Science ?

What science ?

I just see 60 or so self serving, funding seeking, data manipulating, data hiding opportunists “bigging” each other up and “denying” anyone else the right to question their highly suspect conclusions.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/15/news-on-the-new-non-scientist/#more-14211

And don’t forget the railway engineer running the whole thing.

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/search/label/Pachauri

We have far more pressing things to worry about, like energy security, hunger and over population to worry about a possibility that some harmless, trace gas which is produced naturally anyway is going to make the world only just about as nearly hot as it has been in the past. And when it was hotter civilisations grew and prospered anyway.

if not stupid then merely contrarian – some of our cleverest politicians are merely contrarian; what distinguishes your stupid contrarian from your smart one is that the smart one even believes that they believe whatever it is that their opinons are contrary to.

Perhaps a concern that a lot of people who bang on about global warming seem to have a chip on their shoulder about consumer capitalism?

What drives the global warming deniers?

Oh, yes, I know this one! Is it because the enlightened IT technician sees through the socialistic propaganda of the Commie elitist Warmists and their Marxist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids?

I rather think it is, you know. They’ve got Youtube videos to prove it, and everything.

Paul,

“Of course, if they don’t like that conclusion there’s always the alternative of admitting they are too stupid to make sense of the science, and don’t really know what’s going on.”

Science is not a set truth. It is a method to investigate and understand the world, which requires challenging and defending ideas. Your article implies science is set in stone. But if plate tectonics, evolution or relativity all remain theories , why should man-made climate change not also be challenged.

And why does a challenge to an idea have to come from someone trained in that field. If you read much of the criticism on say climateaudit or Bishop Hill, I would have thought the fact that it is based not on climate science but statistical analysis would have illuminated the point that experts in one field can be challenged still. Basically, the problem many undecided and sceptical observers have is that the reason for the way statistics have been treated by climate scientists (a small and relatively inter-conected field) has not been properly published and explained. And since the methodology used in establishing the figures is not elucidated, people can question the use of statistics.

Personally I am undecided on man-made climate change, but get angry when it is assumed indecision is stupid on the grounds of science being a set truth. I also get increasingly worried that if the methodologies used are indeed correct and justify major expenditure and impositions on our lifestyles, then why are they not openly and clearly expressed in a way a non-climate scientist such as myself can understand.

Science simply means knowledge. But knowledge not shared is not science, but rather lore – something passed only amongst the initiatied. I am hopefully a reasonable person, but this means not that I will accept changes because ‘science’ tells me so, but that I will question the transmission of lore as truth until someone explains it to me and thus makes it science.

Most of us don’t have the skills and knowledge to analyse a complex question like global warming, so our default position is “don’t know” (presumably). Some authoritative scientists say it is definitely happening so we think “ok, maybe yes then”. But ooops it turns out some of the supposed best scientists don’t follow the usual norms of scientific practice, and appear to have been breaking the law in an attempt not to do so. They receive funding from government and, more recently, big businesses interested in mopping up those carbon permits. So there are plenty of public choice theory-esque reasons for taking a step back and being a little sceptical.

The question is where you place your baseline (credence, or skepticism) and what counts as an authoritative voice to you.

I think a big part of it is that they are psychologically incapable of accepting that hippies might be right about something.

It’s not so much a question of what drives them, more ‘what do they drive?’.

A careful look at some science at my blog goes far in answering your leading and arrogant stance. Firstly, climate changes and most critics of the AGW politics know this. Secondly pollution is not climate. That is too many human beings blissfuly fouling their own nests.
The survival of the human race is the issue not the planet itself. Most passionate followers of a “religion” are their own doom makers.

Iain Coleman @ 7

Hippies were right about many things. But I do not equate carbon taxes with hippies. If anything strikes me as a tool of ‘the man’ (sorry to resort to crude stereotypes) it is imposing taxes on energy usage and then allowing a select few to profit from trading in this field.

Mind you, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the hippies did all sign up for more government control, and were just having one last blow-out before the state imposed its own morality and views.

Your Commie has no regard for human life, not even of his own. For this reason men, I want to impress upon you the need for extreme watchfulness. The enemy may come individually, or in strength. He may even appear in the form of our own troops. But however we must stop him. We must not allow him to gain entrance to this base. Now, I’m going to give you THREE SIMPLE rules: First, trust NO one, whatever his uniform or rank, unless he is known to you personally; Second, anyone or anything that approaches within 200 yards of the perimeter is to be FIRED UPON; Third, if in doubt, shoot first then ask questions later. I would sooner accept a few casualties through accidents rather losing the entire base and its personnel through carelessness.

Any variation of these rules must come from me personally. Now, men, in conclusion, I would like to say that, in the two years it has been my privilege to be your commanding officer, I have always expected the best from you, and you have never given me anything less than that. Today, the nation is counting on us. We’re not going to let them down. Good luck to you all.

It’s not that difficult to work out. Seeking to ameliorate climate change requires GOVERNMENT ACTION and REDISTRIBUTION – both anathema to the neoliberal mind-set which holds that the market will (eventually) self-correct. The fact that (as with the financial system left to its own devices) this correction may come too late just gets in the way of a good argument.

Here are my reasons :

I know very little about the science, digesting all of the information available is frankly a full time job and I have neither the time or the scientific experience to make an informed opinion.

The champion of AGW in the UK is our prime minister and his government. A pathological liar who has made dishonesty and misinformation a way of life – quite simply, if Gordon Brown and his acolytes are hawking it, my natural suspsicion is there must be something wrong with it.

I’m sure that there are any number of worthy people and organisations who are far more respectable supporters, acronyms like the IPCC spring to mind, but in truth I’ve got little idea who they are and there is so much mud slung from both sides about their legitimacy that the value of their contribution has just faded to an almost irrelevant shadow.

On the subject of mud – time and time again, any reasonable discussion on the subject plummets almost immediately into a gratuitous session of ballistic insults. Witness the way the question of this thread has been framed to immediately put anyone with doubts on a back foot. The very language around the subject has now been constructed to cast anyone with questions in a pejorative light – why is this necessary ?

I confess to scepticism, ignorance and distrust, none of which are positive reasons to take a position, but until someone I like, trust and am confident has done the work on my behalf steps up and says it’s all true then that is where I will remain. I can’t say who that person is but as more time passes without that reassurance I just grow increasingly bored and weary of the discussion and frankly, the festival of hypocrisy playing out in Copenhagen as I write does nothing to reduce the cynicism.

Inconsistancies in the raw data and the interpretation of it.

“Most of us don’t have the skills and knowledge to analyse a complex question like global warming,”

But neither do most of us have the skills and knowledge to analyse most complex scientific questions. That’s why we go to doctors when things are wrong with us. The existence of bad apples like Harold Shipman don’t invalidate medicine, and the financial incentives of big pharma to lie are real but still don’t mean medicine is worthless.

The fact is science works, and is responsible for vast increases in living standards. The layman who doesn’t have the skills or knowledge should place his money with scientific consensus every time.

Governments can thus either listen to scientists, or listen to internet conspiracy theorists. The consequences of South Africa listening to the latter meant Aids denialism and a far greater public health problem as a result.

