Harry's Place

“Inhofe responded, “People are afraid of some of the environmentalists out there because they pour all the money into campaigns”

This is empirically true.

Yea – those evil lefty greeners spending money on saving the planet – tsk tsk.
It is odd that save the planet has come to mean ‘ lefty ‘.

You know, Steve Bell was funny (for once) on this issue today:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2009/nov/02/environment-global-warming

Well my blog is the 23rd on the Politics Home list of Conservative blogs, so I think it is legitimate to quote myself. This is what I wrote about the subject earlier this year:

“In particular I want to criticise an idea that is promoted mostly by people with who I agree 90% of the time- that global warming is a ’scam’, a ‘hoax’ or a ‘con’ or whatever. It is possible that global warming is an incorrect theory, however the idea that thousands of scientists are colluding to trick the public and politicians is absurd. It requires a conspiracy that is in size equal to the one posited by the 9/11 truthers, involving a vast number of people to keep the secret.”

I believe it is more likely than not that Anthropogenic Global Warming is real. However there is a strong degree of scepticism about AGW on the right and that is legitimate but when it comes to denouncing scientists as perpetuating a hoax or a scam then it gets into conspiritorial territory.

Another thing that shows up the political nature of the right’s opposition to global warming is their non-separation of their different disagreements with varying aspects of the politics and science of climate change.

So for instance they will happily cite physicists who believe that climate change is mainly caused by changes in solar irradiation (such that they actually exist), Bjorn Lomborg who believes that man made climate change is happening but that it’s not efficient to try to prevent it or McKintyre who believes that the data has been largely misinterpreted.

Each of these can be an honest position (equally it can be dishonest as is arguably the case with McKintyre) but the conflation of the three is almost always dishonest and reflects either a complete confusion of thinking or distortion of the argument for political reasons.

I haven’t looked at all the the con blogs so can’t comment on that, but I think its worth it to point out that Thatcher was one of the originators of the global warming scare – it was a method she devised to finally break the coal unions and try to move the UK towards nuclear power. When the research she commissioned to back her argument for the closure of the mines came back saying they weren’t causing global warming, she recommissioned other scientists with a brief to find differently – this according to the documentary “the Great Global Warming Hoax” –
http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2007/03/brit_doc_thatch.html

In other news, President Barack Obama says Afghanistan is a “war of necessity.” But research by the mesquito society has found that the top ten Democratic blogs are uniformely skeptical.

It would also be nice to have a nod to the fact that I wrote the earlier piece about Margaret Thatcher’s view on Climate Change here:

http://richardwillisuk.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/margaret-thatcher-%e2%80%93-climate-change-pioneer

And I am a Conservative blogger :-)

Further research by the mesquito society finds that President Obama oft-stated view that a marriage should consist of one man and one woman is enough to get a lesser mortal banned by the top ten Democratic blogs.

Would you invest your pension in a project that predicated anthropogenic global warming? Thought not.

The Murphy Society also notes that especially in the USA, many of the same right wingers that question climate change also are also for the teaching of young earth creationism in the public schools.

Perhaps it is hostility toward science in general rather then simply fearful of “big government”. After all, as we know when push comes to shove, right wingers like big government as much as anybody.

Hang on David Cameron, and everybody else. Planets come and planets go, solar systems come and solar systems go. The earth will eventually be absorbed by the expanding sun anyway, so does it really matter if it’s now or later.

The mesquito society notes that many people who world repeatedly force school children to view “An Inconvenient Truth” on the grounds that it is science also believe, oddly, that an organism’s sex can be changed by superficial surgical mutilation.

You know, Steve Bell was funny (for once) on this issue today:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2009/nov/02/environment-global-warming

A distinctly non-adorable polar bear. Hard to feel any sympathy for it.

The mesquito society needs to get a life.

There is a lot of skepticism around these days. In Britain’s labour party some senior ministers are very skeptical of scientists and don’t believe a word they say.

I’m left of centre and skeptical about the theory of human made climate change. If people weren’t fed silly stuff from both sides all the time, the divide wouldn’t lie between political affiliation…

I’m left of centre and skeptical about the theory of human made climate change.

Alexander Cockburn is way, way left of center, but is a skeptic.

Why should government ministers accept the opinions of scientists concerning climate change when they do not accept the opinions of scientists concerning illegal drugs?

So, Tory bloggers more sensible than their leader.
Good.

Cameron can only lose by stating there is no Global Warming and he gives up mass tax revenues to be derived from Green Taxes. So, he’s going along with the game.

Cameron can only lose by stating there is no Global Warming and he gives up mass tax revenues to be derived from Green Taxes. So, he’s going along with the game.

It’s more depressing than that. Cameron, McCain, Obama, and countless other pols probably don’t have a clue about AGW one way or the another. But since AGW is received wisdom for the vast majority of the chattering classes, to express any scepticism has the effect of stopping a pol’s agenda until he contritely and publicly gets his mind right.

That’s another thing that confuses me, this idea that politicians are only going along with the “global warming hoax” so they get to influence people’s behaviour by the draconian method of changing tax rates, rather than the current namby pamby powers they have to make things illegal.

It’s more depressing than that. Cameron, McCain, Obama, and countless other pols probably don’t have a clue about AGW one way or the another. But since AGW is received wisdom for the vast majority of the chattering classes, to express any scepticism has the effect of stopping a pol’s agenda until he contritely and publicly gets his mind right.

What were the “chattering classes”‘ opinions about the war in Iraq? Have you ever stopped to think that most mainstream politicians accept the reality of man made climate change because it’s true rather than because it’s a grand conspiracy?

Well, Short Order Cook, as Private Eye pointed out…why does every single response to climate change involve…raising taxes?

I accept that AGW is occuring, but I see it as an geo-engineering problem to be fixed, and reject utterly the analysis of the leftist green fascist fuckwits like Moonbat. AGW is a chance to bury socialism once and for all by unleashing a new age of technological innovation and enterprise.

