This message has been edited by bogush from IP address 91.105.189.210 on Feb 7, 2008 10:07 PM This message has been edited by bogush from IP address 91.105.191.26 on Dec 15, 2007 10:11 AM This message has been edited by bogush from IP address 91.105.191.26 on Dec 15, 2007 1:41 AM This message has been edited by bogush from IP address 84.66.199.208 on Mar 26, 2007 11:45 PM
Publication Date: February 2007 Publication Format: Digital Publications
Author(s):
Executive Summary: The Independent Summary for Policymakers is a detailed and thorough overview of the state of climate change science as laid out in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) draft report. This independent summary has been reviewed by more than 50 scientists around the world and their views on its balance and reliability are tabulated for readers. It carefully connects summary paragraphs to the chapters and sections of the IPCC report from which they are drawn, allowing readers to refer directly to what is in the IPCC Report, including:
• Data collected by weather satellites since 1979 continue to exhibit little evidence of atmospheric warming, with estimated trends ranging from nearly zero to the low end of past IPCC forecasts. There is no significant warming in the tropical troposphere (the lowest portion of the Earth’s atmosphere), which accounts for half the world’s atmosphere, despite model predictions that warming should be amplified there.
• Temperature data collected at the surface exhibits an upward trend from 1900 to 1940, and again from 1979 to the present. Trends in the Southern Hemisphere are small compared to those in the Northern Hemisphere.
• There is no compelling evidence that dangerous or unprecedented changes are underway. Perceptions of increased extreme weather events are potentially due to increased reporting. There is too little data to reliably confirm these perceptions.
• There is no globally-consistent pattern in long-term precipitation trends, snow-covered area, or snow depth. Arctic sea ice thickness showed an abrupt loss prior to the 1990s, and the loss stopped shortly thereafter. There is insufficient data to conclude that there are any trends in Antarctic sea ice thickness.
• Current data suggest a global mean sea level rise of between two and three millimeters per year. Models project an increase of roughly 20 centimeters over the next 100 years, if accompanied by a warming of 2.0 to 4.5 degrees Celsius.
• Natural climatic variability is now believed to be substantially larger than previously estimated, as is the uncertainty associated with historical temperature reconstructions.
• Attributing an observed climate change to a specific cause like greenhouse gas emissions is not formally possible, and therefore relies on computer model simulations. These attribution studies do not take into account the basic uncertainty about climate models, or all potentially important influences like aerosols, solar activity, and land use changes.
• Computer models project a range of future forecasts, which are inherently uncertain for the coming century, especially at the regional level. It is not possible to say which, if any, of today’s climate models are reliable for climate prediction and forecasting.
There's more in some of those simple newspaper articles above.
Didn't you bother to read them?
Do you only read stuff from environMental sites?
Anonymous (no login) 87.80.236.128
Re: Some Alternative Views On Global Warming
February 12 2007, 7:16 PM
Your link supports the link that I posted.
Click on "Siegfried Frederick Singer" and you find:
"Siegfried Frederick Singer (born September 27, 1924 in Vienna) is an atmospheric physicist. He is best known as President and founder (in 1990) of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, which disputes the prevailing scientific opinion on climate change."
Click on Richard Siegmund Lindzen and you find:
"He has been a strong critic of anthropogenic global warming theories"
Do you expect global warming sceptics to support the report?
In the "SPM downplays the seriousness of the situation" section we see that two highly respected scientists complain that the report has been softened. Click on Trenberth's name and you find:
"Trenberth attributes global warming to fossil fuels:
The latest 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report reaffirms in much stronger language that the climate is changing in ways that cannot be accounted for by natural variability and that "global warming" is happening. Global mean temperatures have risen and the last decade is the warmest on record. The major cause of warming in the last three decades is from human effects changing the composition of the atmosphere primarily through use of fossil fuels. While changes in particulate pollution mostly causes cooling, increases in long-lived greenhouse gases dominate and cause warming. The long lifetime of several greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide lasts for over a century) suggests that we can not stop the changes, although we can slow them down. Moreover, the slow response of the oceans to warming, means that we have not yet seen all of the climate change we are already committed to. Major climate changes are projected under all likely scenarios of the future and the rates of change are much greater than occur naturally, and so are likely to be disruptive.[1]"
Regarding your use of the term "environMentalist", do you always resort to personal abuse of people you do not agree with?
"Siegfried Frederick Singer (born September 27, 1924 in Vienna) is an atmospheric physicist. He is best known as President and founder (in 1990) of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, which disputes the prevailing scientific opinion on climate change."
And if you bothered to read on you would have found:
Singer is a Distinguished Research Professor at George Mason University and Professor Emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia, and.... a fellow of a number of scientific bodies, including the American Physical Society.
In the 1940s and 50s Singer was involved in designing instruments used in satellites to measure cosmic radiation and ozone. In 1959 he was selected as one of "Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation" by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce.
Previous government and academic positions:
Director of the Center for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Maryland (1953-62)
Special advisor to President Eisenhower on space developments (1960)
First Director of the National Weather Satellite Service (1962-64)
Founding Dean of the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences, University of Miami (1964-67)
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water Quality and Research, U.S. Department of the Interior (1967- 70)
Deputy Assistant Administrator for Policy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1970-71)
Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia (1971-94)
Chief Scientist, U.S. Department of Transportation (1987- 89)
Oh, and didn't he also discover the greenhouse properties of methane?
So what would he know!
Click on Richard Siegmund Lindzen and you find:
"He has been a strong critic of anthropogenic global warming theories"
And, again, if you read on you would have found:
Lindzen worked on Chapter 7 of IPCC Working Group 1
Click on Richard Siegmund Lindzen in Wikipedia and you also find he:
Is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves.
He is a member of the National Academy Of Sciences and the Science and Economic Advisory Council of the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy. He previously held positions at and Harvard.
Lindzen was a contributer to Chapter 4 of the IPCC Second Assessment, "Climate Change 1995"
But he has written:
“Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse"
And:
"In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions."
Regarding your use of the term "environMentalist", do you always resort to personal abuse of people you do not agree with?