First, even James Lovelock only regards MMCC as “probable” – and there is a lot to be said for Boris Johnson’s view that if Lovelock’s half right we should do everything we can to save the planet (BJ means “save” as in “save it for a place which is fit for humans to live in” of course) but that if Lovelock’s wholly right we should just enjoy the time we’ve got left. To my knowledge, Lovelock hasn’t retorted that BJ is stupid. After all, he’s a (rather elderly these days) scientist, not a political debater.

FWIW I suspect that human activity has exacerbated an underlying natural trend, and that, no we aren’t going to do anything about it because the basic problem is one of population size rather than individual behaviour – probably the most useful single piece of legislation any government could pass would be the legalisation of euthanasia with a view to excluding people over a given age from welfare and health-care.

Illiberal? Of course. But why is it less rational than the view, espoused by most conspirators, I suspect, that (a) Lovelock is half right (b) the problem is human behaviour, not numbers (c) the necessary solutions will be compatible with a left-liberal polity?

You know when fluoridation first began? Nineteen forty-six. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works.

One might also ask what drives climate change protesters. Climate change in important; activists need to be better than that.

[please don’t take this as a defense of deniers]

@Luis – plenty of us agree that climate change protests need to change in structure or tactics (my own take @ http://bit.ly/8zeHmp) but the first article you link to there has some very selective history.

If some individual protesters are only dimly aware of what they’re driving at, or are off message, well this is what comes with expanding the protest movement to cover millions of people from around the globe – say 50-100,000 of them in this instance.

“The champion of AGW in the UK is our prime minister and his government”

No it isn’t. It’s been the scientific community, combined with numerous environmental and development organisations and economists, and grass roots activists operating with fuck all. After decades of lobbying it finally became clear enough to the political parties that there was an issue – even then the record of Labour has largely been abysmal, refusing to adopt major policy changes that have been called for, and only adopting the stuff that big business could live with whilst pretending that solutions lay entirely within personal behaviour.

I’m sure the people mentioned in the post will be extremely gratified to have received the seal of intellectual approval from boy-blogger Paul Sagar. Slow day at Liberal Conspiracy, by any chance?

“But if that’s what leading Tory deniers are up to, then a simple conclusion emerges: that they are the very worst sorts of people. The sort who lie, manipulate and distort the truth about a potentially humanity-destroying crisis so as to put their favoured party into power.”

What? You’re complaining about politicians desiring power? Blimey, up next, water is wet says recent graduate.

What drives ‘deniers’?

1. A well-founded scepticism about the robustness and quality of the four main historic temperature datasets that have been employed in nearly all the peer-reviewed literature on the subject.

2. A well-founded scepticism about the supposed ‘scientific consensus’. (The CRU hack confirms that bullying tactics have been used to get journal editors fired and to deny access to climate sceptics).

3. A well-founded scepticism about climate models.

4. The experience of living through eleven years of increasing CO2 emissions while witnessing no concomitant warming. This is a weak reason – but real. One has to ask how it will be possible to sustain the AGW/Greenhouse argument if no warming is evident for a further five years).

5. A naive faith in the world as a self-correcting system.

6. A lively appreciation of the true underlying idological motives of warmist campaigners.

Paul, your headline says it all – ‘deniers’ – in which there is a name-calling presumption that everyone who ‘believes’ in man-made global warming must be right.

I’m not a climate scientist, however I have a degree in engineering just like the head of the IPCC. I’ve also spent my working life submerged in complex maths, statistics, analysis and compuer-modelling, and I still do. I’ve studied the recent revelations – the programming, the cherry-picking of results, the analysis, the primary research methods, the computer-modelling, the statistical extrapolations …. and so on. It is simply isn’t robust. It is certainly not robust enough to spend trillions.

Okay so perhaps I’m not qualified enough. What do I know compared to the experts at the University of East Anglia. But surely the mountain of vested interests that have been laid bare at Copenhagen must alarm the most dedicated global warmist. You have third world countries demanding ‘reparations’ (yes the word was used) to the tune of hundreds of billions, which will end up in Swiss bank accounts judging by the totally corrupt track record of most of these countries – and you know it. You have a small group of people with extensive interests in everything from the continuing ‘science’ to industrial scale solutions. But most of all you have carbon traders broadcasting widely that the carbon-trading market will be worth at least two trillion to a select band of capitalists.

But, hey, if you want to make a few people rich at the expense of taxpayers worldwide that’s up to you – because it will happen. Just don’t call people names if they think for themselves and don’t share your ‘beliefs’.

SHOCK HORROR- OUR FOOD IS CONTAMINATED

Scientists have discovered that something horrible has got into the food chain and that if we continue to eat beef the government sponsored experts are predicting that hundreds of thousand of us are going to die the most horrible death you can imagine where our brains begin to eat themselves from within and we turn into a nation of zombies and…..

I didn’t believe them.

Why?

Because I remembered the old guy with the sandwich board outside the cinema when I was a kid saying “the end is nigh” and I have now lived long enough to know he was wrong.

Yet there is something in many people’s psychological make up that finds the idea of starring in their own personal disaster movie to be compelling (even exciting) and AGW plays well to that audience.

These people probably also stick to motorway speed limits so they don’t get involved in a pile up in which their petrol tank explodes and they are burnt to death in a huge fireball and……

they probably adhere to the fictitious Department of Health safe drinking units of alcohol in case their liver swells up to the size of a rugby ball and …..

they probably voted for Stacey to win X Factor …..

@Pagar …and Karl Popper rolls over in his grave.

“But most of all you have carbon traders broadcasting widely that the carbon-trading market will be worth at least two trillion to a select band of capitalists.”

2 trillion sounds like a silly number to me, but assuming it’s right, please think about what you are saying. There is a huge difference between the nominal value of the carbon credits traded in the market, and how much money anybody is going to make either speculating in carbon credits* and how much banks will make charging fees to carry out the trades. The capitalists who own the actual carbon emitting firms will see their costs increase on average because of carbon trading – the only way these capitalists want to see carbon trading come in is if they believe the other options will be worse for them, not because they’re going to make money out of it.

also, if you’re smart enough to work with complex maths, why can’t you tell the difference between one (or more) cooked studies, and the whole body of evidence? why can’t you think probabilistically about the question?

* which is probably a zero sum game so on net speculators will make zero – but I’m not sure about this

Paul, you have fallen into the classic trap of assuming that dissent comes from people who are either stupid, or evil, or both. This sort of lazy rhetoric does not impress. And when your amateur psychoanalysis of ‘deniers’ – why would people believe this so-obviously-wrong thing? – presents only two possible motivations, it becomes obvious you haven’t exactly strained the limits of your intellect in writing this piece.

There are, as you probably know but don’t acknowledge, ‘deniers’ out there who are neither stupid nor ignorant nor in it for the electoral advantage. Where do they fit into your false dilemma?

Paulo,

1. A well-founded scepticism about the robustness and quality of the four main historic temperature datasets that have been employed in nearly all the peer-reviewed literature on the subject.

There is no evidence that any of these datasets, including the one used by CRU, are suspect. There really is no doubt that the earth has warmed significantly in the last 100 years or so.

2. A well-founded scepticism about the supposed ’scientific consensus’. (The CRU hack confirms that bullying tactics have been used to get journal editors fired and to deny access to climate sceptics).