What were the “chattering classes”‘ opinions about the war in Iraq?

It was divided. Some, like Peter Beinart, were for it. Others, like Chris Matthews, were against it. Still others, like Joe Klein, now try to deny that they were for it.

It’s a complicated question. I think it’s because politicians have lost faith in their own ability to influence the country by non-legislative means, that they have bought into economists’ characterisation of people as wealth maximising production units, and that they don’t think that society can or will react to reasoned arguments unless backed up with punitive measures.

Why do you think it is?

reject utterly the analysis of the leftist green fascist fuckwits like Moonbat

Assuming you mean Monbiot, have you read Heat? Obviously I don’t think that you’ll agree with him about everything, but I think you’d be surprised how much you do agree with him.

Its also another way to bury Islam for all time – its pretty hard to pour billions into mosques worldwide when no one wants your oil.

That’s another thing that confuses me, this idea that politicians are only going along with the “global warming hoax” so they get to influence people’s behaviour by the draconian method of changing tax rates, rather than the current namby pamby powers they have to make things illegal.

Exactly. This view might have slightly more credence if politicians’ impressive sounding language on the issue came even close to being matched by their actions.
But their attitude of many right wing deniers is largely predicated on the assumption that governments are incapable of being motivated by anything other than increasing their own power.
The daft thing is that even if one accepts the reality of AGW there are plenty of legitimate criticisms that can be made of the actions governments have taken – the measures to encourage the use of biofuels for example are bonkers.

He’s a fascist cock, SOC.

But their attitude of many right wing deniers is largely predicated on the assumption that governments are incapable of being motivated by anything other than increasing their own power.

The entire history of governments since Cinnaciatus proves that they are indeed just incapable of being motivated by anything other than increasing their own power

the measures to encourage the use of biofuels for example are bonkers.

Agreed!

He’s a fascist cock, SOC.

As I said, I think you may be surprised by Heat. He’s also extremely scathing on biofuels, but then it’s hard not to be in their current incarnation.

And he’s pro-nuclear power

Yes, he seems to have somewhat changed his mind on that over the last few years, although I still wouldn’t say he’s “pro” nuclear power, just that he thinks it might be a necessity (but one to be got rid of at the earliest opportunity)

The interesting thing is that more and more scientists are beginning to question the AGW story.

(Are we allowed to say “warming” any more, btw? Or is it always “change” now?)

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/02/160-physicists-send-letter-to-senate-regarding-aps-climate-position/

SOC, yes it would be fairer to say he sees it as a neccessary evil.

It’s crazy.

The significant role of the Sun was dimissed by the IPCC, even in their 2007 report.

We’re potentially headed into a deep solar minimum of the same magnitude that accompanied the Little Ice Age – we’ll know in about two years’ time.

In my personal investigation of the AGW science (carried out partly to satisfy my own curiousity, and partly on behalf of a friend who’s considering investing in ‘green’ businesses), I’ve been shocked by the unprofessional and unscientific nature of the IPCC’s reports – they don’t reveal the truth of the science, but rather they selectively pick from the research, ignore undesirable findings and are quite obscure about what has been omitted. (This is also the case for the website RealClimate, the main defender of the IPCC science on the web).

In some cases, they have completely reversed in their summaries, the conclusions of the scientists they’re citing, always in the direction of greater AGW alarmism.

As a side matter, in the case of the infamous 1000-year paleoclimate ‘hockey stick’ graph, showpiece of the 2001 report, it appears that the authors may have been involved in something very close to scientific fraud.

Their climate models ignore long-term solar variablility and assume a water-vapour response to heating that hasn’t been observed in the real world (this water vapour “feedback” is what causes the alarming warming scenarios in the models). They’re also unable to correctly model cloud patterns, which are amongst, if not the most significant forcing for the climate.

I’m not saying that CO2 doesn’t cause warming, or that we’re not emitting CO2, it’s just that the evidence is strongly indicating a far lower climate sensitivity to CO2 changes than the IPCC’s figure.

I’ll be happy to include references to what I think are the key published papers (all of them based on real-world observations rather than modelling results) which refute the AGW hypothesis, if anyone’s interested.

cjcjc,

That’s 160 physicists out of about 50,000 in the APS, many of whom are the same AGW deniers like Singer who pop up time and time again.

And when they say things like

while substantial concern has been expressed that emissions may cause significant climate change, measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent

which are so patently, absurdly false why on earth should we take them seriously?

You are certainly allowed to say “warming” though ;)

I was suprised to find I thought monbiot was sounding pretty reasonable in his public spat with the speccie. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/sep/23/spectator-plimer-climate-change-sceptic&whp=3114&wsc=pr&wsi=797ab69e4ed1b600 Certainly he effectively makes the point about the squid ink squirting and horse-changing tactics many agw ’sceptics’ share with troofers, birthers, anti-vaccers and IDers.
To paraphrase another famous tory, hyperbolic b/s gets halfway round the world before the facts can get their pants on.

IMO it’s more of a story about the nature of political blogging than a straight ‘tories say the craziest things’ story.

I’ll be happy to include references to what I think are the key published papers (all of them based on real-world observations rather than modelling results) which refute the AGW hypothesis, if anyone’s interested.

Why bother? You are probably a Creationist, a 9-11 Truther, a homeopath and a Tory.

Hey, mesquito, those are my attributes!!

I’m with oneuniverse on the science, and soc on the politics.

There is no chance whatsoever of any mainstream politician denying the importance of AGW until the scientific community as a whole does. Much too risky – the media would crucify them. Cameron has got a hard task with this one.

When (if) AGW theory is dropped, the cognitive dissonance generated is going to be big enough to power a medium-sized country.

I wait in smug anticipation.

He is very like those things, in that almost every statement he makes is wrong.

The significant role of the Sun was dimissed by the IPCC, even in their 2007 report.

