Whoa, Rog! You'd better stock up on sunscreen, and perhaps consider investing in that banana plantation in Surrey...

http://www.english-wine.com

Edited by acrosome on 07/26/2008 02:14:27 MDT.

"the best way to get a small fortune is to have a large fortune and buy an English vineyard."

Never truer than today. ;-)

FTrouse (01:25:16) :

I’m envious of all your positive attitudes. Your conviction that as a better more honest science is given an opportunity to be presented the world and your peers will see the truth and accept it.
I fear this will not be the case.
I see the IPCC as another form of Al Gore. One who has invested his fortune his reputation and most importantly his pride in the premise that the earth is heating in direct relation to the introduction by man of carbon pollutants into the atmosphere. The earth is going to hell in a hand cart and it’s all your fault!
All that time he spent as Vice President, with absolutely nothing to do, no way to continue his march to glory, no opportunity to present himself to the world as one of the great ones. Then the humiliation of the loss to that Texas pecker wood.
This is his last chance.
Mr. Gore, like the IPCC, has stepped into the light with all the glory needed to be the guide, the leader, in fact the saviour of the world. Do you think that he, they, will forgo that? Do you believe that something as common and insignificant as science, or truth, will cause them to relinquish the dreams they were born to achieve?
To protect his wealth and his pride Al Gore would rip the heart from every babe that ever drew breath. To remain the man of the decade, or the most influential NGO in the world today, these two entities would scythe through a puny bunch of mathematicians, physicists, climatologists, journalists, or any other ists that would have the gaul to attempt to spoil the exaltation of their glory.
Think about this: If your hopes and thesis are correct, will they, Mr. Gore and the IPCC, relinquish their Nobel s, return the monetary awards, give up their grants and close up the departments and offices that the grants support? Will they continue to feed and care for your peers who rely on Climate Change, IPCC and Al Gore for their livelihoods? Will they go before the world with heads bowed and confess that it was all a terrible mistake? Will they say they are sorry for any inconvenience they may have caused and please allow us to make it right? Will they go before the UN, that paragon of virtue and honesty, and convince them that the Kyoto Agreement must be immediately terminated and any economic losses suffered by it s signatories be recompensed by the UN?
I am convinced you do not need anyone to answer those questions for you.
I believe that those of you who determine to follow your science and the truth that it can provide are about to embark on an adventure that will, as the saying goes, separate the Men from the boys.
As one who hasn’t the tools to prove what time it is but who will never the less be required to live with the consequences of a world under the boot of Eco-Nanny Junk Science Totalitarians, I hope your success is resounding as well as rapid. May I, as one of the billions of little guys who can’t prove the time of day or convince our governments to just leave us alone, offer you my thanks my gratitude and my support.
Sincerly,
FTRouse

Ok, Rog. A climate-denier blog posted an article about a committed climate skeptic (who holds at least one other fringe scientific view) who testified before congress. Not exactly surprising. What is amusing is how every skeptic blog in existance immediately posted his words under headings such as "Well, this should finally put the hoax to rest!"

I mean, really. Who do they think they are kidding?

But, if you want to talk about scientific suppression:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/washington/09enviro.html

And, Rog, I swear I'm not making this up, so don't blame me:

I started researching Roy Spencer and I was led... where?

The Heartland Institute. :-)

(For those of you who haven't read the entire Carbon Flame War thread, the Heartland Institute is essentially synonymous with ExxonMobil, Phillip-Morris, and Amoco.)

He also has connections to the Tech Central Science Foundation and the George C. Marshall Institute, both of which have corporate sponsors including ExxonMobil.

Check it out on SourchWatch.org.

Edited by acrosome on 07/26/2008 05:02:54 MDT.

lol..

This thread is fun to read. keep going.

As I've said many times Dean, I'm more interested in the science than attempted character assassination.
Huff and puff about Heartlands institute and big oil as much as you like. Spencer was employed and paid by NASA for 20 years until 2003, when he became a professor of climate science at a prestigious U.S. university.

The point is that Spencer contends that the oceans are a much bigger player in swinging the global average temperature around than the atmosphere is. And since the atmosphere doesn't heat the oceans much through re-radiation of heat, we need to look at what does heat the oceans, which is the sun, and the changing cloud cover, which isn't accounted for by the doomsday computer models.