No, only when the other side of the "debate" argues along the lines of:
More “truthiness” from the Fraser Institute.... sowing confusion ..... heavy lobbying on the part of big business.... pretty disingenuous.... out-of-date information.... specifically misleading..... etc, etc
And goes downhill from there.
Or is it not the evironMental lobby which paints the opposition as earth destroying, lying, loonies?
People like "Siegfried Frederick Singer" (see his CV above) are Environmentalists.
As are people like Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist.
And the co-founder of Greenpeace who eventually left Greenpeace in disgust complaining that:
"There were always extreme, irrational and mystical elements within our movement, but they tended to be kept in their place during the early years. Then in the mid-Eighties the ultraleftists and extremists took over. After Greenham Common closed and the Berlin Wall came down these extremists were searching for a new cause and found it in environmentalism. The old agendas of class struggle and anti-corporatism are still there but now they are dressed up in environmental terminology"
And
"I now find that many environmental groups have drifted into self-serving cliques with narrow vision and rigid idelogy. At the same time that business and government are embracing public participation and inclusiveness, many environmentalists are showing signs of elitism, left-wingism, and downright eco-fascism. The once politically centrist, science-based vision of environmentalism has been largely replaced with extremist rhetoric. Science and logic have been abandoned and the movement is often used to promote other causes such as class struggle and anti-corporatism. The public is left trying to figure out what is reasonable and what is not."
ie The environMentalists.
So, which are you?
Anonymous (no login) 212.140.169.7
Re: Some Alternative Views On Global Warming
February 14 2007, 12:13 PM
I see you continue to use personal abuse.
The fact is that the sceptics are the small minority. The view currently accepted by the majority of climate scientists is that GW is almost certainly real and man-made. You may wish to ignore the vast majority of the research and focus on the small number of sceptics, so good luck to you.
Given that you clearly know little or nothing about the underlying science, since you are not a climate scientist, why do you think you can decide that the vast majority of climate scientists who study this stuff every working day know less than you? I presume you have some political motivation i.e. you want GW to be false (why?) therefore you support anything that backs up your view.
Given that you clearly know little or nothing about the underlying content of what I posted I don't know why I bother replying.
I suppose you clearly think Lindzen and Singer (hint, see above) know little or nothing about the underlying science, depite both of them having worked on the IPCC reports.
Given that you clearly are brainwashed into believing that as they are sceptical of the environMentalists doctrinaire orthodoxies they must be wrong, as only the true believers can be right it's clearly a waste of my time responding.
Oh, and didn't Singer have a small minority of over 20,000 scientists supporting him (the last time I looked, a year or two back), while the global warmers have about 2,000.
Did you miss that report that reviewed a report that supposedly reviewed all the available literature on global warming.
The original review reported that most of the literature supported man-made global warming.
The review of the review said that, actually, most didn't!
Perhaps you did miss it.
"We're not all gonna die tomorrow" doesn't sell papers.
A statistical organisation tracked the coverage of a couple of studies in a scientific journal a few years ago.
One was the review and rebuttal of the global warmers claim that satellite data was wrong by the two top experts in the field which was the main article in the journal and praised by the editor.
The other was a tail-end filler by a biology student about the migration of a butterflys habitat, which mentioned, as one of several possible causes, "Global Warming".
The first article was only reported in one newspaper in the world.
The second was splashed around the world as butterfly research proves we're all doomed to die from global warming!
Anonymous (no login) 87.80.236.128
Re: Some Alternative Views On Global Warming
February 15 2007, 6:03 PM
Well I don't know where you get your information but you are simply wrong. GW is the accepted view among the majority of climate scientists. The sceptics are the minority. You may well quote the qualifications of a climate sceptic, but the converse can be done too.
By the way just because an individual scientist says something does not mean that it is true. I have met and spoken to a Nobel laureate who is the laughing stock of colleagues and students because his research is generally considered to be nonsense.
You have not explained what you mean by an environmentalist (I have avoided using your intentionally abusive form). Having read some of your other postings, a significant part of your argument involves personal abuse of climate scientists who you disagree with e.g. attacking their integrity and honesty. I would not for one minute question the integrity of those who dispute GW.
I am not sure what point you are trying to make about newspaper coverage. Anyone with any familiarity of science knows that popular reporting of science is abysmal, and "cuddly bunny stories" take precedence over anything of substance. It is also obvious to anyone that popular coverage of climate science is not balanced, and that there is a band wagon whereby anything bad is attributed to GW. If the Summer is hot, is must be GW. The aim is to sell newspapers. Man not bitten by dog is not news. I would not base your understanding of science on reports in the popular press if I were you.
Anyway, sceptical work IS news. Some recent work hypothesises that cosmic rays from the sun influence cloud formation and hence the weather. The work has been widely reported. Respected scientists have commented favourably, but it remains speculation until further work can determine if the effect is real, and if it is, how significant it is.
BTW this is probably the worst internet site I have ever come across. It loads very slowly and most of your links to GW sceptics do not work. For goodness sake if you really want to 'spread the word' at least do it properly. Imagine some people going on a demonstration and not realising that they had forgotten to paint anything on the placards.
Well I don't know where you get your information but you are simply wrong. GW is the accepted view among the majority of climate scientists.
Well, let's just assume the majority of global warming scientists, or, even, if you prefer, climate scientists, do accept GW.
So what?
The globe may be warming. Is it caused by rising CO2 levels? Does it cause rising CO2 levels?
And what has man got to do with it?
Please answer these four simple questions:
If man is causing GW on Planet Earth, who is causing it on the other planets?
If man is causing it, as the raised warming we can expect is what man experienced during the Medieval Optimum warm period, what is the problem?
As many of the climate warming doommongers were previously predicting global freezing doom, if man is causing the warming isn't that actually a good thing?
If it isn't a good thing, why are we better off wasting a fortune and crippling the world economy trying, King Canute like, to stop it when we need all our resources to prepare for the problems (and there are plenty of more pressing problems thet we can't afford to deal with anyway)?
The sceptics are the minority. You may well quote the qualifications of a climate sceptic, but the converse can be done too.
