Craig said:
> Let us, for the sake of argument, say that man-made global warming DOES NOT EXIST. So what?

Quite a lot of what's as I see it.

Scientifically: The integrity and independence of scientific research has taken a hammering in the climate sphere. Grants are directed to those willing to toe the line set by the paymasters. Supposedly definitive reports are post edited by non-scientists, bypass peer review, and are lauded by those whose interests are served. Scientific truth weeps in the corner.

Politically: Barack Obama is going to let the cost of fuel 'skyrocket'. This won't be too much of a problem if the world starts warming up again, but be ready for lots of hypothermia cases as the old folks with little pension money get carted off to hospital if it carries on getting colder. Carbon tax is the new window tax.

Ethically: Third world countries are already having problems with food supply as the artificially induced demand for 'clean ethanol' fuels increases. If it carries on getting colder, the hunger could soon be uncomfortably close to home. The U.S. and europe are on the cusp of recession, fuel and food poverty will be made a lot worse by the cult of carbon culpability.

Vast quantities of money will disappear into the pockets of snake oil merchants touting carbon sequestration technologies. The money would be better spent solving the really pressing environmental issues of rainforest destruction and oceanic pollution.

Rick said:
> Simple answers to simple questions

If Climate science was an everest expedition. The team are sat in an internet cafe in Kathmandu a long way from base camp, discussing gear lists and technique. The pinnacle of perfect understanding soars above the clouds of confusion.

It's still a long way up.

"Vast quantities of money will disappear into the pockets of snake oil merchants touting carbon sequestration technologies. The money would be better spent solving the really pressing environmental issues of rainforest destruction and oceanic pollution."

I can't say I agree with much of what you argue, but I do think you've got a solid point here. I'm definitely confused by all off the money going into such a large and vague realm as carbon reductions when there are SO MANY people and ecosystems on this planet in direct peril from very tangible and preventable issues; hunger, disease, pollution, deforestation, etc.

Thanks for answering the "So what?" question I posed- just trying to understand where you're coming from and clarify the bigger picture of what you're arguing with the data you present.

Hi Craig,
fair enough, but I'll just point out that as you live in SoCal, you might not appreciate how grim it can be up north in the poorer countries of europe like Poland or Latvia, or Glasgow.

In the UK, pensioners die of hypothermia every time there's a cold winter. It's a national disgrace.

So that you can see I'm not just a lone nutter banging on about this, try this easy reading piece by William Gray: Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University

OVER-HYPING OF GREEN
by
William M. Gray

The US green movement is moving forward with its agenda to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) gas emissions. Colorado Governor Ritter has proposed various CO2 reduction measures. Many US state legislatures are beginning to mandate that various percentages of future electrical energy generated come from renewable energy sources. Renewable energy is currently much more expensive than traditional fossil fuel energy. Many cities and states across the US are starting to implement costly programs to reduce CO2 emissions. I doubt that the public is aware of the heavy economic penalties to be paid by efforts to substantially reduce CO2 gases. These CO2 reduction efforts are beginning to be made just at the time we must start to adjust to the serious economic problems associated with the recent severe stock market downturn.

There is little the US can do about reducing global CO2 amounts. China, India and other third world countries will not agree to limit their CO2 emissions. It is important for our country to maintain its vibrant and growing economy to have sufficient resources to invest in research on new energy sources and in further development of our, as yet untapped, domestic energy supplies. It is more important to make progress on reducing our dependence on foreign energy than reducing CO2. We should not let an organized cabal of environmentalists, government bureaucrats, and liberal media groups brainwash us into going in a direction not in our country’s best interest.

