The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they’ve been in.
— Dennis Potter
Readers following the Australian news media’s coverage of climate change will probably have detected the conspiracy theories designed to discredit climate science and climate scientists.
These conspiracy theories label the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming “a hoax”, “a religion” or a “scare tactic” concocted to justify higher taxes and arbitrary, draconian restrictions on the personal freedoms of “helpless” and “disenfranchised” citizens.
Purveyors of this alternative reality tell us the entire global community of climate scientists has fabricated or exaggerated the threat of climate change to secure further funding for their research. This has been aided and abetted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a “political” organisation bent on fomenting a global warming crisis in order to install a left-wing totalitarian world government.
At first, it may seem surprising that such dramatistic, florid “fantasy themes” would appear so often in editorials and opinion columns of major newspapers – usually penned by conservative members of the press who cast minority-view scientists as modern day Galileos.
Occasionally, the contrarians themselves variously compare the field of climate science to the powerful religious elite who persecuted Galileo and the Stalinist regime who sent dissident scientists to the gulags or to their deaths.
My recently published study, Talking Points Ammo, found that many of these fantasy themes were developed by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), a Melbourne-based neoliberal think tank. They were then published in the Australian news media – first via op-eds written by IPA staff and associate scholars, and then by way of ideologically sympathetic newspaper editors, reporters and opinion columnists.
Who is the IPA?
Today, the IPA is a high-profile organisation that consistently rejects the evidence for anthropogenic climate change and opposes mitigation strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Its staff and associate scholars are usually presented as independent experts who provide unbiased commentary.
However, the IPA has had a close relationship with the Liberal Party of Australia since its inception in the early 1940s. The IPA was founded by members of the emerging Liberal Party in the early 1940s. Since then, a number of the IPA’s staff – including current executive director John Roskam – have either run for public office as Liberal candidates or worked as staffers for Liberal MPs.
Despite its non-profit status, the IPA accepts significant donations from corporate sponsors such as the tobacco industry as well as the fossil fuel, mining and energy industries. These benefit from the IPA’s use of the news media to promote political agendas that serve the interests of those sponsors.
Finally there is the IPA’s board of directors, which usually includes senior Liberal Party figures and senior mining and energy company executives.
News media outlets have just reported that one of the IPA’s associate scholars and most prominent climate contrarians, Professor Bob Carter, is allegedly receiving funds from the Heartland Institute, a US think tank that also rejects the scientific consensus on climate change.
Who is saying what and where
In my recent article I report an analysis of three datasets:
magazine articles published in The IPA Review between 1989 and 2009
opinion pieces written by IPA senior staff and published in Australian newspapers between 1989 and 2009.
editorials and opinion columns that praised IPA associate scholar Ian Plimer and his book Heaven & Earth during April-June 2009, in the lead-up to the first Australian parliamentary debates on introducing an emissions trading scheme.
Using a combination of Discourse Analysis and Fantasy Theme Analysis, the study identified nine discrete anti-climate-science fantasy themes developed by the IPA and published in the Australian news media.
(Discourse Analysis takes into account the practices associated with the production and consumption of media texts. This study examined media texts for their immediate content as well as their relationship to other texts. Fantasy Theme Analysis takes a structured look at the narratives that express a group’s dramatic interpretation of a real-life event; this includes basic components such as characters and plot lines.)
The nine themes were grouped into two categories. In the first category, “a plea for scientific truth”, there are four fantasy themes:
- climate scientists as rent-seeking frauds
- climate scientists as dissent-stifling elite
- Plimer as Galileo
- Plimer as the people’s scientist.
The second grouping, “religious, political and economic conspiracies”, includes five fantasy themes:
- climate science as religion
- environmentalism as religion
- climate science as left-wing conspiracy
- green as the new red
- climate change mitigation as money-spinning scam.
To understand these dramatic themes we use Ernest Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory and Fantasy Theme Analysis. As Bormann explains:
“When someone dramatizes an event he or she must select certain people to be the focus of the story and present them in a favorable light while selecting others to be portrayed in a more negative fashion … Interpreting events in terms of human action allows us to assign responsibility, to praise or blame, to arouse and propitiate guilt, to hate, and to love.”
Thus, a fantasy theme is a dramatised morality-based narrative driven by stock characters such as heroes and villains.
In the study’s first grouping of fantasy themes, “the plea for scientific truth”, climate scientists are portrayed as villains whose published research forms the basis of the scientific consensus on climate change. The heroes are contrarian or “sceptic” scientists who reject the scientific consensus and speak truth to power at the risk of incurring the wrath of the iron-fisted “establishment”.
It’s all a conspiracy
These fantasy themes tell the story of a global cabal of climate scientists who are consumed with protecting their privileged status and blind to the “reality” that anthropogenic climate change has no evidentiary basis. The primary plot line sees this powerful scientific elite dominating and controlling the field of climate science and suppressing the “scientific truth” by persecuting the scientific voices of dissent.
In the second category of fantasy themes, “religious, political and economic conspiracies”, by far the most frequently used fantasy theme was “climate science as religion”. This theme enables evidence-based scientific conclusions to be dismissed as an arbitrary set of beliefs or dogma.
The plot line of the fantasy theme “climate science as left-wing political conspiracy” sees the environmental religion’s leftist allies (Labor and Green political parties, and even the United Nations) using climate change as a “scare tactic”. The aim is to consolidate their political power, increase taxes to redistribute wealth, and impose a New World Order that will compromise national sovereignty and restrict personal freedoms.
These two fantasy themes serve to delegitimise the most vocal social groups who support action on climate change: the environmental movement and the political left. They are portrayed not as people rationally responding to a real environmental threat identified by the science. They are variously cast as irrational religious fundamentalists following a doomsday cult or as left-wing conspirators cynically using a fabricated or exaggerated threat to pursue political goals.
A good story can take you a long way
Together, these fantasy themes construct a rhetorical vision – an alternative reality – that is consistent with the ideology promoted by neoliberal think tanks such as the IPA and the hostility they provoke towards traditional “enemies” such as the environmental movement and the political left.
These fantasy themes serve as important markers of group identity for the IPA and its coalition of associate scholars, editors, opinion columnists and readers. They repeat the narratives – for example, in letters to the editor or in online comments or discussion forums. This repetition is a strong indication that they see themselves as members of the group.
Finally, the chaining out of these fantasy themes through the news media serves to build and sustain the rhetorical community. It also continues to propagate doubt about the reality, causes and consequences of climate change. And once doubt is sown, the game is changed. Whether you can back up your statements or not, creating doubt, making a non-contentious issue contentious, entirely reframes the debate.
In this case, the fantasy themes are helping to build and sustain a social movement that has at its core a deep and abiding suspicion of climate science, climate scientists and anyone who accepts the scientific consensus. This further serves to justify inaction on climate change.
The Conversation
Comments (384)
Comments on this article are now closed.
Simon Chapman
(Professor of Public Health at University of Sydney)
The most amusing thing about "think tanks" is the way they seem to crave status as genuine seats of scholarship. They typically call themselves "Institutes", you know, like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National Cancer Institute or the Institute Pasteur. The allow their staff to be called "Fellows", you know, like Oxford dons. They publish occasional papers. The grain-fed new-fogeyist types who work there have often never had any other job or life experience beyond undergraduate Labor…
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John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Simon,
You mean of course something like the Climate Institute, setting itself up as a research organisation into climate with not a single sicnetist in sight? Lots of Institutes but no science!
The World Resources Institute??
The Marshall Institute??
Permaculture Resaerch Institute?
...................................?
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
The term "centre" sounds almost as authoritative as Institute, take the Total Environment Centre for instance, apparently they also claim to be involved in "research".
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Centre for Independent Studies
Eclipse Now
Manager of design firm (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
John Nicol: Your facebook page says the following:
///I spend much of my time now studying the physics of carbon dioxide and the role it might play in changing the climate. As Jack Barrett, professor of Chemistry and Infra Red Spectroscopist at Imperial College London, said in 1985 "Carbon dioxide cannot do what the IPCC, CSIRO Climate modellers, the Melbourne and UNSW university climate claim it can, from the stand point of geopgraphy. The physics of this gas shows that it is almost inert in…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
But Eclipse, JohnN & others are immune from scrutiny, remember? They get to ask for "peer-reviewed" materials on even lunch meats. The folks who actually write & study science & peer-reviewed stuff are, all of us, conspirators. All the thousands of us around the world not getting paid by combustion or political interests to mislead the average populace are trying to prevent their freely expressing carefully thought-out, very rational 'skeptical' opinions, even, sometimes, facts.
We're the Blue Meanies of science, trying make these saintly 'skeptics' oh so wrongly into villains.
How dare we raise inconsistencies or omissions, or trash science in what they emit!? Look at John, the Spectroscopist, who panders that and then refuses to engage when it's clear he avoids understanding molecular dynamics, absorption, emission, quantum behavior and so on and so on.
I went though this last year, being foolish enough to not realize at first who pays him to do what.
;]
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Eclipse Now,
I do appreciate that you have taken time to read some details about the basis of my concern and that of many others regarding the more extreme claims regarding CO2 and Global warming. I think your last paragraph is in poor taste but will respectfully ignore it, and your other suggestions regarding moon landings etc.also.
Yes, I agree, the discussion of the science of climate change should be more of the province of real scintists and in particular atmospheric nand radiation physicists…
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Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
John
Partly replying to our earlier conversation that you didnt comment on, perhaps it was buried too deeply and also to some of your comments to Eclipse Now. Your claim that most climate units are populated by Geographers! Do you have first hand knowledge of this? My understanding is that Climate Science - not just the modelling - as a discipline has grown from the merging of a range of scientific disciplines. And that many of the researchers who moved into Climate Science came from Physics backgrounds…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"Perhaps communicate with the authors such as Myhre to see if thay can direct your enquiries further." etc.
Very good advice but judging from his past behaviour, John Nicol is going to ignore it and just carry on in his intellectually dishonest way and keep on spreading his various bits and pieces of disinformation. Don't expect too much from John.
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Dear John, did you ever get around to understanding Trenberth's diagram, you know, the one that a child should be able to understand yet somehow a so-called professional physicist couldn't make head or tail of? Also, did you ever sort out your calculation of surface temperature from radiation related to that diagram. It would be a shame if a "professional physicist" couldn't correct such blunders, especially if he used them as an excuse to spread disinformation over the internet. One could be forgiven for thinking that continuing to spread such disinformation was dishonest.
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
You are so right Simon. I found another "institute" that craves status as genuine seat of scholarship. Seems the grain-fed new-fogeyist types who work there have never had any other job or life experience beyond advertising or marketing. It's called the Climate Institute.
Here's another, this one's called a "foundation" The Australian Conservation Foundation". Seems certain "researchers" have accepted funding from this "foundation" for "projects", but we know what that's all about. Nudge nudge wink wink, say no more. This one doesn't have fellows but it has a "president". Sounds official!
Tim Scanlon
(Climate and Agronomic Extension at Department of Agriculture and Food - Western Australia)
The tactics and payments oil companies have made to think tanks that are anti-science have recently been exposed. Internal company documents have come to light showing the fraudulent practices of the people involved.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/denialgate-heartland.html
http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-confirms-it-mistakenly-emailed-internal-documents
http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute-exposed-internal-documents-unmask-heart-climate-denial-machine
http://www.desmogblog.com/mashey-report-confirms-heartland-s-manipulation-exposes-singer-s-deception
This needs even bigger media coverage than the specious accusations leveled at climate scientists. This is documented fraud, not someone's opinion.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Oops, I see Marc is now over here advocating 'facts' he never seems able to support!
At least he's as smart as Monckton, who refused the bet offered him in 2009. Indeed Monckton knew he'd lose. But, he still puffed on, even stooping to get $ from Fox News (our US truthiness heroes).
Paul Richards
(logged in via LinkedIn)
Alex - Marc at times it is grating, but he has a commonly held world view and represents the "think tank" well. We do need that don't we?
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
If anyone leads from facts, I've never a problem, Paul.
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Unless of course when they prove you wrong, as is consistently the case.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Good Marc. Keep trying, or better, do some studying.
Tim Scanlon
(Climate and Agronomic Extension at Department of Agriculture and Food - Western Australia)
Hey look, the validity of the Heartland documents was confirmed prior to publishing. Peter Gliek checked the documents and published them in their entirety and without editing once Heartland had actually validated them!!
So the Heartland documents show just how far the denier movement is trying to distort the real science of climate change (amongst other sciences).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/-the-origin-of-the-heartl_b_1289669.html
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
One of the fantasy themes Elaine forgot to mention was "The Cause". This theme is relied on heavily by activist scientists, some activist journalists and some activist Phd students to justify their actions. "The Cause" featured prominently in exchanges in the climategate emails emails. It also appears to the reason why one activist scientist has thrown his career in the bin.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-admits-to-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
Marc Hendrickx' comments on "cause" are curious given runs an anti-ABC blog. He, like many people, seems to be devoted to a cause.
Obviously causes lead people to cross ethical lines, be it hacked emails or stolen documents. Heartland didn't have a problem publicising the hacked emails so its vocal complaints about its stolen documents do seem hypocritical.
In the context of the article, are the causes being discussed based on myth or reality?
In the case of the climategate emails, quotes…
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John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
It is interesting to see who comes out with support for a disgraced and dishonest peddlar, who has deservedly had to resign his position. However, it is still sad to see someone, who many years ago would undoubtedly have been deserving of respect, yet has now fallen victim to his own ego. It is most likely that he developed a habit of being less than honest while under he direction of the Manns and Phil Jones' of this world who have p[layed the game of king maker in AGU on teo previous occasions. - or should that have been assasinator!
I know Crris and Michael will hate tis comment and I did consider your possible reactions very closely before making the statements I did. John Nicol
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
This is a very curious comment from John Nicol.
"Dishonest peddlar" is interesting given all but one of the documents are real (and it remains unclear who produced the "fake" document). "Fallen victim to his own ego" is odd given John Nicol cannot see into Gleick's mind. John Nicol then finishes off with a baseless accusation against Mann and Jones.
While it is good that the Heartland documents are in the public domain, how Gleick obtained them crossed an ethical line, as I noted in my earlier…
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John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
It is indeed curious, Michael, because Gleick did such a silly thing for a man in his position, or for any one, really. To impersonate someone else in order to elicit private material, and then to publish it along with a faked document purporting to be from the same source, does seem to me to indicate a very devious mind. Perhaps I am wrong and I await further information before adding to these types of comments.
I think most people, with the exception of Michael J. I. Brown perhaps, would…
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Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
John Nicol of the ACSC is lying when he states the following:
"I do not think that Mann’s Hockey Stick Graph, which is now disowned even by the IPCC, was exactly an honest presentation to the public. The source of data was questionable, the number of points inadequate and he used a massaging algorithm to produce the graph. You may disagree and you are welcome to do so. These things are always a matter of opinion, and from where I stand, Mann was dishonest. "
For an introduction to the Hockey…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
John Nicol: "I do not think that Mann’s Hockey Stick Graph, which is now disowned even by the IPCC"
You can't stop lying can you? Mann's Hockey Stick Graph is in Figure 6.10 on page 467 of AR4 WG1 along with 10 more recent reconstructions.
Obviously you are far more interested in continuing to push lies and other misinformation about climate science than trying to understand your blunders about atmospheric radiation physics. You are a pathologically dishonest person.
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Thanks Chris for your comment.
Fig 6.10 is indeed a group demonstration of the general flavour of the changing climate through the ages going back as far as 2,000 years using a lot of different proxy data and a few thermometers. In the IPCC report of 2001, Mann's graph was apparently picked out as being an outstanding demonsration of the coming catastrophe, solidly promoted by the IPCC to feed the fever which overtook governments of all persuasions and continued up until about 2008. Starved…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
John Nicol: "Fig 6.10 is indeed a group demonstration of the general flavour of the changing climate through the ages"
Here comes the goal-post shifting.
"Starved of confirmation"
What are you talking about? You even said Figure 6.10 is a group demonstration. Does that group confirm MBH99 or not? If not, why not?
"together with the belittling of Mann by Steve McIntyre"
Belittling by a couple of non or lightly scientifically-reviewed papers. Big deal.
"has fed into a period of both…
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Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Great comment John. About Gleick's actions I like Mann's attempted defence:
Mike Mann: “Evaluation shows “Faked” Heartland Climate Strategy Memo is Authentic ”
To which we can respond:
Agreed; it’s an authentic fake.
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
Anthony Cox's "quote" is a distortion. Michael Mann did not say...
“Evaluation shows “Faked” Heartland Climate Strategy Memo is Authentic ”
Instead, he merely retweeted a link to an article with that title.
Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Typical sophistry from Dr Brown.
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Anthony Cox: "Typical sophistry"
So you think "it’s an authentic fake" is not sophistry?
You either have a lot to learn about what sophistry is or you're a hypocrite.
Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Chris, why don't you just tell us whether CO2 is the X or Y variable.
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Anthony (no correlation on any timescale) Cox, why don't you take your new set of goal posts somewhere else?
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
John Nicol: "I is interesting to see who comes out"
I love it. It's one of the clearer demonstrations that you're blinded by your ideological allegiance.
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Ahhh the nefarious actions taken by those under en rapt by "The Cause".
Your hero, who appears likely to be charged, is finished Here's what Andy Revkin had to say about it:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-admits-to-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/
"One way or the other, Gleick’s use of deception in pursuit of his cause after years of calling out climate deception has destroyed his credibility and harmed others. (Some of the released documents contain information about Heartland employees that has no bearing on the climate fight.) That is his personal tragedy and shame (and I’m sure devastating for his colleagues, friends and family)."
No doubt The Con will provide full coverage.
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Tim, can you please clarify your claims of fraud on this. It appears the only fraud here is on the part of those (one presumes them to be CAGW activists) who have acquired and disseminated the documents. For it seems that one document, that has been the focus of much attention is a fake, and a very clumsily one at that. Anthony Watts has a concise post on this at WUWT.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/15/notes-on-the-fake-heartland-document/
None of the climategate emails were faked.