Because there is no evidence that the current warming is due to solar activity. If it was then you would expect to see warming in the stratosphere, but instead the stratosphere is cooling but the troposphere is warming, which is precisely what you would expect with warming due to an enhanced greenhouse effect.

As a side matter, in the case of the infamous 1000-year paleoclimate ‘hockey stick’ graph, showpiece of the 2001 report, it appears that the authors may have been involved in something very close to scientific fraud.

Totally untrue but in any case besides the point. There have been a number of reconstructions made using a variety of different proxies and they all show the same pattern. The “hockey stick” doesn’t rest on a single piece of research, nor for that matter do arguments about it have any bearing on whether the real observed warming over the last 100 years or so is due to human CO2 emissions.

Their climate models ignore long-term solar variablility and assume a water-vapour response to heating that hasn’t been observed in the real world (this water vapour “feedback” is what causes the alarming warming scenarios in the models). They’re also unable to correctly model cloud patterns, which are amongst, if not the most significant forcing for the climate.

It’s true that most models do not model cloud patterns effectively, but the evidence seems to be that as the climate warms changing cloud patters will provide positive feedback. So to the extent that the effect of changes in cloud cover are not taken into account this is responsible for underestimating the likely effect of increases in CO2 levels rather than the opposite. See

http://climateprogress.org/2009/07/24/science-deniers-lindzen-clouds-amplifying-positive-feedback-not-negative/

I’m not saying that CO2 doesn’t cause warming, or that we’re not emitting CO2, it’s just that the evidence is strongly indicating a far lower climate sensitivity to CO2 changes than the IPCC’s figure.

Well this is the crux of the matter – it is incontrovertible that increased levels of CO2 will cause warming and that levels have indeed increased dramatically, so we are left with arguments amount climate sensitivity. The IPCC says 1.5 – 4.5C with the likely figure around 3.0C, which is in line with the vast majority of research (and there has been a lot of research on this). I guess you are referring to Linzden’s paper which put it at about 0.5C but that is a single piece of research which has been strongly contested. He is certainly alone in his view that water vapour feedbacks are negative and the abovementioned research on the effect of changes in cloud cover would also seem to contradict his assumptions.

Short order cook, you wrote earlier that :
“Each of these can be an honest position (equally it can be dishonest as is arguably the case with McKintyre)”.

McKintyre’s honesty was confirmed by the Wegman investigative committee, commissioned by Congress, which fully upheld McIntyre and McKitrick’s criticism of the Mann’s statistical work on the ‘hockey-stick’.

May I ask what makes you believe that McKintyre was somehow dishonest ?

Hettie, your blog doesn’t look very centre-left, given you’ve got a Conservative general election countdown clock and an attack on Gordon Brown. Just saying.

I am not inclined to listen to this American-inspired climate change scepticism nonsense when the other popular view to come out of the American Right is Creationism. I’m not a Deep Green by any means, (in fact I think they’re nutters) and I realise that it is possible to live in reality and be a Republican, but, man, so much of your party must embarrass you the whole time. Like a dribbling, flatulent old uncle perving over your female friends at a dinner party before going off to puke a bottle of port in the sink.

Ben, it’s not about been deep green or otherwise. Just listen to the scientists.

I am perfectly happy to listen to the science, Andrew. I (flatteringly, no doubt) consider myself to be entirely disinterested in my view when it comes to climate change. This means that I follow the overwhelming consensus in favour of global warming.

I am, nonetheless, deeply suspicious of the anti-growth screed of much of the Deeper Green fringes of the environmentalist movement. These are the luddites who opposed the green revolution from the 60s onwards and now the important work with GM crops etc. Always in favour of the luddite, anti-human response, never in favour of the ability of humankind to manipulate the environment around us to improve lives.

Indeed, one might say that the success of environmentalism is to have taken the more sensible views of a bunch of cranks and assorted nutters and misanthropes, projecting them into the mainstream where wiser heads can pick and choose the sense and the nonsense.

You may of course ask! McKintyre’s “honesty” was not what was being investigated by the Wegman committee, what was being investigated was the statistical techiniques used in Mann’s two “hockey stick” reconstructions. We could ponder on why a committee was assembled by two Republicans with links to the oil and coal industries almost solely to look at this but that isn’t necessarily relevant to McKintyre’s honesty.

The main problems relating to McKintyre’s position on this subject are that he keeps insisting that his work shows that the hockey stick graph is wrong, despite the fact that it has been shown that using different statistical methods on the same data show very similar trends, and that different datasets have since emerged independently which serve to corroborate the hockey stick trend, and his accusations of dishonesty (especially relating to release of code and data) against Mann and co-workers.

I am not sure, not being personally involved, whether he has a dishonest position or not. I would say that it is possible to work for many years to improve statistical analyses on a dataset, or to work to detect and correct systematic errors in a measurement technique, but that the honest reason to be doing that is to improve the state of the science. I’m not sure whether that is why he is doing what he is doing.

I am prepared to give Thatcher a pass on supporting the concept of catastrophic man-made climate change. I am not aware of any contrary scientific opinion at that time.

Mind you, I was not paying a lot of attention to the debate. It is quite possible there were counter arguments. However, if the level of discourse is anywhere near the same as it is today, or more correctly five years ago, the counter arguments would not have been allowed in.

A number of the core proofs to the Man Made Global Warming argument have now been disproved. It also appears that, not only was the analysis incomplete, the data was never offered for independant review.

You ask why so many scientists still agree with the faulty analysis. I do to.

The IPCC has even scaled back from its most dire predictions. Allthough this hasn’t stopped the continuous barrage of propaganda.

PS:

Have you noticed that the ratbags, sorry, I mean the Warminists, have moved on from CO2 to methane.

Andrew Adams, thanks, will reply shortly.

Short order cook:

The Wegman report said that they found the “criticisms of MM03/05a/05b to be valid and compelling”.

The report didn’t find any flaws in their analysis. Trying to smear the report, and by extension the integrity of Dr. Wegman and the other authors of the report, by darkly mentioning “Republicans” and “links to the oil and coal industries” is just frankly unpleasant ad hominem, and has no bearing on the mathematical correctness of the report.