I have been studying and teaching weather and climate for over 50 years and have been making real-time seasonal hurricane forecasts for a quarter-century. I and many of my colleagues with comparable experience do not believe that CO2 gas emissions are anywhere near the threat to global climate as the environmental and liberal media groups have led us to believe. Most people are not aware of how flimsy are the physical arguments behind the human-induced warming scenarios. There has yet to be a really open and honest scientific dialogue on this topic among our country’s most experienced weather and climate experts. Most knowledgeable global warming skeptics have been ignored and/or their motives questioned. Many have been falsely tagged as tools of the fossil fuel industry – reminding me a bit of the McCarthy period. By contrast, those harping the loudest on the dangers of CO2, such as Al Gore, typically have little real understanding or experience in how the atmosphere and ocean really function.

The Global Climate Model (GCM) simulations by large US and foreign government laboratories and universities on which so much of the warming science scenarios are based have basic flaws. These global models are not able to correctly model the globe’s small-scale precipitation processes. They have incorrectly parameterized the rain processes in their models to give an unrealistically warming influence from CO2 increases. These GCMs also do not properly model the globe’s deep ocean circulation which appears to be the primary driving mechanism for most of the global temperature increases that have been observed. Most GCMs indicate that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 towards the end of the 21st century will lead to global warming of 2-5oC. My best estimate of global warming for a doubling of CO2 is about 0.3-0.5oC, 5-10 times less than the models estimate. These GCMs have yet to demonstrate predictive skill at forecasting the next few years of global temperature. Why should we believe their predictions 50 to 100 years in the future?

Many thousands of scientists from the US and around the globe do not accept the human-induced global warming hypothesis as it has been presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. The summary statements of the IPCC reports are strongly biased to upholding the human influence on climate. The IPCC summaries often do not conform to the material in the reports. Most known warming skeptics, such as myself and a number of my very experienced colleagues were never invited to participate in the IPCC process or even contacted by the IPCC for our views.

It is impossible to objectively separate the small amount of CO2 induced global warming that may have occurred from the large natural induced global temperature changes which are always occurring. There has been little global warming the last 10 years. Due to recent changes in the global ocean circulation that I and others foresee as the basin for a modest cooling of global temperature in the next 10-15 years. This would be similar to the global cooling that was experienced between the mid-1940s to mid-1970s.
Reducing atmospheric CO2 will not by itself solve any of the globe’s many environmental problems. A slightly warmer globe due to CO2 increases would, in the net, likely be more beneficial to humankind than a slightly cooler globe. Crop and vegetation growth would be stimulated by higher amounts of atmospheric CO2. We should not allow ourselves to be stampeded into costly CO2 reduction programs of little or no real benefit but much economic detriment.
______________________________________________________________________
The author is a Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University where he has worked since 1961. He holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago in Geophysical Science.

Rick said:
> You are talking about weather not climate.

As Skots seems to prefer 30 year time chunks for getting a handle on climate as opposed to weather, lets take a look at the satellite data from when it began in 1979:



The temperature of earth seems to be currently about the same or slightly less than it was around thirty years ago when satellite measurements started.

Here's the linear trend up to the peak in 1998



And here's the linear trend down from the peak since 1998

Edited by tallbloke on 11/08/2008 22:58:28 MST.

> The temperature of earth seems to be currently about the same or slightly less as it was around thirty years ago when satellite measurements started.

The problem with this argument is that you are only using two data points and ignoring the underlying trend.

To me, it would appear that if I were to fit that (very noisy) data to a linear model, the trend would be one of gradual increase.

The fact that the data is so noisy should make it clear that just because the global average temperature has fallen recently, does not say much about the underlying trend.

Hi Ashley,
or an increase followed by a decrease, as my modified post shows. But you are right that the overall 30 year trend is up, even though by a small amount of less than one degree fahrenheit.

Edited by tallbloke on 11/08/2008 23:06:16 MST.

> or an increase followed by a decrease, as my modified post shows

Indeed, you can get all sorts of different trends depending on what model you choose to fit, and your start and end points. So it pays to be wary of graphs, and statistics in general.