The editor in question was fired because by her own admission she was accepting papers because they presented a skeptical argument regardless of their scientific merit. Six members of the editorial board resigned in protest at the way she was compromising the integrity of the journal. It’s hardly surprising that legitimate scientists would be concerned by such things.

3. A well-founded scepticism about climate models.

Firstly on what basis do you consider this to be well founded? Secondly the basic science behind AGW stands regardlessof arguments about models.

4. The experience of living through eleven years of increasing CO2 emissions while witnessing no concomitant warming. This is a weak reason – but real. One has to ask how it will be possible to sustain the AGW/Greenhouse argument if no warming is evident for a further five years).

We have not had 11 years without warming.

5. A naive faith in the world as a self-correcting system.

But if you suddenly introduce a new factor into hat system it may cease to be self-correcting.

6. A lively appreciation of the true underlying idological motives of warmist campaigners.

But that doesn’t change the basic scientific arguments, which are made by scientists not campaigners.

@Andrew Adams

There is no evidence that any of these datasets, including the one used by CRU, are suspect.

On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020126/climategate-goes-serial-now-the-russians-confirm-that-uk-climate-scientists-manipulated-data-to-exaggerate-global-warming/

@Pagar …and Karl Popper rolls over in his grave.

At least as valid a contribution to the debate as is made by the selective tree ring measurers. 🙂

Luis @ 27

The value of the carbon-trading market is extensively covered by finance experts on their websites – just Google it. One particularly clear account is at http://www.marketwatch.com/story/carbon-trading-awaits-us-adoption-before-takeoff-2009-12-07. Now you’ll tell me that these capitalists are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and of course they don’t want to become insanely rich, because they will including a few well known advocates of global warming action! (No names, no pack drill but you know who they are.)

Your other point about the science as a whole is something I can’t answer. This is because the raw data are being withheld as are the programmes. Therefore I cannot apply any analysis. Perhaps when the dust settles on Copenhagen the bodies concerned – and there are only a couple – will be forced to publish under Freedom of Information. After all, they haven’t got anything to hide, have they?

Chris, yes I see that. You still haven’t grasped the distinction between how much a market is “worth”, the nominal value, (i.e. the total value of all shares traded on the UK stock market is £2400bn) and how much money it makes for the participants (the profits stockbrokers make etc. – rather less than £2400bn). Of course people are intending to make money by charging fees for trading carbon credits, and possibly by speculating in them, and of course those people are motivated by making money not goodness. A larger set of people are going to lose money because of it – such as the shareholders of carbon emitting firms (a consideration that is absent from your “it’s all about money” story). The point is simply that you are citing a very silly number to make your argument that carbon trading will happen because people wish to make money from it.

But ooops it turns out some of the supposed best scientists don’t follow the usual norms of scientific practice, and appear to have been breaking the law in an attempt not to do so.

First, Nick, you don’t have any evidence they broke the law. Secondly, perhaps you could enlighten us how many scientists were involved in that ‘biggest conspiracy ever, ever ever’ compared to the number of scientists across the world agreeing on the phenomena?

Luis @ 33 – Of course I understand the difference between the money flow in a market and I understand how people make money out of the money flow. But you don’t seem to understand that shareholders don’t lose money – customers do. Here in the UK we are already paying via our energy bills.

So if the UK stock market is worth about 2.4 trillion, and I bow to your superior knowledge, how much money do the stock brokers, market traders, market makers, banks, etc make? Probably quite a lot.

My point is: how can people who want to see a more egalitarian world condone the naked vested interests? How can you justify carbon trading when it will probably never make any contribution to reducing CO2 and the money made never (never) make its way beyond a select few?

What drives the global warming deniers has been fully theorised many times by the PR industry paid by the fossil fuel companies to sow doubt and create delay in reacting to global warming.

There are the manipulators and the manipulated. You are absolutely right that the manipulators are “the very worst sorts of people”. They have placed themselves beyond the pale of polite debate and should be treated as pariahs.

Campaign against Climate Change has a slogan: Climate Disinformation is Genocide. This is the reality of the games Conservative Home, Dirty Desmond et al are playing.

Monbiot on the subject:

“the muted response to 20 years of revelations about the propaganda planted by fossil fuel companies. I have placed on my website four case studies, each of which provides a shocking example of how the denial industry works(2).

…When I use the term denial industry, I’m referring to those who are paid to say that manmade global warming isn’t happening. The great majority of people who believe this have not been paid: they have been duped. Reading Climate Cover-Up, you keep stumbling across familiar phrases and concepts, which you can see every day on the comment threads. The book shows that these memes were planted by PR companies and hired experts.”

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/12/07/the-real-climate-scandal/

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/12/07/case-studies/

Check out this utter crap:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020126/climategate-goes-serial-now-the-russians-confirm-that-uk-climate-scientists-manipulated-data-to-exaggerate-global-warming/

Without a doubt the London public school crowd are, not for the first time, finding prostituting themselves for Russian oligarch dirty money is a great way of funding their lifestyles. Whether Delingpole is taking it up the ass for Texas or Moscow on any particular day of the week, all roads lead back to oil money.

“How can you justify carbon trading when it will probably never make any contribution to reducing CO2 and the money made never (never) make its way beyond a select few?”

Eh?

Might we be able to get a tad beyond Trotspeak 101?

There’s one way and only one way to reduce climate change. Reduce emissions.

There are two intellectual approaches to reducing emissions. Intervene in hte markets and then let them sort it out or give politicians the power to decide what everyone must do and which technologies they may use.

That latter has not been noticeably successful outside of the very short run in things like World Wars. So we’ve already decided not to do that. We’ve decided to intervene in the markets and then let them get on with it.

There are two ways we could do this intervention. We could have a simple carbon tax (my preferred solution as it keeps the idiot politicians well away). Or we could have cap and trade. Everyone who wants to emit has to have a permit allowing them to do so.

The welfare effects of either system are exactly the same. However much it is that we end up paying, either through taxes or through the price of permits for the emissions embedded in what we buy it’s always going to be the same people who pay. Us, the consumers. Simply cannot be any other way.

From the producers side the effects are also exactly the same: the cost of their emissions in their production process is now embedded in the prices their goods sell for on the market. This will reduce demand for high emissions goods and raise, relatively, demand for low emissions ones. This is exactly what we want.

In terms of who ends up paying the cost there’s no difference: it’s always going to be the consumers.

Now, there is one difference between the two approaches. The above is only true if all those producers have to go and buy their permits. If they get given them for free then it really is a transfer from consumers to producers. At the moment only around 10% of the permits are sold (a very bad thing) but it is intendde that this will rise to 100% over the next decade or so (a good thing).

But who gets the dosh from he sale of the permits? The government of course. Which makes cap and trade just like a carbon tax: the government gets the cash and can either use it to buy nice things for us or reduce other taxation.

That’s where the $2 trillion, 50 cents, whatever the number is, goes. To governments.

The trade part of cap and trade, the bit you seem to be worried about, is simply a pimple on the backside of this monster.

To take the City example, stock market £2.4 trillion. Total value added (ie, the contribution to GDP) of the entire City (that’s all insurance, foreign exchange, banking, stocks and shares, bonds, shipping markets, metals markets, the whole bloody lot) is around £60 billion. So, if we take just the stock market capitalisation as representing the whole City then they’re skimming 2, 2.5% or so off the top.