Wegman’s analysis that Mann’s use of PCA was incorrect was backed up in definite fashion by Ian Jollife, an authority the use of PCA in statistics (and a believer in AGW), who stepped in to stop pro-AGW blogger Tamino from falsely misrepresenting his work in a defense of the hockey stick. See http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3601 .

Wegman makes it clear what Mann did in his “hockey stick” paper :

“The controversy of Mann’s methods lies in that the proxies are centered on the mean of the period 1902-1995, rather than on the whole time period. This mean is, thus, actually decentered low, which will cause it to exhibit a larger variance, giving it preference for being selected as the first principal component. The net effect of this decentering using the proxy data in MBH and MBH99 is to produce a “hockey stick” shape. Centering the mean is a critical factor in using the principal component methodology properly. It is not clear that Mann and associates realized the error in their methodology at the time of publication.”

SOC, re: the other temperature reconstructions that have a ‘hockey stick’ shape

All these ‘other reconstructions’ have been show to use problematical proxies with hockey stick shapes, normally one or more of the strip-bark bristlecone, strip-bark foxtail and the Yamal tree-ring data – all problematical proxies which happened to have hockey stick shapes. They’re re-using the same few proxies.

Strip-bark trees should not be used for paleoclimate temperature reconstructions at all, as they’re not good proxies. The National Academy of Science’s investigative panel (prompted by Mann’s graph) specifically said that they shouldn’t be used – Mann used them in his original hocket stick, and he’s used them in subsequent “reconstructions” to support his original hockey stick, and so have others.

Wahl and Amman’s validation of Mann was also useless – the R-squared was so low that the results were statistically meaningless (same as with Mann’s original hockey stick). In fact one of the original criticisms of Mann’s paper was that he didn’t publish his R-squared figure (which also shows how shoddy the peer-review was).

The hockey-stick graphs magically erased the Little Ice Age from the temperature record, and diminished the Medieval Warm Period.

The NAS Panel (mostly confirmed pro-AGW scientists):
“Large-scale surface temperature reconstructions yield a generally consistent picture of temperature trends during the preceding millennium, including relatively warm conditions centered around A.D. 1000 (identified by some as the “Medieval Warm Period”) and a relatively cold period (or “Little Ice Age”) centered around 1700. The existence of a Little Ice Age from roughly 1500 to 1850 is supported by a wide variety of evidence including ice cores, tree rings, borehole temperatures, glacier length records, and historical documents.”

Some dubious statistical work, and a few proxies that are demonstrably not usable temperature records are not enough to wipe out the large and varied evidence that we’ve been similarly warm some 1000 years (maybe it’s warmer now), and that the Earth has been warming for at least 250 years in a recovery from the ‘Little Ice Age’ period.

I guess now the question is not who is to blame and what have caused changes in climate, but how to stop those changes before it is too late.

Great article, Gene

Andrew Adams: “Because there is no evidence that the current warming is due to solar activity.”

There’s a lot of gathered evidence that the Sun has been increasing in activity over the last couple of centuries (until recently): it increased its radiative output, and its magnetic field strengthened , more than doubling in the 20th century. This is not controversial.

The IPCC 2007 report disputes the magnitude of the radiative changes, but it doesn’t dispute the qualitative nature of the increases and decreases, or their strong correlations with temperature changes, on decadal, centenial and longer scales.

Solar minima have coincided historically with cooling periods over past millenia. The IPCC doesn’t really mention these correlations. I assume this is because they raise difficult questions for the AGW hypothesis.

AA: “If it was [warming due to solar activity] then you would expect to see warming in the stratosphere, but instead the stratosphere is cooling but the troposphere is warming, which is precisely what you would expect with warming due to an enhanced greenhouse effect.”

The atmosphere is mostly transparent to the Sun’s photonic radiation, which mainly heats the surface, particularly the oceans, much more than the atmosphere.

Some of the insolation in the ultraviolet range does get absorbed by oxygen and ozone the stratosphere, agreed (although this will have actually have a net cooling effect as the energy absorbed by the stratospheric oxygen will partly radiate back to space (as infrared), whereas it would have contributed more to the Earth’s temperature if it had penetrated deeper into the atmosphere or reached the surface). Increased CO2 is predicted to cool the stratosphere, and this will offset the localised warming from the oxygen and ozone, so I wouldn’t neccesarily expect to see a warming stratosphere. If we were getting increased insolation, I would expect a warming surface and that’s what we’ve been experiencing.

The troposphere , whilst warming, has not been warming anywhere near the rate as predicted by climate and GHG models.

You’re probably going to say that the satellite data on which that result was based had an orbital drift problem, and it was corrected. Yes, it was corrected, and the troposphere no longer showed that strong cooling, and yet it still didn’t show the AGW predicted warming either.

There’s also the radiosonde data, as summarised visually on page 116 of US CCSP 2006 report (and buried at the back of the IPCC report):

http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-chap5.pdf

The radiosonde results (panel E) show little to no heating, and in places exhibit a slight cooling in the troposphere where the heating signature of increased water-vapour greenhouse effect is meant to be. This went against the IPCC’s predictions that increased CO2 would lead to increased water-vapour GH feedback in the troposphere. Very importantly, all the large climate sensitivity estimates and severe warming predictions from the models assume that this feedback exists and that it’s positive.

Rather than take this result seriously, the IPCC report buried the graph somewhere at the back of the report, and instead cited two papers, one which argued that the radiosonde thermometer data wasn’t reliable and that we should try to deduce the temperature instead from wind-shear speeds (no fault has been found with radiosonde instruments and their use – it was a silly, speculative argument, but it appears to have been good enough for the IPCC report), and another paper arguing that the warming was lost in statistical noise. However, the warming, if lost in this way could not have been significant, so this is not a refutation at all.

The IPCC’s prediction of tropospheric heating due to water vapour feedback from CO2 increases was disproved, and they buried it.