This is being proved by the fact temperatures have been falling while co2 continues to increase. Even now the AGW proponents are backpedalling and saying, "well ok, the Pacific decadal oscillation coupled with the Atlantic oscillation may cause a decade of cooling" Not that they want to discuss what lies behind the decadal oscillations.(lol). The problem is, they also want to say that this is only masking co2 driven warming and it'll be back.

This makes AGW an untestable hypothesis for the forseeable future. It's become an article of faith resting on increasingly shaky scientific ground which is being eroded by new research all the time now. Nonetheless, as Huzefa quoted from FT Rouse in the post above, the big money Gore and his pals at Google inc have invested in 'clean tech' and crackpot carbon sequestration schemes isn't going to be given up without a fight. It's not big oil we need to worry about right now, it's big bullcrap.

Lets do a bit of science and look at the relative mass of the earth's oceans to it's atmosphere:

Mass of Atmosphere-5.1480×10^18 kilograms

Mass of Ocean-1.4×10^21 kilograms

(5.148×10^18)/(1.4 × 10^21)=0.003677143 or 0.37%

And carbon dioxide is 0.039% of that 0.37%

’nuff said.

Ummm .... Rog?

"Talking of seasonal changes and records being broken. This just in from Oz:

Breaking Weather News - Record-breaking cold morning in Tasmania
Brett Dutschke, 22 May 2008

Long-term records were broken in Tasmania this morning due to the extreme cold and widespread frost across the state, according to weatherzone.com.au."

This is not evidence that the earth is cooling, quite the reverse. As the article you quoted quite clearly stated, the reason it was so cold was because the nights have been uncharacteristically clear, so there was no clouds or water vapour trapping heat near the ground - and that is because of the unprecedented drought most of Australia is currently suffering. I was at my parents farm a couple of weeks ago and we actually had a day of rain - and it was the first time my 8 year old son, or my wife, had seen rain up there. I explained that our winters used to be like that ...

In the end, you can quote all the figures and plot all the graphs you like, but the reality on the ground - here in Australia - can't be denied. So it's fine for the climate sceptics to deny that there's anything going on because regardless of what you argue we still don't have any water in our dams.

The cold weather wasn't resticted to Australia over the last winter, records tumbled all over the world. My anecdotal local reporting was indicative of this. I also pointed out either in the same post or an adjacent one that it was also the first time ever snowfall in Baghdad was reported, and the masive snowfall across NW USA, and in China and Russia, and elsewhere.

Colder climates tend to be drier, as humidity falls. At the moment, Oz is in a double bind because of the shift in the PDO to it's cooler drier phase, and the generally elevated global temp. I feel for the plight farmers are in, but it's part of the reason aborigines (and north american indians and african bushmen) are/were traditionally nomadic. I looked around on the aus meteorological site you linked in your previous post, and found that while some areas of australia were in drout, others not far away had more than average rainfall. Them's the breaks.

It's the difference between climate and weather we need to e clear on.

Are we talking about "global warming" or "climate change"?

The climate is always changing. Sometimes on short term cycles, but also on a myriad of longer term cycles, which ranges from years to millenia and more.

The question we are concentrating on is whether it's man's activities which have raised C20th temps through increased output of Co2, or whether it's natural variation.

"Colder climates tend to be drier, as humidity falls."

Sorry, in this case it's the other way around - it's not drier because it's colder, it's colder because it's drier.

To quote from your article:

"Record low minimum temperatures are again possible across NSW, Victoria and Tasmania on Saturday morning due to clear skies, light winds and very low surface moisture, optimal conditions for overnight radiative cooling."

"I feel for the plight farmers are in, but it's part of the reason aborigines (and north american indians and african bushmen) are/were traditionally nomadic."

For the record, Australian Aboriginals weren't "nomadic" - they had tribal territories they moved around seasonally but contrary to popular opinion they did not just go wandering around aimlessly. Where I came from they had stone huts for wintering in - we get snow on the local mountains - which were re-thatched every year. They also built extensive stone fish and eel traps, and redirected water courses to do so.

"Them's the breaks."

Just north of where I grew up people are walking off farms that were productive for generations, because they haven't had proper rain for the best part of ten years. The suicide rate amongst drought-affected farmers is appallingly high. So, pardon me for saying so, but "them's the breaks" comes across as more than a little callous.