True.
But the ones quoted include eg, the professor who measured the ozone layer, discovered the greenhouse properties of methane, founder of the US weather satellite program, fellow of American Physical Society, Director of the Center for Atmospheric and Space Physics....
So clearly quite an expert on climate science.
But also:
Professor Emeritus of environmental science, Founding Dean of the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences, University of Miami way back in1964, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water Quality and Research, U.S. Department of the Interior, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Policy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Professor of Environmental Sciences.....
So clearly quite an Environmentalist too.
So, who ya gonna believe?
Someone whose career is based entirely on global warming research, whose sole source of funding and income is global warming research funding effectivel funded by carbon taxes which in turn are justified by global warming research........?
And so it goes on.
The guy who is professor of meteorology at MIT renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves and a contributer to Chapter 4 of the IPCC Second Assessment, "Climate Change 1995 and worked on Chapter 7 of IPCC Working Group 1.
But a sceptic!
And then you have (have you actually been reading what I posted?):
Henk Tennekes dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming.
Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism.
Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.
Not to mention Bjorn Lomborg, another environmentalist, pilloried by the GW establishment.
And you say the global warmers must be right because they are in the majority and the sceptics in the minority!
I suppose you think that the armed forces have far too much manpower and equipment for the tasks at hand as hardly any serving officers say different and most of the retired officers who supported the government while serving aren't aren't now saying they were lying through their teeth throughout their careers?
I suppose you think that the Iraq war was a good idea because most of the people who owe their positions to bLiar supported it, and hardly any any of the people who don't but were suckered in by the 45 minute scares care to admit they were so gullible and wrong all along.
I suppose you think Saddam really could hit out bases with WMD in 45 minutes because none of the spooks haven't admitted they lied, and the promoted chief spook still supports bLiar.............
You have not explained what you mean by an environmentalist (I have avoided using your intentionally abusive form).
Which bit of this did you miss:
In case you're still confused.
People like "Siegfried Frederick Singer" (see his CV above) are Environmentalists.
As are people like Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist.
And the co-founder of Greenpeace who eventually left Greenpeace in disgust complaining that:
"There were always extreme, irrational and mystical elements within our movement, but they tended to be kept in their place during the early years. Then in the mid-Eighties the ultraleftists and extremists took over. After Greenham Common closed and the Berlin Wall came down these extremists were searching for a new cause and found it in environmentalism. The old agendas of class struggle and anti-corporatism are still there but now they are dressed up in environmental terminology"
And
"I now find that many environmental groups have drifted into self-serving cliques with narrow vision and rigid idelogy. At the same time that business and government are embracing public participation and inclusiveness, many environmentalists are showing signs of elitism, left-wingism, and downright eco-fascism. The once politically centrist, science-based vision of environmentalism has been largely replaced with extremist rhetoric. Science and logic have been abandoned and the movement is often used to promote other causes such as class struggle and anti-corporatism. The public is left trying to figure out what is reasonable and what is not."
Having read some of your other postings, a significant part of your argument involves personal abuse of climate scientists who you disagree with e.g. attacking their integrity and honesty. I would not for one minute question the integrity of those who dispute GW.
So you think the sceptics aren't in the pockets of the carbon fuel lobby?
And that they are right!
No?
So would you like to expand on your position vis a vis the sceptics then?
And I suppose you don't question my integrity either.
You just think that a significant part of my argument involves personal abuse of climate scientists who I disagree with e.g. attacking their integrity and honesty.
I am not sure what point you are trying to make about newspaper coverage. Anyone with any familiarity of science knows that popular reporting of science is abysmal.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
So you admit that we aren't all going to die.
The globe isn't warming.
And man isn't causing it if it is.
I kinda guessed you didn't really think that GW on other planets was down to little not so green men driving around in 4x4's!
and "cuddly bunny stories" take precedence over anything of substance.
No penguins and polar bears becoming extinct either then.
Remember that story about the north pole melting splashed around the world?
What few papers that did carry the correction admitting the scientists were tourists from a totally unrelated field and polar ice had always melted through in summer had the tiny paragraph well tucked away
It is also obvious to anyone that popular coverage of climate science is not balanced, and that there is a band wagon whereby anything bad is attributed to GW.
No need to panic then.
If the Summer is hot, is must be GW. The aim is to sell newspapers. Man not bitten by dog is not news. I would not base your understanding of science on reports in the popular press if I were you.
Anyway, sceptical work IS news. Some recent work hypothesises that cosmic rays from the sun influence cloud formation and hence the weather. The work has been widely reported. Respected scientists have commented favourably, but it remains speculation until further work can determine if the effect is real, and if it is, how significant it is.
One sceptic report.
Widely reported in about two newspapers!
Strange though that the more the sceptics look into the crazy idea that it's the Sun Wot Heats The Earth, the more of the climate they can explain by reference to the Sun.
Whereas the the more the Global Warmers try to explain climate changes by any CO2, never mind man made CO2 the more excuses tey have to make about why they get it wrong and the more established facts they have to ignore in their models.
BTW this is probably the worst internet site I have ever come across. It loads very slowly and most of your links to GW sceptics do not work. For goodness sake if you really want to 'spread the word' at least do it properly. Imagine some people going on a demonstration and not realising that they had forgotten to paint anything on the placards.
Sor-ry. I'm not a web designer or server owner, just using an off the shelf forum package.
Just think of it as an early form of blog and be happy it keeps me happy and off the streets.
Paint free placard or not.
And which links don't work?
All the ones above work for me.
Or do you mean older ones?
That could be because they are old!
Anonymous (no login) 87.80.236.128
Re: Some Alternative Views On Global Warming
February 24 2007, 11:17 AM
You seem to be having an enjoyable conversation with yourself.
I tried some of your GW links on the following page:
http://www.bogush.fsnet.co.uk/Ecology.htm
None of them worked. If you want people to take this site seriously, then it helps to maintain links. But maybe that is not your aim.
The main problem with your site is that each time I click on a forum thread, it totally stuffs my web browser for about a minute, while it waits for the thread to load. No other site does that.
