Dec 05 2009
Why are there so many man made global warming sceptics?
The government has started its counter atack, after the East Anglian emails. We are now told that the risks are simply too great that the earth is warming up, so something has to be done. This has replaced the previous sound bite that the “science is settled”. Even the BBC now accepts that not all scientists agree.
This crude use of language and failure to engage with the underlying issues and doubts partly explains the scepticism in the polling. It is like the advocates of Euro federalism. Instead of telling us why it is good for us in detail and dealing with all the counter arguments, they simply repeat endlessly that 3 million UK jobs depend on exports to the EU, as if these jobs would be lost without federalism. They ignore the other 25 million jobs that do not depend on such trade as if they did not not matter or are unaffected by overly intrusive and expensive European government. The more the federalists have made their case in the UK, the more Eurosceptic the public has become. There is a lot of overlap between Euroscepticism and climate change scepticism. Some climate change sceptics see warming theory as another excuse by the EU to extend its power of regulation and to encourage higher taxation.
The main reason many people are climate sceptics is they do not like the remedies the warmists recommend. They see the theory as a way of increasing a whole range of taxes on them, and increasing regulation which is a kind of back door taxation.
The warmists and their Ministers need to set out in detail their case to the public. They need to show that
1. The world is warming. Some temperature series show no warming in the last decade, and a cooler period after the war until the 1970s.
2. That warming comes from rising C02 levels
3. That past periods of warming prior to industrialisation in both historical and geological time were caused by processes and events that do not apply today
4. That the man made element of increasing CO2 is the bit that matters and will cause unacceptable warming
5. That it makes more sense to try to stop the CO2 increases and the warming, than to invest in ways of handling the adverse consequences
6. That taxing and regulating is a better way to change human behaviour than incentives and technology
I have been asked by several to set out my view. Some ask me that no doubt because they wish to play silly political games in the press by misrepresenting my view by crudely labelling me as a climate change denier as part of their attempt to divide and rule. I have set out my views on several occasions. We should concentrate on tackling any adverse consequences of climate change, as it is not in the UK’s power to solve the global problem. I have long been an advocate of more reservoir capacity for water in the UK, to meet the demands of the rising population. I have wanted better flood defences. We need these things now.
The UK should parrticipate in international conferences on the environment as a voice of reason. It is a very good idea to lower our dependence on fossil fuels, to recycle where sensible, to improve fuel efficiency, and to clean up our air and water. It would be helpful if the scientists who do believe warming theory could set out proper temperature series for the public to see with the underlying data, and could produce a climate model which did predict future patterns of temperature. The long run climate data could then be analysed with explanations for past variations. Then maybe more people would be persuaded that the “science is settled” and “the risks are great.”
98 Responses to “Why are there so many man made global warming sceptics?”
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
John
I agree; it needs intelligent approaches to obvious changes that we need to know more about; much more to be able to take responsibility and make the correct decisions for our children; tinted e-mails, sponsored surveys, or lobbied media and politicians are part of an ugly game, but should not distract common sense from reality.
That’s for the ecology; it is the same for the economy!
caw
Excellent post Mr Redwood, I wholeheartedly agree with everything you state and I believe you have summed the whole thing up superbly.
Even people who are not scientists, when reading alleged emails between the scientists who decide these things, can understand that when people are talking about how to obstruct FoI requests, that they’d rather the data was deleted than show it in the light of day, that collobarators on scientific papers to the IPCC should delete all emails apertaining to the complilation of that paper, that data needs to be put through a process to hide the decline, fudge factors introduced, etc, etc, etc. can see that something is rotten in Denmark.
Succinct and to the point.
The only people who won’t consider this sort of reason are either those who see AGM as a new religion, or those who benefit from the assumption.
My only variation on JRs reasoning is that climate models do not have a good record of accuracy. I would suggest that the world tries to move towards more efficient generation and use of energy as a matter of good practice, and taking new measurements as time progresses. Although this will both help demonstrate if there is a genuine problem and start to alleviate the issue if there is one, it is more to make sure that there is sufficient reliable, cheap energy available as the world population continues to expand.
A whole (hideously expensive) industry has grown up around the MMGW myth, so there are too many people with an axe to grind. If nothing else, this should be a big clue that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
This is a pretty good summary, IMHO.
I think it’s also worth pointing out that the underlying science to such a case needs to be open and available for critique. The government may well make a case that the world has been warming in recent decades, but people will not accept that position unless the temperature data and the code used to process it are available and understood. Now we have seen CRU’s code, we know that it is (arguably-ed) badly put together. We already knew that the data is of (questionable-ed) quality and that the corrections applied to it are based on some heroic assumptions.
Does this mean that the world isn’t warming? Well, the satellites also showed warming at the end of the last century, so the answer is probably no. But as you say, the warming appears to have stopped in the last ten years. The IPCC’s publicly stated consensus position of 2 degrees of warming per century is currently either on the cusp of falsification or is falsified, depending on where you take your starting point and which temperature series you look at.