I'm never too interested in these climate discussions because I never know who to believe about the credibility of the data. Sure, someone can show me a graph and say that it correlates with global temperature, but unless you really understand how the data was gathered and summarised and a lot of the theory behind it, it is very easy to be led astray.

I therefore have to defer to the majority scientific opinion as without hundreds of hours of research I'm not really in a position to make an informed judgement. If the majority opinion is wrong (quite possible I suppose) then I trust that the scientific process will eventually show it beyond doubt. There have been countless examples in science where the majority opinion was eventually overturned (but many more where it was proved right!).

> you can get all sorts of different trends depending on what model you choose to fit, and your start and end points.

True, but checking the trends from the start point to the exteme and from the extreme to the end point seems a reasonable approach to me.

> If the majority opinion is wrong (quite possible I suppose) then I trust that the scientific process will eventually show it beyond doubt.

That's the problem. We are no longer involved in a scientific process. "The debate is over".

Many years ago I studied a degree in the history and philosophy of science at Leeds University here in the UK. What I currently see happening in the field of climate science fills me with sadness at the subversion of the scientific process. See the William Gray article above.

Edited by tallbloke on 11/08/2008 23:50:47 MST.

Craig said:
> I'm definitely confused by all off the money going into such a large and vague realm as carbon reductions.

Maybe this snippet of information will help clarify it for you.

Al Gore is a non executive director of investment company Kleiner Perkins. They are currently investing heavily in 'clean tech startups', including carbon sequestration projects.

Skots said:
> I understand that you'd like to change the subject again, as is your technique, but lets stick with ice for a while, eh?

Good idea, here's the latest ice area graph from NORSEX



So the recovery is continuing, ice area is back to the thirty year average (about to soar over it I suspect), and there's currently a million square km more of the stuff than there was same time last year. The global warming alarmists who predicted an ice free arctic this year seem to have gone to ground...

As for your prediction that the new ice would be thin and likely to melt off quicker next year; well, there's another La Nina developing down south as we speak so I'm not surprised you balked out of backing your prediction with a bet. ;-)

The latest RSS satellite temperature data is down too, so brace for another cold N.H. winter, followed next year by.... another cold N.H. winter.

There is an interesting new blog which throws some light on the southern oscillation index and the causes behind El Nino and La Nina here:

http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/

I've been coming across Erl Happ's work more and more recently, the guy has a depth of understanding and insight which impresses me.

Edited to update graph.

Edited by tallbloke on 11/11/2008 04:36:08 MST.

> That's the problem. We are no longer involved in a scientific process. "The debate is over".

I am familiar with the argument that climate researchers are only able to get funding for "pro-warming" research and that anti-warming researchers have been frozen out. This may be the case -- to some extent. However, I certainly don't buy into the idea that thousands of scientists around the world know that global warming is a hoax and are just making things up to get funding.

Even if there were no funding available for the minority of climate researchers who do not believe in global warming, the scientific process would not stop. The great thing about science is that you do not always get the results you are expecting or seeking. A compelling set of experimental results which ultimately undermine the global warming hypothesis could very well arise from "pro-warming" research and will not be withheld simply because it upsets the status quo. If global warming does not exist, then sooner or later evidence will accumulate to the contrary. I don't believe in conspiracy theories.

Anyway, these kinds of discussions ultimately lead nowhere so I think I'll sign out of the discussion at this stage and bend my mind towards more productive uses! Before I go though, I thought I'd share an article which I found to be interesting, as it pits some of the main arguments and scientists (including Prof Gray) in the debate against each other.

Edited by ashleyb on 11/09/2008 17:06:17 MST.

A couple of days ago, Jim Hansen over at NASA/GISS announced that October 2008 was "The hottest October ever".

Dream on Jim. It turns out that for some as yet unexplained reason, they have re-used the sept 2008 data from many Russian stations as the values for october, which are actually typically about 15C lower!