Is that worth it? Almost certainly yes. We’d be a great deal poorer than 2, 2.5% poorer, if we didn’t have capital markets at all.

And so it probably will be with carbon markets. Once properly running, when all permits are auctioned, it’ll be governments getting the big numbers, the wodges of cash. The traders will be taking 1, 2, 3% or so as their skim off the froth of the market. But having the market is vastly more than 3% more efficient than not having the market (sorry, this is already too long for me to go into proof of that, accept it as a true statement though, please. There are innumerable reports out there making this point, that the trade part of cap and trade makes it cheaper overall) in the first place.

So while it may gall to see some idiot in a stripey shirt quaffing champagne paid for by trading carbon, money looted from the pockets of the workers, the existence of such traders, through the trading they do, means less is being looted ftpotworkers over all as a result of said trading.

Here’s how to solve climate change:

1) Find a self-rightious, pompous, right-wing windbag. (This isn’t difficult)
2) Nail his feet to the floor. (This is a little more tricky, as the slower you are, the likelihood of this posturing wet fart wriggling free and scarpering increases. I suggest you invest in a nailgun)
3) Pull on a pair of titanium boots. (Now this is where the plan can potentially unravel, as such ready-made boots are difficult to find, and it may take decades for you to carbon-offset making your own)
4) Kick his snivelling, selfish face off.
5) Repeat from 1)

OK, there are a couple of minor flaws with this plan. But with some inspired tweaking, I think this could form the basis of saving the planet from hunger, bullshit and outright lies.

Chris,

You are right the cost of carbon trading will be born by mainly consumers (although shareholder might see lower returns too – you can’t rule it out, and the shareholders of firms that emit lots of carbon are unlikely to be happy) but then as a wise man said, anybody who wants to tackle climate change but who does not want to raise the cost of emitting carbon, simply isn’t serious. Tim is of course right that the money made by the people running the market is neither here nor there, and that the governments are the ones getting paid. As for whether carbon trading will achieve it’s goals, I gather that comes down to how permits are chosen.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The Hadley Centre doesn’t decide what weather stations to use, the WMO does.

Thank you Tim @ 38 – a very clear explanation. However as you say the cost is embedded in the prices consumers pay – so we pay. I wish I had your faith that a.) only 10% of credits paid for now will rise to 100% and b.) governments will benefit from sales and reduce taxes and c.) the ‘idiot in a stripey shirt’ will be satisfied with a mere 60 billion in commission. By the way I’m of no particular political persuasion at the moment. I just wondered – ignoring the argument about the science – how the more left-wing and egalitarian felt about the monetary possibilities.

Oh, and sucking up, I do enjoy your blog and particularly your insights into taxation.

Chris #42

I don’t think you can say much about the egalitarian aspects of carbon trading until you know 1. whether the goods consumed by poor people are proportionately more carbon intensive than those consumed by the rich and 2. what the governments will do with the money all this generates.

that’s a thought – are governments with fiscal deficits going to be more likely to push for a carbon trading agreement in Copenhagen? (a carbon tax agreement would be equally attractive from that p.o.v.). Will the UK’s fiscal position benefit from carbon trading?

29. Andrew Adams. The period of 1600-1850 was particularly cold. The Earth has warmed up since 1850 because it has come out of a cold spell. Mass industrialisation and the development of technology started in the late 1800s . idespread use of thermometers to record climatic temperature started in about 1850, mainly in the UK. What needs to be considered is the Medieval Warm Period.

Urbanisation is a major problem when recording temperatures. Urban areas are invariably warmer than the surrounding agricultural/natural areas. Urbanisation is greatest in the UK, NE USA and Northern Europe. A thermometer which may have been loatedin the countryside 90yrs ago may now be in an urban area- look at the growth of suburbs in London in the 20s and 30s.

Pre -1850 and in areas where thermometers were not used, temperature has to detremined by proxies – fir cones, tree rings, core of sediments from the sea bed and ice cores. It is likely that fir cones and tree ring data can be influenced by fertilisation from carbon dioxide and nitrate.

The statistics input when assessing paleoclimates is very important and requires the the presence of a statistician to ensure the experiement is suitably designed and the data interpreteted correctly.
Scientists suchas R Lindzen( Meteorology, E Wegman( Statistics) amd Nils-Axel Morner( Geodynamics- sea level changes) have significant concerns the way climate data is collected and analysed. R Lindzen has pointed out the results from the ERBE Satellite data – Earth Radiation Budget Experiment suggest hat when all models agree, they can be wrong. Lindzen is saying, based upon the ERBE satellite( 15 yrs of data) , as the Earth warms, more heat is is lost into space which is the opposite of the IPCC models(11 in total).

Lindzen is also quoted saying
“More significantly, the ARGO bathythermographs deployed
throughout the world’s oceans since 2003 show that the top 400
fathoms of the oceans, where it is agreed between all parties that at
least 80% of all heat caused by manmade “global warming” must
accumulate, have been cooling over the past six years. That now prolonged
ocean cooling is fatal to the “official” theory that “global
warming” will happen on anything other than a minute scale. ”

Why does the World not spend money and repeat the experiments and investigations with the required statistical input ? After all repeating a experiment and obtaining the same results is one of the methods of proving the technique is correct? If the data recorded is different to the that predicted by computer models, then they need to be re-examind amd modified where appropriate.

As Lindzen has said, human activitity probably does produce global warming due to urbanisation and releasing carbon dioxide but how significant is it compared to natural cycles and are there other problems more important to worry about?

“Oh, and sucking up, I do enjoy your blog and particularly your insights into taxation.”

Mwah, Mwah, we must do lunch sometime.

Although I would point out that *I* don’t have any insights into taxation. I’m afraid I just keep repeating the neo-classical orthodoxy…..

Tim – I’m not sure if my posting or your reply should be deleted for sarcasm under the rules of the forum!

Luis @ 43 – Don’t the poor always pay more in proportion for energy?

#47. Dunno – smaller houses cost less to heat, smaller cars, fewer overseas holidays …. but yes, energy (utilities + petrol) are still probably higher % of income. Still though, you can’t avoid raising cost of carbon if you want to reduce emissions – all you can do is redistribute if you don’t like distributional implications.

Here’s how to solve climate change:

1) Find a self-rightious, pompous, right-wing windbag. (This isn’t difficult)
2) Nail his feet to the floor. (This is a little more tricky, as the slower you are, the likelihood of this posturing wet fart wriggling free and scarpering increases. I suggest you invest in a nailgun)
3) Pull on a pair of titanium boots. (Now this is where the plan can potentially unravel, as such ready-made boots are difficult to find, and it may take decades for you to carbon-offset making your own)
4) Kick his snivelling, selfish face off.
5) Repeat from 1)

Remind me, Sunny. Why IS is this place called LIBERAL Conspiracy?

Remind me, Sunny. Why IS is this place called LIBERAL Conspiracy?

To annoy people like you Mike Power. That’s the sole reason. So you can snipe from your blog about it every day while sanctimoniously declaring you’re giving up blogging because its getting all too partisan and heated for you. You set such a good example to us young ‘uns. Now please kindly fuck off and stop trying to tell me to change the name. The jibe is so old even the right-wingers have stopped using it.