And the point I HAVE made, more than once, is that I fully understand that weather has cycles - I was alert to El Nino as a kid long. Why? Because my family have been on the same farm since the 1880s so we kind of know how the area works. Three good years, one bad one with wetter and drier cycles. But as I have said repeatedly, the current weather is unprecedented. My father has run our farm for over 60 year, he used to keep meterological records and he's never seen anything like it. Which is also what Australian meteorologists are saying, as is the government.

I lived in London in 2006 and 2007 - it was all very wet, very lush and very green so I don't think anyone living in the UK is really in a position to understand what's going on in Australia or what a ten-year drought in a low-rainfall area looks like. To give an example - I almost drowned in a lake near my home-town that has now been bone-dry for at least 5 years.

Here it is: http://www.travelvictoria.com.au/images/horsham/photos/66.jpg

Then there's Lake Burrumbeet:

http://www.ballarat.vic.gov.au/Parks_and_Environment/Nature_Reserves/Lake_Burrumbeet/index.aspx

"Totally dry since 2004"

Do you want to guess when Lake Burrumbeet last dried up? 1944. And prior to that? 1839. I could go on ... Natimuk Lake, Dock Lake .., all places I used to swim, canoe and boat on when I was a kid. But I'd be seriously surprised if they ever fill again in my lifetime.

Try to imagine Windermere drying up and you'll get the general picture.

I certainly don't mean to be callous, and I sincerely hope some nice weather surprises come the way of your part of the world. Ten year drout's are not unknown elsewhere in the world, the Sahelian drout comes to mind.

"the current weather is unprecedented"

As I said, there are cycles varying from annual to multi millenial, and the written history of australia isn't long enough to know them all.

Aborigines may have stuck to their tribal territory in the usual pattern of things, because they would want to make use of the structures you mention that thay had invested in, but I don't doubt they would have been capable of moving further afield if extraordinary conditions forced it. A couple of centuries of relative climate stability has made us think stability is the norm, but really, change is the norm.

Money, its a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think Ill buy me a football team.

Laughing Gas


http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/07/23/laughing-gas-how-to-game-the-carbon-markets/


French Firm Cashes In
Under U.N. Warming Program
By CHARLES FORELLE
July 23, 2008; Page A1

ONSAN, South Korea -- A French chemical maker is reaping a potential billion-dollar windfall under a United Nations program intended to spur climate-friendly investment in the developing world, highlighting the challenges of using market forces to tackle global warming.

The company, Rhodia SA, manufactures hundreds of tons a day of adipic acid, an ingredient in nylon, at its factory here. But the real money is in what it doesn't make.

The payday, which could amount to more than $1 billion over seven years, comes from destroying nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, an unwanted byproduct and potent greenhouse gas. It's Rhodia's single most profitable business world-wide. Last year, destroying nitrous oxide here and at a similar plant in Brazil generated €189 million ($300.5 million) in sales of pollution "credits."


The laughing gas is big money thanks to the U.N.-administered program in which polluters in rich countries buy credits like Rhodia's, effectively paying for the privilege of continuing to emit greenhouse gases. The money is meant to flow to poorer countries to develop clean-air technology -- for instance, an African nation would get a financial incentive to build windmills instead of a cheaper, but dirtier, coal-fired power plant.

Rhodia's experience shows that even a major Western industrial company can cash in on the pollution-trading program.


Cash In

Damn, you're such an easy target, Rog.

The tables are turned... :-)

But it isn't name-calling, Rog. It is disclosure. If I publish a paper comparing a new pharmaceutical to the old gold standard then I had damned well better disclose that the study was funded by Pfizer. Likewise, the fact that Spencer has taken money from Heartland (i.e. ExxonMobil) does not QED mean that he is wrong, but it does cast doubt about his motives, and we have to take it into account.

And, Jesus, but I am again stunned when you try to lecture ANYONE on the difference between weather and climate, given all of the "empirical examples" that you keep posting.

Chutzpah! God bless you.

But the whole point of the Heartland reference that I keep teasing you with is getting back to the whole scientific consensus and peer-review issue. AGW is supported by extensive peer-review. By people far more qualified than either you or I. You have tried multiple times to minimize the gargantuan list of scientific organizations of national or international standing that support AGW. I again challenge you to come up with a better argument than the Vast Environmental Conspiracy, or at least list one dissenting organization of equal standing.