The scoop is on climate audit here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4318

Update: It seems the error originates with the NOAA/NCDC.
Still makes you wonder about GISS quality control, and the state of the code they are using which fails to spot an anomalous anomaly though. No doubt if the error had been in the other direction, it would have been corrected before publication. After all, this is why GISS holds back until the 10th of the month before issuing data.

I wonder when Big Jim will publicly acknowledge the error....

In other news of things having gone awry in the warmista camp, it turns out that Dr. Tom Karl” - now the lead author of the U.S. government’s Climate Change Science Program assessment being prepared to support EPA regulation of carbon dioxide - never earned an academic Ph.D in a climate related study field. According to the NOAA he styles himself "Dr" on the basis of a 2002 honourary doctorate in 'humane letters'. Whatever that means.

It turns out that this isn't the full story however... Looks like serious academic and financial fraud to me.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/10/more-flubs-at-the-top-of-the-climate-food-chain-this-time-ncdcs-karl/

Edited by tallbloke on 11/11/2008 10:26:50 MST.

Skots said:
> I understand that you'd like to change the subject again, as is your technique, but lets stick with ice for a while, eh?

Good idea, here's a snippet from the Sydney Morning Herald.
http://news.smh.com.au/world/over-200-whales-trapped-in-canadian-ice-20081122-6eas.html

"It's unlikely the animals are going to survive the winter, so the hunters have been given authorisation to cull them."

"A couple of weeks ago, when the ice was still moving, there were quite a few narwhal seen out there in the open water," Jayko Allooloo, chairman of the Pond Inlet hunters and trappers organisation, told public broadcaster CBC.

"About a week later, they're stuck."

Lets hope the eskimo hunters leave some behind for the poor starving polar bears.

Ashley, PLEASE don't feed the troll. I've long since stopped. Rog has proven over and over again that he does not want to discuss climate- he wants to rant about weather by passing it off as climate to the uninitiated. He is, indeed, a formidable statistician but he is obviously not a scientist. Witness his unfounded conclusions based on meaningless data, and his continued presentation of thoroughly biased or misleading data, such as his CONTINUED practice of the posting of graphs starting in 1998- a methodology debunked in general on the website he recently championed, www.woodfortrees.org.

(Incidentally, it looks like a decent website from what I've read so far. But I certainly understand skots's initial skepticism regarding ANYTHING that Rog posts, though. He has proven that he will try to sneak useless biased crap past you if you don't check his sources.)

Arguing with Rog is pointless. I wholeheartedly agree that he will be the last man standing in this thread, because all the rational people are tiring of discussing this issue with him. Some of his arguments are so flawed that it actually HURTS to read them, so I've stopped. I plan to dig this forum up in 2020 and contact him then to collect my $money. That's right, I am confident enough that I will take Rog's version of our bet on HIS terms, and I'll win. The majority of GISS, HadCrut, UAH, and RSS regressions for 2005 to 2020 (i.e. only HALF of a climate cycle) will have a positive slope. You're on. Pick any figure that strikes your fancy, up to $1000. The "judge" will be this forum, if it is still in existance in 2020 (no disrespect meant, BPL folks...). Pray for a large volcano, Rog. Or are you going to reject the bet?

I'll take you at Texas Hold 'Em, too! And don't try to pull some wierd European game on me, like baccarat or whist, neither! :-)

Until then I'll see you in other posts, and I apologize in advance for the negativity of this one, but there really isn't a truly "nice" way to shine the light on Rog's activities.

Love,

Dean

PS- Sorry I was away so long, Rog. Big hug! Work and family things dominated my world for a while. Still want to do the Tour du Mont Blanc? Also, I'm going skiing in Garmisch from the 17th to the 20th, if you care to drop by. I've had friends find Ryan Air tickets for 1 Euro, though with the taxes you actually end up spending about 25 Euro, but nonetheles you might be able to find a very cheap flight. If not, see you around!