“But neither do most of us have the skills and knowledge to analyse most complex scientific questions. That’s why we go to doctors when things are wrong with us. The existence of bad apples like Harold Shipman don’t invalidate medicine, and the financial incentives of big pharma to lie are real but still don’t mean medicine is worthless.”

But no one, except in authoritarian regimes, forces you to go to a doctor.

“The fact is science works, and is responsible for vast increases in living standards. The layman who doesn’t have the skills or knowledge should place his money with scientific consensus every time.”

Not quite. Medicine and engineering ‘work’, because they do stuff in the real world. And engineering is pretty advanced these days incorporating things like quantum physics into its design of things like GPS systems. So we have to accept a lot of the validity of the latest physics stuff. Climate science, by contrast, hasn’t actually made anything yet. Not even a model that can accurately predict the past or the future. You can believe in physics because it allows engineers to make aeroplanes to take off. But there is no equivalent “show me it working” for climate science. One might call it the critical theory of the natural sciences.

@44 Let it go, Charlie2, it’s over. Denialism is finished.

@50 “Climate science, by contrast, hasn’t actually made anything yet. Not even a model that can accurately predict the past or the future.” What rot. The models can reproduce the ice core and geological evidence. They reproduce the patterns we are seeing now (eg much more dramatic changes at the high lattitudes). You have literally no idea what you’re talking about.

Strategist @ 51 – The models I’ve studied reproduce – yes – but they’ve fiddled them to make sure. Anyway whatever we say here it looks like our ‘leaders’ have decided no matter what we think. Time will tell if there is any effect on anything including the climate and the poor and disadvantage. What does the modelling say about how we will all fare? Will the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?

“What drives the global warming deniers?”

Pissing off liberals. Thats it.

Oh, and the fact that many of them are just sheeple used by the global corporations who fund most of the astro turf anti climate change rubbish.

What does the modelling say about how we will all fare? Will the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?

Wow, I thought the guy criticising climate models on the basis that they couldn’t predict next week’s weather was a strange one!

But you are right, it is so over for the corporate-funded denialist project. We must watch out for their next ruse. Meanwhile the poor manipulated sheeple will carry on bleating until they burn or drown.

51. Strategist you contradict Lindzen and Morner who primarily base their comments on data, not models.

we can all go back to adopting the ostrich position and avoiding difficult sacrifices.

This would appear to be the offical Liberal Conspiracy position on the governments money worrries. And indeed, the common Labour Party position.

If they don’t care about the future of the governments finances, they are not going to persuade me that they care about the future of climate change.

“Oh, and the fact that many of them are just sheeple used by the global corporations who fund most of the astro turf anti climate change rubbish”.

Yep – whereas the “warmers” are all independent thinkers who have unique scientific insights, have rigorously tested the data and are promoting their panic laden predictions through their mates in the media, totally objectively without any attempt to use fear as a means of social engineering and global wealth redistribution. Or maybe they are just regurgitating Islington dinner party conversation, Al Gore plolemics and Guardian editorial until the next “fashionable” cause comes along (my money is on ocean acidification BTW) The estimated value of conversion to the “low carbon economy” is ? $3 Trillion – do you really imagine there’s no vested economic, political or social vested interest in climate change ?

“Campaign against Climate Change has a slogan: Climate Disinformation is Genocide.”

This sort of hyperbole really doesn’t help your cause.

“To annoy people like you Mike Power. That’s the sole reason.”

I thought it was a satirical statement on right-wing claims of a liberal conspiracy? In any case, post 39 rather than heated debate just strikes me as someone getting rather too worked up over this whole issue. Not to mention you’d have to smash in the faces of pretty much anyone who enjoys driving a car or flying on an aeroplane.

I thought it was a satirical statement on right-wing claims of a liberal conspiracy?

It is, but clearly that sort of irony goes over the head of our trolls. What can I say?

It didn’t go over my head.

Our aim is to re-vitalise the liberal-left through discussion and action.

That does say LIBERAL left, doesn’t it? I think it’s thatuse of the word Liberal that people question when they get twats like “Cheesy Monkey” posting their viscious, adolescent crap. I see you’ve taken down his last charming effort. But you haven’t told him to fuck off, I see.

Oh, the irony of YOU, of all people, using the word sanctimonious. If the aim is to annoy me then you’ve failed but I’ve certainly rattled your cage, so that’s cheered me up.

PS: I have never asked you to change the name, I couldn’t care less what you call it.
PPS: I didn’t say I was giving up blogging, sanctimoniously or otherwise. I DID give up Twitter. Do try and keep up.

If the aim is to annoy me then you’ve failed but I’ve certainly rattled your cage, so that’s cheered me up.

That reminds of me that favourite practice of right-wing bloggers of saying something stupid and then trying to come back by saying they were just joking/lefties are humourless/they just wanted to wind up lefties. You’ve become a lame parody of Iain Dale. Brilliant.

Tim – I hope when you wrote that you’re having a beer like I am.

Battery hen farming abuses millions of chickens each year. So if parliamentarians were serious about animal rights, surely they would be passing laws to eliminate the most abuse?

Charlieman – but we don’t eat foxes and have to buy their meat. Whereas having better rights for chickens inevitably gets the right screaming hysterically about how working class people will be hit by higher chicken prices. Hence, less politically palatable.

I’m motivated by similar reasons to you, but I’d ban it on ethical grounds… as I would firm up animal rights in other ways. I’ve been a vegetarian for years for the same reason.

“clearly that sort of irony goes over the head of our trolls. What can I say?”

Dear Lord. Someone buy that man a sub editor.

The defining point about trolls is that they are *short*. So of course things go over their heads.

Jeepers.

(Of course, *I’ve* never been guilty of such infelicitous phrasing. Little Miss Perfect I am. But some along now Sunny, a would be professional writer really should not be guilty of such soleicisms. (Umm, is that how you spell that word? Soliecisms doesn’t look right. Does it even mean what I think it does (mistake which the person who made the mistake should know better than to make)? And can I get any more sub somethings into this comment (probably (yes, certainly))?))

“If the aim is to annoy me then you’ve failed but I’ve certainly rattled your cage, so that’s cheered me up. ”

Dear Penthouse, I keep getting these strange dreams…………

The Fox hunting community is the most dishonest because they won’t admit that the main reason they do it is for pleasure. They get pleasure from killing animals. They love blood. But that does not play very well with the neutral, So they lie through their rosy red teeth.

The argument that it keeps down the fox population is shot to hell since many hunts have active programmes of breeding foxes to hunt.

Without human caused global warming, there is no human caused climate change.

A fairly simple model accurately predicts average global temperatures since 1895. Consideration of change to the level of CO2 or any other ghg is not needed. The model, with an eye-opening graph, is presented in the October 16 pdf at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true.

This model predicted the ongoing temperature decline trend. None of the 20 or so models that the IPCC uses do.

Charlie2,

Global temperatures were back to the pre-LIA level by about 1900 so you can’t blame 20th century warming on coming out of a cold spell. And anyway even when coming out of a cold spell there still has to be a physical driver behind an increase in temperature.
Lindzens work using the ERBE data wrt climate sensitivity has been widely criticised itself – I’m not sure you can hold him up as an example of the proper use of data. And Morner seems to have made some very odd claims about sea levels which are accepted by no-one else.
It’s true that upper sea temperatures have cooled since about 2003 (following a very sharp rise) but they are naturally variable so I’m not sure this is massively significant over such a short time scale. Deeper sea temperatures have steadily risen during this time.