You can't. Any dissenting organization that you have ever listed was either a similar corporate mouthpiece or a fringe minority.

I don't know why you won't admit this. Being in the minority is hardy shameful. But you insist upon a bald fallacy- that the weight of evidence is on your side, and that scientific opinion is swinging your way.

Absolutely incorrect! A great rhetorical technique, but incorrect.

Edited by acrosome on 07/28/2008 04:46:55 MDT.

Regarding the Vast Environmental Conspiracy, I would like to note some competing scenarios that have been proposed:

A
The climate scientists are falsifying data so that they can continue to collect grant money for ongoing research into global warming. Evidently climate science must hold some special attraction for such dishonest people, because the field is full of self-centered, self-serving liars who want nothing more than to pull one over on the world and continue their cushy existence of sports cars, fast women, and penthouses. The royalties that these deceivers collect on their climate models are immense, and they will do anything to protect them. They are so intent upon protecting their fortunes, in fact, that they have engineered a Vast Environmental Conspiracy involving essesntially 100% of the reputable scientific bodies on Earth.




B
The corporate world, in the form of industries reliant upon carbon emissions, in keeping with its historical precedent of sacrificing the long-term good in favor of short-term profit, has purposefully obfuscated global warming. Though the scientific evidence has become so overwhelming that even ExxonMobil (and BP, and Shell…) has been forced to release statements supportive of AGW theories, they continue to funnel money to the minority dissenting pundits (and politicians) in an effort to minimize the matter in the public conscience and political arena, thus ensuring that official policy remains friendly to continuing emissions and their profits.

.


C
Global warming is caused by a pirate deficiency.




D
Sasquatch is doing it.




I maintain that proponents of Scenario A look pretty silly... Obviously it's the pirates.

"As I've said many times Dean, I'm more interested in the science than attempted character assassination."

Oh, bull$hit, Rog! :-) You engage in character assassination every time you endorse Scenario A: baselessly calling 90% of the world's climate scientists dishonest liars. I am merely pointinbg out a possible individual conflict of interest, as I would for any scientific paper. I'm also doing it by revealing known associations and monetary sources, as opposed to just directing libel at a bunch of scientists without any evidence.

And if you were interested in the science you wouldn't post crap like this:



Obviously I'm joking: you are self-evidently interested in science.

But this is one of the most dishonest, misleading things that climate skeptics engage in. Having debated with you at length I will readily give you the benefit of the doubt and state that I don't think you were being dishonest- but you do need to be more careful about from whence you get your information. Picking 1998 as a starting point to try to trend temperatures is the CLASSIC dishonest skeptic cherrypick, since 1998 had the strongest El Nino effect on record and thus picking 1998 as the start point results in misleading graphs (and Loess lines). Granted, you always have to pick SOME starting point but there is NO REASON to pick 1998 EXCEPT that it is misleading. No instrumentation changes happened then, the satellite data didn't start then, etc. Just that record El Nino. (Also a global warming effect.)

Here's the rest of that data:



The graph reveals the El Nino spike in 1998 that these dishonest people try to capitalize upon to mislead people who don't know better. (And, recall that the dip after 1940 is an instrumentation effect and the true trend is probably more regular. :-)

For instance, recall that this cherry pick has gotten so notorious that even the other SKEPTICS on the blog you got that graph from called the guy on it.

Edited by acrosome on 07/29/2008 05:32:05 MDT.

re: to A: Great minds think (too much) alike

something to consider...

Great minds think (too much) alike

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11745514

Jul 17th 2008
From The Economist
Is the web narrowing scientists’ expertise?

James Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, decided to investigate. His conclusion, published in this week’s Science, is that the opposite is happening. He has found that as more journals become available online, fewer articles are being cited in the reference lists of the research papers published within them. Moreover, those articles that do get a mention tend to have been recently published themselves. Far from growing longer, the long tail is being docked.



Science magazine abstract


http://www.sciencemag.org

Edited by gmatthews on 07/29/2008 10:57:25 MDT.

Pirates!

That is one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time.

Pirate Deficiency!!
I love it!!!!
Great post Dean...

ARRRRGH!!

Edited by ekim765 on 07/31/2008 00:38:00 MDT.