You have to be an expert to spot the difference, but to those in the know there are subtle clues hidden away in the urls.
The former is an off the peg website set up seven years ago that can't handle what's on it and goes into meltdown if you try to edit the seven year old links.
The latter is an off the peg forum site.
Which I, with my crappy old computer, have no difficulty opening up.
Was there anything else you wanted me to talk to myself about?
Anonymous (no login) 87.80.236.128
Re: Some Alternative Views On Global Warming
February 26 2007, 5:39 PM
I see no need for you to have responded with personal insults and abuse. I was simply pointing out that your website forum causes problems for me whether viewed at home, or at work. I have had problems from at least three totally separate PCs, miles apart from each other, all on different ISPs. So I suspect the problem is widespread. Maybe others have had problems too. Who knows.
I simply stumbled on your web site, and the forum and other stuff seem to be all one unit. They all seem to be under the "Bogush brand" so to speak, regardless of the URL which is no more than the location of information. I presume they are all yours, if not, well okay I made a mistake.
Now all you have to do is realise that it doesn't matter how much you tax motorists it isn't going to reverse global warming in the rest of the solar system.
From there it is just a small step to acknowledging that therefore motorists don't make a blind bit of difference to global warming on our own planet.
Even if you sink 100% of the tax into global warming research grants.
PS Where are the "personal insults and abuse" you keep wittering on about?
The only place I have come across "personal insults and abuse" is from the environMentalists!
Anonymous (no login) 87.80.236.128
Re: Some Alternative Views On Global Warming
February 26 2007, 9:50 PM
Your response was sarcastic and patronising. Here are two examples:
"I'd obviously overlooked the fact that you don't actually have a clue."
"You have to be an expert to spot the difference, but to those in the know there are subtle clues hidden away in the urls."
Do you have to respond with personal abuse? The points I made seemed reasonable and not at all rude.
You use the term "EnvironMentalists" in a manner which I guess is intended to be abuse. But I am curious who these people are.
Exactly how far down the thread did you have to trawl to find those?
And when are you going to address the important points?
Anonymous (no login) 87.80.236.128
Re: Some Alternative Views On Global Warming
February 27 2007, 9:56 PM
"And when are you going to address the important points?"
I have done earlier on. But I will repeat what I have already said.
The vast majority of climate scientists are concerned at the increase in C02 levels which have reached historically significant levels, and believe that it is due to man's activities. They believe that climate change will result. A very small number of scientists are actively against these ideas, and a larger minority are somewhat sceptical.
Why should I or anyone else choose to ignore the vast majority of climate scientists and believe the dissenters? And why should I think that I can learn more from you, a layman who resorts to childish insults and name calling, than from professional climate scientists? I choose to listen to the great majority of climate scientists who spend their lives thinking about these issues.
There are of course some serious scientists who are sceptics, and they should be funded. I think Piers Corbyn is one sceptic is he not?
You mean vast majority of carbon tax backed global warming research grant funded scientists (many of whom were formerly on the nuclear winter/evil polluting man made ice age band waggon and currently pretend that the little ice age and Medieval optimum never happened).
Simple question:
If we ban cars will that stop the global warming on the other planets in the solar system too?!
Anonymous (no login) 87.80.236.128
Re: Some Alternative Views On Global Warming
February 28 2007, 6:31 PM
"Vast majority of climate scientists?"
Yes.
"You mean vast majority of carbon tax backed global warming research grant funded scientists (many of whom were formerly on the nuclear winter/evil polluting man made ice age band waggon and currently pretend that the little ice age and Medieval optimum never happened)."
The phrase "carbon tax backed global warming research grant funded" is nonsense. It indicates that you know nothing about research funding. University academics are funded by research council grants or in some cases departmental rolling grants. They are awarded by peer review of proposals. The measure of success of research is the number of publications, the quality of the journals published in, and the number of citations. Articles are published only after peer review by scientists throughout the world. That peer review determines whether or not the research was well done, whether or not the conclusions are justified given the data, and whether or not it says something that is worth publishing i.e does it extend current knowledge. If a scientist published an article that proved without doubt that GW was tosh, he would become famous, and would be able to name the university at which he would like to be a professor. If a scientist published a paper that was later found to be fraudulent, then he would be hounded out of the scientific community. It has happened in the past and will no doubt happen again.
As far as I know quite a bit of the sceptical research is directly funded by oil companies is it not? MInd you, as long as it is peer reviewed and they are given freedom, then that is to be welcomed, as it is another source of funding.
"Simple question: If we ban cars will that stop the global warming on the other planets in the solar system too?!"
You obviously aren't reading anything I'm posting!
The phrase "carbon tax backed global warming research grant funded" is nonsense. It indicates that you know nothing about research funding. University academics are funded by research council grants or in some cases departmental rolling grants. They are awarded by peer review of proposals. The measure of success of research is the number of publications, the quality of the journals published in, and the number of citations. Articles are published only after peer review by scientists throughout the world. That peer review determines whether or not the research was well done, whether or not the conclusions are justified given the data, and whether or not it says something that is worth publishing i.e does it extend current knowledge. If a scientist published an article that proved without doubt that GW was tosh, he would become famous, and would be able to name the university at which he would like to be a professor. If a scientist published a paper that was later found to be fraudulent, then he would be hounded out of the scientific community. It has happened in the past and will no doubt happen again.
You clearly missed:
“Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse"
And:
"In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions."
Not to mention:
The once politically centrist, science-based vision of environmentalism has been largely replaced with extremist rhetoric. Science and logic have been abandoned and the movement is often used to promote other causes such as class struggle and anti-corporatism.
And:
Oh, and didn't Singer have a small minority of over 20,000 scientists supporting him (the last time I looked, a year or two back), while the global warmers have about 2,000.
And:
Did you miss that report that reviewed a report that supposedly reviewed all the available literature on global warming.
The original review reported that most of the literature supported man-made global warming.
The review of the review said that, actually, most didn't!
As far as I know quite a bit of the sceptical research is directly funded by oil companies is it not? MInd you, as long as it is peer reviewed and they are given freedom, then that is to be welcomed, as it is another source of funding.