AA: “He [Lindzen] is certainly alone in his view that water vapour feedbacks are negative and the abovementioned research on the effect of changes in cloud cover would also seem to contradict his assumptions.”

He’s not alone, it’s actually Dessler that seems to be more isolated. You’re indirectly citing the paper “Water-vapor climate feedback inferred from climate fluctuations” by Dessler et al. 2008, which seems to be the only one deducing a positive feedback. It’s been mentioned by all the pro-AGW outlets (even though the paper actually shows that there’s been a net drop in relative humidity due to decreased humidity in the lower troposphere, something not predicted by the models, and not mentioned either by Dessler or t fshe pro-AGWers). However, there’s more evidence for a negative feedback and lower climate sensitivity. At the very least we can say the science cannot be considered to be “settled” :

The paper “Three-dimensional tropospheric water vapor in coupled climate models compared with observations from the AIRS satellite system” (Pierce et al 2006) analyses data from the same satellite (from a few years earlier) and concludes:
“The results show the models we investigated tend to have too much moisture in the upper tropospheric regions of the tropics and extra-tropics relative to the AIRS observations, by 25–100% depending on the location, and 25–50% in the zonal average. This discrepancy is well above the uncertainty in the AIRS data, and so seems to be a model problem.”
http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~pierce/papers/Pierce_et_al_AIRS_vs_models_2006GL027060.pdf

Another paper, “A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions” Douglass, Christy, Pearson, and Singer, 2007:
“Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. … On the whole, the evidence indicates that model trends in the troposphere are very likely inconsistent with observations that indicate that, since 1979, there is no significant long-term amplification factor relative to the surface. If these results continue to be supported, then future projections of temperature change, as depicted in the present suite of climate models, are likely too high.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/904914/A-comparison-of-tropical-temperature-trends-with-model-predictions

Lindzen, as you mentioned :
“On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data” Richard S. Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi 2009
“Climate feedbacks are estimated from fluctuations in theoutgoing radiation budget from the latest version of Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) nonscanner data.It appears, for the entire tropics, the observed outgoing radiation fluxes increase with the increase in sea surfacetemperatures (SSTs). The observed behavior of radiation fluxes implies negative feedback processes associated withr elatively low climate sensitivity.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf

There’s also the 2009 paper (Paltridge, Arking & Pook) “Trends in middle- and upper-level tropospheric humidity from NCEP reanalysis data”, which covers a 35 year period, several times longer than than the periods covered by the other two studies:
“The upper-level negative trends in q are inconsistent with climate-model calculations [...] Negative trends in q as found in the NCEP data would imply that long-term water vapor feedback is negative—that it would reduce rather than amplify the response of the climate system to external forcing such as that from increasing atmospheric CO2.”

In 10 years time we will look back and wonder, as with Y2K, what all the panic was about.

Scum like Gore will have moved onto another money-making hobby-horse.

Let’s hope that only a few dumb decisions will have been made in the meantime.

As a ratbag (see above) I am afraid of man made climate change considering man’s general, catastrrophic negligence of the environment. Business-suicide comes first above all other considerations. I have no proofs, but a lot of distrust of the hardline right, already because they politicise this subject instead of treating it dispassionately.

And no-one has answered my question (last time round): Is it true that the ozone has been damaged? I saw a TV programme which shows a hole in it.

Won’t somebody think of the children!!!

But since AGW is received wisdom for the vast majority of the chattering classes

You could have substituted “vast majority of the world’s climate scientists” for “chattering classes”, but how would that have helped you and your agenda?

In 10 years time we will look back and wonder, as with Y2K, what all the panic was about.

I’ve been waiting for this. The most dire predictions re Y2K were always OTT but the reality is that Y2K passed off without incident precisely because of the fuss made in the preceding years. I helped project manage half-a-dozen Y2K software upgrades; without these, there would have been catastrophic system failure for the companies and vendors concerned.

With respect, people who hark back to 2000 and claim it was all a fuss about nothing don’t know what they’re talking about.

Back on topic, it’s a pleasant surprise to learn that the world’s pre-eminent climate scientists are actually readers of Harry’s Place. It remains a mystery, however, why our resident subject matter experts remain unknown beyond this blog, but I for one am convinced.

FFS.

In 10 years time we will look back and wonder, as with Y2K, what all the panic was about.

I do wonder when people write things like this, what they think is going to happen. Is the CO2 just going to go away, or is the level going to continue to go up, but the temperature will not. Because the first one requires some as yet unknown mechanism to occur, and the second would go against some fairly old and fundamental laws of physics and chemistry.

Well if the 50% of us who are convinced stopped driving, flying, turned down the heating etc. they (you) could look down upon the other 50%, while the latter will have a much more pleasant time on the roads and at the airport.

Problem solved, don’t you think?

I don’t drive, have been on an aeroplane the sum total of four times in my entire 46 years of life, live in a tiny flat with my partner, where we keep the heating off most of the year because it’s top floor and very warm. My carbon footprint must be gnat-sized, if that, so I don’t intend to change any of my behaviour any time in the near future.

Not answering the question then? Which is it – will the CO2 disappear or will it increase but no warming?

There will be no warming.
I have a large bet on that there will be no warming trend over the “100 months to save the world” period.

I understand that I am going against the consensus.
But I have made a fair amount of monet betting against hysteria in the past (shorting tech in 2000, shorting housing related stuff in 2007, buying housing related stuff earlier this year).
Where there is hysteria, history suggests that hysteria will not last.
I have no opinion on the science, merely the hysteria.
Hysteria is rarely correct.

What are the details of the bet?

It’s binary win-lose.
That the linear trendline plotted against a particular global temp anomaly series ( can’t remember which one – a fairly standardly quoted one from RSS) will have zero or negative slope.
Data is 100 months from Aug 2008 (I think that’s the start of the 100 months??)
So far it’s modestly upward sloping…d’oh!…still some time to run…

Is the trendline averaged over several years?