This model predicted the ongoing temperature decline trend. None of the 20 or so models that the IPCC uses do.

That’s because there isn’t an ongoing temperature decline trend.

http://www.mutantblog.co.uk/?p=100

67. Andrew Adams . There are many potential physical drivers . All those working in climate science can be criticised . It is not a precise science such as chemistry undertaken in a lab. Since 2006-2007 some scientists have been revising there views on the climate change, Claude Allegre is an example.

Often the way knowledge progresses if for an an experiment to be undertaken in one lab and it is repeated in another, in order to verify the method. Repeatability is perhaps the key method in developing an analytical technique. The development of an analytical technique does not depend upon one scientist but several. That is why standards are developed, so measurement and analytical techniques are repeatable to very high levels of precision and accuracy.

Bothe Lindzen and Morner are former reviewers for IPCC. As you are nor doubt , it was the use of computer models in finance which caused the collapse of Long Term Capital Management and much of the recent financial problems. The quants writing the computer models did not assess the raw data; the actual financial worthyness of those taking out ninja mortgages.

When Lindzen is saying that measurements by satellite and bathyscope are contrary to computer model predictions.Therefore, it would be sensible to bring all the scientists together. The scientists should re-analyse existing data, undertake more investigations and enlarge them if required, re examine the computer code and if necessary re-write it. As Keynes said ” When the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do sir?”.

how could anybody deny that climate change is the single biggest threat facing humanity?

Well, nuclear weapons have probably killed more people. And I suspect that a major nuclear war would probably not be a barrelful of laughs.

That does say LIBERAL left, doesn’t it? I think it’s thatuse of the word Liberal that people question when they get twats like “Cheesy Monkey” posting their viscious, adolescent crap. I see you’ve taken down his last charming effort. But you haven’t told him to fuck off, I see.

Man, I sooooo want to party with you right now. Why am I thinking you’re possibly a non-contact twister kind of bloke?

I believe my last comment was ‘disappeared’ due to my use of an offensive slur. You see, that ‘Winterval’ myth is verboten ’round these parts.

I had a vicious adolescent crap once. It didn’t budge for days and was highly offensive to anybody who dared go near it…

Yep, it does indeed say ‘liberal’ up there on t’top of t’page. Do you know where else it says ‘liberal’? In the dictionary. I politely suggest, sir, that you look it up. This site is liberal – that’s in part why fartquakes like your good self and I can get the fevered content of our bRanes (occasionally) appear miraculously below the line. I haven’t a duck-house’s chance in hell of getting a comment published on a wrong-wingers’ page. Yet apparently us lefties are the censorious ones.

Oh, and the previous comment stands.

Byesies.

Since 2000 the atmospheric carbon dioxide level has increased by an amount equal to 20% of the increase from 1800 to 2000. According to the average of the five reporting agencies (four since Climategate), the average global temperature has not changed much for several years and during the seven years from 2002 through 2008 the trend shows a DECREASE of 1.8°C/century. This SEPARATION between the increasing carbon dioxide level and not-increasing average global temperature is outside of the ‘limits’ of all of the predictions of the IPCC and ‘consensus’ of Climate Scientists. The separation has been increasing at an average rate of about 2% per year since 2000. It corroborates the lack of connection between atmospheric carbon dioxide increase and average global temperature. If you would like to check the data, a list and the links are given at the July 30, 6:52 PM post at http://www.sindark.com/2009/07/28/hfcs-and-climate-change/#comment-83310

The Argo float data shows that global warming stopped abruptly in about 2004 (graph on pp4 of http://www.oceanobs09.net/plenary/files/Wijffels_HeatContentTemperature_2Aa_vfinal.pdf )

Lindzen of MIT has presented measured data that shows that the IPCC’s GCMs are wrong at slide 4 at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/co2_report_july_09.pdf. Monckton (Margaret Thatcher’s science advisor) also shows IPCC to be wrong at slides 7, 8, and 9 of this presentation.

The seasonally adjusted Arctic sea ice area has been increasing as shown by the graph that is updated daily at http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png .

And now Climategate has shown that some of the advocates of AGW have at best misled the public by suppressing data.

Dan Pangburn – firstly 9 years isn’t enough to establish a climatological trend separate from the background weather noise. Therefore ranting on about temperatures since 2000 is the wrong thing to do, scientifically speaking.

But as it happens a competent statistician has looked at some of the claims about the last decade contradict what was expected, and surprise surprise, they don’t:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/riddle-me-this/#more-2108

As for Monckton, he is wrong on just about everything he ever says about global warming – pick something and I’ll explain why.

Sea ice – well again, you go cherry picking a very short period – the record low was 2007, due to local weather conditions of warm air being blown into the Arctic. So that the next few years have more ice is not surprising. The long term trend is still downwards though.

Climategate, as peopel call it, shows nothing of the sort, except scienitsts getting exasperated with people harassing them and publishing bad science.

In the meantime, as to climate change denialism, today the Daily Express has just surpassed itself.

Charlie2

When Lindzen is saying that measurements by satellite and bathyscope are contrary to computer model predictions.Therefore, it would be sensible to bring all the scientists together. The scientists should re-analyse existing data, undertake more investigations and enlarge them if required, re examine the computer code and if necessary re-write it. As Keynes said ” When the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do sir?”

Surely the logical thing to do first is examine Lindzen’s paper and judge whether it stands up. According to many it doesn’t, for various reasons including the rather selective use of particular datasets from the satellites. Even Roy Spencer, hardly an AGW hawk, has criticised it. Lindzen has not demonstrated that the facts have changed so no reason yet for anyone to change their mind.

Sunny @ 64

“Tim – I hope when you wrote that you’re having a beer like I am”.

Sorry, Sunny, but beer and lager are out. That should be the last one you drink. The fields which grew that barley solely for the purposes of brewing alcohol could have been used for growing food. Besides which, the fermentation process emits carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. By the same token, anything produced using yeast is out – that is, alcohol in general and leavened bread. Cider apple orchards can be grubbed up for growing wheat, which, together with potatoes, should be our main source of carbohydrates, thus avoiding the import of rice, which has a very large carbon footprint, having to be carted halfway round the world if it’s eaten here. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. We’ve got to be prepared to make sacrifices for the good of the planet.

“Tim – I hope when you wrote that you’re having a beer like I am”

I had had a beer which explains it rather better.

“Besides which, the fermentation process emits carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.”

Quite. I once worked out (long story) that the CO2 which is used for gassification (ie, purely the stuff to give it sparkle and fizz, not the stuff from the actual brewing) is equal to the CO2 emitted from shipping bottled water around (both UK figures).

So, if we’re to campaign against bottled water, as many do, then we must also campaign against keg beer. Which is good news for CAMRA at least.

So a night on the beer followed by a curry is not only bad for my guts and liver, but also for the planet ?

Of course I don’t expect the conservative trolls or their great hero’s like Clarkson to believe in global warming, but maybe they should pay a little attention to that bastion of dirty hippies 😉 the Pentagon. (Sponsor of much right wing terrorism around the world over the last 40 years.)