Tim Scanlon
(Climate and Agronomic Extension at Department of Agriculture and Food - Western Australia)
Marc you are still in denial. Lakely confirmed the validity of the documents and how they were emailed to people.
Denier fraudsters are just in damage control, trying to convince everyone they aren't anti-science, when they are.
Oh, and those hacked emails, I've actually read them and not just the cherry picked quotes. There is nothing but scientists discussing science there.
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Tim you really do surprise me with comments purporting to be your real and honest opinion such as "There is nothing but scientists discussing science there" I have read most of those emails and very few dealt with any real science - most were concerned with data problems which didn't show warming and had to be fixed while others were concerned that John Mclean's paper describing the major role of a natural cycle, the La Nina-El Nino and ENSO, was published in JGR.
This of course resulted in…
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Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
I find it curious that McLean's science continues to be defended by "sceptics", particularly after McLean's prediction that 2011 would be the coldest year since 1956!
McLean's 2009 paper does have significant flaws, as discussed by Foster et al. and it even shares some missteps with my parody Man U climate model.
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Michael,
Please tell us about the flaws. It is one thing to make a statement, but surely in such a pair of short papers as were both Mclean's original and Foster's rebuttal, it must be easy to demonstrte an error in less than a page or two. Thanks.
John Nicol
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
The flaws in the McLean et al. (2009) paper are described http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=162 and in the Foster et al. paper.
There is also an interesting post by Foster on the topic at his blog (http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/how-low-can-you-go/);
Don Aitkin
writer, speaker and teacher (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au)
I cannot claim the same background as John Nicol, but I have worked in the assessment of research projects, of all kinds, where money is being sought, both in Australia and overseas, and for thirty years. The argument that human activity can have an effect on climate is probably right, especially at local scales. The argument that such activity is fundamentally warming the temperature of the planet is plausible, but so far not well supported by observations. The argument that such warming is likely…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"The argument that such activity is fundamentally warming the temperature of the planet is plausible, but so far not well supported by observations."
Observations: Long term global warming is happening, long term GHGs are rising, long term other forcings are not rising much, especially over the past 50 years.
What more do you need?
"The argument that such warming is likely to be catastrophic to humanity is based on model scenarios, and is quite unsupported by observations."
Negative forcing by sulphate aerosols: observed
Negative forcing by oceanic heat absorption: observed
"What Australians should be interested in is the ENSO system, and in anticipating the cycle of droughts and floods"
ENSO events, like ordinary weather events, are unpredictable more than a certain time in advance.
You have a lot to learn Don.
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Sorry Chris, but it is you who has a lot to learn, perhaps to read what Don has said.
His comment was in the context of research, acknowledging our shortcomings in understanding climate. His very sensible suggestion is that Australia should concentrate on understanding the influences which determine the oscillations of the ENSO which is already known to be cyclical over decadal periods. More research may unlock further secrets which could lead us to be able to predict with much more certainty…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
John, John, John -- so disappointed. You pretend, as if we never privately discussed points like your #1. Why do you fib to Chris so?
You know the Medieval warming had direct dependence on solar activity. You know cooling in the Little Ice Age had the reverse influence from solar inactivity. And, you know more from volcanic aerosol events, even appearing today in the form of massive combustion particulate clouds cooling that region & altering the Asian monsoon. You know we discussed much…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"Additionally, "more than a cetain time in advance" sits a bit oddly with the predictions of the IPCC as twhat the climate will be like in 2100!!"
John, why is it that you continually want to demonstrate your ignorance? Just because weather events are not predictable more than a certain time in advance does not mean the same thing for climate. Perhaps you're just another person who doesn't understand the difference between weather and climate. In any case, the only thing you have achieved is to demonstrate how little you know.
Don Aitkin
writer, speaker and teacher (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au)
To Chris: I hope that we all have a lot to learn. I keep learning.
ENSO: I am suggesting that it would be in Australia's interest to spend a great deal of money on understanding ENSO. I agree that at the moment we don't have a lot of warning, but as John Nicol points out above, we do have some. I hope that further research would extend our warning system. I would move expenditure from GGE research to ENSO research, pretty confident that we would be a lot better off.
As to your other points…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Don: "But I need more good data than exist at the moment"
So you believe there could still be some mysterious forcing, substantially stronger than that measured for CO2, that we are completely unaware of? How likely is that?
"I'd like to see some really good evidence of the level of climate sensitivity."
There already is from several independent lines of evidence cited in http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdannan/GRL_sensitivity.pdf
"At present it would seem to me that one is as able to see that as negative as positive"
Not sure what you mean by negative as positive. The 95%+ confidence range is 2-4.5C/CO2 doubling derived from, as I cited above, multiple lines of evidence.
"All the arguments are conjectural"
There's very little conjectural cited in Annan and if there is, it does not cross several lines of evidence.
Don Aitkin
writer, speaker and teacher (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au)
For Chris: 'Good data'. The best data we have come from satellites, but there's only thirty years' worth of them. I have some confidence in land temperature data from about 1950, very little before. I have the least confidence in SST. Why? Errors of all kinds, paucity of measuring stations, different forms of measurement, and so on. It follows that while I can see no reason to think that the earth has cooled over the 20th century, and I am prepared to accept that it has warmed, I don't think we are…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Don: "The best data we have come from satellites, but there's only thirty years' worth of them. I have some confidence in land temperature data from about 1950"
The surface data follows the satellite data reasonably well, especially when exogenous influences are removed: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-real-global-warming-signal/
So the only issue for existing data quality here is how far back did the existing quality of data sampling begin? Hadcrut3 has estimates of uncertainty: http…
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Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"So how do you explain the fact that the current warming follows the increase in carbon dioxide? THAT is unprecedented."
It is also non-existent:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1998/offset:-390/plot/rss/from:1998/trend/scale:1000/offset:-280
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
""So how do you explain the fact that the current warming follows the increase in carbon dioxide? THAT is unprecedented."
It is also non-existent"
Anthony Cox dumb as usual. CO2 started rising more than 200 years ago. Temperature didn't start rising much until 100 years ago. By the way, the correlation between annual CO2 as recorded at the Law Dome and global temperature from 1880 10 1978 was 0.71. But in Anthony's alternate reality, 0.71 is the same as zero.
Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"CO2 started rising more than 200 years ago. Temperature didn't start rising much until 100 years ago."
Again, not true; both temperature and CO2 started increasing about 150 years ago; after the little ice age finished:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_200_yrs.html
"the correlation between annual CO2 as recorded at the Law Dome and global temperature from 1880 10 1978 was 0.71."
I don't believe you. Prove it.
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
Above is a classic strawman argument. Climate scientists do not assume that CO2 is the only thing driving climate.
The Foster & Rahmstorf paper discussed at http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-real-global-warming-signal/ also accounts for volcanic aerosols, the ENSO cycle, and solar variability. Once they did this, an increase in global temperatures is still seen.
Anthony Cox provides a link to a temperature record where the scatter in the pre-1875 data clearly shows large uncertainties. Better temperature records are available, including http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years
Anthony Cox is surely well aware of what I have discussed above, but repeats disinformation time and time again. Perhaps this is not unexpected given Anthony Cox has transformed a couple of 1970s undergraduate geography subjects into a degree in climatology (http://www.webcitation.org/65Vd6x6MN).
Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Thanks for the publicity.
You haven't discussed F&R; you issued a set of proclamations which were contradictory; the climate sensitivity found by F&R is inconsistent with that pronounced by AGW. You ran around in circles avoiding that point.
You also ignored F&R's biggest error which is assuming that by removing TSI they have removed the solar effect. As David Stockwell notes that assumes TSI is directly proportional to temperature, i.e. that there is instantaneous equilibrium. Basic physics…
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Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
Anthony Cox has a unique interpretation of Foster & Rahmstorf, transient climate response, climate sensitivity and climate change generally.
For example, Anthony Cox often confuses transient climate response with climate sensitivity in his arguments. He does this so he can claim climate sensitivity is lower than values accepted by mainstream scientists (and even many climate "sceptics").
Anthony Cox believes my interpretation of F&R is in error. I have double checked my facts by asking questions on Foster's blog. Thus far Anthony Cox has avoided doing this, perhaps because he won't like Foster's answers.
Anthony Cox's confusion about his own qualifications in the area of climate perhaps reflect his generally poor grasp of the facts on climate change.
Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"Anthony Cox often confuses transient climate response with climate sensitivity in his arguments. "
What is the difference?
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
One can look up definitions at the following websites (amongst others)...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/345.htm
Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
As I said before, on another thread, the 'official' AGW position on climate sensitivity to CO2 increases is that it is made up of 2 parts.
The first is the Transient Climate Response [TCR] which occurs at 2XCO2, a doubling of CO2 to ~ 560ppm; for calculation purposes that 2XCO2 is arrived at a rate of increase of 1% PA. The current rate of CO2 increase exceeds that but no matter.
The Equilibrium Climate Response [ECR] occurs at a time after the 2XCO2 event and is based on no further increase…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Antony (no correlation on any timescale) Cox:
"The first is the Transient Climate Response [TCR] which occurs at 2XCO2, a doubling of CO2 to ~ 560ppm; for calculation purposes that 2XCO2 is arrived at a rate of increase of 1% PA."
No, it's not just for calculation purposes, it's part of the definition.
"The current rate of CO2 increase exceeds that but no matter."
So 2.3 ppm exceeds 1% of 393 ppm? I guess that's no concern to Anthony Cox. It's only a fact after all.
"It is trivial…
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Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Chris [X or Y variable] O'Neill says this:
"That's short term variability. Heat absorption by the entire mass of the oceans as would occur in equilibrium climate response is in proportion to the entire mass of the oceans."
Which is meaningless at best because total OHC can only be increased by variable heat which is 90% in the upper ocean; or is Chris saying that variable heat distinguishes between AGW caused heat and other heat?
And Chris has also obviously neglected his PFD's and P&ID's because he is double-counting; heat that is contributing to upper ocean variable heat variation cannot then be also counted as contributing to deep ocean heat increase.
But then AGW has not been afraid to incorporate perpetual motion concepts in its theory before.
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
What a lot of pseudo-science. Right up there with "no correlation on any time scale".
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"X or Y variable"
I don't recall ever saying that.
Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
You did the r2 calculations proving that CO2 and temperature are correlated; so:
Is CO2 the X or Y variable?
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Don't know much about correlation, do you Anthony? Or any other mathematics either. Try looking up the definition of correlation. Maybe you're better off avoiding mathematics altogether. Everyone else would be if you did.
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
Anthony Cox, secretary of The Climate Sceptics Party, is indulging in pure pseudo-science. http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pseudo.html provides an introduction to the traits of pseudo-science.
A trait of pseudo-science is not being self-critical. If everything is as simple as Anthony Cox believes, why haven't many thousands of scientists (including "sceptics") come up with his answer previously?
Another trait of pseudo-science is taking numbers and facts from actual science…
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Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
So says the Michael Brown, the Sheldon Cooper of the AGW debate; I quote chapter and verse from Michael's sources to reveal the nonsense that they are and we get the usual sanctimonious lecture about pseudo-science from him, in addition to this:
"If the ocean has not reached equilibrium temperature when CO2 stops increasing, a great deal of temperature rise can still occur,"
Michael's own sources say otherwise. What a scam AGW is.
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Michael Brown,
That looks like an authoritative source for matters climate science. Isn’t anything to do with climate science on Wikipedia edited by Greenpeace and FOE (just like IPCC AR4)?
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
Peter Lang is welcome to suggest an authoritative source with radically different definitions.
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"both temperature and CO2 started increasing about 150 years ago"
Michael Brown has already pointed out the garbage part of your temperature graph. Here are a few samples from the 75 year smoothed CO2 measurement at Law Dome: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/lawdome.combined.dat
1600 276.4
1650 276.4
1700 276.7
1750 277.0
1800 282.9
1850 285.2
1900 296.7
One thing Anthony Cox and Don Aitken are never going to explain is why the CO2 level is not taking 800-900 years to rise after temperature the way it always used to as recorded in the ice cores.
""the correlation between annual CO2 as recorded at the Law Dome and global temperature from 1880 10 1978 was 0.71."
I don't believe you. Prove it."
Hahahaha. I like it. Too hard for you to do your own calculations is it Anthony? Law Dome CO2 is at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/lawdome.combined.dat Use your own annual temperatures, preferably not from one of your corrupted sources.
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
By the way, I patched together the CO2 records for Law Dome and Mauna Loa using the average difference between the two during their period of overlap (1959 to 1978) to estimate what Law Dome will give after 1978. Law Dome is on average 0.7 ppm lower than Mauna Loa. Using the composite CO2 record from 1880 to 2008 to calculate the correlation with temperature (GISTEMP) over the same period gives a correlation of (wait for it):
0.91
Stuff that in you pipe and smoke it, Anthony (no correlation on any timescale) Cox.
Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
I'm impressed; the r2 is 0.91, more than 20% better with the extra 20 years, as you'd expect since that is the super AGW period.
I'll get a mate to do some correlations over similar periods and smaller intervals correlating with PDO and AMO and TSI; in the meantime what is the r2 for this period shown graphically from 1959 when Mauna Loa began and when AGW is at its greatest:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1959/offset:-390/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1959/trend/scale:1000/offset:-280/plot/esrl-co2/from:1959/offset:-390/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1959/scale:1000/offset:-280
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"what is the r2 for this period shown graphically from 1959 when Mauna Loa began and when AGW is at its greatest"
0.89 (to 2008).
Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
OK, that is a very good fit with a +ve correlation. A high +ve correlation indicates a relationship between x and y variables such that as when values for x increase, values for y also increase.
Is CO2 the x or y variable?
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Chris,
Thank you for the refernece to GRL_Sensitivity.pdf. I read there yet again of the tremendous uncertainty in the climate sensitivity which has apparently remained unchanged at 1.5 to 4.5 indicating an error of at least +-3 in both the lowest and highest figure. May one conclude reasonably from this that a "warming" sensitivity of up to -1.5 C (cooling) is also likely.
In your reference I also reasd more fully that:
"Climate sensitivity has been subjectively estimated to be likely to…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
John Nicol: "I read there yet again of the tremendous uncertainty in the climate sensitivity which has apparently remained unchanged at 1.5 to 4.5"
Annan did take a while to get around to it, but if you spent more time reading papers than spreading disinformation on the internet, then you would have noticed that he arrived at a 95% confidence interval of 2.0 to 4.3.
"indicating an error of at least +-3 in both the lowest and highest figure"
What are you talking about?
"I had no idea at…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Chris, not to worry, JohnN says he's been "retired for 12 years" and hasn't really kept up.
If he''s now criticizing the relative stability of forcing estimates for 27 years, as in some odd way 'showing' they're wrong , or something, then maybe he'd like to criticize all the cosmologists who've yet to move w (cosmological constant) more than a small fraction of a percent? Or maybe he could criticize the energy-range estimate for the Higgs Boson, to somehow come up with a theory all physicists…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Don (and anyone), you might look into the wealth of data from the Vostok (Antarctic) & Greenland ice cores, going back hundreds of thousands of years and using accurate isotopic measures of temps.
The Milankovitch Cycles and CO2 concentrations are also accurately recorded. The sediment analyses from under the Antarctic ice are also informative.
The Scientific American article (last Fall) describing some of the reported data (see article refs) is also revealing in that our present temp & CO2 rises are now unmatched by any event since the Permian Extinction ~230 million years back. And, the fastest natural increase in temps & CO2 occurred ~54 million years ago at a rate <1/100 of our present rates of CO2 addition & temp rise.
Don Aitkin
writer, speaker and teacher (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au)
Alex: thank you for the directions.In fact I know all that material— at least I've consulted many of the papers that have discussed the findings.
But, as I said in my earlier, post, I don't think anyone has a real handle on 20th century average global temperature — the error bars are too large, there's too much missing data, the sea surface temperatures are dodgy, the Poles are barely covered, and so on. Maybe you're right. But I have a great fondness for good data, and for good methodology…
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Don Aitkin
writer, speaker and teacher (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au)
After I wrote the above I read Chris's somewhat similar comment, and my response above will serve in large part for Chris.
Look, my position on AGW is that it might be right, but that it is most unlikely to be dangerous or catastrophic, and that we are putting our eggs in the wrong basket. So many of those who support the orthodoxy seem almost dazzled by the way in which they can adapt the AGW argument to whatever new finding there is, whether it is supportive (Hah! We were right all along…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Don, the problem with your responses is that they ignore the detailed responses that falsify the claims you made. They go off on a tangent. One particular thing I'll also mention here is that you said: "land temperatures as worth thinking about only since 1950". If land temperatures are good enough for you then why doesn't the 1 degree C rise in land temperature since 1950 mean anything to you? I think your attitude is heavily weighted towards cynicism and cynicism never achieves anything.
Don Aitkin
writer, speaker and teacher (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au)
Chris, I am not aware that I made any 'claims', other than that I have doubts about the validity and reliability of land temperature measurements. The only thing that would falsify anything in this domain is really good data. Now there aren't really good data. The land temperature increase for the 20th century is commonly agreed to be 0.7C — I don't know where you get your 1 degree from. But I think the precision is bogus anyway. And the use of GTA measurements to three decimal places is equally bogus: there is nothing in the measuring instruments themselves that would allow such precision.
I am not a cynic, but an agnostic about the scientific claims for dangerous AGW, and deeply sceptical about the policy responses to the imagined danger.
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Don: "I am not aware that I made any 'claims', other than that I have doubts about the validity and reliability of land temperature measurements."
That's at least what I was talking about. I thought your problem was with sea surface temperatures. Looks like I'm dealing with a moving target. In any case doesn't a 0.45 deg C rise in 33 years in trend temperature for the UAH satellite derivation mean anything to you: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/trend
"The land temperature increase for the 20th century is commonly agreed to be 0.7C"
No that's the whole globe, land and ocean.
"I don't know where you get your 1 degree from."
BEST
"And the use of GTA measurements to three decimal places is equally bogus"
Who's doing that?
Anyway you're very slippery. I put up arguments in response to what you say and you nearly always ignore that and move onto something else. This is a form of Gish Gallop.