It’s simply fitted via OLS regression to those 100 monthly data points, so 8 and a bit years.
Upward slope – I lose.
Downward – I win.

Hmm, good luck with that one. It would be good if you’re right, but I hope the bet’s not too large.

SCO, Mann’s work on the hockey stick graph has been discredited by McIntyre and McKitrick, the Wegman report and the NAS Panel report. There hasn’t been one credible defense of his work – eg. an attempt to defend his unorthodox and unrecommended use of de-centered PCA were shot down by the statistical expert Ian Jolliffe who was being cited, who himself said:
“I am by no means a climate change denier. My strong impressive is that the evidence rests on much much more than the hockey stick. It therefore seems crazy that the MBH hockey stick has been given such prominence and that a group of influential climate scientists have doggedly defended a piece of dubious statistics.”

So why bother still defending it? Ian Jollife calls it a piece of “dubious statistics” – those are strong words in such an academic context.

This “piece of dubious statistics” was on the second page and IPCC 2001 report, and reproduced several times throughout the report, more than any other graph has ever been in an IPCC report. It was also touted by the world’s media as powerful ‘proof’ of AGW. Indeed, it convinced many scientists of the AGW case.

Are you aware that the summary of the 1995 IPCC report substantially changed the conclusions of the scientific findings within it, changing them from “unable to determine significance of human influence” to “likelihood of human influence” (I paraphrase) ?

I think some of the IPCC scientists whose work was misrepresented may have attempted the sue the IPCC after that. In the course of defending the IPCC, it was admitted that there had been no new evidence in science since the 1990 report to support AGW, but rather, the “evidence” was coming solely from climate models.

Now as pointed out above, scientists studying the earth’s atmosphere have published papers in the top scientific journals diocumenting evidence, from satellite and radiosonde data, that contradicts the predictions of these models, namely that the assumed sub-polar latitude water-vapour feedback is missing, and that they fail to model the most powerful feedback, which is clouds. Without the water-vapour feedback, there’s no prediction of a high climate sensitivity.

You can check for yourself by plotting on-line graphs at
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl

There’s data for surface temperatures, air temperatures, relative and specific humidity, and pressure, at different heights in the atmosphere.

Like I said, I’m just gald the world’s pre-eminent experts comment here.

Since no one will answer my question about damage to the ozone, I’m trying ot find an answer myself. The following report comes from the Ministry of Information, New Zealand. It takes for granted that the the ozone has been damaged but I want more explicit information about this.

http://www.mfe.govt.nz/issues/ozone/damage.html

I’m doing more research. I think it’s legitimate for scientific dumbclucks like me to want really serious explanations, put, if possible, in simple compehensible terms.

I am the opposite of an expert on the science.

But I know an “extraordinary popular delusion” when I see one, and AGW has all the hallmarks. The only annoying thing about it is that there is no obvious way to short it.

Stupidly I missed my chance to short carbon on the CCX.
$7/tonne in mid 08, now around $0.15.

cjcjc, good luck with your bet, although a cooling Earth will probably bring a host of problems with it.

The next 11-year solar cycle is predicted by NASA to peak around 2013 (updated from an earlier prediction of 2012). The predicted amplitude of the cycle is small(er), but it may still be enough to place a heating ‘bump’ on the decreasing solar trend (if that does indeed turn out to be the trend).

The Sun broke records last century, as documented by NASA amongst others, for its increased solar activity (the most active for at least 700 years, possibly for the last 8000 years according to one study). It’s now at a century-class minimum (also documented by NASA), and it may turn out to be a deeper one, we’ll see.

–

Brownie, do you have anything of substance to say, or are you going to stick to sarcasm and insinuation?

Thank you to Andrew Adams for sensibly discussing the issue with me, I appreciate it.

Anyway, this is one of my favourite blogs, and I don’t really want to argue here – the science is probably boring and inaccessible to most, but I’m a little disappointed by the lack of curiousity and worldly caution and cynicism about political processes such as the IPCC, and the whole notion of ‘consensus science’, given the warning signs that have come along the way : ignoring satellite data (1990 report), interference in scientific conclusions (1995 report), dubious statistical work to produce false temperature reconstructions (2001 report), ignoring refuting data about tropospheric heating rate predictions, and ignoring important new research and results about solar variability and effects (2007 report).

Oh, and it is a religion now -officially!

“Essentially what the judgment says is that a belief in man-made climate change and the alleged resulting moral imperative is capable of being a philosophical belief and is therefore protected by the 2003 religion or belief regulations.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/8339652.stm

Felix, there’s a description of the studies of ozone in the atmosphere here:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/assessments/1998/ – The 1988 assessment
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/about/ozone.html – more recent studies

Overall, quantities of ozone have been dropping over the last two decades as measured over northern mid-latitudes.

Brownie, do you have anything of substance to say, or are you going to stick to sarcasm and insinuation?

oneuniverse,

I discussed this issue sans sarcasm for the best part of two days last week and it nearly tippped me over the edge. My analyst is telling me to stick to the sarcasm for now.

That said, I do think it relevant that every national scientific body of repute the world over accepts the IPCC assessment. I don’t think there is anything compelling about the fact that there are individual scientists willing to dissent from the IPCC assessment. What I find compelling is that they are in a tiny minority.

I see no more reason to reject AGW than I did to stop my kids getting the MMR vaccine. It doesn’t mean that legitimate criticisms of the prevailing, dominant AGW theories cannot be made or that every critic is an extremist crank. For a non-scientist such as me, the question is whether we ignore the overwhelming scientific consensus and carry on as we are, or mortgage our childrens’ futures on a hunch that the tiny minority of dissenters have got it right.

I’m not suggesting amateur climate scientists commenting at HP don’t have anything valuable to offer the debate about the data and how it’s analysed, but they shouldn’t take offence when laymen like me ask themselves: “What does this guy know that 9 out of 10 experts do not?”