So you missed this too:
How long have they been working on the papers that were abstracted and summarised in the "latest" IPCC report?
How many $$ BILLIONS is up for grabs in Global Warming research grants?
How many $$$ TRILLIONS is up for grabs in Carbon Taxes?
How many of the scientists who have worked on the IPCC research have left in disgust at the cherrypicking of data and twisiting of conclusion?
And even most environMentalists acknowledge that the summary is the work of the bureaucrats and not the scientists.
In fact, some scientists have complained that the bureaucrates even rewrite the scientific reports!
This is the wikipedia entry on "IPCC Summary for Policymakers"
"Simple question: If we ban cars will that stop the global warming on the other planets in the solar system too?!"
I'll assume that is not a serious question.
Why?
Because it doesn't suit your agenda?
It is perfectly simple.
Global Warming is occuring throughout the solar system.
If it is caused by cars then it must be caused either by little not-so-green men driving 4x4s on the other planets or the fallout from drivers on Earth.
If it isn't caused by little not-so-green men driving 4x4s on the other planets then why should it be, uniquely, caused by motorists on Earth?
Over to you.
Anonymous (no login) 87.80.236.128
Re: Some Alternative Views On Global Warming
March 5 2007, 9:25 PM
No. The vast majority of climate scientists do back global warming, as you well know, though there is disagreement on details mainly because more work is needed, and it is being done. You write as if science is driven by conspiracies and vested interests. It isn't. As I have said before, you do not understand how science works. Your comments on global cooling and your misrepresentation of it illustrate that point well. See Wikipedia for a good overview. Your argument seems to be based on conspiracy theory, and calling into question the integrity of the vast majority of scientists, apart from a brave few who dare to tell the truth. Such a simplistic viewpoint is not valid. You have never worked in research have you?
Some while back some scientist in the North of England was claiming that his research was being suppressed. I wish I could remember the details but I think it was in prions. He was in quite a few news papers. It turned out to be simply bad research that was disproved.
I suggest you look into the details of these supposed suppressions of the truth that you talk about rather than just quoting verbatim some half truth.
Of course in science people do sometimes get pushed out for 'political' reasons.I knew someone who was a researcher at a world famous university in England. A world famous researcher was invited to take a professorship in the same department. He was a very big name. But his partner also needed a job. So my friend was gradually forced out, to create a post that the professor's partner could take. My friend was nothing compared to the prestige of the big name. I don't think anyone came up with grandiose conspiracy theories. It was just shitty power politics. It can happen.
"In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions."
How many times have you managed to ignore that now?
FW (no login) 81.100.86.105
Re: Some Alternative Views On Global Warming
March 7 2007, 12:14 AM
Still not quite got the hang of the fact that "scientific consensus" does not mean that everyone agrees, and that "overwhelming burden of evidence" does not mean that there aren't any contradictory results, have you BJ.
But then someone who believes that lunar phases are caused by the Earth's shadow is unlikely to have much of a grasp of the scientific method, is he?
And you seem to struggle to grasp the fact that there is the consensus of the atmospheric physisicists and the like who accept that:
The globe, at times, warms.
And, at times, cools.
That greenhouse gases retain heat and stop the earth from being an icy waste.
That the main greenhouse "gas" is water vapour.
That many greenhouses gases are much more potent than CO2.
That most CO2 is generated naturally.
That most man-made CO2 doesn't come from cars.
That while the graph of CO2 levels is similar to that of temperature levels CO2 levels rise and fall AFTER the corresponding rises and falls in temperature and not before.
And that while not all the climatic changes can be definately blamed on the Sun:
The more research that is done the more ways that the Sun affects the climate are found.
On the other hand there is the consensus of the Global Warmers and the like who accept that:
Man is destroying the planet.
He is doing it by car pollution.
He is going to cause an ice age.
Oops, there seems to be some warming so he is obviously causing Global Warming.
He is causing it by polluting the air with plant food.
And they can prove it by generating models which say that if you put CO2 into the atmosphere it gets warmer.
Though they can't even really get that right unless they pretend that the known climatic changes of the past never occured.
But if we give them lots more Global Warming grants they will be able to tweak their made up models until they give the answers they want them to give.
Still suffering from your obsession with me, I see!
FW (no login) 128.243.220.42
Re: Some Alternative Views On Global Warming
March 8 2007, 10:54 AM
Hmm... so, should I take your word for it, who, as far as I am aware, has not any qualifications at all in the study of atmospheric physics, climatology, etc, and has never actually done any research at all on the subject. Or should I go with the consensus of thousands of scientists who have spent their careers studying the subject, and producing work like that summarized in http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf . Tough call.
Anonymous (no login) 87.80.236.128
Re: Some Alternative Views On Global Warming
March 8 2007, 5:26 PM
"On the other hand there is the consensus of the Global Warmers and the like who accept that:"
"Man is destroying the planet."
"He is doing it by car pollution."
"He is going to cause an ice age."
"Oops, there seems to be some warming so he is obviously causing Global Warming."
"He is causing it by polluting the air with plant food."
"And they can prove it by generating models which say that if you put CO2 into the atmosphere it gets warmer."
"Though they can't even really get that right unless they pretend that the known climatic changes of the past never occured."
"But if we give them lots more Global Warming grants they will be able to tweak their made up models until they give the answers they want them to give."
I have not heard of climate scientists making those claims. Cars make a tiny contribution to global C02. Heating homes is far more significant.
Your argument seems to be based on attributing to scientists claims they do not make, and stating that scientists fake their results. You are suggesting a massive global conspiracy of scientists all over the world faking research. Scientists in one country do work, submit it for publication, and referees in another country review the work, and ignore the fraud, and pass it for publication. It is all rather far fetched and absurd.
As I have said so many times, you obviously have never worked in academic research, and have never worked with scientists either, as you do not have a clue how ridiculous your suggestions are.
Now if you want to make the point that NEWSPAPERS make the claims you cite above e.g. cars are causing global warming, then I agree. The meeja make some bloody stupid claims, and there is one hell of a bandwagon going on. Each day a newspaper claims that a given atmospheric event is due to GW. But scientists do not make such stupid claims.