>Oh, bull$hit, Rog! :-) You engage in character assassination every time you endorse Scenario A: baselessly calling 90% of the world's climate scientists dishonest liars.

Can you point to any post I've made in this entire 9 page thread where I have 'endorsed' the straw man scenario you colorfully paint? - No.

Quite a few pages ago, you cited Mann et al 1998 and their dodgy bristlecone studies as support for his infamous 'hockey stick' graph which did so much to get the world in a panic over warming.

Then, without any prompting from me, you said that Mann et al had detractors such as Steve Macintyre and Ross McKittrick 2005C who showed that Mann's statistical techniques were wrong and the hockey stick could not be supported. You then said that M&M had in turn been 'debunked' by Ammann and Wahl 2005.

Now it turns out that Amman and Wahl have been engaging in what can only be described as a fraudulent deception. Or perhaps it's just gross incompetence. Their paper relied on 'supplimentary information' and it has taken three years of persistence on the part of Steve Macintyre to force it's publication. It reveals the unsupportable statistical methods by which Amman and Wahl kept the Mann et al fallacy alive.

And so another key support has been pulled from under the AGW house of cards.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?cat=20


We discussed diffent smoothing methods for graphs some pages ago and you agreed that the poster who put up that graph readily admitted it's shortcomings (not that the AGW camp don't do their own cherrypicking). The way you have dispensed with the context and brought it up again here smacks of grandstanding for those who have not read the rest of the thread. This is pretty typical of the way AGW protagonists try to rubbish people who disagree with them. It's tedious and I won't bother responding to more of it.

Here's another graph of the last 10 years, including Mauna Loa Co2 data. The temperature has been flat for a decade and is currently falling.

Atmospheric Co2 is levelling out in response.

Edited by tallbloke on 08/10/2008 05:44:33 MDT.

"Can you point to any post I've made in this entire 9 page thread where I have 'endorsed' the straw man scenario you colorfully paint?"

Uh, yes. I recall at least three references in this thread, and one in the industrialized civilization thread. Here's one from the first page:

“Very few climatologists are in the pay of oil companies, compared with the estimated 3.2 billion dollar global warming gravy train funding the research of the 'pro global warming camp'. If you want a research grant these days in climatology, you have to pay lip service to the 'truth' of global warming or be left out in the cold.”

I will not allow you the victory of wasting my time by hunting for them all to quote them to you. Nor will I point out all of your references to the "agenda" or "official storyline," etc.

"The way you have dispensed with the context and brought it up again here smacks of grandstanding"

Hilarious hypocrisy coming from the man who keeps bringing up Al Gore and the IPCC out of context so that he can rant for a while. :-)

You sort of prove a couple of my points with your graph, though. First, no one has stated that CO2 is the ONLY factor affecting global climate. So, if other factors are forcing cooling the temperature average may level or dip. Let's see what your graph looks like in another decade. I’m surprised that you need to be taught this basic point. :-) Second, your graph starts in 1998. The classic cherry-pick. Again. Right after I pointed out how flawed the technique is. Thus all the flat-ish regression lines on your graph. Also, the vertical axis covers all of, what, 5 degrees centigrade? Such a wide scale on a graph covering only a decade makes everything look more flat to someone who doesn’t know better.

Anyway, I know that you are going to keep posting such stuff alongside your "empirical examples", but you aren't going to fool people like me and skots.

I'm in the middle of studying for my boards, so I will defer looking up the hockeystick buffoonery for the nonce. But "gross deception"? Shall we discuss Patrick Michaels and his intentional misrepresentation of Hanson's data during his 1998 congressional testimony? Now THAT'S gross deception. Then Michael Crichton ran with it:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2005/Crichton_20050927.pdf

Hmm. I always thought he was a damned poor science fiction writer, anyway.

Later, Rog. Big hug.

P.S. If we ever do meet face to face, be it in some pub or at Mont Blanc, we have to have a gentlemen's agreement about NOT bringing up climate change. Or at least not until we're both thoroughly p1ssed. Okay?

P.P.S. I am TRULY willing to let the debate rest until we can check more data in 2018. Just don't call me out by name next time! :-)

P.P.P.S. Since I started this damned thread, is there a way for me to CLOSE it? Please! Some moderator! Close it!

Edited by acrosome on 08/12/2008 17:26:48 MDT.