Brownie, thank you for the reply – just going out to eat, will respond after.

Interesting discussion…

I do believe that we contribute to the global warming and that it’s time to change our habits in order to minimize the damages.

oneuniverse,

Thanks for your reply earlier, pressure of work prevented me from responding earlier but here are a few quick points.

Solar activity rose in the early part of the last century but has been flat or slightly lower since about 1980 – it can’t explain the continued warming since then.

The National Research Council Report largely vindicated the hockey stick, certainly WRT the data for the last 1000 years. Moreover they stated that “The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world”. It’s not just about Mann et al – there are numerous reconstruction using a variety of proxies which have very similar outcomes.

Regarding the warming of the troposphere, RSS shows a warming trend of 0.19 per decade, perfectly in line with expectations.

Finally, the IPCC estimates of climate sensitivity are based on a large number of studies based both on models and empirical observations. Even if, which I don’t neccessarily accept, water vapour feedback is overestimated, there are other feedbacks, including clouds which you correctly mention, which may not be fully represented. The Hadley Centre model does include cloud formations and shows much higher sensitivity.

Brownie,

It’s a fair point, if not a telling one. Following the consensus amongst scientitsts will see you right most of the time. Science, however, is decided by the evidence, not a show of hands.

Most of the scientists on-board the AGW wagon are there out of trust in the scientific establishment and its processes. It takes quite an investment of time and effort to learn the climate science and review the climate science papers, and I doubt that the members of all these scientific establishments have all studied the subject and come to a decision.

The consensus amongst the actual climate scientists also doesn’t appear to be as broad as you think eg. this survey, carried out amongst scientist who’ve contributed climate science papers to the major journals, found that 15-20% of the scientists believed that the IPCC estimate of climate sensitivity was too low, and 15-20% believed that it was too high. That’s not a consensus, but a s normal pread of opinions along the spectrum.
( http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d5/jdannan/survey.pdf )

Here’s another survey, this time of scientists contributing to the IPCC 2007 report, also showing the lack of consensus : http://demanddebate.com/ipcc_survey.pdf .

I agree it’s silly to resort to a poll to determine the scientific truth, but that’s how you’re evaluating it.

The IPCC made a prediction in 2001, an absolutely key one to the AGW hypothesis, that increased CO2 will lead to increased water vapour in the mid to upper troposphere, leading to a heating of about 0.5C per decade in those regions.

These predictions were disproved by actual observations – radiosonde and satellite observations (including the corrected set). The troposphere didn’t heat as predicted, and the water vapour didn’t increase as predicted. I pointed out some of the papers documenting this earlier.

So when it comes to the published peer-review climate science, the science is not settled. Specifically, the AGW water-vapour feedback hypothesis has been disproved by real-world observations.

Time to wheel it out again. G.K. Chesterton: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.”

Andrew, thank you for your reply.

AA: “Solar activity rose in the early part of the last century but has been flat or slightly lower since about 1980 – it can’t explain the continued warming since then.”

The IPCC says that there has been no significant long-term trend in insolation since 1980, but the Sun had been increasing in strength since the beginning of the century until about 1980. ie. if the IPCC had considered the period from 1970 instead of 1980, they would have seen the trend (although to be fair they were restricting their observations to satellite data – but why).

Since the oceans act as a heat buffer with a delay of perhaps 15-25 years, and a lot of the solar heating is absorbed by the oceans, the fact that the increase in insolation stopped in 1980 is no reason to dismiss the Sun’s effect in the heating that took place in the 80’s and 90’s. Also, although the increase in solar insolation stopped, the insolation level was left at a higher level than it had been before, effectively ‘turning the heat up’. I realise the magnitude of the insolation increase is uncertain, but the increasing trend since at least 1900 isn’t.

re: hockey stick

The same report that you cite also says:
“Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium. The substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large-scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming.”

“Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium” because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales.”

Please also notice the the report confirms “the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age”. I also quoted from this report upthread, where it again mentions the large quantity of evidence documenting the Little Ice Age. Yet Mann’s graph is missing the Little Ice Age entirely.

The other report on the Mann paper, the Wegman report, concludes :
“Our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.”

The Wahl and Amman validation of Mann’s graph had a very low R-squared figure, making the validation meaningless. This validation figure wasn’t revealed after their paper had been accepted and published by the IPCC, which allowed them to keep the Mann hockey stick graph, although this time buried beneath a set of others in their ’spaghetti graph’ replacement for the hockey-stick (which, it needn’t be pointed out, didn’t have a hockey-stick shape, and showed evidence of the Little Ice Age again).

As for the other subsequent proxy reconstructions by Mann, Briffa etc., they all use one or more of the same recurring set of problematical proxies, such as strip-bark bristlecone and strip-pbark foxtail. The report you cited, as I mentioned earlier, specifically says that strip-bark trees should be avoided for temperature reconstructions. Mann and Briffa have ignored this advice. Also, the Yamal tree set is also used, with its well-documented problems (please see the posts in the last few months on ClimateAudit covering this.).

The majority of paleoclimate reconstructions do not have the hockey-stick shape, but instead show a warm medival period and a cool little ice age period.

These hockey stick reconstructions are just a handful in number, and they all have serious flaws. The original hockey stick was the worst, because its statistical method would create hockey stick shapes out of random red noise. This was confirmed by Dr. Wegman (see his quote upthread), and the result has been reproduced by others.

re: tropospheric heating
The radiosonde temperature records and some (but not all) of the satellite data sets don’t show the predicted warming. Also, part of the prediction is that the heating occurs from water vapour feedback, and as the papers I mentioned earlier show, upper tropospheric relative humidity has been decreasing.

This page is interesting, on significant findings from the AIRS satellite:
http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/science/major_findings/climate/

It lists two papers that say the models are confirmed (including the Dessler 2008 paper that you indirectly mentioned), three papers that say the models are wrong with respect to water-vapour (including the Pierce paper that I mentioned), and one paper that says “The existence of radiance biases of opposite signs in different spectral regions suggests that the apparent good agreement of a climate model’s broadband longwave flux with observations may be due to a fortuitous cancellation of spectral errors.”.