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Actually, BEST (global land average) has a rise in trend from 1950 to 2010 of 1.1 degrees C: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/trend/plot/rss/trend/plot/best/from:1950/to:2010/plot/best/from:1950/to:2010/trend
The trends for UAH and RSS are almost exactly the same over 33 years.
Don Aitkin
writer, speaker and teacher (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au)
Who's doing that? Anyone who tells us that 2011 was the warmest years since whenever, in an attempt to show that warming is going on and is unprecedented, and must be human caused because the models require it, since no other forcing is known. You haven't said that, but you will be aware that this is the standard form of argument.
I'm not slippery, just consistent. I've told you what I think and how I got to it. You propose this or that piece of information as something that knocks down a wicket…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Don: ""And the use of GTA measurements to three decimal places is equally bogus"
Who's doing that?
Anyone who tells us that 2011 was the warmest years since whenever"
Name one person who says that 2011 was the warmest year since anything.
"My judgement is based on gathering together what has been written and considering it as a whole."
So you tell us but you rarely respond with any detail. You can't even get basic facts right e.g. you said "The land temperature increase for the 20th…
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Don Aitkin
writer, speaker and teacher (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au)
'Who's doing that?' Well, a host of end-of-year climate watchers, like National Geographic online , writing about a UN report, at the end of November last year:
'This year is shaping up to be one of the ten hottest years on record, according to a United Nations report announced yesterday. Likewise, 2011 may be the hottest year on record during La Niña, a periodic cooling of the eastern tropical Pacific.'
There are lots of these. Did you miss them? Just Google '2011 is the warmest year…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"National Geographic online , writing about a UN report, at the end of November last year:
'This year is shaping up to be one of the ten hottest years on record"
So now the truth comes out. You didn't really mean 2011 was the warmest year since whenever, you meant something somewhat different. Well at least we know we can't rely on you to be accurate. Also, where are the measurements "to three decimal places" that you assert? I expect this is just another one of your exaggerations.
"Likewise…
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Don Aitkin
writer, speaker and teacher (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au)
Oh dear, this is really smart-arse stuff, isn't it. The measurements of 'warmest year' are done with respect to the GTA at three-decimal places, presumably on the basis that because there are so many measuring stations, three decimal places is appropriate. But to do so is to imply a precision that is not there.
Sorry, Chris, you don't qualify as a conversationalist.
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"this is really smart-arse stuff, isn't it."
So making statements like "Anyone who tells us that 2011 was the warmest years since whenever," is not being a smart-arse is it?
"The measurements of 'warmest year' are done with respect to the GTA at three-decimal places, presumably on the basis that because there are so many measuring stations, three decimal places is appropriate. But to do so is to imply a precision that is not there."
So you have a problem with using a greater number of significant digits for intermediate calculations than is presented in the final results. You not only have a lot to learn about climate science, you have a lot to learn about numerical mathematics.
"you don't qualify as a conversationalist."
If you qualify as a conversationalist through your Gish Galloping, moving the goal posts, and making a lot of claims for which you have zero interest in debate, then yes, I certainly don't qualify as a conversationalist.
Don Aitkin
writer, speaker and teacher (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au)
I gave the wrong Table from WG1 — it should be Table 2-11, not 1-11. It shows, inter alia, the levels of scientific understanding of the forcing agents discussed in the chapter. That for GHGs is said to be High, two are Medium, two are Medium to Low, six are Low, and five are very Low. When I first came to that Table, I wondered on what basis the authors came to their subjective probabilities about the human factor at the 95 per cent level. Of course, if you think that only GHG are important, then the other forcing agents, and the whole uncertainty issue, can be put to one side. If that is not the reason, I still wonder what it is.
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Perhaps I should have just asked Don if he'd changed his spots since 2008: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/04/et_tu_ockhams_razor.php
It seems facts are generally a problem for him, 'trivial' or otherwise. e.g.:
Don: "It warmed again from 1975 to 1998, and then it stopped warming again."
No it didn't: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/04/no_global_warming_has_not_stop.php
Don: The IPCC "went to some trouble to argue that the warming of the late 20th century had no counterpart…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
" I wondered on what basis the authors came to their subjective probabilities about the human factor at the 95 per cent level."
The 95% confidence range for climate sensitivity which has nothing directly to do with uncertainties in forcing estimates.
I'm astounded by the notion that if scientists say they're uncertain whether something is bad or really bad that the rational way to react is to assume it's good.
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Her is an article describing research on the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum: http://climate.yale.edu/publications/eocene-hyperthermal-event-offers-insight-greenhouse-warming
Some people believe that if our climate changes in a 'precedented' way, such as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, for example, then we have little to worry about. Amazing really.
Shirley Birney
retiree (logged in via email @tpg.com.au)
Don Aitkin, your admission that you are still learning does not prevent you from exploiting your prominence by publicly speaking on climate change and sowing the seeds of doubt by irrefutably reproducing the claims of sceptics, even though you are by all accounts, an amateur.
As a former academic and political scientist would it not be in the interests of the common good for you to speak of the history of Australia’s think tanks particularly their importation of America’s most disreputable…
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Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Tim follow the link. It should be easy for Heartland to provide the original email.
lets see "scientists discussing science" you say...
Tim Mitchell #0051: Our Wednesday lunchtime Bible study course on John's Gospel finished last week, so in half an hour we will be gathering some of the regulars together to sit in the sunshine and talk. Perhaps the more informal structure will allow one or two of the students to open up to us? The Lod knows...
Ben Santer 125510087: “Next time I see Pat…
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John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Tim,
Nothing amazes me much any more!.
But someone referring readers to the totally unscientific Blog of John Cook at Skeptical Science, a very professionally presented and run (by John Cook) but completely rag-tag clientele with not a semblance of Science among them really is amazing!!
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Tim,
still waiting to see your apology to Anthony Watts, or do you stand by your lie?
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Watch out Tim, Marc is a terrier for the truth!
;]
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
as Alex is the lounge lizard of lies
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
So Marc, you don't get that name calling means you lost an argument? And, that you alert everyone else to that sad fact?
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
You make me laugh Alex
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Good! Something productive from you, at long last!
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
More media attention?
Leaked Docs From Heartland Institute Cause a Stir—but Is One a Fake?
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/
Paul Richards
(logged in via Twitter)
Marc - would it be appropriate to as believe what one of Josef Goebbels minions said in their media about Nazi Party motive? Please give your readers some credit.
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Paul, given you consider humans to be viruses and apparently hate old people (see below) I'd be a little more circumspect about playing the Nazi card; lest someone play it on you.
Paul Richards
(logged in via LinkedIn)
Marc - good to see the lighter side : )
It's not an ageist issue either, but that's ok if you see it that way.
It's the pensioner mindset, reds under the bed, yellow peril and the military can do no wrong. News sources that are "conservative are fine, what's wrong with them!"
The poor soles have been stuck at an early development age since they where in their twenties. They remind me of those guys when I was a kid, who still dressed like Elvis, when The Clash ruled the world. - People out of phase with reality.
Having said that, I know 28 year olds now who suffer from it. Happens at any stage of development, people can freeze, not evolving though to the next level, fixed, using cognitive bias to verify staying put.
Nazis, ......... well that was an illustration not an accusation.
Shauna Murray
Research Fellow (logged in via email @unsw.edu.au)
This is a timely analysis. I was waiting for someone to do some independent research on the generally terrible state of the coverage of climate change in the Australian media.
Its only a great surprise to me that the press controls in this country seem to be no protection from this type of highly inaccurate and misrepresentative reporting on such a major issue.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
You have Murdoch & we have Roger Ailes -- wanna trade?
;]
Paul Richards
(logged in via LinkedIn)
Elaine - you nailed it, excellent piece now watch the fur fly.
This global set of propaganda started by the very same agencies as the tobacco industry used is being see for what it is.
Not before time the human collective intelligence is way beyond "Marlboro Man" tactics, it's transparent to the generations of youth following, who understand and have learned about these strategies in K8 - K12 classes. The time for reckoning is coming "baby boomers" and older, you are gradually becoming redundant.
Dale Bloom
Laboratory analyst (logged in via email @mail.com)
Objection.
Discrimination on the grounds of age.
see Age Discrimination Act 2004
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ada2004174/
Dennis Alexander
(logged in via LinkedIn)
Dale, you read the act. There is no discrimination. Paul is not employing anyone, so is not discriminating in terms of the Act, nor is he advocating that someone else who might employ someone should discriminate on age grounds. What he is stating, as we babyboomers know, is that we are getting older, contributing less and that our views are gradually or rapidly becoming less relevant as we grow old and die: ie we are becoming redundant.
There is a great difference between stating a fact and discriminating on the grounds of that fact. For example, I could state that you were intellectually impaired as an assessed fact but to then advocate or suggest that your employer sack you on those grounds is discrimination on the grounds of that disability and, under the disability discrimination provisions of the Human Rights Act, illegal.
Please keep your comments accurate if not pertinent.
Dale Bloom
Laboratory analyst (logged in via email @mail.com)
Dennis
The age discrimination act is not just for employment, but by the tone of his comment, he could be advocating that older people should not be in certain positions.
He is carrying out a type of emotional manipulation, and that emotional manipulation involves denigrating comments about older people.
BTW. I also don't like his attempt at an apology, and I don't particularly think he has evolved.
Dennis Alexander
(logged in via LinkedIn)
Still no discrimination on the grounds of age under any of the object of the Act - he has neither neither denied, prevented, obstructed nor denigrated, merely stated fact.
And evolved or not, fact is fact: ants get squashed by elephants.
Dale Bloom
Laboratory analyst (logged in via email @mail.com)
Dennis
I don’t like your threatening tone either.
Paul Richards
(logged in via LinkedIn)
Dale - noted and apologise for any sensitivities.
There are evolved "baby boomers" here, they know who they are.
Dale Bloom
Laboratory analyst (logged in via email @mail.com)
Paul,
I won't argue about it. You carried out age discrimination. Read the act
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ada2004174/
Paul Richards
(logged in via Twitter)
Dale - I made light of your objection apologised for your sensitivities. Didn't take your comment seriously. With your last comment I do.
I have and always will be respectful to individuals here and else where, however I will retaliate if pushed. I happen to read and apply "law" very well, comprehension is my forté.
The fundamental problem with your premiss is this. It applies to an individual;
PART 3--CONCEPT OF AGE DISCRIMINATION
Outlined here is the basis for using this in law…
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John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Paul,
I should not be responding to this as it is entirely away from the thread we have been pursuing, but.....
At least you acknowledge, by suggesting their current "redundancy", that baby boomers and older citizens have been useful in developing this world, this country, into the comfortable and advanced state into which you have been luckily born.
It remains to be seen, when they and those of us who are even older and have thus contributed more to developing a sinecure for you, have passed on, whether you and your fellows of the younger generation will have the wit to continue such a stable and progressive economy, country and population. Some how I doubt it from some of the comments.
Andy King
Physics teacher (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
Paul, what would be interesting would be if Elaine was to apply the same critical techniques to the proponents of AGW. Under that constructivist form of scrutiny, that particular viewpoint would not look particularly valid. As it stands her argument adds nothing to the debate and is little more than a hatchett job on a view to which she is clearly opposed - warm & fuzzy if you agree with her, cold and heartless if you dont.
John Yasmineh
IT (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
Andy, considering your reply does nothing but state a contrary viewpoint as a fact, without presenting any analysis or evidence, do you think you might've been looking in a mirror when you typed that comment, rather than commenting on the article above?
Andy King
Physics teacher (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
John, two things: Firstly, I didnt think I stated "a contrary viewpoint" or declare any position on the topic of climate change for that matter. Secondly, my point was (poorly expressed, I'll admit) that the same type of mocking, satirical or derisive critique can be applied to any side of an argument and make that position look ridiculous too. As others further down this conversation have stated, there are think tanks etc on the loony left that match the loony right for irrational zealousness and hyperbole.
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
I agree with you Andy. The article does have something to say about the very unhelpful form into which the climate debate has fallen but the arguments are totally biased on one side with not even an example, of which there are many to choose from, taken out of the writings of people supporting the climate industry.
I think Elaine is testing the water and hopefully she will get some useful experience and learn something from this exercise provided she can take the time to read all of the many comments on her article - as wel as the many more which have I think nothing whatsoever to do with her article. The message she can take home from this is that the article lacked any real punch, mainly because of her obvious bias, which means it is not something sceptics want to concentrate on and what the others, those who support the IPCC arguments, have alr4eady said about the sceptics. John Nicol
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
YEs John, Elaine will be good for you -- not being an engineer or scientist, as she finally reveals!
So indeed, we can expect what you value & generate yourself: "arguments [that] are totally biased"
The bond, John? The bond? You might make more $ in it than from what you're doing now -- a little more honor too!
Elaine McKewon
(PhD Candidate at University of Technology, Sydney)
John,
In the interests of full disclosure, could you please confirm whether or not you are the chairman of the Australian Climate Science Coalition.
The SMH has just confirmed that the ACSC receives most of its funding from the Heartland Institute.
“Documents from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission show that a group funded by the Heartland Institute, via a thicket of other foundations and think tanks, provided the vast majority of the cash for an anti-carbon price lobby…
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Elaine McKewon
(PhD Candidate at University of Technology, Sydney)
Link to the Australian Climate Science Coalition:
http://www.auscsc.org.au/about_us.html
David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
Elaine,
"In the interests of full disclosure, could you please confirm whether or not you are the chairman of the Australian Climate Science Coalition."
Full disclosure? When we comment on The Conversation we are now required to confirm our real identity?
What if my twitter account is a front and I am actually the sole financial donor to the IPA? Would that mean I cannot comment on The Conversation?
To engage with ideas in a respectful manner (and on topic) should be the only criteria needed to comment here..
Elaine McKewon
(PhD Candidate at University of Technology, Sydney)
David,
It’s not a requirement, it’s a question of moral standards.
So yes, if you were the sole financial donor of the IPA, then in all fairness you should disclose that you have a vested interest in supporting the agenda of the IPA.
David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
Elaine,
Then according to your moral standard climate scientists have a vested interest in maintaining the need for "more papers on climate" science, which is all paid for by taxpayers even if they don't want to pay taxes for that research.
At least the IPA is funded from people who have willingly given their money.
The Conversation is not a journal. But this thread has ignited in me an interest in the IPA so I may now just head there and wrap myself up in warm blanket of free market thinking.
The same free market thinking that would be required to effectively 'fight climate change due to CO2"….
Elaine McKewon
(PhD Candidate at University of Technology, Sydney)
David,
For the last time, my request that John Nicol confirm whether or not he is Chairman of the Australian Climate Science Coalition is about disclosure.
If he or anyone else is closely affiliated with the organisation who is the subject of this article - the chairman of one of their front groups, no less - then there is a moral obligation, but not a legal requirement, to say so.
As for your further comments - scientists are up front about who funds their research. I have been up front about who funds my research.
It is also a failure of logic to connect my comment on disclosure to the idea that ‘climate scientists are rent seeking frauds’ … as you seem to suggest when you say ‘climate scientists have a vested interest in maintaining the need for more papers on climate science’.
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Elaine said:
“the chairman of one of their front groups, no less - then there is a moral obligation, but not a legal requirement”
Firstly, whose morals are you talking about? I find many of the Left’s morals repugnant, especially the ones that would like to dictate to everyone else what they can say, think, do and eat.
Secondly, can you disclose who provides the funding for RealClimate? Is it a large US PR organisation (i.e. a specialist at political spin)? Where is that disclosed in your article?
The point I am making is that you are so ideologically biased that your work cannot be trusted to be objective. And what we are seeing with your responses here is evidence of a culture of ideologically driven group-think that runs throughout the soft areas of climate science and its extension to policy activism.
With every post you make you expose that further.
David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
Elaine I do not understand how John's disclosure or not has anything to do with moral obligations. This is a public forum, your above links regarding funding show the Australian Climate Science Coalition is not funded by public money. Therefore there is no need for disclosure. If it was funded by public money then there may be a moral case for disclosure.
I apologise for any lapses in my logic regarding the link to climate scientists needing to maintain the need for more papers on climate science. I did make a jump in logic there and assumed that you were suggesting if John happened to be linked to the ACSC then that would somehow invalidate what he has said on this thread. I then turned that same logic back toward the climate scientists.
Elaine McKewon
(PhD Candidate at University of Technology, Sydney)
David,
So according to that logic, if an organisation’s mission is to dispute the scientific consensus on climate change and oppose policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions … you think it doesn’t matter to readers whether or not that organisation’s funding comes from the fossil fuel, mining and energy industries?
Think again. Private funding in such a case is absolutely relevant and should be disclosed, especially if the organisation presents itself as a group of independent experts who provide unbiased commentary to the general public.
Vested interests are vested interests. If one has nothing to hide, disclosure is not a problem.
Don Aitkin
writer, speaker and teacher (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au)
Elaine, I think that this is fundamentally a red herring. Surely we should be interested in arguments and evidence, not in who is promoting them. Bad arguments and rubbery evidence are to be exposed wherever they come from. Otherwise we get into a discussion of our bona fides: who is pure and who is tainted, and how do we know. We learn nothing there.
I can show you, for example, that the Department of Climate Change has pushed large amounts of money into the CSIRO and to a number of university…
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David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
“if an organizations’ mission is to dispute the scientific consensus on climate change and oppose policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions … you think it doesn’t matter to readers whether or not that organizations’ funding comes from the fossil fuel, mining and energy industries?”
No. I do not think it matters, because my worldview is that Australians have brains and can think for themselves.
On the about us page at www.auscsc.org.au/about_us.html it states, “we do not believe that past…
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John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Dear Elaine,
First, Yes I am the chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Australian Climate Science Coalition which has a well known website at http://www.auscsc.org.au. The maintenance of this site is basically the sole activity of the ACSC as far as I know.
Secondly, it has been known to most bloggers on The Conversation that I am chairman of this scientific group, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the maintenance of the site or its funding but acts as a filter, on…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Ok John, you've busted the prior word count record by far, but your fetish with the IPCC can't serve you well, because there are so many other research groups and scientists analyzing real things that you carefully avoid, like sea rise, acidification, etc. .