I have not heard of climate scientists making those claims.
“The data don't matter. We're not basing our recommendations [for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions] upon the data. We're basing them upon the climate models” - Chris Folland, UK Meteorological Office
“Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked.” - Professor Sir David King, Government chief scientist;
"We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest." - Professor Stephen Schneider
Cars make a tiny contribution to global C02. Heating homes is far more significant.
I don't recall any global warming scientists ever saying don't worry about cars, it's central heating oil we should be taxing at around 350% plus an annual boiler tax plus a consuption tax on any boiler run during peak periods.
Your argument seems to be based on attributing to scientists claims they do not make,
See above.
and stating that scientists fake their results.
Are you familiar with the term "hockey stick"?
Oh, and would you class Professors Sir Roy Meadows and David Southall as scientists?
Remember them?
You are suggesting a massive global conspiracy of scientists all over the world faking research.
And what about that, Korean, was it, who faked his cloning research.
But, no, I'm not saying there is a massive global conspiracy of scientists, but there are some who have their own agenda, and many more happy to take gloabal warming grants.
And then there are the politicians and political appointees who want the carbon taxes.
Scientists in one country do work, submit it for publication, and referees in another country review the work, and ignore the fraud, and pass it for publication. It is all rather far fetched and absurd.
You still haven't spotted:
"In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions."
As I have said so many times, you obviously have never worked in academic research, and have never worked with scientists either, as you do not have a clue how ridiculous your suggestions are.
No, but I watched the Channel 4 programme earlier today "The Great Global Warming Swindle".
And it was full of leading climate scientists.
Who obviously have worked in academic research.
And worked with scientists.
And, strangely, they were saying exactly what I have been saying for the past few years.
Did you watch it?
If you had you would have realised it is you who do not have a clue how ridiculous your suggestions are.
Now if you want to make the point that NEWSPAPERS make the claims you cite above e.g. cars are causing global warming, then I agree. The meeja make some bloody stupid claims, and there is one hell of a bandwagon going on. Each day a newspaper claims that a given atmospheric event is due to GW. But scientists do not make such stupid claims.
Really?
Not according to the scientists on that programme!
Hmm... so, should I take your word for it, who, as far as I am aware, has not any qualifications at all in the study of atmospheric physics, climatology, etc, and has never actually done any research at all on the subject. Or should I go with the consensus of thousands of scientists who have spent their careers studying the subject, and producing work like that summarized in http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf . Tough call.
thousands of scientists ?
Did you watch that programme?
Are you referring to the "thousands" of scientists in the IPCC.
Again according to the leading climate scientists on that programme the "thousands" are two to two and a half thousand scientists, including those that disagreed with the summaries, and even those that resigned because their research was ignored.
AND NON scientists working for the IPCC!
Looks like you lose again!
FW (no login) 81.100.86.105
Re: Some Alternative Views On Global Warming
March 10 2007, 10:14 PM
Still not quite got the hang of the way science works, have you BJ. No matter how much you huff and puff, the phases of the Moon are not caused by the Earth's shadow, and the fact that some evidence suggests that global warming is not man-made does not mean that global warming is not man-made.
To lose again, I would have to have lost in the first place, and for that to happen you would have had to figure out the rules of the game. So I am not exactly quaking in my boots.
"Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter."
And then the scientists tailor their research to suit!
FW (no login) 81.100.86.105
Re: Some Alternative Views On Global Warming
March 18 2007, 1:30 PM
----------------------------------------------------------
Is that how science works then?
The politicians write the executive summary.
And then the scientists tailor their research to suit!
----------------------------------------------------------
Nice to see you asking questions to try and address your ignorance of the way that science works, but unfortunately you still have it wrong.
Here was how it worked:
1) The scientists did the research and wrote the large number of research reports that make up the whole document.
2) The scientists wrote the executive summary of these research reports.
3) The scientists went back over the detail of the reports, to make sure that they had not mis-spoken in the vast mass of detail, to correct any errors in their text where they might have accidentally contradicted the broad conclusions (which they had themselves agreed was what the report said). The reason for this tedious step was to try and finesse idiots who did not understand basic science from going through the report line by line and picking up on any contradiction, no matter how insignificant, which "proved" that the whole report was fraudulent.
So, it was all done by the scientists, and, if you read the rest of the instructions from which you have selectively quoted, you will see that they have to sign off on the original research reports, the executive summary, and any errors corrected in the original reports. That is how science gets done -- by scientists. Not by marginal pressure groups and website crawlers like you, but by people who get off their backsides and do the work.
From the links above even the Global Warmers complain:
We produce a draft, and then the policymakers go through it line by line and change the way it is presented.... It's peculiar that they have the final say in what goes into a scientists' report.
And:
Scientists determine what can said, but the governments determine how it can best be said. ... The IPCC process is dependent on the good will of the participants in producing a balanced assessment. However, in Shanghai, it appeared that there were attempts to blunt, and perhaps obfuscate, the messages in the report...
The sceptics report:
The Science and Environmental Policy Project conducted a survey of IPCC scientific contributors and reviewers; we found that about half did not support the Policymakers' Summary. Parallel surveys by the Gallup organization and even by Greenpeace International produced similar results.
The report is prefaced by a policymakers' summary written by the editor, Sir John Houghton, director of the United Kingdom Meteorological Office. His summary largely ignores the uncertainty in the report and attempts to present the expectation of substantial warming as firmly based science.
And, as you've still managed to miss it time after time, those:
Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse
And:
In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.
And then there's
The data don't matter. We're not basing our recommendations [for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions] upon the data. We're basing them upon the climate models” - Chris Folland, UK Meteorological Office
And:
We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. - Professor Stephen Schneider
And, finally, where we came in:
Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter.
Did you actually follow any of the links:
Wegman found that Mann made a basic error that "may be easily overlooked by someone not trained in statistical methodology. We note that there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimate studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians." Instead, this small group of climate scientists were working on their own, largely in isolation, and without the academic scrutiny needed to ferret out false assumptions.
