need to adjust your clocks. Fair dinkum. 🙂

  54. cohenite says

    Jan; as your lawyer I can assure you that your hearing problems were not due to your band experience; after all, how much damage can some whispered crooning and humming from a gentle folk group cause? At least that’ll be your story in the witness box; whereas all that bashing and crashing on the job, well, it’s a foregone conclusion; actually, there is no time limit to a hearing loss claim; if it’s ‘only’ tinnitus, the claim cut off point is 1/1/02, at least in NSW.

    Louis; Philipona and Ruckstuhl have published a number of papers on longwave downward measurements in an attempt to seperate anthropogenic and natural causes for heating over Europe; actually I remember Steve sending one into Benny Peiser earlier this year; a couple of their papers are here;

    http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL034228.shtml

    Steve’s one is at Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol 9, 09636, 2007; and another one is at; Meteorologische Zeitschrift, Vol 17, no 2, April 2008, pp 181-186

    They seem less concerned with CO2 then with declining aerosols and consequent solar brightening/irradiance under cloud-free skies; they conclude that the bulk of recent warming was due to the reduction in aerosols and the cessation of their direct blocking of solar.

  57. spangled drongo says

    Cohenite,
    Those hollow pylons weren’t really suitable for romance and the opportunity never really arose anyway.
    Gordon,
    That was 1957, Bruce Highway, Mary river, Gympie, Queensland and I suffer from the “cocktail party effect” [hearing wise, that is] probably as a result. Luckily I can still identify HF [Scarlet Honeyeaters] and LF [Frogmouth Owls] that some people with good hearing have problems with, so I have to be thankful.
    Gavin,
    The jackhammers were air tools but there was so much gear working inside those pylons that CO2 was always a hazzard. Some times we had to stop work because of the “drowning effect” until it was cleared. We were the canaries. No one seemed to have any measuring devices.
    When we could no longer extract enough water, we let it fill up and continued jackhammering under water with deep-sea diver’s gear [lead boots and copper helmets] and no visibility.
    Sorry for the delay, been sailing down the ‘Pin where the weather and the wildlife were so fabulous that I have to suck lemons to take the silly smile off my face.

  59. Louis Hissink says

    Cohenite,

    Thanks for that – I’ll might follow up with WK and see what the latest take is on this. From memory it’s a tad more to do with aerosols and etc.

  61. Louis Hissink says

    Which we will do. Anything published by the Guardian could be catalogued into the hysteria section of the local library.

  62. Ian says

    Gordon — thanks for the correction .. fixed.

    Glen — The arctic had similar melting in the 30s. It’s a natural variation.

  63. Jan Pompe says

    Gordon: “You might try hypnosis. I know it works well for dealing with problems that have a psychosomatic origin.”

    Thanks for your note I work in a hospital without call bells – every one is mobile sometimes too mobile. I could/can hear the call bells in other hospitals without problem it’s the old fashioned buzzers I could not hear unless pointed out or I was directly underneath it. I wasn’t really aware of a problem until my assistant became annoyed when I never answered calls unless I was standing under the buzzer.

    As for not having trouble due to bands I might suggest that perhaps you weren’t playing with a bunch of lunatics like I was. I played in an orchestra for a while with the trumpets In the row behind – that was sometimes painful too.

  64. Louis Hissink says

    Jan,

    another cause of hearing loss (especially HF) is flying in turbine powered helicopters. I discovered my HF loss when I complained about a new Suunto watch not notifying me of an appointment – it rang the alarm allright but the frequency was very high and I never heard it.

    As for the tinnitus – sometimes it disappears completely when I am relaxed, so I suspect its stress related.

  65. gavin says

    Jan: It concerns me that you may not have done an independent assessment of your hearing difficulties yet. Tinnitus can be due to a medical problem. A former household member travelled infrequently to a lab in Sydney to have his personalized external aid updated. They sometimes failed after he forgot to remove the one he was wearing on his trip to the shower.

    Someone learning to lip-read after adulthood becomes stubborn in other ways too….

  66. gavin says

    Louis: Many mature adult males suffer from substance thickening between the ears as time goes on. HF ring tones aren’t the only things we can’t pick up or hang up on.

    Each way conversation diminishes too according to the one with the day job.

  67. Louis Hissink says

    Gavin,

    Ad hom’ after ad hom – never let up do you. I suppose your fellow travellers delight in your superficial posts vilifying the sceptics, albeit it a glib way.

  68. Gordon Robertson says

    Cohenite said “Ha! Gordon’s living in the past; maybe we can establish a temperature trend”.

    The trend in Vancouver is definitely downward in 2008 and we are in the banana belt of Canada. We had the coldest winter in a long time and it was inordinately cold in the northern parts of Canada. I don’t know why this blether about Arctic melt persists. Hudson Bay was completely frozen over last winter.

    June was the coldest month on record and whereas July started hot, I think we may have set a record for the coldest July as well.

    It just warmed up in the last few days to 25 C but it was down at 15 C for a couple of weeks, very unusual for this part of the world where July and August are usually 20 to 25 C, ranging up to 30 C. Remember, it’s mid-summer here.

    How’s things in the future?

  69. Louis Hissink says

    Gavin

    This comment was posted on “Watts Up”, I think it is related to the Guardian link you asked me and associates not to bother with. Says it all, really.