So, despite all the words, why not do some honest scientific study that includes more that just continually knocking over the same straw man (IPCC)? You say you don't know the funding of the place that takes your writings.
You admit…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
This comment reveals that Elaine McKewon is strongly biased, ideologically driven and, therefore, incapable of doing objective research in a subject such as this.
This provides a window to see the bias that is ubiquitous in climate science research. It is mostly a soft science - hence the ideological propaganda component of much of it.
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Elaine,
In the interests of full disclosure, can you outline your expertise in Climate change science?
Are you, or have you ever been a member or have you donated to one or more of the following organisations:
The Australian Greens
The Australian Labor Party
The Climate Institute
Greenpeace
WWF
Australian Conservation Foundation
Al Gore's Climate Project
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Elaine McKewon
Do you suggest that the Government should ban funding for Climate Coalition?
Should they ban funding of organisations that do not support Left wing ideology beliefs?
If so, for balance, should they also ban organisations that propagate Left wing agendas and propaganda such as (oh dear, where do I start?):
Environmental NGO’s
Climate Institute,
Nearly all the other so called “institutes” and similar political bodies
UN IPCC
RealClimate
Skeptical Science
ABC
BBC
Farfax media
GetUP!
Crikey
The Conversation.
Elaine McKewon
(PhD Candidate at University of Technology, Sydney)
Peter Lang,
I think it’s important that John Nicol answer the question.
If indeed he is the Chairman of the Australian Climate Science Coalition, a front group of the Institute of Public Affairs, then he should say so.
This is highly relevant, as the above article concerns the IPA and its attacks climate science.
Financial interests and political associations should be disclosed by everyone, as I have done as author of this article.
No one suggested that the ACSC’s funding be “banned”.
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Elaine,
The question you ask says a lot about you and your biases, not about John Nicol. I think anyone without bias would applaud John Nicol for what he has given to this thread. He has behaved impeccably given the continual vitriol thrown at him by the Left ideologues / CAGW alarmists / catastrophists.
You should be asking where the money is coming from for all the organisations involved in promoting climate alarmism. That would be a much more valuable work on your part, given the huge sums of public money involved.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
"Left wing" -- Elaine, such an old shibboleth, for a new PhD candidate!
Our Climate Coalition (gotta love how con artists pick their names) was supported by:
The Aluminum Association
American Highway Users Alliance
British Petroleum
DaimlerChrysler
Exxon / Esso
Ford Motor Company
General Motors Corporation
Shell Oil USA
The Aluminum Association
American Highway Users Alliance
British Petroleum
DaimlerChrysler
Exxon / Esso…
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Daryl Deal
retired (logged in via email @melbpc.org.au)
IPA, is the same institute, that I believe dispatched a copy of 'Ian Plimer's' latest junk science book, under covering letter to science teachers.
Me, if I was a school 'Science Teacher', I would reproduce extracts, provide a copy of Skeptical Science "Debunking Handbook" and tell all the students, give me a science essay noting all the basic errors in science"! As an English Teacher, I would provide extracts with a complete copy of SkS's "Debunking Handbook" for a clear thinking essay, on…
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John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Daryl,
You, as English teacher would take part in an indoctrination programme with young impressionable students, on a subject about which you know absolutely nothing? You have only formed a POLITICAL opinion on global warming!!! How moral is that.
And Skeptical Science is your foundation! Well, Well, Well!!!!!
Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
And SkepticalScience is the source of opinions for a large number of people John. It has a large team of Authors producing a steady stream of articles on the current published science and data. You might be interested in the following piece I published there yesterday
'Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!' http://www.skepticalscience.com/Breaking_News_earth_still_warming.html
Because that is the inconvenient truth, that so discomforts skeptics (we all remember poor Stephen Fielding). The world has been warming steadily for decades. It hasn't stopped or even appreciably slowed. It just that for the last decade or so most of the warming has been happening somewhere else - the middle layers of the ocean.
Warming hasn't stopped. That is just another Denier 'zombie meme' that needs a stake drive through its heart.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Very nice paper, Glenn.
Next, one on sea rise and acidification?
Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
Alex, have a look at the OA not OK button on the SkS home page - a 20 part series on Ocean Acidification by Doug Mackie and others.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
What's the SkS website Glenn?
Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
http://www.skepticalscience.com
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Glenn,
I am interested indeed to hear that yoiu obtain your information from Skeptical Science. This is, as you may of course well know, set up purely to train people in the denigration of sceptics. This is a very professional web site and I give John Cook, who is a very pleasant person, full marks for his efforts.
But his sole purpose on the site and in seminars he provides, is simply to examine the most effective ways to deal with sceptics. Certainly his clients on the site provide all the gaul which one needs to be thoroughly scrambled. I wnet there for awhile after attending one of John's seminars and meeting him and discussing climate change.
However, the abuse hre on the drum for a sceptic is kindergarten level compared to that on Skepotical Science and I have sworn off that site for good!!
John Nicol
Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
John
As an author within the community that contributes articles to SkS, you couldn't be further from the truth. We all obtain our information from the scientific literature. As for 'denigration' of skeptics!Only where it is justified. Serial peddlers of mis-information such as Monckton, Carteretc will be 'denigrated' s you put it - BS merchants should be called on it. Honest skeptics are not in the least bit 'denigrated'. Its just that they are, in our experience rare.
What is an honest skeptic…
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Andy King
Physics teacher (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
John, as a teacher for 24 years in the state system, I have to tell you that, unfortunately, the abuse of trust by teachers like Daryl is not uncommon with this issue. They sprout the party line and treat any counterpoint with derision and sarcasm - two characteristics of Daryl's response. Since moving into physics teaching I hopefully can give you some hope in that I see many students prepared to argue against this 'status quo' on the basis that they are concerned about the propagandist nature (and failure to answer questions) of the so called 'consensous spruikers'. What I'm trying to say is that the kids aren't swallowing the whole thing hook line and sinker but are asking pointed questions and insisting on their questions about the scientific method and process actually being answered - they refuse to accept deflection, avoidance and derision.
Vincent O'Donnell
(Independent media analysis associated with the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University)
I'm interested in the appropriation of Galileo's story by those wishing to typify the climate sceptics as the repository of truth, the true scientist.
Some years ago I wrote an article published in 21C titled 'Ned Ludd got a Bad Press'. It argued that most of the riots of the second decade of the 19th century in the UK were food riots, and there was good evidence that the machine breaking was often done by paid gangs for the competitive advantage of their employers.
In this case, with Galileo, those who claim his mantle have got things back to front.
Galileo was the empirical scientist, whose ideas were fact based. His persecutor, the Catholic Church, was the one who relied on faith and hope, and dogma.
John Smith
writer (logged in via email @gmail.com)
The real interesting thing about the fossil-fuel industry funded AGW denialism campaign is the way it trashes scientific findings.
After all, the fossil-fuel industry didn't get where it did today by not using the results of scientific research. It's a heck of a lot easier to finding oil and gas by using established techniques based on geological and other sciences rather than wishful thinking, guesswork or dowsing.
Why didn't the fossil-fuel industry acknowledge AGW (as their scientists advised…
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Byron Smith
(PhD candidate in Christian Ethics at University of Edinburgh)
"the last reserves of oil and gas "
Peak oil does not mean that we are about to hit the last reserves of oil and gas, simply that we're unlikely to see the rate of production rise above the peak. There is still plenty of fossil carbon around - almost certainly enough to cause ourselves very serious harm, especially once you include coal reserves (which are significantly larger than oil) and unconventional sources.
Gavin Moodie
Principal Policy Adviser (logged in via email @telstra.com)
It is interesting that the IPA and other right wingers call climate science and environmentalism pejoratively a religion, when presumably most of them or their supporters are conservative christians.
Byron Smith
(PhD candidate in Christian Ethics at University of Edinburgh)
It would be interesting to know what proportion of self-identified conservative Christians are climate deniers (and vice versa). My impression (as someone who has spent a lot of time in conservative Christian circles, as well as writing a PhD that is partially about Christian attitudes towards climate change) is that the link is considerably stronger in the US, though far from absent in the UK and Australia (these are the three contexts with which I am most familiar).
Andrew Glikson
(logged in via email @iinet.net.au)
A few questions to those who promote open-ended carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
1. Do they accept the scientific method as such, based on empirical evidence and data sets and the basic laws of physics and chemistry, or do they think the physicists who formulated the black body radiation laws which govern the effects of atmospheric greenhouse gaes (Planck, Stefan-Bolzman, Krichhauf), as well Arhenius, Callendar, Tyndall, Keeling and many other
(http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Andrew Glikson,
When a scientist becomes and advocate for a cause, he/she is no longer objective. He/she loses credibility, and rightly so.
If they become an alarmist, a catastrophist, a scaremongerer, in either their own discpline or in other areas outside their area of expertise (like nuclear energy), then their crediblity is next to non existant.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Soooo Peter, you're saying you're no scientist, so we can believe you?
Or, are you saying you are a scientist and we still can't believe you, because you've spoken as an "advocate for a cause" -- the cause of climate-change/sea-rise/sea-acidification denial?
We want to get your meaning right, Peter, those of us who are scientists and don't talk from advocacy, but from observed fact.
Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
Peter
If a scientist finds through their professional work that thalidomide causes birth defects, or that an asteroid has a high probability of colliding with the Earth, or that increased levels of GH gases are likel to lead to pronounced warming that would be seriously detrimental to human well being, if they go beyond the halls of Academe or the literature to convey their findings to a broader, and possibly disbelieving world. This is not being an advocate for a cause, it is being a communicator…
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John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Glenn,
Workers in the climate industry should certainly provide the results of their findings to the public and comment on what their view is of the possible consequences.
However, when Professor McBride blew the whistle on thalidomide, people down to the least informed person medically, such as myself, had a perfectly clear picture, from what he published and provided for the public, of why he was able to say that thalidomide was causing birth defects. His whole method and data were made…
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Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
John
In addition to what was published in the IPCC Report, And the SPM(Summary for Policy Makers) of the IPCC report, they also published references to thousands of Scientific papers.
Soince you are a retired scientits,I presume you know rthe basics of researching in the scientific literature. Following the citations trail etc.
There is no secrecy. But equally the scientists haven't said we will provide an individualised account of the evidence base to each citizen on the planet. They published…
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Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
Given John Nicol is chair of the ACSC, which is effectively funded by the Heartland Institute, perhaps it is not surprising that he is unwilling to chase down the references nor download the readily available data that would refute the claims made by himself, ACSC members and the Heartland Institute.
The IPCC Data Distribution Centre (http://www.ipcc-data.org/ddc_gcmdata.html) has much of the data that "sceptics" often claim is unavailable.
The HITRAN database contains data and references which refute John Nicol's pet theories of CO2 and the transmission of infrared light through the atmosphere.
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Michael, my boy,
I said in my last reponse to you that I wasn't coming back onto this over worked thread, but I thougt as an astrophysicist you might find it useful if I were to point out to you why the HITRAN data is not the be all and end all of information required to examine the Enhanced Green House Effect (EGHE). The establishment of the that principles behind the claims for the EGHE, do not depend on data which only approximates fairly roughly, in form, to the total band structure of CO2…
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Glenn Tamblyn
(logged in via Facebook)
John
You never replied to our previous conversation, so I'll post it here
Your claim that most climate units are populated by Geographers! Do you have first hand knowledge of this? My understanding is that Climate Science - not just the modelling - as a discipline has grown from the merging of a range of scientific disciplines. And that many of the researchers who moved into Climate Science came from Physics backgrounds.
Next you have repeatedly commented on the fact that the radiation transfer…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Glenn Tamblyn:
"John
You never replied to our previous conversation"
And he probably never will. Just as he will probably never explain how he could grossly misunderstand such a simple radiation diagram as the one by Trenberth or how he comes up with his temperature calculations based on that graph.
Instead he is only capable of repeating his allegations ad nauseum. Perhaps he is too old to think of anything new because he never shows signs of realizing that anything he thought was wrong.
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Dear Glenn,
Thank you for your reminder. As I have mentioned in a couple of recent posts I am not that keen on wasting time on this over populated thread which is so cumbersome. I have suggested several times to the organisers that the structure should be changed to enable on to load smaller pages and that posts should be shown in full as happens on most quality blogs of which I had thought would be one, nothing has been done about it. Editing in the text box is also inexplicably awkward as…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
John Nicol: "However, the original placement of Climatology when this idea of global warming was taking on, was in geography departments and run by physical geographers."
John's trying to misinform everyone as usual. The idea of global warming took on with physicist Gilbert Plass when he was an instructor of physics at Johns Hopkins University from 1946 to 1955. Why did John Nicol neglect to inform us of that? Maybe he has a barrow to push.
"I don’t agree that making use of other’s code which…
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John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Chris,
This will be my very last response, mainly because as I said before, this overgrown thread is too cumbersome, but also because I realise that there is no possibility of holding a civilised conversation with you in any form. I will respond to your remarks out of courtesy, even though your posts reflect the nature of an AGW exptremist which I don't think you are, rather than the sicentific person I think you might be. Your replies are all laced with insults. Why? Please try to read what…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
John Nicol: "I realise that there is no possibility of holding a civilised conversation with you in any form."
I'm sorry if telling someone that they are not telling the truth is not being civilised, but I believe the responsibility for not being civilised lies with the person who is not telling the truth, yourself in this case.
"Your replies are all laced with insults. Why?"
If telling someone they are not telling the truth is an insult then the reason is very simple. You are not telling…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Glenn Tamblyn,
Your last paragraph says:
“Unless of course your purpose is to come onto forums such as this, where most readers won't be able to tell what is well informed opinion vs bluster, and bluster away.”
Are you suggesting that forums such as this should be left to the catastrophists, alarmist, economically irrational folks and those who want to use catastrophic climate change as an excuse to further their political aims?
Do you suggest that there should be no airing of concerns…
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Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
Peter.
Language like this: "catastrophists, alarmist, economically irrational folks and those who want to use catastrophic climate change as an excuse to further their political aims?" says so much about the lens that you are looking at this question through. What political aims do I have apart from retirement soon? You seem to be so certain that AGW is false that you have had to imagine all sorts of other psychological drivers and motivations for those who advocate that it is valid.While ignoring…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Here Glenn, just to get you started:
http://tome22.info/IAC-Report/IAC-Report-Overview-Short.html
http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/mckitrick-ipcc_reforms.pdf
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/02/reality-check.html
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/2010.36.pdf
http://pacificclimate.org/sites/default/files/publications/Pielke.ClimateFix.Apr2011.pdf
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/07/spending-billions-why-not-do-a-due-diligence-study/
http://www.tnr.com/blog/critics/75757/why-the-decision-tackle-climate-change-isn%E2%80%99t-simple-al-gore-says?page=0,0
Please! don't come back spitting venom that you don't like the subject matter or where it is published, and then say "nobody told me"
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Glenn Tamblyn,
Please! Direct your advice about what to write, say, think, do and eat to your mates – those of similar ideological persuasion. Just look through this thread and any other thread on The Conversation and notice the vitriol and derision hurled you and by those of your ilk. Focus first on trying clean up the manners of yourself and your friends before trying to direct those you want to persuade that you know what you are talking about.
It amazes me how the Left want to dominate…
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Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
Peter. You put up a list of links. The only one partly worth reading was the last one at New Republic. All the rest were just the same old same old denialistt networks. The same people cropping up again and agin in all the think tanks and movements that they are all mutually engaged in creating to fabricate the appearance that they are a bigger 'movement' than the actually are.
You then make these comments:
"It amazes me how the Left want to dominate these discussions trying to imply only they…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Glenn Tambling said:
“Peter. You put up a list of links. The only one partly worth reading was the last one at New Republic.”
I can only conclude you say that because you do not understand or care about the economic consequences (i.e. the human consequences) of the policies being advocated to “control” the climate. How strange that the only article you had any time for is from a Left web site.
If you don’t want to know why people are not accepting the Left spin about catastrophes (one after…
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Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
Peter
"With all the money directed to producing new research to support the orthodoxy there is little focus on what real science does – check, reproduce and verify. So that is not being done properly." Totally wrong Peter. It is being done properly. Far more to the point the key steps of check, reproduce, verify for the core science that is the basis of AGW science have been done propely. It was completed long ago. In the areas where there is still some degree of uncertainty, or where the estimations…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Glen Tamblyn
“It was completed long ago. In the areas where there is still some degree of uncertainty, or where the estimations can be refined and made more accurate, that is where the work is going.”
You must be a physicist. Who was the physicist who famously stated words to the effect: “we know everything there is to know about physics and the universe. All that remains to be done is to refine the number of decimal points”?
Such ridiculous comments are why people are losing confidence…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Glenn Tamblyn
Regarding you lack of interest in the economic (i.e. human) consequences of the policies the CAGW alarmists are pushing us to implement, such as the CO2 tax and ETS, I posted the following comment on another thread running concurrently on the Conversation. I am positing it here to help you an other readers understand why the economic (i.e. human) consequences of the polices proposed by the CAGW alarmists are so relevant.
Wil B, you said:
“A market-based ETS is the most orthodox…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Glenn Tambling,
By continually selecting a point to argue about and avoiding my key questions you are doing what the Alarmists have been doing all along. This is why you and they fail to convince those who approach the issue of CAGW - and appropriate policies to deal with our most important issues – that we should rank this issue as highly as you think we should.
You say: “Totally wrong Peter. It is being done properly. Far more to the point the key steps of check, reproduce, verify for…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Glen Tamblyn
My apologies for misspelling your name in my last comment.
Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
No problem. It was originally Cornish so it was probably Tomlin originally
Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
Yes Peter, I do realise that we are in a cold phase. Most of the last 600 million years has been warmer. than now except during the phases of Ice Age conditions. The Jurassic & Cretaceous are described as 'Hot House' climates or the Saurian Sauna. This isn't the coldest it has been since we are at the top of the ice age cycle but still, by long historical standards we are in a cold phase. That is actually the point. Human civilisation, and more importantly domesticated crops co-developed in a cool…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Glenn Tamblyn
You said you are a physicist and you want to talk physics. However, you then proceed to roll out this pile of faith based argument from way outside your claimed area of expertise:
“That is actually the point. Human civilisation, and more importantly domesticated crops co-developed in a cool world.”