Worse, the problem also applied more generally, to the broader climate-change and meteorological community, which also relied on statistical techniques in their studies. "[I]f statistical methods are being used, then statisticians ought to be funded partners engaged in the research to insure as best we possibly can that the best quality science is being done," Wegman recommended, noting that "there are a host of fundamental statistical questions that beg answers in understanding climate dynamics."
In other words, Wegman believes that much of the climate science that has been done should be taken with a grain of salt -- although the studies may have been peer reviewed, the reviewers were often unqualified in statistics. Past studies, he believes, should be reassessed by competent statisticians and in future, the climate science world should do better at incorporating statistical know-how.
One place to start is with the American Meteorological Society, which has a committee on probability and statistics. "I believe it is amazing for a committee whose focus is on statistics and probability that of the nine members only two are also members of the American Statistical Association, the premier statistical association in the United States, and one of those is a recent PhD with an assistant-professor appointment in a medical school." As an example of the statistical barrenness of the climate-change world, Wegman cited the American Meteorological Association's 2006 Conference on Probability and Statistics in the Atmospheric Sciences, where only eight presenters out of 62 were members of the American Statistical Association.
While Wegman's advice -- to use trained statisticians in studies reliant on statistics -- may seem too obvious to need stating, the "science is settled" camp resists it. Mann's hockey-stick graph may be wrong, many experts now acknowledge, but they assert that he nevertheless came to the right conclusion.
To which Wegman, and doubtless others who want more rigourous science, shake their heads in disbelief. As Wegman summed it up to the energy and commerce committee in later testimony: "I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn't matter because the answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science." With bad science, only true believers can assert that they nevertheless obtained the right answer.
And, no, that was Michael Mann and his hockey stick!
And how about:
Because of his immense reputation, the Stern report itself relied on Tol's work in coming to its conclusions. But Sir Nicholas twisted Tol's work out of shape to arrive at unsupportable conclusions.
As one example, Sir Nicholas plucked a figure ($29 per ton of carbon dioxide) from a range that Tol prepared describing the possible costs of CO2 emissions, without divulging that in the very same study Tol concluded that the actual costs "are likely to be substantially smaller" than $14 per ton of CO2. Likewise, in an assessment of the potential consequences of rising sea levels, Sir Nicholas quoted a study co-authored by Tol that referred to the "millions at risk," ignoring that the same study then suggested greatly reduced consequences for those millions due to the ability of humans to adapt to change.
Throughout his report, in fact, Sir Nicholas not only assumed worst possible cases, he also assumed that humans are passive creatures, devoid of ingenuity, who would be helpless victims to changes in the world around them. Such assumptions underpinned Sir Nicholas's claim that "the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever," and led Tol to view Sir Nicholas's conclusions as "preposterous." Tol's conclusion: "The Stern review can therefore be dismissed as alarmist and incompetent."
Then there's:
You're a respected scientist, one of the best in your field. So respected, in fact, that when the United Nations decided to study the relationship between hurricanes and global warming for the largest scientific endeavour in its history -- its International Panel on Climate Change -- it called upon you and your expertise.
You are Christopher Landsea of the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory. You were a contributing author for the UN's second International Panel on Climate Change in 1995, writing the sections on observed changes in tropical cyclones around the world. Then the IPCC called on you as a contributing author once more, for its "Third Assessment Report" in 2001. And you were invited to participate yet again, when the IPCC called on you to be an author in the "Fourth Assessment Report." This report would specifically focus on Atlantic hurricanes, your specialty, and be published by the IPCC in 2007.
Then something went horribly wrong. Within days of this last invitation, in October, 2004, you discovered that the IPCC's Kevin Trenberth -- the very person who had invited you -- was participating in a press conference. The title of the press conference perplexed you: "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity." This was some kind of mistake, you were certain. You had not done any work that substantiated this claim. Nobody had.
As perplexing, none of the participants in that press conference were known for their hurricane expertise. In fact, to your knowledge, none had performed any research at all on hurricane variability, the subject of the press conference. Neither were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability, you knew, showed no reliable upward trend in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. Not in the Atlantic basin. Not in any other basin.
To add to the utter incomprehensibility of the press conference, the IPCC itself, in both 1995 and 2001, had found no global warming signal in the hurricane record. And until your new work would come out, in 2007, the IPCC would not have a new analysis on which to base a change of findings.
To stop the press conference, or at least stop any misunderstandings that might come out of it, you contacted Dr. Trenberth prior to the media event. You prepared a synopsis for him that brought him up to date on the state of knowledge about hurricane formation. To your amazement, he simply dismissed your concerns. The press conference proceeded.
And what a press conference it was! Hurricanes had been all over the news that summer. Global warming was the obvious culprit -- only a fool or an oil-industry lobbyist, the press made clear, could ignore the link between what seemed to be ever increasing hurricane activity and ever increasing global warming. The press conference didn't disappoint them. The climate change experts at hand all confirmed the news that the public had been primed to hear: Global warming was causing hurricanes. This judgement from the scientists made headlines around the world, just as it was intended to do. What better way to cast global warming as catastrophic than to make hurricanes its poster child?
You wanted to right this outrageous wrong, this mockery that was made of your scientific field. You wrote top IPCC officials, imploring: "Where is the science, the refereed publications, that substantiate these pronouncements? What studies are being alluded to that have shown a connection between observed warming trends on the earth and long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity? As far as I know, there are none." But no one in the IPCC leadership showed the slightest concern for the science. The IPCC's overriding preoccupation, it soon sunk in, lay in capitalizing on the publicity opportunity that the hurricane season presented.
You then asked the IPCC leadership for assurances that your work for the IPCC's 2007 report would be true to science: "[Dr. Trenberth] seems to have already come to the conclusion that global warming has altered hurricane activity and has publicly stated so. This does not reflect the consensus within the hurricane research community. ... Thus I would like assurance that what will be included in the IPCC report will reflect the best available information and the consensus within the scientific community most expert on the specific topic."
The assurance didn't come. What did come was the realization that the IPCC was corrupting science. This you could not be a party to. You then resigned, in an open letter to the scientific community laying out your reasons.