Because for the last couple of years they have been looking at climate change , and global warming, and have a rather different view to our pretend Clarkson’s.

From MSNBC …….

“ For the past several years, Pentagon security analysts have looked anew at climate change, as if they were facing a potential enemy army or naval fleet. Global warming is now shaping their future military missions and nowhere more so than in places like Egypt, which is so dependent on its unique resource – fresh water.
Former CentCom Commander and retired U.S. Gen. Anthony Zinni, who co-wrote a groundbreaking report on the link between global warming and conflict in 2007, said that Egypt is on his list of “top ten” global climate hotspots.
“The Nile is Egypt and Egypt is the Nile. Historically, for millennia, they have defined their national interests around that, they’ve even said it would be a ‘causus beli,’ a reason for war, if the upstream resources were somehow controlled, dammed, polluted or whatever,” said Zinni.

But that is exactly what is happening. Even as the Nile Delta is covered in rising seas, the Nile itself is ‘shrinking’ – with thirsty upstream neighbors like Ethiopia damming the Nile, in four places at last count, to improve its own water supply.
Meanwhile, Sudan is selling some 30 million acres of commercial land to China, which will require, according to Hamza, at least 180 billion cubic meters of water to irrigate, for the export of crops back to China.
Where will the water come from? Where else? “It’s going to be a fight within the family, I think. But a big fight, if Ethiopia continues to dam, and Sudan continues to sell land,” Zinni warned.”

Now this has well and truly pissed of the right wing heritage foundation, but then nobody takes that organisation seriously and claims to be sane. After all, they are funded by billionaires and millionaires from the oil and coal industry for the sole purpose of promoting policies that benefit said millionaires and billionaires.

Just wait till 100’s of millions of people around the world are on the move. That will get them spluttering on their cornflakes as the read the Daily Telegraph.

sally,

Thanks for that.

There are options to damming rivers, even the Nile, but they take stuff like desalination plants, solar energy and big engineering as a given. Perhaps it is a lot easier just to fight….

Ethiopia – population: 1983 est. 35-40 million, 2008 est 75-80 million

According to my rudimentary knowledge of mathematics and economics, 2 people require twice as much food and water as 1 person. Ethiopia’s population appears to have doubled in 25 years. I don’t suppose this has any relevance?

What drives global warmer deniers?

Facts.

Facts like Carbon Dioxide is heavier than air and can’t do what devotees of the AGW god say it does.

It’s not based on real science. The list of goes on, but for starters:

One of the worse problems AGW devotees have created is to convince the Pacific islanders that this is the cause of their problems so no attention is given to the very real dilemma facing them; the instability of coral islands, the movement of tectonic plates and earthquakes affecting islands hundreds of miles from these because of the interconnections.

Sea levels aren’t rising. The Maldives government ignored the results of real science research findings for a photo op and expectation of money for a problem which doesn’t exist. http://www.examiner.com/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2009m10d28-Mike-Fox-Maldives-Raising-Sea-Level-Fraud

“..one of the foremost sea level experts in the world. He is the Swedish scientist Nils-Axel Morner.

In an October 20th letter to President Nasheed, Morner wrote, (http://tinyurl.com/ykb3ctc):

“When I was president for an international commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, we spent much effort on the question of present-to-future sea level changes. After intensive field studies, deliberation within the commission and discussions at five international meetings, we agreed on a “best estimate” for possible sea level changes by the year 2100. Our figure was +10 cm ±10 cm. This figure was later revised at +5 cm ±15cm. Such changes would imply small to negligible effects.

Such a small rise would pose no threat for the Maldives. Rather, it would be a natural return to the conditions existing from 1790 to 1970; i.e. to the position before the sea level fall in the 1970s.

So, Mr. President, when you ignore available observational facts, refuse a normal democratic dialogue, and continue to menace your people with the imaginary threat of a disastrous flooding already in progress, I think you are doing a serious mistake.

Let us, for Heaven’s sake, lift the terrible psychological burden that you and your predecessor have placed upon the shoulders of all people in the Maldives, who are now living with the imagined threat that flooding will soon drive them from their homes, a wholly false notion that is nothing but an armchair fiction artificially constructed by mere computer modeling constantly proven wrong by meticulous real-world observations.”

The malpractice in this science which suppresses the finding of real scientists while promoting a con created out of manipulated data.

And last but not least, some of us just don’t like being conned and prefer to remain rational about this.

Carbon dioxide is the essential food for all life on earth, it is heavier than air, it always sinks through the atmosphere unless acted on by a greater force, such as wind.

etc.

Mhyrr,

Facts like Carbon Dioxide is heavier than air and can’t do what devotees of the AGW god say it does.

Ever heard of atmospheric mixing?

Oxygen and Nitrogen, the main two constituents of the air you breath have different atomic weights. Oxygen is 15.9994 and Nitrogen is 14.00674. On the basis you predicate, the lower atmosphere would be entirely Oxygen would it not? Oxygen being heavier than Nitrogen.

You’ll have noticed it isn’t.

Nils Axel-Morner is not a cite I’d like to give. Given that he is a bit of an enthusiast for dowsing.

Mhyrr,

It is also sort of interesting that he seems to exclude direct measurement from his calculations:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/the_australians_war_on_science_42.php

Fig 5 of this link is quite funny:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we18.htm

You can prove almost anything you like that way!

Guthrie @73
I agree that 9 years is too short a period to draw any firm conclusions on climate. That is why I said corroborates even though it is “outside the ‘limits’ of all of the predictions of the IPCC…”.

Apparently you are more impressed by the 22 year long temperature run-up from 1976 to 1998. You might even be astounded by the research linked @66 which produced an excellent match of average global temperatures since 1895. That is 114 years…and counting.

There is no such thing as ‘mixing’ if you mean the AGW canard that the atmosphere is ‘well mixed’. Carbon Dioxide is one and half times heavier than air, it sinks and pools on the ground in still air. It is not possible for CO2 to remain for hundreds of years building up an accumulation in the atmosphere. That’s simply nonsense, it comes down every time it rains no matter how much or how little of it and in still air it will sink to the ground where plants await it. Try and find some old textbooks, pre 1970.

“It is not possible for CO2 to remain for hundreds of years building up an accumulation in the atmosphere. That’s simply nonsense, it comes down every time it rains no matter how much or how little of it and in still air it will sink to the ground where plants await it.”

Fascinaing. So that bloke on the volcano in Hawaii who keeps measuring the rising amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is doing what then?

p.s. Carbon dioxide displaces oxygen, so for example as found in mines, the carbon dioxide will pool on the bottom, the nitrogen will pool at the top. AGW creates a different physical property for CO2 molecule. No wonder you have these strange ideas about it.

That bloke is measuring what? Wouldn’t we like to know.. That’s one of the most active spots in the world for CO2 emissions from the volcanos and from the hundreds of earthquakes every year.

@85 “I agree that 9 years is too short a period to draw any firm conclusions on climate”

Intersting admission for a warmer – given that the whole MMGW hypotheis is based on only 150 years of accurate temperature data. Every time the BBC say “the highest on record” they neglect to say the record only goes back to 1850.
It’s a scientific nonsense to extrapolate any meaningful trend based on data from such a minute fraction of the earth existence.