Sorry, that is simply alarmist hype. Your credibility is shot to peaces. It shows you base your arguments on your faith and ideological beliefs. Your faith has nothing to do with physics. It is just a deeply routed ideological feeling that you believe those who share your ideology. It shows you are not applying physics at all - you are following group think.
The fact is: Life thrives when the planet is warmer. And life thrives as the planet warns.
You need to do better than a whole pile of prose with a zero N/A* rating, Mr Physicist.
Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
No Peter. Its your words.You pointed out that the Earth is in a cold phase. Which is absolutely true. The last 50 million years have been a cold phase historically. And all our major food crops evolved during that period of time. And we only doemsticated those crops in the last 10-20,000 years. we have never tried to grow our food crops in a warm world such as the dinosaurs lived in. And the dinosaurs weren't munching grass Peter. It didn't exist.
SO if you think otherwise. When did Wheat first…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Glenn Tamblyn,
“but tonight in private, look yourself in the eye and ask yourself whether anything I have said has a germ of truth to it.”
I’ve been challenging my beliefs all my life.
However, you have demonstrated, in comments up thread, you are not prepared to read the material that does not support your beliefs.
I’d suggest you, yourself, do exactly what you suggest I do.
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
* N/A = Numbers to Adjectives ratio
Paul Richards
(logged in via LinkedIn)
“I can only conclude you say that because you do not understand or care about the economic consequences” Peter Lang
This issue you continually raise goes to the heart of your value system.
That of the;
“ Economic Consequences”,
what you don’t want to discuss is
“Risk Management”
With every comment you make quoting the science, as it unfolds as you see it.
This is the choice in RISK MANAGEMENT;
1) We do it your way, we risk and it is wrong > = we loose the earth ecosystems…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Paul Richards
It has to make you laugh when some guy, whom I presume gets his knowledge about nature from a computer screen, then tries to talk big about “risk management”. The vast majority of people blogging here are of the anti-nuclear ideology as wwll as the pro-renewables ideology and the CAGW ideology. So my guess is you belong to those ideological groups too. How strange then that you would bring up the term risk management. If you had a clue about risk management you’d be promoting nuclear energy as the way to a safer, cleaner, energy secure future. My presumption that you are anti nuclear, pro renewables etc show you haven’t the slightest understanding of risk management. You just pulled out a few big words to try to make your self look good. Right?
Still waiting for your answers about the consequence of the policies advocated by the CAGW alarmists – refer to my question you replied to.
Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
Peter
How do you know that "The vast majority of people blogging here are of the anti-nuclear ideology as wwll as the pro-renewables ideology and the CAGW ideology"
Personally I regard Nuclear as something that should be considered. If the world had no other major threats and challenges to face then I would be anti-nuclear because of the particular level of risks it poses. But when we look at all the risks we face from other sources the risks from nuclear are much lower. Nuclear is safer than…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Glenn Tamblyn,
How do I know the vast majority blogging here are anti-nuclear? Because threads on The Conversation where the topic is raised are swamped by commenters repeating anti-nuclear talking points, and very few who oppose them. My gut feeling is of those who comment on the Conversation it is 60% to 70% opposed, around 10% support and 10% sitting on the fence (I admit I have no statistics on this).
You said:
“If the world had no other major threats and challenges to face then I…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Glenn Tamblyn
Further to my previous comment, I notice you are now wanting to divert the discussion to talk about psychology. Why is that?
Is it because you realise you have been making statements based on your beliefs, all unsubstantiated and getting further and further away for your stated area of expertise?
Is it because you realise you are beginning to realise how baseless much of your belief in catastrophe really is?
I notice you continually avoid the most important issue, the economic and human consequences of the policies advocated by the CAGW alarmists and forced on us by left wing governments. You just don’t want to face up to that, do you?
Paul Richards
(logged in via LinkedIn)
Peter - for the record I am not aligned politically or ideologically this is an assumption, because you are again judging me by your standards.
You still have failed to address the "Risk Management" issue, looking logically you are willing to risk everything based on the arrogance of your science being right.
At least the other science camp aren't prepared to do that.
All purely to make prevent "Economic Consequences", your value systems screams at us all load and clear.
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
I answered your comments. You have not answered my questions.
Furthermore, you have not demonstrated anything beyond a use of the word’s “risk management” tied with some faith based assumptions. It appears from what you’ve said so far you have only a naive understanding of risk management. Show you have some understanding of quantitative risk analysis as a first step to a discussion of risk analysis and cost benefit analysis.
Paul Richards
(logged in via LinkedIn)
Peter Citizens Against Government Waste CAGW can't recall anything said to me about that. But yes we have a vast untapped resource in waste, government and industrial, it will be a source of good business in the future.
Please explain my connection to comments about CAGW, it's a little cryptic.
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Paul Richards,
Your comment reveals you are either a complete newcomer to discussions about climate alarmism, or you are a smart arse.
If it is the former, then I’ll explain that CAGW stands for Catastrophic Global Warming ( which is what the climate alarmists preach).
If it is the latter, which I suspect it is, I’ll bow out of discussions with you.
Paul Richards
(logged in via LinkedIn)
Peter - no point in talking to anyone who sees "Economic Consequences" as more important than - human consequences - it is an an un-evolved position generally held by early baby boomers or the silent generation, who are going to be redundant when the issues matter.
The risk management issue used by the world's issuers is a valid argument whether you want to believe it or not.
They like you are motivated by money, they win you lose. The insurers are using the risk management and backing the other camp, and for the record I don't care for either.
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Paul Richards, I doubt you have a clue about risk management. I think you’ve pulled a couple of big words together and decided to try to look smart.
You say:
“This issue you continually raise goes to the heart of your value system. That of the;
“ Economic Consequences”,”
Further to the above I also doubt you understand what “economic consequences” means. Do you recognise it means human consequences. If we damage the world’s economies by silly schemes, such as those proposed by the CAGW…
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Paul Richards
(logged in via LinkedIn)
Peter - I have seen with my own eyes how the current militarised nuclear energy industry manage waste. If you had any credibility you could not back it either.
I have no problem with using nuclear energy provided it meets criteria for safe use and storage of waste. So far all the industry is bent on doing is deceiving people about creating a need for plutonium, has a heinous record over sixty years of this utopin spin and has little if any credibility left after Fukushima.
And you say this…
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Paul Richards
(logged in via LinkedIn)
Peter - another of those nuclear energy issues;
http://goo.gl/nBXpX
Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
What's the Kump 2011 link Glenn; the only Kump I can find is the well known 2008 paper on cloud feedback:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/320/5873/195.abstract
Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
Anthony
Link here. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AGUFMPP23B1747C
Apologies, Lee Kump was the second listed Author, Y Cui is lead author. Also look for a report on this in Scientific American
Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Thanks; I tried to reply earlier but couldn't get up.
Eclipse Now
Manager of design firm (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
///those of similar ideological persuasion.///
Hi Peter,
I think you meant to say "those of a science-accepting persuasion". It amazes me that those of the right think the word "ideological" makes all the science go away.
Regards
helen stream
teacher (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
Andrew Glikson:
Your certainty about the soundness of the scientific methods of the‘consensus’scientists and , [ presuming it’s sceptics you’re talking about ], your certainty that sceptics want open-ended carbon emissions , flows glibly off your tongue or your keyboard, as if it were axiomatic---and that’s how shallow it all is with so many true believers in AGW.
When the British Institute of Physics produced a report on the CRU emails commissioned by the House of Commons---the report that…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Wow, a woman (assumption) not appearing to care about her (unknown) or others' kids, grandkids, and further, having to clean up any messes her unconservative approach to emissions is already helping to create.
Who's paying you to ride like Joan of Olde to thwart the evil "massive decarbonisation the Left so carelessly demands" Helen?
How about this, since you're so sure costs of emissions are falsified, -- commit to posting a bond for your offspring and theirs, to be collected by them to defray their future emissions expense, on the off chance you might ever be wrong. I mean, if you're right, as you seem so comfortably sure, you'll recover your bond in some decades, with interest. Or, at least your inheritors might. Or, they might curse you for your blowing it.
Want to put some gumption where all these many words of yours come from, Helen?
You do realize you're the liberal in the room -- very liberal with fibs & other peoples' money, land, livelihood, even lives.
Byron Smith
(PhD candidate in Christian Ethics at University of Edinburgh)
Someone has had fun with the images and captions on this excellent article by Ms McKewon. Minor point: the first image does not show a dragon.
Jane Rawson
(Editor, The Conversation)
Byron, the chap who made the illustration describes it as a dragon, so I thought I should let his interpretation stand.
Byron Smith
(PhD candidate in Christian Ethics at University of Edinburgh)
OK, though let's just agree it's a long way from anything that might be considered iconically dragon-like.
Jane Rawson
(Editor, The Conversation)
consider me agreed. He has definitely slain it though, and valiantly!
James Walker
(logged in via Facebook)
So, why can a fairy tale get up and stay up?
Because the general public have no reason to trust anyone. We can't get access to the original scientific research (yet - https://theconversation.edu.au/spread-the-word-scientists-are-tearing-down-publishers-walls-5098 - so there's hope).
Our schools are a joke, so we lack the background scientific education to understand what is going on (consider how the phrase "just a theory" demonstrates a misunderstanding of what a scientific theory *is…
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John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
James Walker, Your last two paragraphs sum up the situation exactly. I wonder how long it will take the pendulum to swing so that we can get back to a state where the "wisdom of the crowds" can again drive government "by the people, of the people, for the people." I am not sure if that quote is quite correct but you know what I mean.
Jeremy Hall
PhD student (logged in via email @rsc.anu.edu.au)
Great article, thanks. Just tried to read the study... but the publishers want $30 from me.
It sure doesn't help the 'scientific elite' image very much to deny access to most of the population. Not much you can do about it as an author, I know :(
Ken Fabian
Mr (logged in via email @westnet.com.au)
Thank you Elaine for this overdue look at this key Australian player in the commodification of public opinion. IPA 'fellows' are regulars on the ABC's The Drum and on SBS's Insight and get far more opportunities to promulgate their product through mainstream media than they should.
In the face of a global problem that will do great harm to Australia's future prosperity and security to actively engage in misinformation to prevent timely and appropriate action reveals just how amoral the IPA is.
The use promotion of freedom of ideas and speech in the defence of science based truth is a fine thing - in the hands of the IPA, in the defence of lies and misinformation for narrow, shortsighted goals without regard for the longer term harms and greater good, these freedoms have been turned to another purpose entirely. The IPA and it's ilk treat such freedoms as weaknesses to be exploited. I for one am disgusted and appalled.
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
There was an interesting piece in The Age which discusses the funding of the Australian Climate Science Coalition (which includes John Nicol, Ian Plimer and Bob Carter) and links to Heartland.
The article is online at http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/web-leak-shows-trail-of-climate-sceptic-funding-20120217-1tegk.html
Two very interesting paragraphs from the article are:
In 2010, the Australian group had an income of $50,920, and $46,343 of that came from the American Climate Science Coalition, an offshoot of the International Climate Science Coalition, the ASIC documents show. The amount of public donations received was nil.
In 2009, the US arm kicked in $60,699 in funds - virtually all the Australian organisation's entire budget of $62,910 - the ASIC documents show. Donations from the public, at a time when debate over the federal government's proposed emissions trading scheme was at a peak, were just $138.
James Jenkin
EFL Teacher Trainer (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Did you treat any opposing arguments as fantasy themes? For example, economic growth is unsustainable? AGW skeptics are being paid off by the polluters? If not, why not?
helen stream
teacher (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
This article is just more of the post-modern claptrap designed to deceive the Australian people----- just another attempt to divert attention away from the decrepit crumbling state of the AGW ‘consensus’ ‘science’---to get the Australian people’s minds off the science and onto the propaganda---as happens in Flannery’s useless ludicrous Climate Commission sessions.
Those AGW re-educators are supposed to be going around the country informing Australians about AGW---that’s what they’re being…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"-----the Murdoch press."
You're right Helen, the Murdoch press are the most ethical organization in the world. Australians such as yourself are not being stupid when they believe that. We only need to observe the Murdoch press in Australia to know how well it represents the science:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/the_war_on_science/
Eclipse Now
Manager of design firm (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Dear Helen,
It's got to hurt the 'Sceptics' cause when they rant foaming-at-the-mouth conspiracy theories. It does not sound completely sane. Perhaps you need a warm cup of milk and, when you have calmed down, an afternoon nap?
There is no 'debate', there is only science, and anti-science. The peer-reviewed science will win out in the end. I take 'Glacier-gate' as a good sign, that faulty evidence and unauthorised papers will ultimately win out. So why, oh why, do you choose to side with Denialists who publish lies which are defeated by the peer-reviewed science, challenged in live debates, shown to be faulty at a number of crucial data points... but then your heroes just rinse and repeat? Rather than attempt to get their work published in the peer-reviewed literature, they write books for the gullible, frightened masses. Why do you side with these snake-oil salesmen?
Regards
Eclipse Now
Manager of design firm (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
D'oh! Terrible typo. I of course meant to say:
//I take 'Glacier-gate' as a good sign, that faulty evidence and unauthorised papers will ultimately be winnowed out.//
You may now laugh at my expense. But hey, at least it was just a typo. At least I don't believe in world wide conspiracy theories involving EVERY National Academy of Science on the planet! Please review this list and tell me which National Academy of Science, or even Corporately funded Academy of Science, disagrees with the AGW position.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
helen stream
teacher (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
Eclipse Now;
Oh dear , you are so solicitous, Eclipse Now---even though entirely confected, as with all who employ this Left wing tactic.
But there’s not one item in my post that you can refute , which is why you resort, as warmists do, to generic smear.
The question is why do you, Eclipse, work so hard to keep yourself uninformed on developments in this issue.
Could it be, I wonder, that the fevered blinkers must stay in place, so your cosy little boat won’t be rocked ---your image…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
As the king complained to Mozart about "Too many notes" in one of his best pieces, I'm intimidated by your many, even large, words, Helen!
I've lost tract of which missive this is, but, in one of them you demonstrate both ignorance of solar power & nuclear power, which is an unusual combo indeed....
"...unless there’s a massive leap forward in solar science---and that’s that every little country in the world that wants to progress , and therefore must have reliable energy, will establish its…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Helen,
Excellent comment. Thank you for taking the time to write this. I hope some from the CAGW ideology may have a sufficently open mind to read your comment carefully, and can understand what it really means. They'd need to approach it with an open mind, which the comments on this thread clearly demonstrate is beyond most of the Conversation's contributors.
Eclipse Now
Manager of design firm (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
It's all a conspiracy! The entire scientific world can't measure Co2 concentrations or do the math on the Radiative Forcing Equation properly, because every time an independent university or climate group go to study these phenomenon, The Doctor's old rival The Master sends out a Leftist-brain-wave which distorts their perceptions to support the Conspiracy. We've just GOT to see through every climate and atmospheric physics lab on the planet, so that we can thwart this intergalactic conspiracy and defeat The Master and reclaim our planet! Join us! Only the A-TEAM can reclaim this planet! (Alliance to Take the Earth Away from the Master!) Join the A-TEAM and combat the evil plans of the Master of this Conspiracy...
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Helen,
Yours is a well expressed, accurate and gutsy description of the current state of play in this climate debate and the relevance of past doings of those feeding misinformation to the public for their own satisfaction and pecuniary interests. I could not add to it.
It also addresses the subject of the article by Elaine McKewon which some of us have strayed away from rather badly. Well done.
I should not ask but I would be interested if it were possible to know your background in this…
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Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Great summary Helen. Humans have to understand their environment and know what they can do and can't. AGW science gives no guidance in this respect.
Paul Wilson
Academic (logged in via email @patientsoft.com.au)
The AGW hysterics keep missing the point. The metrics in the early IPCC Reports and subsequent commentary about global doom by the likes of Gore, Flannery, Monbiet, Brown have been contradicted by subsequent real data (not models) and better knowledge over the past few years.
The fact the original predictions that have subsequently been proven to be wrong (not all but a number) is never acknowledged by AGW proponents is the cause of the divide now and will continue to be. If a recognition of errors…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Not being Australian, I've no idea what your lastt sentences mean, Philip, but if you indeed expect us to see you DNA as better than you claim for those thousands of modestly-paid conspirators, then do tell us where to find these reports of IPCC 'errors',. Or better, tell us which of the reports consumed by the IPCC are filled with "errors". Then, we can discuss.
We can assume then, that if you are as well in "error" that it's in your "DNA to admit error", right?
Just to kick off, the IPCC…
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John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Alex, You know as well as I do that the increase in CO2 predicted by general analysis of the output by industrialised countries throughout the world, verified by subsequent measurements, lead to warmings according to their own model predictions of significant warming over the last fifteen years when CO2 has increased by about 34% of all the carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by man. No one doubts the figures and all the carbon testing in the world will not change that.
The percentage of…
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Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
John
"However, the temperature, measured by NASA, GISS, CRU, remains at the same mean temperature as it was at least 10 years ago - I would not myself go back as far as Phil Jones has done and go to 1995 - but 2001 or 2002 will do nicely thank you. None of the dat shows an increase since these years and if you disagree I would ask you to send me to an official site where that is shown to be the case."
I can't give you temperature data John because that is the secondary measure of warming. What…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
John, you disappoint me, you claimed to want honest discourse, but now you ignore all the climate forcings that don't suit your belief, such as solar & volcanic activity, oceanic circulation cycles, etc. You've know for months that the predictive models using all relevant variables show exactly what we see -- flattened temp increase in recent years -- perfect matching of the last decades you concentrate on, etc..
Yet you try to hide from the decent folks here that 2008 was a world record year for temps, 2010 tied it and sea rise & ocean acidification continue apace. And, 1000 US cities recorded all-time record high avg. temps in 2011.
Do you really have no decency of conscience to continue perpetrating statements you know are false?