Next year, the IPCC will come out with its "Fourth Assessment Report," and for the first time in a decade, you will not be writing its section on hurricanes. That task will be left to the successor that Dr. Trenberth chose. As part of his responsibility, he will need to explain why -- despite all expectations -- the 2006 hurricane year was so unexpectedly light, and at the historical average for the past 150 years.
How about:
Dr. Lindzen is proud of his contribution, and that of his colleagues, to the IPCC chapter they worked on. His pride in this work matches his dismay at seeing it misrepresented. "[Almost all reading and coverage of the IPCC is restricted to the highly publicized Summaries for Policymakers which are written by representatives from governments, NGOs and business; the full reports, written by participating scientists, are largely ignored," he told the United States Senate committee on environment and public works in 2001. These unscientific summaries, often written to further political or business agendas, then become the basis of public understanding.
As an example, Dr. Lindzen provided the committee with the summary that was created for Chapter 7, which he worked on. "Understanding of climate processes and their incorporation in climate models have improved, including water vapour, sea-ice dynamics, and ocean heat transport," the summary stated, creating the impression that the climate models were reliable. The actual report by the scientists indicated just the opposite. Dr. Lindzen testified that the scientists had "found numerous problems with model treatments -- including those of clouds and water vapor."
When the IPCC was stung by criticism that the summaries were being written with little or no input by the scientists themselves, the IPCC had a subset of the scientists review a subsequent draft summary -- an improvement in the process. Except that the final version, when later released at a Shanghai press conference, had surprising changes to the draft that scientists had seen.
The version that emerged from Shanghai concludes, "In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations." Yet the draft was rife with qualifiers making it clear the science was very much in doubt because "the accuracy of these estimates continues to be limited by uncertainties in estimates of internal variability, natural and anthropogenic forcing, and the climate response to external forcing."
The summaries' distortion of the IPCC chapters compounds another distortion that occurred in the very writing of the scientific chapters themselves. Dr. Lindzen's description of the conditions under which the climate scientists worked conjures up a scene worthy of a totalitarian state: "throughout the drafting sessions, IPCC 'coordinators' would go around insisting that criticism of models be toned down, and that 'motherhood' statements be inserted to the effect that models might still be correct despite the cited faults. Refusals were occasionally met with ad hominem attacks. I personally witnessed coauthors forced to assert their 'green' credentials in defense of their statements.
And there's more:
For more than a decade, Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center has been pursuing an explanation for why Earth cools and warms. His findings -- published in October in the Proceedings of the Royal Society -- the mathematical, physical sciences and engineering journal of the Royal Society of London -- are now in, and they don't point to us. The sun and the stars could explain most if not all of the warming this century, and he has laboratory results to demonstrate it. Dr. Svensmark's study had its origins in 1996, when he and a colleague presented findings at a scientific conference indicating that changes in the sun's magnetic field -- quite apart from greenhouse gases -- could be related to the recent rise in global temperatures. The chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change, the chief agency investigating global warming, then castigated them in the press, saying, "I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naive and irresponsible." Others accused them of denouncing the greenhouse theory, something they had not done.
This is the "scientific" method you keep spouting on about?
Hot cities, not CO2, cause urban thermometers to rise
Ross McKitrick, Financial Post Published: Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Below is the famous graph of "global average surface temperature," or "global temperature" for short. The data come from thermometers around the world, but between the thermometer readings and the final, famous, warming ramp, a lot of statistical modelling aims at removing known sources of exaggeration in the warming trend. In a new article just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research -- Atmospheres, a co-author and I have concluded that the manipulations for the steep post-1980 period are inadequate, and the above graph is an exaggeration. Along the way, I have also found that the United Nations agency promoting the global temperature graph has made false claims about the quality of its data...........
.........
So there are two points to note here. First, the IPCC concedes the existence of a correlation pattern that shows its main data set is contaminated, and it has no coherent counterargument. Its claim that it is due to natural circulation changes contradicts its later (and prominently advertised) claims that recent warming patterns cannot be attributed to natural atmospheric circulation changes. Second, the claim that our evidence is statistically insignificant is, in my opinion, a plain fabrication. The IPCC offered no supporting evidence. Confronted with two lines of independent evidence that the data set on which it bases its fundamental conclusions is contaminated, it conceded the point, but then dismissed it on the basis of non-existent counter-evidence.
This is no mere tiff among duelling experts. The IPCC has a monopoly on scientific advising to governments concerning climate change. Governments who never think to conduct due diligence on IPCC reports send delegates to plenary meetings at which they formally "accept" the conclusions of IPCC reports. Thereafter they are unable -- legally and politically -- to dissent from its conclusions. In the years ahead, people around the world, including here in Canada, could bear costs of climate policies running to hundreds of billions of dollars, based on these conclusions. And the conclusions are based on data that the IPCC lead authors concede exhibits a contamination pattern that undermines their interpretation of it, a problem they concealed with untrue claims.
Our new paper presents a new, larger data set with a more complete set of socioeconomic indicators. We showed that the spatial pattern of warming trends is so tightly correlated with indicators of economic activity that the probability they are unrelated is less than one in 14 trillion. We applied a string of statistical tests to show that the correlation is not a fluke or the result of biased or inconsistent statistical modelling. We showed that the contamination patterns are largest in regions experiencing real economic growth. And we showed that the contamination patterns account for about half the surface warming measured over land since 1980.
In other words, we have confirmed, on new and stronger grounds, that the IPCC's global surface-temperature data is exaggerated, with a large warming bias. Claims about the amount of surface warming since 1980, and its attribution to anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions, should be reassessed using uncontaminated data. And governments that rely on the IPCC for advice should begin asking why it was allowed to suppress earlier evidence of this problem.
-- Ross McKitrick is associate professor and director of graduate studies, Department of Economics, University of Guelph.
Professor of Economics. What an excellent authority to quote. If you would like a complete demolition of this man's incompetence when it comes to climatology, you might try
http://timlambert.org/category/science/mckitrick/
(Personally, I particularly like the part where he doesn't know the difference between a radian and a degree, but there are plenty of idiocies to choose from)
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