Dean said:
> The majority of GISS, HadCrut, UAH, and RSS regressions for 2005 to 2020 (i.e. only HALF of a climate cycle) will have a positive slope. You're on. Pick any figure that strikes your fancy, up to $1000. The "judge" will be this forum

Great, I'll see you for the full $1000.

I was mightily amused to see yesterday the BBC's main news anchor, John Sissons, take on the head of the UK Green Party and give her a hard time. Up until now, the BBC has been very much pro AGW, and I think she expected an easy propaganda platform. She certainly got pretty flustered when John Sissons pointed out that the temperature has been dropping since 1998, and tried to get around it by saying that she preferred to talk about 'climate change' rather than 'global warming. John countered this by saying that the science around things like hurricanes and typhoons was certainly not 'settled' and the last two hurricane seasons had been unusually quiet.

She then accused John Sissons of being 'irresponsible' and that the 'debate is over', much like the abuse Dean heaps on me when he can't actually support his arguments. John pointed out that as a journalist, it's his job to find the truth, and that her attempt to stifle the debate is not scientific at all, and that a large number of scientists don't go along with the so called 'consensus'.

She then got into repeating herself, much like the pro AGW camp do. As if by repeating nonsense often enough and loudly enough, it might be accepted as truth.

Post us some more artistic impressions from wikipedia Dean, I do enjoy a good laugh.

Arnie will be pleased to know...

Busted.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/how_would_you_describe_this_gr.php#more

GIGO. Yet again.

"Busted.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/how_would_you_describe_this_gr.php#more

GIGO. Yet again."



PWNED

Edited by HechoEnDetroit on 12/11/2008 15:01:24 MST.

According to the link provided, Rick prefers a version of the graph which has been 'adjusted' for the air pressure and the seasons.

Which is odd, given that the air pressure is always between 970 and 1020 millibars at sea level, a +/- 2.5% variation on the standard 14 or so psi we breathe. And considering it's acting on an incompressible fluid (seawater)you'd think that if te pressure was up in one place, pushing the water level downwards, it would be squeezing up somewhere else. Taken over the globe as a whole. It's hard to see how it's going to make much difference to the global average sea level. Perhaps Rick can explain.

And 'seasonally adjusted' is a bit odd too. The earth as a whole is constantly seasonally adjusted by the fact that when it's winter in the northern hemisphere, it's summer in the south.

I think that until we get a claerer picture of the methodology, quantities and reasons for the 'adjustments', I'll stick tot he raw data which shows the actual average level at a given time, rather than the imaginary level, adjusted for who knows what.

Rick said:
>GIGO, Yet again.

Tossing the alphabet salad is fun, but Garbage in - Garbage out applies more to the models made by computer science graduates who select a limited set of parameters and preset initial conditions for climate models which are proving to be wide of the mark, rather than the satellite data observations which provide us with accurate data of the *actual sea level in the real world*.

Dean said:
>I plan to dig this forum up in 2020 and contact him then to collect my $money. That's right, I am confident enough that I will take Rog's version of our bet on HIS terms, and I'll win. The majority of GISS, HadCrut, UAH, and RSS regressions for 2005 to 2020 (i.e. only HALF of a climate cycle) will have a positive slope. You're on. Pick any figure that strikes your fancy, up to $1000. The "judge" will be this forum, if it is still in existance in 2020 (no disrespect meant, BPL folks...). Pray for a large volcano, Rog. Or are you going to reject the bet?


Just for fun, I thought I'd plot a graph to see how the $1000 bet between Dean and I is going.

The plot below shows the four indices chosen plus a linear trend of the average of all of them.

Down over two and a half decades worth of global warming in under 4 years! At this rate of temperature decline, I'm not going to need a volcano to win this bet, but I will be needing a fur lined parka!

Start saving Dean, $1000 will probably be enough to buy us a rice beer together in 2020. ;-)

Edited by tallbloke on 12/13/2008 09:40:53 MST.