Oops, heading for the "victim" corner, eh John?
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"However, the temperature, measured by NASA, GISS, CRU, remains at the same mean temperature as it was at least 10 years ago"
John, you are just demonstrating that you are intellectually incompetent when you make strawman statements such as this. You may be able to fob people off when you start talking about obscure scientists that disagree with everyone else about radiative forcing but when you start making strawman statements that plainly demonstrate professional ignorance, your credibility vanishes in a pile of dust.
Felix MacNeill
Felix MacNeill (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au)
So 'might makes right' then... is that really the best you can do by way of an adult argument?
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Whose "might", Felix? That of the thousands of quiet, honest scientists working for modest pay around the world on the most expensive problem to be faced by humanity, or the might of the loud, money-grubbing industry tools who will want to be bailed out later, when the effects of their dishonesty cause larger problems for innocent folks around the world than any deserve?
You think climate 'skeptics' or 'deniers' are any better than junk bond designers & traders?
If so, I'd love to hear why.
Bruce Moon
Bystander! (logged in via email @imap.cc)
Elaine
I have a concern with your article.
First, let me say I have no concern with you contrasting the views of the IPA - a looney right entity of political conservatism - with the established scientific view towards climate change.
The concern I have appears minor, but I suggest serves to undermine the credibility of your argument.
My concern is that you only canvas the views of the established scientific view towards climate change and those of the looney right IPA.
Despite the strongly held views of the established scientific view towards climate change, there are other credible alternate views about this phenomena. My concern is it would have been preferable had you at least acknowledged that those other views exist, before then seeking to debunk the biased views presented by the looney right IPA. That way, you would have shown you were not engaging in the bigger debate, rather, just targeting the politics of the looney right.
Cheers
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Being in much the same area of philosophy as John Cook's well structured Blog, Sceptical Science, this article seeks no other recognition than to be one of those which simply play a very strong and possibly effective political game of bagging sceptics. As with all of this type of essay, and as found in spades on Sceptical Science of course, there is not one wit of evidence supporting what is claimed.
The abuse of sceptics is easy pickings so go for it!!!
What the author fails to point…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
John Nicol:
"The fact that according to the CRU there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995 till 2011"
The fact that you appear to believe that statistical significance lower than 95% over 15 years means something proves nothing more than you don't know what you're talking about. In any case, refer to http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/phil-jones-was-wrong/
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Chris,
I believe I have commented before on Tamino's wordpress blog.
He purports to redo the graphs in the IPCC AR4 2007 report which they present demonstrating that the models can be adjusted in their many parameters to provide a reasonable representation of the mean global "effective" temperature (not the average temperature mind you, which is something different from what the IPCC use!) over the period from about 1960 to the present. This is a reassonable thing to do because when the…
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Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
John
You make this very strange statement:
"which lie at the heart of the theory of global warming by an Enhanced Green House Effect, EGHE, (a very different concept BTW from the Green House Effect which is not at all controversial)". Say What?
If you accept the GH house effect as much of your long piece seems to suggest, in what way is the EGH effect qualitatively different. The basic premise is simply that certain levels of GH gases produce a certain level of GH Effect, Higher concentrations produce a greater level of the same phenomenon.
So how do you see things differently from that?
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Oh John,, are you hiding from these folks the email exchange you asked for and we had some months back that you broke off because you couldn't seem to counter the facts? Of course Monckton did the same the previous year, but he has a Fox News gig, so I get that. Who's paying you to fib to these nice folks?
"no statistically significant warming since 1995 till 2011" Really? You don't know 2008 was an all time record for coziness around the world? You don't know 2010 tied that record? 2011…
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Andy King
Physics teacher (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
Alex, isnt that EXACTLY what you are doing - pummelling "folks with masses of words and read nothing contrary to what you're paid to believe and promulgate"?
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Actually, Andy, I feel obligated to read every thing I can here, even if not addressed to me. I even read everything Monckton exchanged with me a couple of years ago, everything JohnN exchanged with me last year, everything in the journals of societies I'm a member of, everything people or alma maters send me that is any way related to climate & energy, etc.
So, your point is?
Andy King
Physics teacher (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
My point is that you have made 45 comments on this topic to date and for sure you are entitled to do that as is John. I just think it;s a bit rich to hit him up for posting masses of words when you are doing the same. Let's be clear. It is not the number, size or position of your comments, just the criticism of another respondant on the basis of theirs. Sorry, I am struggling to express myself clearly but I hope you get the general idea. Cheers
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Alex,
I am sorry but when I asked about an exchange of ideas with you, I was looking for a straight up and down scientific discussion on the very basis of the global warming discussion, viz. the interaction netwwen CO2 and IR and the other molecules in the atmosphere.
Something you had said made me believe that you may have had a scientific background and would be well capapble of engaging in such an exchange. I had no idea that you would continue to be so aggressive and rude, maintaining…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Really John? Shall I reproduce the email I sent you, on your request, with data & analyses that you never responded too?
Remember, we agreed to have a scientific discourse. You broke it off without even bothering to say why, or what you disagreed with in what I'd sent or referred you to in science journals (yes, "peer-reviewed" Marc).
So, now you get to play the victim of some nasty Alex! Oh John, you're a smart guy, you must see the absurdity of your manipulation.ere.
So, since you never replied to the facts I sent, I just assumed you had no refutation. Want to be a good 'skeptic' and go back & respond honestly? Can't hide in the "victim" corner every time truth becomes uncomfortable to you.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
OMG, playing the victim is so heartwarming, John (and handmaiden Peter) -- it means the phony argument is exposed & lost (at least that's what it means up here on Fox News).
Why don't you explain that you didn't stand up and take the bet offered Monckton, John? Why not come out of the 'skeptic' safe house and continue the email debate we had that you seemed unable to counter with facts?
Yes, it's just so sad that poor 'skeptics' get so abused by facts, when they try to promulgate their fibs.
;]
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Thanks John, but I fear it's over the heads of The Con crowd as Alex demonstrates.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Aha, playing the desperate ridicule card, eh Marc?
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Well said!!
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Bob Carter pulls in $1550 a month from the private Heartland Institute to promote climate rationalism and this is somehow a scandal? His relationship with Heartland is no secret, he is an author of the Heartland funded NIPCC summary report. The amount Carter gets is 10x less than Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery syphons from the public's threadbare purse as the government's number one agent for alarmist climate propaganda and billions less than the cost of Flannery's advice and dodgy weather predictions…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
H:
"Flannery's advice and dodgy weather predictions that has indirectly lead to the construction of a number of pretty much useless desalination plants"
Wivenhoe was down to its last 15%. One more year and Brisbane was stuffed.
And as those in denial of the facts like to deny, Flannery was talking about southern Australia where dams such as Melbourne's are still not full.
"and policy decisions that lead to the flooding of Brisbane in 2011."
One can't blame Flannery for incompetent dam management during floods.
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Chris, As will be shown when the report from the Flood inquiry is released, the engineers were in a very difficult position, which anyone who cares to listen to the other experts, including the commission's own expert withness, an experienced hydrologist, and to look at the flood levels in the upper above and through Ipswich, and in the upper, mid and lower Brisbane, it is perfectly clear that most of the flooding came from the Lockyer valley and above not from releases from Wivenhoe, which would…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"As will be shown when the report from the Flood inquiry is released, the engineers were in a very difficult position"
No-one's denying that. Doesn't mean they did a good job.
"it is perfectly clear that most of the flooding came from the Lockyer valley and above not from releases from Wivenhoe"
I presume you meant "below" rather than "above". Although releases from the dam caused a peak of about 5000 m3/sec to be added to the flood in Brisbane above the natural flow that peaked at just…
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Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Well, fancy that, the person who calls everyone else a liar saying this:
"Wivenhoe was down to its last 15%. One more year and Brisbane was stuffed."
Wrong:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/queensland-floods/engineer-warned-of-danger-from-wivenhoe-dam/story-fn7iwx3v-1225991369355
In fact Wivenhoe was 100% supply full as a matter of public. Anyway, didn't Beattie build a Desal plant to cope with the AGW predicted desertification of Australia. But when you think of the cost, in money and lives, AGW theory has cost Australia the word lie seems grossly inadequate.
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"Well, fancy that, the person who calls everyone else a liar"
I don't "call" anyone a liar as you claim. I state the fact that they are a liar when they lie.
"saying this:
"Wivenhoe was down to its last 15%. One more year and Brisbane was stuffed.""
Wrong"
Did I say it was down to 15% shortly before the flood? No. I made the point that it got down to 15% in relation to the building of the desalination plants and the drought that motivated them. Getting down to 15% was part of the reason they decided to build those plants.
But of course you're too dumb to realize that and just wanted to jump to your false conclusion. That's the story of your whole attitude to climate science.
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
One of the fantasy themes Elaine forgot to mention was "The Cause". This theme is relied on heavily by activist scientists, some activist journalists and some activist Phd students to justify their actions. "The Cause" featured prominently in exchanges in the climategate emails emails. It also appears to the reason why one activist scientist has thrown his career in the bin.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-admits-to-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Perhaps that should say his career as a scientist is over.
His new career as an activist will surely blossom, especially with the likes of Elaine, and the CAGW cheer squad on his side.
David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
Glenn,
I had a quick look through sks, would you have a suggestion on a good approach to find a specific list of papers that in the view of yourself, others at sks and other climate scientists would all be confident that such papers could be used to form the strongest argument that CO2 is causing our planet to warm?
I want to believe in it but I have not seen a convincing pro-argument, and do not want to see references to the IPCC.
I also respect that it is not a scientists job to come up with such a list, but a publicly vocal scientist should be able to provide a list of papers that was used to arrive at his/her view.
I have started to make little videos as a hobby and would be happy to make one that is pro-warming but so far have not seen anything convincing yet.
Thanks, David
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
If you have an undergraduate science background then http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/PhysTodayRT2011.pdf
may be a good start.
The Pierrehumbert article discusses the basis of global warming in very well established physics, which has been verified via observation and lab experiments.
John Nicol (and others) will claim Pierrehumbert and other mainstream scientists have it wrong. John Nicol has written essays on this topic, but he has avoided comparing his models with the relevant data. Indeed, his model lacks the features seen in the AIRS spectrum of the Earth's atmosphere.
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Michael,
I agree with you that the Pierrehumbert article does indeed cover the features of the discussion on the Enhanced Green House Effect.
Howevver, I belive, and I guess you would agree, that it does not present an accurate account or demonstation of the complex physics involved in accounting for the trandsfer of energy from the earth, through warmth in the lower atmosphere arising from 20% ground contact, 20% IR absorption by Green house gases and 60% by evaporation over the sea coupled…
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David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
John, As an undergraduate science student that pierrehumbert paper is probably enough to convince me that CO2 is "most probably" a greenhouse gas, but I am perplexed to hear the CSIRO would think it would influence a practicing physicist to start believing CO2 is helping to drive temperature changes.
Surely convection could be added to the gas layer experiments with ease..
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Roger Peilke Jnr has an interesting take on the Heartland documents that includes this observation:
"If the faked document happened to be produced by a climate activist or scientist (as some are already suggesting), then the leaked Heartland documents will go down in history as one of the more spectacular own goals in the history of the climate debate (with the consequences proportional to the stature of the faker). "
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/reality-is-not-good-enough.html
I post here as the editors of The Con appear to have a thing with the Pielke's.
Sean Lamb
(logged in via Facebook)
Ha!
I always knew it. The Liberal Party hates children and wants them all to drown or whatever disastrous outcome it is this month.
Actually the messianism is by no means limited to Climate Change deniers on this issue.
Anyway the mark of a good theory is the ability to make predictions - thus far the record of Climate Change scientists on that score has been somewhat less than stellar.
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Elaine,
All the points you raise have been used by proponents of AGW. So no intellectual honesty in your study then. Shame.
dissenting climate scientists as rent-seeking frauds
dissenting climate scientists as dissent-stifling elite
Hansen as Galileo
Hansen as the people’s scientist.
Non alarmist climate science as religion
Non alarmist climate science as a new creationism
non alarmist climate science as right-wing conspiracy
Nuclear energy as a money-spinning scam.
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
One can make a crude exploration of myth making with google. Certainly not as thorough and robust as what is described in the article, but certainly interesting.
Google "climate change" with "galileo" and ones finds many "sceptic" sites.
Google "climate change" with "people's scientist" and one finds quite a few references to Ian Plimer.
Google "climate change" with "conspiracy" and one mostly finds articles attacking mainstream climate science and the IPCC.
Eclipse Now
Manager of design firm (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Hi Marc,
the biggest point against the dissenting climate scientists is not the scientists, or the funding, but the science. And the fact that the tired old myths they push again and again and again have been debunked and addressed in the peer-reviewed literature. So they dig up a Denialist fan base and guess what they do? Repeat the myths again! It's only fair. They can't get published in the peer-reviewed literature, so they go outside it and write science fiction like Ian Plimer's 'Heaven and Earth', one of the worst pieces of anti-science agit-prop ever written. Funny how geologists set themselves up as climate experts. But hey, as a discipline you guys seem genetically predisposed to Denialism. Almost makes me think of that recent kid's movie "Avatar: the last air-bender". Experts in earth and air seemed to be old enemies.
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Mr Now.
(If that is your real name), The peer reviewed literature increasingly indicates that IPCC climate models have overstated the climate's response to human activity, be it through increased emissions of greenhouse gases, or landuse change or other factors. This is not to say we will not face challenges in the future as we put increasing pressure on our surroundings, Thankfully the science has shown that the climate Armageddon favoured by a few has a low probability of eventuating.
Avatar (the one with the tall blue smurfs) is a good analogy for the propaganda activists, (such as yourself) have been spruiking.
Fred Pribac
(logged in via email @internode.on.net)
IPCC models?
My understanding is that the IPCC simply evaluates the vast body of peer reviewed publications and research up to the IPCC report date. If more recent modelling work by the myriad scientist and organisations involved is indeed tending towards more moderate results this will be reported objectively and transparently in the next round of the IPCC. I am sure that such a result would be welcomed by us all.
As for Climate Armageddon, here my understanding is also at odds with yours. My interpretation of the literature is that there are increasingly strident warnings issuing from a range of academic and government tasked research organisations concerning the difficult to predict, but possibly very severe, effects of reaching various climate tipping points. I believe the balance of the evidence suggests that we may be approaching some of those tipping points more rapidly than previously anticipated.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Well summarized, Fred. And, when the energy folks are concerned, it's indeed time for some more of us to listen & think...
http://tinyurl.com/bueq2ev
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/energy-climate-all-talk-no-action
Even a Greenpeace founder sees more light...
http://knowledge.allianz.com/energy/fossil_fuels/index.cfm?526%2Fnuclear-power-debate-climate-solution-pro
Fred Pribac
(logged in via email @internode.on.net)
Thank you Alex.
I know that you are an advocate for nuclear power as the strongest contendor for sustainably weaning ourselves from fossil fuels and that you do not share my evaluations in regard to the safety and long term pollution issues of nuclear power. That's fine ... maybe we can explore that debate further at a later date.
However, right now, I am genuinely curious as to what is your take on geothermal as a potential source of base load power on an R&D dollar for dollar comparison with nuclear?
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Hi Fred, Geothermal is actually nuclear. ;] Radioactive decay of Thorium, Potassium & Uranium in the core provides 80% the heat (20% left over from the old days of formation).
So, geo is ok, except for a few realities: a) transmission loss (except in Iceland), b) emissions of underground materials (Radon, sulfurous stuff...); c) thermal inefficiency -- low operating temperatures, and d) dependence on ground water & injection power. So, one could say it's as renewable as nuclear, but it has…
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Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Note the author,
Elaine,
Your supervisors, Wendy Bacon and Catriona Bonfiglioli seem to be heavily biased in their political outlook. One of the aims of a Phd is to expand your mind, sad that yours appears to be closed tight from the start.
Before it is too late I suggest getting in touch with John Roskam from the IPA as a potential co-supervisor to provide some much needed balance. I think your project would benefit from his involvement.
David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
The funny thing about this whole thread is that it has left an impression on me. And that impression relates back to the original content of the article. I am just left with the impression that 'global warming' and 'climate change' is just a religion. And as religions with a God require, they require an initial belief that God is real and then the rest of the belief system can be installed. The IPCC reports are the bible, and non-believers should be hunted down and publicly ridiculed because they…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
David Collett: "if one asks for a specific set of scientific papers that can be used to put a very convincing case up that CO2 is driving dangerous changes in the earths temperature"
Start with Myhre, G., E.J. Highwood, K.P. Shine, and F. Stordal, 1998b: New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases. Geophys. Res. Lett.,25,2715-2718.
You can shut up now.
Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Myhre et al is a good paper as far as it goes and can be verified, in respect of 3.7W/m2 forcing for 2XCO2 by HITRAN 2008.
However, it does not specify whether the forcing is at TOA or at the surface and ignores the reduction in forcing from H2O as found in these 2 papers:
http://owww.met.hu/idojaras/IDOJARAS_vol108_No4_01.pdf
http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/16193427/157753127/name/miskolczi.PDF
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"it does not specify whether the forcing is at TOA or at the surface"
Who cares if there is forcing at the TOA? Some things aren't obvious enough for some people.
"ignores the reduction in forcing from H2O as found in these 2 papers"
Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service? Energy and Environment? Good jokes but don't give up you day job.
Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"Who cares if there is forcing at the TOA? Some things aren't obvious enough for some people."
That's hopeless; an increase in radiative forcing at TOA will have much less temperature effect then an increase at the surface; the Long Wave [LW] leaving the surface is ~ 390W/m2; the amount of LW leaving at the TOA is ~ 240W/m2.
Are you really saying 390 + 3.7W/m2 = 240 - 3.7W/m2?
Glenn Tamblyn
(logged in via Facebook)
Anthony, your comments don't make sense. Radiative Forcing is defined solely at TOA. It is a meaningless concept to talk about RF anywhere else.
It works like this. Across the major frequencies where GH gases absorb, at ground level they are saturated. Not that they can't absorb any more. but that they effectively absorb all the available IR radiation at those frequencies. Increased surface temperatures and more IR doesn't change this. They still absorb it all. It is what happens at high altitude…
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Anthony Cox
(logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"Radiative Forcing is defined solely at TOA."