    “This is OT, but EUReferendum.com references you. That is, oddly enough, where I found out about your site, it being one of their favorites. This time, however, the news is not so good, although the witty sarcasm they use in regards to AGW is deliciously funny. I don’t know how to put links in here without getting flagged, so I’ll just tell you it is under the heading of “There is Only One True God.”

    I will quote it. Verify it if you like by visiting their page. I quote:

    “In terms, there is no difference in the tenor of the messages. Thus, in “climate change”, we are not dealing with science but a belief system. The “scientists” are merely the High Priests of this strange new religion, their bible the IPPC assessment report. This is the Holy Writ, handed down from on High. There can be no deviation from The Word.

    This is why the likes of Watts up with that and Climate audit, invaluable though they are, will never prevail. They are attempting to deal, methodically and dispassionately, with the science. But this is a religion. And there is only one true God … the God of climate change.

    If you dispute this fact, you are an unbeliever, and you will be cast into to the Hell of a planet warmed by 4 degrees. We know this to be true – Professor Bob Watson has said so and The Guardian has printed it. No more proof is needed.”

    What is the old saying? Never discuss politics and religion at the dinner table?”

  70. Gordon Robertson says

    Ian said “Gordon — thanks for the correction .. fixed”.

    I may have mislead you. I was talking about a plot of the surface temperature above a plot of the atmospheric temperature, on the same graph, to show it’s the wrong way about. That’s the point Christy is making. Although the IPCC put up a smoke screen in the 2007 AR4, suggesting satellite and sonde data had been adjusted and the atmosphere was now warming in step with the surface, that was totally misleading.

    The atmospheric temperatures are still well below the surface temperatures and that’s not what the models have predicted. I have never seen a graph that demonstrates that clearly, perhaps with a big caption to the effect that something is wrong with the model predictions for the troposphere.

    I’m bothered by the use of temperature anomalies. They seem to suggest an average temperature, which smells a lot to me like models. For example, the Hadley centre uses an anomaly based on the average temperature from 1961 to 1990 in one of its graphs.

    Maybe someone could explain it to me. If you project a warming of 0.6 C as an anomaly in the year 2000, for example, how do you know what the average ‘should’ have been for that year? No one knows that, so an arbitrary range seems to be picked over previous years as an average.

    They talk about a warming of 0.6 C on average over the past century, but what do they base it on? Do you see what I mean? Anyone can cherry pick a convenient baseline and that’s what GISS is famous for doing. In fact, they change the temperature records to suit their propaganda.

    I’d like to see a normalized surface temperature record plot and a normalized satellite record plot superimposed on a graph for the same baseline of average temperatures. I don’t know how to do that and maybe I’m asking too much of you.

  71. Mark says

    Gordon: “The trend in Vancouver is definitely downward in 2008 and we are in the banana belt of Canada.”

    Here in central Canada the picture is similar. Quite cool and very wet with none of the 30 degree+ heatwaves you typically get here several times through the summer. I think the temperature has only topped 30 once so far thsi summer and given the long range forecast that may be it!

  72. Ian says

    Gordon,

    Ah yes that is yet another point — that the troposphere should get hotter faster according the models and it hasn’t.

    I agree with your point about anomalies … it suggests there is such a thing as a ‘correct’ temperature.

  73. Gordon Robertson says

    Mark said…”Here in central Canada the picture is similar”

    That’s interesting. I drove through central Canada on my way to Montreal somewhere around 2001. Hit some pretty good thunderstorms around Winnipeg and The Sioux. I know you get pretty hot and muggy over that way in the summer and it’s interesting things are not as hot as normal.

  74. gavin says

    For what it’s worth, the weather in my part of the world has returned to normal. I wondered today about my lawn mower, long time no see. It stays under the house most of the year.

  75. Jan Pompe says

    gavin: “It concerns me that you may not have done an independent assessment of your hearing difficulties yet. Tinnitus can be due to a medical problem.”

    Yes thanks gavin but I do spend a lot of time with doctors ( funny that ). I also spend quit a bit of time with my GP with regular visits to him and various specialists etc some of the medication I’m on can also cause it so it has in fact been investigated posible causes like hypertension treated. There has been no significant change in about 40 odd years.

    Most of the time I don’t even notice it but for some strange reason I’m noticing it now.

    On the topic of the thread an interesting cropped up when looking at something else: Richard Lindzen

    “It is commonly claimed that the natural component of this blanket keeps the earth about 33 degrees Centigrade warmer than it would be in the absence of this blanket. The claim is a little inappropriate insofar as it requires getting rid of the greenhouse impact of clouds while retaining them to reflect sunlight. Getting rid of clouds as reflectors would reduce this difference substantially. ”

    A minor point he says, and,

    “Greenhouse gases are those substances that are reasonably transparent in the visible but capable of absorbing and emitting in the infrared. The ‘emitting’ part, though conveniently ignored in some oversimplified treatments, will turn out to be very important.

    http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~wsoon/ArmstrongGreenSoon08-Anatomy-d/Lindzen07-EnE-warm-lindz07.pdf

    enough of these little and relatively unimportant points can I suspect add up to some major problems.

  76. Louis Hissink says

    Jan,

    The emitting part seems most important – as N2 and O2 form most of the chemical composition of the atmosphere, any variation of CO2, a radiating gas, would produce interesting results.

    Everything else being equal, CO2 because of its radiative properties, will cool faster than a non radiative gas, (assuming there is a thermal gradient in the first place).

    So how did Arrhenius come up with his idea of CO2 being a greenhouse factor?