As Professor Trenberth said, the IPCC can’t explain this and it is a travesty that they can’t.
Why are there so many climate change sceptics you ask. I think one reason is, that “Brown the incompetent” is so vehement about it.
The left seem to think that they have a monopoly on environmental concern which is what irritates me.
I don’t buy into the scare mongering that global warmists propagate, but that doesn’t mean that I want to see the environment ruined!
Its time the right took back the argument by endorsing sensible practicle and achievable measures that deal with any potential environmental damage. This also means adapting to climate change rather than having a war with it.
APL Reply:
December 7th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Chefdave: “I don’t buy into the scare mongering that global warmists propagate, but that doesn’t mean that I want to see the environment ruined!”
Exactly right. Pollution is one thing, the control and elimination of the release of poisionous heavy metals or oxides of Sulphur or dioxins into the atmosphere or ground environment is a good thing. In the West we have been highly successful at doing that.
That is a completely different thing from ‘carbon’ elimination, where ‘Carbon’ is used incorrectly as a synonym for Carbon Dioxide, in this sense, ‘carbon’ is fundamental to life, carbon is the gas everyone breathes out in their breath every minute of their lives.
Carbon dioxide is fundamental to life, it forms part of the metabolic process of plants these in turn form the basis of the whole food chain.
This is pre O’ Level, it is a terrible inditement of the British education system that such hysteria can be drummed up by dishonest politicians about a topic that is really nothing more than ‘hot air’.
Thanks for setting out your view so clearly. By voicing your concerns now you’ll gain more credibility when, in a few months or years, the government (whichever party that is) will have to admit they got it wrong and the whole country will again assume that “green politicians” were just being opportunistic.
Small wonder that many former reds have gone green – the message is the same – do as we say, its for your own good. We simply do not know enough about the long term variations in climate and an attempt to pin it on CO2 is simply not convincing. When people start to use “religious ” language like deniers – alarm bells start ringing. I don’t want to save the planet because the script “we are all doomed” is the stardard rubric of religious cults. What if we are not all doomed – the cult members don’t want to give it up their religion. We don’t need them, at all.
APL Reply:
December 7th, 2009 at 11:55 am
AndrewSouthLondon: “Small wonder that many former reds have gone green ..”
In Lord Monktons presentation he used the term ‘Traffic light’ to describe the ‘green syndrome’. Advocates of Anthropormorphic Global Warming are green because they are too yellow to admit they are Red.
Wonderful stuff.
His presentation is well worth the time, he even debunks the ‘greenhouse’ effect itself, without which the whole Global warming scam collapses.
The government’s approach is laid out in their document “The Rules of the Game” – which shows how to conduct Warmist taxpayer funded propaganda, including the “The Science is settled” attack on “deniers”.
Part of the problem is the supposed new science of climate change – which is really a new branch of engineering – lacks any of the disciplines of engineering. It is manned by scientists who have none of the required discipline for the task.
The solution is obvious – give the climate change problem to people who are used to dealing with uncertainty, computer models of the real world, setting up rigorous documentation systems and applying the discipline of software engineering.
Review should not be carried out by former civil servants ( who since Labour’s politicisation of the civil service can never again be trusted ), but a team of consulting chemical and mechanical engineers.
Let the grown ups at the problem.
I do wish ignorant politicians would stop using the expression “the science is settled” as a way to shut down debate and discussion. True scientists will never be so absolute. The problem is that politicians and people with an eye for the main chance to enrich themselves (example left out-ed) have seen man-made global warming as something to exploit for their own benefit. For politicians, taxes will be seen as good when it means saving the planet and the plethora of other money making schemes is too long to list here. Scientists are paid to carry out research which (seems slanted-ed) to proving the theory rather than being objective. All of a sudden leaked e-mails seem to show that such is the desire to “win the argument” that even scientists may have been prepared to manipulate or delete the so-called evidence. (People-ed) like Ed Miliband appear on the radio and, in trying to downplay what is a scandal at the Climate Research Unit at the UEA, suggests that the word “trick” used in one of the e-mails could be a scientific term! Politicians and (some climate gurus-ed) continue their jet-setting ways and excessive consumption with seemingly no regard to their own emissions. How many thousands are going to Copenhagen next week to play out the next stage of their plan? No doubt they will say they have paid” to offset their carbon emissions “forgetting to mention that it will be someone else’s money (some of them-ed) have used(words left out-ed). What actually happens to that money anyway?
Carbon dioxide has been labelled as the culprit greenhouse gas. No politician ever seems to mention the fact that the largest greenhouse gas is water vapour. Why is that? Could it just be that with fossil fuels they have a perfect vehicle to make money out of a scare? I have no doubt that the climate is changing, always has changed and always will change but when I see all those vested interests at work with their various money making schemes I think that this is all about making money and not about saving the planet.
APL Reply:
December 5th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Brian Tomkinson: “No politician ever seems to mention the fact that the largest greenhouse gas is water vapour. Why is that? ”
Most people are preoccupied with other things, most people didn’t enjoy O’level physics or geography or geology, as a result most people will take a government bought ’scientist’ like Phil Jones word that a thing is what he says it is.