I know that, tell Chris O'Neill. Or not I couldn't care less.
Fine theory Glenn, well explained; doesn't work; stratosphere not cooling as professor Leonard Weinstein explains:
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html#msu_amsu_time_series
"Looking specifically at TLS and TLT you will first note the following for TLS:
1978-1982 average flat
1982 El Chicon large volcao and following 2 years of spike up
1984-1991 drop to lower…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"an increase in radiative forcing at TOA will have much less temperature effect then an increase at the surface"
No kidding Sherlock. Actually the effect of an increase at the TOA would be very little at all, like putting a source of heat on top of a blanket. Try to think about where the CO2 absorbs heat in the atmosphere.
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"an increase in radiative forcing at TOA will have much less temperature effect then an increase at the surface"
I expect the forcing definition would be with respect to the radiation diagram in AR4WG1 Chapter 1 FAQ 1.1 Figure 1. A forcing of 1 W/m2 would reduce the radiation escaping at the TOA from 235 W/m2 to 234 W/m2 and cause that 1 W/m2 to be absorbed at various places within the atmosphere. To restore radiation balance, all temperatures within the atmosphere and on the surface could be increased proportionately by 0.25*(1/234) of their absolute values which means a ground temperature of 15 deg C (288 K) would be increased by 0.31 deg C. Since a CO2 doubling causes a forcing of 3.7 W/m2, this would require an increase in surface temperature of 1.14 deg C to restore radiation balance, in the absence of feedback of course.
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
You've summed it up perfectly. Spot on.
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
This is another of the continuous stream of totally biased articles promoting left ideologies. It attacks organisations like IPA but has nothing to say about the mass of organisations promoting leftist ideologies. The Conversation is one example of many.
The problem with the "catastrophic climate change" ideology is that the catastrophe bit hasn't been demonstrated convincingly. It seems to be scaremongering by extremists, alarmists and the usual Leftists groups. The cost benefit analysis of adaption versus prevention has not been made persuasively. Most of those arguing catastrophe are not impartial. Many are politically partisan - Sir Nicholas Stern and Ross Garnaut are two obvious ones.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Ok Peter, man up & take the bet Monckton and every other 'skeptic' I know won't take.
You do realize that we conservatives aren't speaking "leftist ideologies", don't you? You do know what being "conservative" means, right? Maybe not. In case not, it means avoiding "Fool's Wagers", like cashing in all your savings, mortgaging your house, selling you car & boat (keep the spouse & kids -- they'll leave you later) and going to Vegas and betting all that cash on just roulette & craps, until you…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Alex Camera,
I do not accept your starting position. Your beliefs are built on an ideological belief in catastrophic climate change.
No, CO2 concentrations are not unusually high. They are unusually low. They are barely above the threshold at which plant life cannot survive and, therefore. animal life cannot survive either. They are near the lowest concentrations they have ever been in the planet’s history.
You need a longer time perspective than you are adopting.
There has been no…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Peter, news flash! I don't care what you "accept". Your own words make clear ignorance and apparent lack of responsibility to your own society, whatever that may be.
Take the bet Monckton wisely didn't, Peter. I'll be happy to take your $.
Otherwise, babble elsewhere, like: "Your beliefs are built on an ideological belief in catastrophic climate change" -- obviously, you don't know science from "belief", so how could anyone think you knew anything about their "beliefs"?
You make it so easy, Peter, your words are caricatures. My only concern is for others your words might mislead.
;]
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Likewise, my concern is the for the others that you words will mislead. There is a long history of people being misled by such ideological beliefs as you hold. Examples are the 50 years of anti-nuclear scaremongering by the same people who are the catastrophic climate change activists.
And as for "babble on", well, that is exactly what your comment is - babbling on about bets and wagers and Las Vegas. You must be a "climate scientist".
I notice you avoided answering my questions. Don’t like those ones do you. Don’t like to consider the human consequences of you thought bubbles do you?
Fred Pribac
(logged in via email @internode.on.net)
I'm sure Alex can defend himself but some of your comments are extraordinary and intemperate.
For instance you comment: 'You must be a "climate scientist".'
I would have thought that would be a good starting point for a discussion about the evidence pertaining to climate change but the tenor of your commentary suggests that you regard that as some sort of a negative.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Thsnks Fred, but what interacting with the few folks like this teaches is that they've internalized the Ailes & Rove schooling on argumentation -- avoid the facts, use ridicule, then when losing cry victim.
Their problem is that that bullying doesn't work, unless the other folks are very nice & mannerly. I'm from NJ, so no problemo.
;]
.
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
If you want to clean up the behaviour and rudeness, you are atacking the wrong party. Attack your own crowd and get them to clean up their disgusting beahiour, (which occurs on all these Left dominated sites) then you wont get back what you dish out.
John Nicol's comment says it much better than I can.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Peter, you now fall onto JohnN for help? Really? You don't know John & I had direct email contact and he broke off, unable to counter facts presented to him bu little ol' me.
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Peter, I also found there's no point in conversing with Alex, he's a true loony!
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
So Marc, you don't get that name calling means you lost an argument? And, that you alert everyone else to that sad fact?
(see, your remarks are so unimaginative, we can just robo-generate replies, Marc. I do warm to Loony Lounge Lizard of Lies, though!)
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Oops, Marc, missed that your descent into the Lost Argument of name calling sucked in your handmaiden Peter.
You two do have lives outside this blog, right?
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Thank you. I realise that now.
I didn't expect so much ignorance, insulting commentary and derision on what is supposed to be an academic site. It is obvious why the population have lost confidence in IPCC, the environmental NGO's and the left leaning political parties that appear to use climate change alarmism to advance their other political agendas - like more taxes, more regulation, so more public servants to administer it all and, of course, more wealth redistribution.
Eclipse Now
Manager of design firm (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
///I didn't expect so much ignorance, insulting commentary and derision on what is supposed to be an academic site.///
Well, Peter, I guess you reap what you sow! You're the one who thinks he is smarter than all the climatologists on the planet, so, just maybe some of your 'derision' as you strongly call phrase the responses to your absurd propositions, is, in this case, deserved? Stop being absurd and accusing everyone here of being SOCIALISTS (Oh the humanity! Won't someone think of the children! There's reds under the beds!) and maybe we'll stop calling you absurd?
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
I love when folks who don't study the data then ask challenging questions of those who do! Manly.
Take: "CO2 concentrations are not unusually high. " -- you obviously haven't even bothered to look at the ice core or sediment data from either pole, so you don't act responsibly enough to let iu all here know that.
If you did, you'd see in the 100k-year cycles, and the longer cycles, back to the Permian Extinction, that where we are now is modest in CO2 but going up faster that at any time…
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Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Alex Cannara,
I haven’t bothered to read your whole comment because the tone is clearly of one who is an ideologue, a scare mongerer and a catastrophist. You make baseless assumptions and ignorant statements about what I have or have not looked at. These show you to be an ignoramus.
What I did read of your diatribe did not answer my questions nor address my points. They were just a spiel of what you want to say.
Why did you choose to quote some CO2 concentrations, not give the source…
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Fred Pribac
(logged in via email @internode.on.net)
Some remarkable and unsubstantiated claims here.
For instance: "And warming rates much faster than we are experiencing now are beneficial for life."
If you can point to some evidence or peer reviewed work backing up your assertions please do. Then the discussion can be more specific and progressive. Otherwise it simply becomes an unproductive shouting match!
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
What, haven't you looked at the ice core data from Greenland?
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
You might do better to read before you write, Peter. I did suggest in another post to look at core data from "both pole" regions. Why do you make it so easy?
;]
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Alex, My answer was to a comment by "Fred Pribac", not to your comment.
You continually demonstrate you are a complete goof. In you wown words "Why do you make it so easy?"
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Peter, I'm so sorry, I missed the quorum that gave you control over these messages!
But do go on calling names and deflating the value of your statements.
;]
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
"warming rates much faster than we are experiencing now are beneficial for life."
If you can point to some evidence or peer reviewed work backing up your assertions please do.
Why look here, just recently published in Science...
WA coral reef growth perplexes scientists
A NEW study has found corals off the WA coast grow more quickly when ocean surface temperatures are warmer.
http://www.sciencewa.net.au/3898-wa-coral-reef-growth-perplexes-scientists.html
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Marc in your same issue of Science and in previous last fall, the truth about editorial coercion and peer-re view accuracy is laid out quite well -- it's far from perfect, and the bigger the journal the more the retractions of "peer-reviewed" papers.
But that aside, indeed coral off our coasts respond to warming water. Do you know about the US western coastal waters? Maybe not. They're quite cold. They get cooled by the Japan current, which comes to us via Alaska. You don't go in here without…
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Daryl Deal
retired (logged in via email @melbpc.org.au)
Let me look at the big picture first and seek additional missing information at NOAA's "Coral Reef Watch" found here :- http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/vs/docs/list_vs_group_latlon_201103.html
Skeptical Science provides a comprehensive link here :- http://www.skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=coral+reefs&x=12&y=8
"It is a difficult idea to fathom. But the science is clear: Unless we change the way we live, the Earth's coral reefs will be utterly destroyed within our children's lifetimes." link ;- http://e360.yale.edu/feature/is_the_end_in_sight_for_the_worlds_coral_reefs/2347/
Coral Reefs -- Changing Planet :- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joYOKOfqhzc&feature=autoplay&list=PLFE152CCA956BA0E1&lf=results_video&playnext=2
Cherry pick much, to avoid seeing the big picture, do we? ; )
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Daryl Deal,
Can you explain why coral reefs nearly die out in ice ages but thrive when the planet is much warmer than now - as demonstrated by the massive coraline limestones deposited during warm periods?
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
At least my cherry was peer reviewed.
links to the SS blog, what a rotten cherry that one is.
Daryl Deal
retired (logged in via email @melbpc.org.au)
Let me reiterate the reality of the real world of the 21st century science on climate change/global warming :
"The scientific underpinning of climate change has been developed through research undertaken in multiple institutions in multiple countries; published through peer reviewed literature, in journals that encourage debate and discourse; discussed at single discipline and multi-disciplinary conferences, many of which have an open submission policy for abstracts (e.g. EGU General Assembly…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
OMG, please don't bring up your cherry Marc. We've no interest in any peer-reviewed surgeries lik etha.
;]
But, when ours are ready for picking, I'll know whom to call!
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Alex , The paper is published in science by the team from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), one of our brightest cherries, again you seem to have lost the plot.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Marc, indeed if you read it you'd see its observations confirm sea warming and indicate that at extrema of a specie's range, that warming may help it extend, while at the other end, it can cause die off, particularly in concert with acidification, as is already observed in other oceanic ranges. The die off at one end isn't necessarily compensated for by extension at the other.
So, your point is?
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
The point is that the fantasy you promulgate, one of climate catastrophism, is over cooked and exaggerated. Not saying there will be no change, or there won't be challenges ahead. The facts are indicating that in regard to AGW it will be a lot less drammatic and dire that you contend.
The report cited indicates some changes to be expected, it would appear these no greater than that experienced in the recent past. It appears the corals will do fine.
Here's another peer reviewed paper along…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Glad you finally agree that global warming is occurring due to CO2 emissions, and that there may be "challenges" ahead, Marc.
And, the point is, that global warming may well be the lesser of the challenge causes, sea rise is gradual and inexorable, with capability to remove land from hundreds of millions of folks who didn't cause much of the emissions, and to do it before 2100.
And, the other point being studiously ignored is even more imminent and fatal -- acidification. Since measurements…
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Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Alex,
In regard to cause of warming I have never said otherwise (you are obviously a late comer here), other causes include land use changes, orbital variations etc etc. Suggest you read Roger Pielke Snr's article(below) and get informed.
I do not agree that fall back on the precautionary principal is the right policy response. This is tantamount to doctor prescribing a cure without properly diagnosing the problem. I prefer something better that such a hit/miss approach that is likely to kill the patient.
Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Well that's good too hear Marc, that you agree CO2 emissions are causing unnatural warming, se a rise, etc.
However, your feigned conservatism seems convenient, because it ignores the reality you, as a geologist, must understand that the time constant for sea changes, glacial melts, etc. is exceedingly long and not as easily reversed, if and when you think we should do so.
Just the >50 cubic miles of ice that melted from Greenland a few years back, would take the entire power output of the…
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Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
You say "who pays you? "
Why no one Alex. Who pays you? Based on what you have expressed above and elsewhere I suspect they will be wanting a refund.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Well, Marc, then we're both giving proper value!
Paul Richards
(logged in via LinkedIn)
Alex - I am impressed to facilitate a level change is admirable. Rare.
It's a bit like the Father Christmas issue for kids, they can never quite remember thinking they believed. Funny that, but it is a sign of transition of thought to the next level.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Peter, I love it! "...the tone is clearly of one who is an ideologue, a scare mongerer and a catastrophist." -- "catastrophist"!? Really? I've never been good at acting. Can you suggest an agent?
You still don't get it? You can get access to all the info you want, and you know it. So stop playing the passive-aggressive pretentious 'skeptic' and do some honest work.
I don't care to convince you of anything. It's the blathering of misinformation that I work to prevent others from assimilating. That's all, Go do something useful for your mind and humanity in general, Peter.
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
Alex,
Yolur arrogance and iggnorance are breathtaking. But typical of the catastrophists.
In you own words:
"I don't care to convince you of anything. It's the blathering of misinformation that I work to prevent others from assimilating. That's all, Go do something useful for your mind and humanity in general, Alex."
And I might add, stop pushing your ideological beliefs down people throats. Your ideological beliefs and the policies you and your ilk want implemented, are repugnant.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Funny how some like you love to bully others with your feigned knowledge, but you can't take it when it comes right back at you.
Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
Some life thrives in warmer temperatures, others don't
Tropical waters are nice and warm and crystal clear - because they are deserts. Not enough oxygen for many species. Whereas cold polar waters teem with life.
Reptiles love a warmer world, being cold blooded and all that. But us warm-blooded types don't do nearly as well.
Plants survive because of a balance of multiple factors - air temperature, soil temperature, humidity, sunlight intensity and seasonal change, availability of polinating…
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Eclipse Now
Manager of design firm (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
//Furthermore, life thrives when the planet is warmer and struggles when colder.//
Gross generalisation. Yes, 'cold' is bad. No one wants an ice-age. No, 'hot' is not good either! The *actual* scientists who are qualified to measure and model what *hot* would do tell us it would radically reduce *global* crop yields, even though some places like Canada might marginally increase their particular crop yields. But this is a *global* event, so pointing at the very few global winners is disingenuous.
In summary:
cold = bad.
'Warm' (where we are now) = good, and are the conditions our civilisation developed in.
'Hot' = sudden changes to food supply and 'bad' again.
And no, Peter, not all life thrived in hot events in the past. Some Palaeontologists say it may have caused an E.L.E!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#Sustained_and_significant_global_warming
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
More comments from the mystery man Mr Now, or is that Dr Now? Do you wear a cape?
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Elaine,
Based on the lack of balance shown here and your long history of bias (http://elainemckewon.wordpress.com/category/climate-change/) in this area, along with your one sided supervision how do you expect anyone, other than fellow activists, to take you seriously?
Elaine McKewon
(PhD Candidate at University of Technology, Sydney)
Marc,
Firstly, I have never claimed to have expertise in climate science. My research is about the representation of scientific knowledge in the news media.
Secondly, the point of disclosure is to declare which organisation/s fund a person or group’s activities (such as research or lobbying) or whether you own shares etc. in a company that stands to commercially profit from your research.
Thirdly, you claim that I have ‘a long history of bias in this area’ ... apparently because I have long accepted the scientific consensus on climate change.
So in your mind, a person who accepts the scientific consensus on any issue is inherently 'biased'?
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
You are obviously not qualified to judge either way so I accept that for the ignorant an argument from authority may seem as a valid basis for deciding, That would be okay if the science was being judged fairly. However, the scientific debate has long been skewed as the science has become politicised, and on these ground the argument from authority angle falls over, and the question becomes more of which authority do you trust.
I used to be broadly happy with the IPCC position until I attended…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Marc the geologist wants "full disclosure". But where would a geologist work, or be consulting?
Again the assiduous avoidance of the clear downers for 'skeptics' -- sea rise & acidification. Forget voluminous ice-core data.
Instead, we get never ending mentions of one 'evil' source -- IPCC. And we get more divertimentos like: "...is still to be determined with a satisfactory level certainty" Marc's degree?
Or, more pompously: " I note more and more peer reviewed scientific literature is indicating changes at the lower end of model projections." -- reread as "Marc doesn't read much or doesn't read what he doesn't like".
It's actually very clear in many peer-reviewed (gotta have that, eh Marc?) studies not connected with the dreaded IPCC bureaucracy, that their predictions have been and remain conservative, on the low ends of warming , ice loss and other predictions. C'mon Marc, man up & find them, it's easy!
Trevor Ellice
Geologist (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
So this is the new line of attack regarding the pesky skeptics (or those of us lft with a brain). Funny the author seems to believe those skeptical about the biblical protestations of the end of the world by co2 belong to conspiracy and then launches another conspiracy to explain their meddling. Joe public are beginning to wake up to the fact the great CAGW kerfufle is a gross beat up by acedemia with vested insterests and founded on science about as thin as wet tissue paper; and when they do they are going to be angry. A few of those vested interests should be planning their out, about right now.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Regardless of the article's merits/demerits, this "pesky skeptics (or those of us lft with a brain)." is good, Trevor -- well excepting the spellink.
But it does open a new path for passive-aggressive withholding of agreement, which then, upon expected, logical criticism, can open the interior door to being the "victim" 'skeptic'.
Good. Classically manipulative, but good.
;]
.
Marc Hendrickx
Geologist (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Down to the spelling then. What the gas tank almost on empty, Alex? Come on you can do better than that.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
For you, Marc, I'll really try harder!