Myrr – if the Keeling curve is being affected by CO2 from volcanos as you allege, why does it track the northern hemisphere seasons so well?

You can download data from global measurements of greenhouse gases here:
http://gaw.kishou.go.jp/wdcgg/wdcgg.html

Now will you retract your baseless accusations?

Dan – what the heck? Your graph bears no resemblance to real life – the climate models don’t agree with your suppositions, and you can juggle figures to get anything you like. Suffice to say I and many others disagree with your ideas. I appreciate you’ll disagree, but you’ll get your chance of fame over the next few years if the temperatures fall. Of course the 30 years trend will still be upwards, due to the well known physics of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, but that won’t matter to you.

“So that bloke on the volcano in Hawaii who keeps measuring the rising amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is doing what then?”

“Wouldn’t we like to know.. That’s one of the most active spots in the world for CO2 emissions from the volcanos and from the hundreds of earthquakes every year.”

I’ve heard it all now.

Left wing denialism is rather more fun – http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12182009.html

But there is evidence that dreadful things are happening all over which are probably related to climate change. For instance, I recently came across this scary article about the Sahara desert:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html

Yes, it seems that grass is starting to grow there. Now this is really bad news, because if grass starts growing seriously, it might matt all the sand together and stop it from blowing about in the way God intended. Terrible. Whatever next? Trees? Vegetables? Flowers? My heart sinks. What are people going to eat when there’s no sand left to put in their sandwiches?

Guthrie- The ‘measured’ trace on the graph is a direct plot of NOAA data for average global temperature from the link given. That is what ‘real life’ looks like.

Current measured temperatures are outside the limits predicted by the GCMs. The GCMs are great for predicting weather a few days into the future but are worthless for predicting climate. My research used none of the stuff that is used by the GCMs. If you follow the research you will discover that there is no ‘juggling of figures’.

guthrie – “Myrr – if the Keeling curve is being affected by CO2 from volcanos as you allege, why does it track the northern hemisphere seasons so well?

You can download data from global measurements of greenhouse gases here:
http://gaw.kishou.go.jp/wdcgg/wdcgg.html

Now will you retract your baseless accusations?”

Y’all just don’t like the facts, do you? Keeling was on the volcano less than 2 years when he decided he ‘definitely’ saw a rise in global atmospheric CO2..
.
Hello? He went to one of the worlds hot spots where volcanic activity is creating a new island even as we speak, where active volcanos give off CO2 locally above and undersea around the islands, where earthquakes are practically continual, so CO2 from these too.

He went there to create his man made hypothesis, first by creating a data set which excluded all the highs and lows which wouldn’t fit his theory, then by creating all stations in his theory’s image and likeness. That’s why they fit so well. His son continues this con, because it certainly isn’t science, at Scripps from which all this junk data continues to spew its hot air.

Strategist

Good grief. Don’t you check anything?

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/

“January 2010 Proclaimed Volcano Awareness Month
In a Proclamation from the County of Hawai’i, January 2010 has been designated “Volcano Awareness Month.” Throughout the month, the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO), in cooperation with Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, Hawai’i County Civil Defense, and the University of Hawai’i at Hilo, will sponsor various events to promote the importance of understanding and respecting the volcanoes on which we live.”

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs074-97/

“People on the Island of Hawai`i face many hazards that come with living on or near active volcanoes. These include lava flows, explosive eruptions, volcanic smog, damaging earthquakes, and tsunamis (giant seawaves). As the population of the island grows, the task of reducing the risk from volcano hazards becomes increasingly difficult. To help protect lives and property, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory closely monitor and study Hawai`i’s volcanoes and issue timely warnings of hazardous activity.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Islands#Earthquakes

“Hawaii accounted for 7.3% of the United States’ reported earthquakes with a magnitude 3.5 or greater from 1974 to 2003, with a total 1533 earthquakes.”

“On Sunday, October 15, 2006, there was an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7, off the northwest coast of the island of Hawaii, near the Kona area of the big island. The initial earthquake was followed approximately five minutes later by a magnitude 5.7 aftershock. Minor-to-moderate damage was reported on most of the Big Island. Several major roadways became impassable from rock slides, and effects were felt as far away as Honolulu, Oahu, nearly 150 miles (240 km) from the epicenter.”

http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/loihi.html

“Loihi seamount, sometimes known as the “youngest volcano” in the Hawaiian chain, is an undersea mountain rising more than 3000 meters above the floor of the Pacific Ocean (Loihi is the red-capped nub that is pointed out in the of the image above). Both Loihi and Kilauea volcanoes sit on the flank Mauna Loa volcano, an older, larger, and still active volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. ”

These are active volcanos, hundreds of earthquakes every year. Now you’ve heard it all. Research the detail for yourselves.

The only reason a scientist would be measuring CO2 in such an area would be to correlate it to volcanic and earthquake activity.

Keeling wasn’t a scientist, but a charlatan.

What’s really annoying here, is that actual CO2 readings properly correlated might help us, and especially the people of these islands, to better understand what is really happening here. But they’ve been screwing with the data for half a century now.

This AnGloW God is a bad joke at worst, the creation of those without integrity. They’ve been deliberately hiding the temperature decreases in the last decade (1998 was an El Nino year so not a trend), without integrity as proved in the emails.. They deliberately created the Hockey Stick to con us that there was some ‘flat’ temperature as normal. We’ve been had.

Now governments are putting ‘carbon taxes’ on domestic heating oil and petrol and diesel and frightening children by calling CO2 a poison and teaching them to fear it because they think it will destroy the earth. Why? Because they got thousands of people campaigning in support of their con.

If any here from those parts of Europe and US now hit by the worst winter weather we’ve had for decades…, hope you’re enjoying global warming.

p.s. Rising sea levels? http://www.examiner.com/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2009m10d28-Mike-Fox-Maldives-Raising-Sea-Level-Fraud

Meanwhile, the people of those islands in the Pacific who are in grave danger, now, from sinking coral atolls and huge underwater earthquakes in an area of very complicated tectonic plate interactions affected by a massive subduction zone, are of interest to Global Warmers only as a club to hit us with. If anyone of you really cared about these people, and they’re being conned into believing this lie, you’d begin campaigning for the truth.

This is an extraordinary large con, a long con in the jargon of conmen. That governments are involved is certain, the Met Offices of the US and Britain hand in glove co-ordinating this fraud as seen by their constant adjustments of past data and selection of stations, and their direct involvement in creating false graphs from the these methods from the national records of New Zealand, Australia and Russia, and how many more? In Britain they claim the original data are destroyed.

How scientific is that? ! These countries still have them, and they tell a completely different story.

You don’t have to buy into it.

p.p.s. before I go. Track earthquakes in http://tux.wr.usgs.gov/ , but they may be holding out too for the general proles..

Excuse my naivete, but if sea levels are rising around Tuvalu, doesn’t that mean that sea levels are rising around Britain? What does British data say? Or does the sea slope upwards as you get to Europe?

Trofim, worse than that, the sea is rising over one island while two nearby are unaffected.

I had one exchange with someone claiming to work involved geology and having studied sea levels, he confidently told me that sea levels are different around Britain, and well known fact that sea levels are different all over the world, he then linked URL to tide levels.