I’m not really seeing the consensus that apparently exists on this topic.

Brownie, I made a mistake in my last post to you, concerning the 0.5 C/decade heating trend.

I was switching between the IPCC2007 report and the CCSP 2006 report, which have different scales (C/decade and C/century), and go up to different values 0.6 and 1.2. I didn’t spot this, ended up with 0.5 C/decad.

The correct figure for the predicted warming is about 0.1 C/decade – my mistake, sorry.

Great warns from Cameron

Ideologically fixated positions.

I was in favour of the first ’surge’ on Iraq, after all they had invaded another country. I hardly dared say so to my liberal friends. (Today I would have the courage) But what struck me during pro and contra debates is that I saw grains of truth on both sides, which were flatly refused by the warring parties for ideological reasons.

Oliver Kamm and Chomsky. I am entirely on Kamm’s side, but Chomsky sometimes has the insight of hatred about Western capitalism.

Global warming. My impression of the anti-warmers is that they WANT to believe they are right, even before examining evidence and find the evidence that suits them. They already have the poison of hatred in their minds for reasons that have nothing to do with the subject.

In all my Google research I have found – maybe by chance – that man made climate change is generally assumed. Apparently the USA banned the use of aerosol at some point. This morning on TV news I saw Angela Merkel at a meeting at which she said the was no time to lose in stopping man made climate change. So Cameron is not alone.

Whatever the truth may be, there is no harm in limiting the emission toxic gases into the atmosphere – I have a nephew who travels around the world showing factories how they can stop or limit pollution.

Oneuniverse – thanks for sending me those links to very interesting studies. These are very weighty and serious and have no trace of political pressures in them. According to them damage to the ozone is at least partially man made.

And Oneuniverse – your letters above are examples of dispassionate observation and a valuable contribution to HP. Alas, I don’t understand them and don’t know what this hockey stick is. I’m not entirely sure whether you think climate change is to some extent man made. In one of the studies you referred to I found this sentence:

“The claim that the human input of CO2 is not an important climate forcing is found to be false in our survey.”

For the moment I believe in man made warming. No one would be happier than me if I were disproved convincingly.

This thread is on its way out alas.

The consensus amongst the actual climate scientists also doesn’t appear to be as broad as you think eg. this survey, carried out amongst scientist who’ve contributed climate science papers to the major journals, found that 15-20% of the scientists believed that the IPCC estimate of climate sensitivity was too low, and 15-20% believed that it was too high. That’s not a consensus, but a s normal pread of opinions along the spectrum.
( http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d5/jdannan/survey.pdf )

Therefore, the point that there are disagreements about the climate sensitivity estimate is just a statement of fact and not a convincing argument to do less to combat CC. On the contrary, the fact that we can’t hang our hats on 3c and things are as likely to be worse than this as they are better – and the costs of worse far outweigh the benefits of better – is a very good reason to start taking steps now.

Felix, interesting comments.

Concerning Chomsky, may I point you to http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html and in particular http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/200chomskylies.pdf .
He’s incredibly dishonest – his denial of communist atrocities is on par with Holocaust denial.

I’ve seen hatred on both sides of the warming debate. On the warmist side, the warmists believe that humanity is in danger from CO2, so they feel the anti-warmists are endangering all human life with their skepticism.

The hockey stick graph was the result of a paper making a new reconstruction of the global temperature for last 1000 years.
It was given a prominent place in the 2001 IPCC report (2nd page of the Summary for Policymakers , http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/pdf/WG1_TAR-FRONT.PDF ).
The graph was significant because it purported to show that the Earth was slowly and steadily cooling for 900 years, and then heated abruptly in the 20th century, and so could be used as powerful evidence that perhaps the increased human activity in the 20th century caused this heating. The graph was widely shown in the media as strong proof of AGW.

The graph was also controversial because it was completely different to other paleoclimate reconstructions of temperature – the hockey stick graph showed no Little Ice Age, and a greatly diminished Medieval Warm Period.

It turns out that the paper was massively flawed. Mann refused to fully divulge his methods and data for two years until Congress stepped in and forced him to do so. The investigation into his statistical methods were absolutely damning.

The IPCC of course offered no explanation or admission of this problem in their next report – as far as they were concerned, the job of the graph was done – it had convinced millions, and masses of scientists, that AGW was serious.

The accepted paleoclimate reconstructions, rather, show a much less alarming picture of similar high temperatures 1000 years ago (and even warmer periods 2000 years ago). Most significantly to my mind, they also show that the Earth has been warming for several centuries, not just the 20th century. This also coincides with increasing solar activity. The cold period of the Little Ice Age coincides with the solar quiet period of the Maunder Minimum. The smaller, more recent Dalton Minimum also created a dip in temperatures.

By removing these features of the temperature record, and their correlations with solar activity, the IPCC could then argue that it must have been human activity that caused the warming.

Brownie,

I’ve been pointing out that the “AGW likely” statements in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers aren’t bourne out by a review of the scientific literature.

This isn’t the first time that the IPCC has changed the conclusions of its contributing scientists to better suit the AGW case.

An editorial in Nature addressed this issue (“Climate debate must not overheat”, Nature 381, June 1996): “phrases that might have been (mis)interpreted as undermining these conclusions have disappeared”.

The changes made are actually stronger than indicated by the Nature editorial. You can verify the nature of these changes yourself – the original text and the changes are shown at : http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/Spinning_the_Climate.pdf (page 10 onwards).

The consequences of a low value for CO2 climate sensitivity are more than you’re making out : if CO2 sensitivity is low, something else has driven the increases in temperature over the last two centuries.

Changes in cloud cover and solar variability (which are possibly linked) can both plunge the Earth into cooling. Needless to say, the effects of a cold Earth would be devastating, crop failures and starvation being the main worry.