;]
David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
None of the articles from the IPA or books from Ian Plimer made me question my "belief" in global warming, but this book by Christopher Booker did: http://www.amazon.com/Real-Global-Warming-Disaster-scientific/dp/1441119701/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329430928&sr=8-1
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
DAvid, just reading the Amazon promo: "Christopher Booker interweaves the science of global warming with that of its growing political consequences, showing how just when the politicians are threatening to change our Western way of life beyond recognition, the scientific evidence behind the global warming theory is being challenged like never before"
Shows up his charlatanism: "politicians are threatening to change our Western way of life beyond recognition" -- gut appeal to anyone who distrusts…
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David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
Alex, I agree with you that the blurb for the book doesn't sound very appealing. I received the book as a gift and it took many months before I picked it up and hand a look through. What I found interesting was the political history of the issue of "global warming" from the 70's onwards, and the dodgy politics/PR tactics that were used to get the issue into the public awareness in America.
For me the book was not so much about trying to poke holes in science it was to show the political history of the issue. And that Al Gore's conviction on the issue was based on something that turned out to be false.
Am no book reviewer, but that's were my questioning started…:)
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
What was Al Gore wrong about?
We also must realize that ever since the Steam Age, engineers and scientists have worried about burning so much carbonaceous material for power. That includes those after Arrhenius wrote his 1896 & 1905 papers on the atmospheric effects of CO2 (before oil). The motivation for nuclear research for decades was also to address the wasteful combustion of fossil materials: http://tinyurl.com/6xgpkfa
David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
From memory Gore was sitting in a lecture at university where the lecturer showed a graph of temperature vs CO2 concentrations over time. The two appeared to correlate nicely and Gore internalised the link. Later, more accurate results could be used to zoom in on the graph to show the two were not linked and one cannot claim from the graphs that CO2 is driving changes in temperature. But that's from memory so much better to read the book.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Ok, so whatever graph they showed, Gore was ultimately right, because with all the various ice cores from opposing poles, the correlation is very clear. Suggest the Vostok data, for example...
http://www.google.com/search?q=vostok+temperature&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=WNC&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=85g9T_OtG-SW2gXdrMWsCA&ved=0CG0QsAQ&biw=1062&bih=716
And I'd be happy to email another example, but all you need do is Google "ice core data…
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David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
Alex, you are convinced because of correlations?
Instead of taking the usual line of trying to poke holes in the science I took the opposite: http://www.taxpayers.net.au/science-2/climate-change/
Fred Pribac
(logged in via email @internode.on.net)
I went to the website you link to as above, I read your letter and also the response from the IPCC.
It is very clear to me that the IPCC directed you very politely and clearly to relavent sections of their reports and also indicated in several places in their response where the information you were after is summarized within the IPCC reports.
I thought their advice balanced, respectful and appropriate.
David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
I had already looked through quite a lot of the material they mentioned and the sections they mentioned did not help to answer the questions.
Likewise the CSIRO, who, like the IPCC cannot come up with a succinct list of scientific papers that someone could then use to argue that temperatures have been increasing to dangerous levels and that CO2 is to blame. Having links to where there is a 'bit of a discussion' about it is not enough.
Eclipse Now
Manager of design firm (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
Hi David,
I too was at first troubled by the Al Gore ice-ages graph and the way "The Great Global Warming Swindle" demolished it. However, there's more to that story.
Denialists attacked Al Gore's rather simplistic presentation of the ice-ages graph. In 'An Inconvenient Truth' Al Gore *seemed* to suggest that climate science was based on the Ice Ages graph. In the movie, the way this graph was used suggested that changing Carbon Dioxide levels caused and then killed the Ice Ages; that Co2…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Nothing like an eclipse to cool things off. (sorry, couldn't resist)
The very powerful forces acting are indeed positive feedbacks that accelerate changes, such as Arctic ice melting leading to exposed sea, which absorbs more solar energy, warms more and melts more ice, etc.
Some things work differently at different latitudes as well, such as Asian combustion particulates acting like volcanic dust at mid latitudes, cooling upper air & even altering monsoon behavior, while soot particles falling…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Yes, David correlation isn't causality. Nor is it lack of causality , which is what unscrupulous folks try to exploit. Being degreed in, and having taught, statistics, correlation simply provides hints on where to look for causal relations. The causal relations for CO2 heating air have been known since Tyndall & Arrhenius. The causal nature of CO2 acidifying seawater (or seltzer) has been known longer. And, the causal nature of melting land-ice/snow raising seawater has been known for -- well…
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David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
I am not interested in general links to climate change, there are many papers that mention the words "climate change", or "CO2" or "temperature". I want to argue really well for climate change due to CO2, and have not come across material to do that with. Since the IPCC & CSIRO cannot provide a briefer set of scientific papers than the IPCC volumes it something I do not spend any time looking into anymore.
Agree there probably is more convincing evidence for the ocean acidification issue but that is still a separate topic.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Well David, when you go to your doctor with a real problem and he says "I'm not interested in..." what do you think? Facts take work. "A lie goes around the world before the truth gets its boots on" -- Sam Clemens. That;s exactly the work we're dealing with here.
So, here's a shot at covering the Big Three of CO2 emissions for you in one swoop, with a few references at the beginning...I think it's #10 down: www.thoriumenergyalliance.com/ThoriumSite/TEAC3.html
David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
I am not sure what the point of that link was, I have studied physics at university and have no problems with nuclear power, did some research on its safety and turns out Australia is one of the safest places to store nuclear waste and that when done properly it is at a lower radiation level that exists from its original source in the ground. Living within our means from an energy point of view is the heart of the problem which is something we probably both agree on..
Not sure what the doctor point was either.
Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Sorry David, I should have been even more explicit -- that 10th presentation down covers the evidence for CO2 influences on: 1) global warming, 2) sea rise, and 4) ocean acidification. Perhaps clicking on the PDF download & viewing that would make more sense to your original question.
Indeed, there's even a class of reactor now in R&D around the world that can consume all the existing wastes and, after ~100 years, the net radioactivity on Earth would be less than now. It's worth remembering that radioactivity arise from elements that are unstable and disappearing into stable, non-radioactive ones. So, unlike PCBs, DDT, Chlordane, Mercury, Arsenic, etc. nuclear 'wastes' disappear -- some more quickly than others. And, ones that disappear slowly aren't particularly radioactive.
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
David,
Your experience is EXACTLY parallel to mine.
I have, as it turned out, wasted about three years tryng to obtain such papers from Penny Whetton, head of CSIRO Climate Group in Melbourne, lead author in IPCC report, and to Andy Pitman, UNSW, Will Steffen ANU, David Karoly Melbourne and countless othere. The result nothing.
Penny Wheton did make the unqualified statement, after a dozen or so letters in which promised to send me some material, that it is that "We believe that most of the increase in atmospheric temperatures in the second half of the twenrtieth Century was very likely caused by increases in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide."
I did not realise at the time that this was a quote from the IPCC report AR4.
In any case I think I can claim to have done better than you did in that I received some revealing advice!!!! Perhaps not that revealuing!
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
John Nicol:
"I have, as it turned out, wasted about three years tryng to obtain such papers from Penny Whetton, head of CSIRO Climate Group in Melbourne, lead author in IPCC report, and to Andy Pitman, UNSW, Will Steffen ANU, David Karoly"
If you knew anything about this subject, you wouldn't be bothering those people asking them to do your research for you.
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Thanks Chris,
Your remarks almost parallel my own thoughts which are that "If had known anything about this subject, I wouldn't be bothered going to those people asking them for advice."
However, I entered this interesting area after I fully retired about 2004, and at that stage believed that the geopgraphers in the climate centres must be correct and their arguments did seem logical. As a physicist in the area of high resolution gaseous spectroscopy, I thought it interesting to be able…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
John, last year, you told me who was paying you for all this kind of blogging, but I forget who it was. Want to share it again?
You do have time to write voluminously, but really, what does this mean?...
"c.) we know that CO2 absorbs infra red and warms the atmosphere, has anything to do with the discussion in hand. These facts are totally accepted."
And, last year, in private exchange, you demonstrated lack of understanding, at the quantum level or above, of how & why CO2 increases can…
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Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
Also, you did your own calculations...
So you have replicated the mathematics embodied in the Radiative Transfer Codes of such programs as ModTran. You calculated the solutions to the radiative transfer eqn, including allowing for the temperature profile of the atmosphere, the moisture profile of the atmosphere, density changes and their impact on line broadening of individual spectral lines and the data in things like the HiTran Spectroscopic database - data on 2.5 million spectral lines from 30 different atmospheric gases.
You did all this John? Or did you do something far more simplistic that gave you an unrealistic result.
Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
David.
"At the same time I followed the path of doing my own calculations on atmospheric CO2 beyond the simplistic estimates of Arrhenius, Callendar, Hansen, Trenberth and others."
It is interesting that your list of sources starts with the very early folks like Arrhenius & Callender, predating modern spectroscopy which you profess to have expertice in. Then you skip to Hansen who is primarily a paleoclimatologists these days and Trenberth who works substantially in planetary energy budgets - neither of which deals with the modern spectroscopic understanding of the GH Effect starting after WWII. You don't mention Gilbert Plass, Mannabe & Wetherald etc. How many of the text boks on radiative heat transfer theory pertaining to the atmosphere have you read? For someone who claims to have a background in the relevent area of physics, you make scant mention of the key researchers.
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Sure, I quote Hansen and Trenberth and while I may have respect for Gilbert Plass, Manabe and Wetherald and also many others, the names who have retained an advocacy in Climate Change as being the result of CO2 are Hansen and Trenberth. The IPCC quotes them and in spite of some lack in qualifications to do so, both have written papers purporting to demonstrate the effects of carbon dioxide on climate. Both have also taken an interest in trying to influence Australian politics to our detriment…
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Glenn Tamblyn
Mechanical Engineer, Director (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
John. I have read Zastawney 2006 and he is presenting a very simplistic model of the atmosphere. His model basically treats the atmosphere as a single homogenous entity. His paper contains references to absorption all through it but not one single reference to or use of the words emission or re-radiation. Without this it is useless. A model based on a single homogenous atmosphere that i only being analysed for absorption is pointless.
To calculate all the behaviour in the atmosphere it needs…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"Manabe and Wetherald are actually biologists not climate scientists"
Manabe got his PhD in 1958 and his papers in the period before then were (from www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/results.php):
Manabe, Syukuro, 1957: On the modification of air-mass over the Japan Sea when the outburst of cold air predominates. Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan, 35(6), 311-326.
Manabe, Syukuro, 1956: On the contribution of heat released by condensation to the change in pressure pattern. Journal…
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John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Chris,
I am very surprised that you stooped so quickly to provide the ultimate insult, "lying", but perhaps you had had a bad day. I forgive you unreservedly.
Your earlier reference to Manabe (whose name you incorrectly spelled as Mannabe) and Wetherald, seemed to me to imply that they were of an era and are infact "climate" scientists who have looked at the effect of global warming on tree species.
The Manabe to whom you now refer is indeed a meteorologist whose work was very thorough…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
But John, you lied to me last year when you said you knew how Photo-molecular interactions worked in the atmosphere, and you show here that you've made no progress. Are they still paying you for this silly bluster?
Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"Your earlier reference to Manabe (whose name you incorrectly spelled as Mannabe)"
It's not surprising that you're easily confused. The earlier reference to "Mannabe" was made by Glenn Tamblyn.
"and Wetherald, seemed to me to imply that they were of an era and are infact "climate" scientists who have looked at the effect of global warming on tree species."
So that's your pathetic excuse for calling Manabe a "biologist"? Well at least we know we can't believe anything you say if that's the…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
John Nicol: "Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius and Callendar along with Mann, Trenberth and Hansen, are of course the main references provided by the IPCC"
I can't find any mention of Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius and Callendar in the AR4 WG1 chapter on radiative forcing. Why should anyone who wants to learn about climate science bother reading you considering that so much of what you say is wrong?
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Chris,
Sorry, I should have been more specific. Try Chapter 1, References and various other places and including Section 1.4 - Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis.
Callendar, G.S., 1938: The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., 64, 223–237.
Arrhenius, S., 1896: On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature on the ground, Philos. Mag., 41, 237–276
Tyndall, J., 1861: On the absorption…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
David Nichol: "the famouis diagram by Hansen and Trenberth .., was complete nonsense, since as the absorption coefficient of the air increased, while energy was captured a few metres lower, energy returned to the earth by radiation form the Green House Gases, had also to pass though a lower atmosphere whose absorption coeficcient had increased even more, reducing at some wavelengths the radiation reaching back to the earth and just not increasing at others."
The only thing that's complete nonsense…
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John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Chris,
Since you refer to some words I have written, may I assume that your comment was actually meant for me, John Nicol, and not the David Nichol. I will therefore respond.
First, I would say that I appreciate that you have engaged in a proper conversation here, by picking me up earlier on my truncated list of references and now by challenging my physics. It will be interesting to see who can convince the other of our particular approach to this piece of physics, or whether we will simply…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
John Nicol: "This radiation has not come as a mamoth readiation field from the top of the atmosphere as implied in Trenberth's diagram"
I don't know which particular chart you're referring to but the ones I'm familiar with refer to the back radiation as received by the ground, i.e. not something that comes from the top of the atmosphere. The one I just looked at has arrows that start below the clouds.
"In addition, if the only cooling from the surface of the earth is via radiation as implied…
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John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
Chris, No I am not suggesting any conspiracy theory, simply stating facts demonstrated by John Coleman who was part of the meteorological scene at the time. OK. He may be wrong and if so I apologise.
However, at that time and afterwards, and again in the mid 1980s, Universities in Australia funded by such bodies as the UGC and ARC required 1. Universities to nominate what they saw as their areas of research strength with a limit on the number of such areas which could be Nominated. James…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
"No I am not suggesting any conspiracy theory, simply stating facts demonstrated by John Coleman who was part of the meteorological scene at the time."
It may not have needed a conspiracy to begin with but sooner or later a conspiracy of dishonesty would be needed to keep it going.
I'm still wondering if you're going to repeat your meme about Trenberth's diagram somewhere else as if nothing happened above. That would be the standard intellectually dishonest behaviour I've come to expect from climate science denialists. The same thing applies to your assertion about an equatorial ground temperature of 140 C. Same thing about the meme that because climate scientists pointed out the effects of sulphate aerosols in the 1960s, they must be wrong about the effect of CO2. But this is the way that climate science denial, of which you are an exponent, works. The intellectually dishonest false assertions are repeated over and over again even though they are debunked over and over again.
John Nicol
(logged in via Facebook)
My dear Chris,
Thank you for reminding me of the need to respond to your very challenging questions.
Yes, I have quickly and somewhat untidily posted a copy of his diagram, if you want to refresh your memory, along with some others, at http://www.ruralsoft.com.au/climatescientific.
If I have interpreted it correctly, the diagram shows that of atotal of 341 W/m^2 received from the sun, 161 W/m^2 is absorbed in the earth's surface from the sun, while 79 W/m^2 are reflected by clouds…
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Chris O'Neill
Telecommunications Engineer (logged in via email @optusnet.com.au)
John: "The indication of 333 W/m^2 from the reradiation coming downwards is not well defined, and one might assume that this is complementary to another 333 W/m^2 being radiated upwards by the atmosphere"
That would be true if you could get several optical depths above the ground while the air temperature remained near enough to surface temperature. As you rise above the ground, the radiation going up is the sum of the ground radiation multiplied by the exponential decay factor for that wavelength…
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Alex Cannara
(logged in via Facebook)
Don't worry Chris, JohnN will soon disengage, as he did with me privately last year, when it became clear he'd no idea how molecules in air interact, with or without photons inducing possible quantum states.
But, maybe, he'll go in with Helen & post a compensation bond for future Nicols, etc. to recover some value for the damage their liberality with facts, and lack of the traditional conservative value of knowledge, may induce? Bets?
David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
John,
I remember reading your first post thinking, "wow, John has put a lot more time into it than me and they still haven't come up with the goods."
That's the point, as citizens we are free to believe whatever we want to believe, like this whole thread, everyone has different perspectives and experiences.
But if our head science body is going to take a clear position on this topic that they "believe in and are confident that CO2 is causing dangerous changes to the earths climate" then…
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David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
got my where and were mixed up then..:(
Davoe McNamee
(logged in via email @gmail.com)
Did he make you question your 'belief' that asbestos is a carcinogen too?
David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
No I don't remember asbestos being on the topic. My grandmother died of mesothelioma :(
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
Christopher Booker has a number of contrarian beliefs about global warming, smoking, asbestos and evolution. As a starting point see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Booker
David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
Thank you for the link to that paper Michael, I enjoyed reading it. It has always amazed me how how a photon is absorbed into an atom provided there is he perfect energy slot for it to jump into.
It seems the logical next step after that paper is to build an experiment whereby the horizontal slices of the atmosphere at a particular grid point are recreated ( ratio of different atoms in the gas, temperature etc) so as to record what happens when a sunlike light source shines down through the layers and the just slowly increase the level of CO2 and see what happens at all levels...???
Michael J. I. Brown
(ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
One can run simple experiments with pairs of perspx boxes containing air with/without enhanced levels of CO2, using lights to replicate the action of the Sun. There are videos of these experiments online (there's even a mythbusters episode where they do such an experiment).
David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
Just had a look at the myth buster videos, it's a good way to show CO2 and methane are greenhouse gases...
David Collett
(logged in via Twitter)
Sorry for the spelling mistakes in my last comment Michael, that was my first attempt with an iPad :)...
Peter Lang
Retired geologist and engineer (logged in via email @netspeed.com.au)
To: Andrew Glikson and other Climate scientists and climate activists,
An Open Letter to Dr. Linda Gundersen
Posted on February 21, 2012 by Willis Eschenbach
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Dear Dr. Gundersen;
I see that due to the highly theatrical auto-defenestration of your predecessor, Dr. Peter Gleick, you are now the Chair of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Task Force on Scientific Integrity. I'm not sure whether to offer my congratulations or my condolences. Let me offer you…
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Trevor Ellice
Geologist (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
what an amazing thread. I dunno can the warmist scientists just come out like the labour party and fess up - so we can all get on with our lives.