But even most people would not stand for the idea that we have to cut water, that even in these diminished times would be so ridiculous as to be literally unbelievable. People would not be so gullible, would they?
So perhaps they might take another tack, instead of banning water, perhaps they should try to ban dihydrogen monoxide?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax
Brian Tomkinson Reply:
December 6th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
APL
Nice one. I wonder what Miliband would make of dihydrogen monoxide? Perhaps he would realise it was no more than that well known scientific term ‘a trick’!
Excellent piece – the bullying and hectoring tone of the pro scientists and their very largely unqualified political supporters is very concerning. It has distinct dictatorial echoes. Some examples of climate change are clear – glaciers on the Himalayas are melting with serious consequences for some Nepalese, the perma frost in Alaska, Northern Canada and Siberia is softening. Whether it is caused by man is hotly disputed by genuinely qualified scientists and for E. Miliband to call them flat earthers really says it all about him and Nulabour. It is far from clear cut either way and world leaders should be concentrating on preserving and conserving the Earth, halting population growth and not taxing the pants off everyone. The top five polluting countries are China, USA, India, Brazil and Indonesia, Britain’s effect is minimal with 1% of the world’s population. For Brown of course this is another “I’m saving the world” distraction from his endless calamities in office.
A couple of years ago David Milliband, then environment minister, was interviewed on the BBC and asked about his flights with family and on government business. He answered that he or the government respectively paid for carbon offsets on his flights. Does Milliband think the money to pay for his offset would fall from the sky, perhaps now the printing presses, or in his own mind does he realise people with real jobs have to work and pay taxes for his offsets? Back in the real world, those taxes will be raised from people who have to drive to work, use electricity in their jobs etc. These champagne socialists have no idea where the money comes from to fund their largesse. Not that the Tories will be much better. Many of the engineering solutions to any real threat are flawed in any case, eg CFL that take minutes to reach full brightness, but the assumption of free money is the most galling.
We don’t have to demonstrate that temperatures are rising to make a case for using less fossil fuel. We know that fossil fuels produce large amounts of carbon dioxide, we know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, we know that its proportion in the atmosphere has increased since the industrial revolution, so it is entirely reasonable to say there is a danger of higher temperatures. If it did happen some models of the economy and of the environment say this will have very bad effects, although we are not sure about that either.
But, as you have said, there are many benefits anyway in reducing the amount of fossil fuels that we are using. It is not very expensive to reduce this amount, or at least its rate of increase. Failure to do it could be very expensive. So let’s at least start working towards running a lower carbon economy. We won’t lose much, and we could save our descendents a lot of trouble. It’s a reasonable insurance policy. In the mean time the climate modellers and economists can continue their work and we will, slowly, get a more accurate view of what is happening and is going to happen, and we can refine our decision making as we go along. It is not necessary actually to measure temperature increases to come to this conclusion; it is a reasonable conclusion from the known increase in carbon dioxide.
An effective method of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels has to maintain our standard of living, not reduce it. We need better technologies that enable us to heat our homes, run our cars, take long journeys abroad without increasing carbon dioxide production. We don’t need regulations that stop us doing these things, and attempts to introduce them will probably fail, although not without producing a lot of inconvenience.
I am interested in your analogy with Euroscepticism; we are not sure that being in the EU is beneficial, but at the moment it looks as though it is – a sounder economy, a larger market for our exports, the opportunity to move to a reliable currency that maintains its value, regulators willing to control banks instead of being controlled by them, standardisation that reduces the number of different regulations our industry is subject to, an electoral system that produces a parliament that reflects the balance of opinion in the electorate not in the political parties, a constitution that effectively limits the power of the executive to act in an arbitrary manner. Yes, many advantages. Let’s stay in and do our best to make it work well unless someone produces a convincing demonstration that it is bad.
Mike Stallard Reply:
December 5th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
On the EU: sounder economy (No, fishing, agriculture, cattle.), larger market for exports (No, they export more to us than we to them), reliable currency (ever read about the PIGS? Greece is tottering), controlling banks (Didn’t you read about Mr Sarkozy?), electoral system without parties (PR????)……
I really cannot let you say all these things as if they were the truth. I regret they are not.
Do you, by the way, subscribe to Open Europe?
DennisA Reply:
December 6th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Your opening paragraph demonstrates the classic “association is not causation.”
We know that CO2 levels have gone up in the last 20 years, we know that there has been an increase in the number of flat screen televisons in the last 20 years, therefore we think it is 95% likely that CO2 has caused an increase in the number of flat screen televisons. My own rejection of their modelling stems from their own data and words. They know full well themselves that they have not proven their theory, but vast amounts of money have gone into the whole system, which is now why there is government consensus.
Take an example from the e-mails without going into personal names. A dutch researcher was seeking a supporting letter from the head of the Tyndall Centre in 2003 to set up a Dutch centre similar to Tyndall. The whole programme cost was 100million euros. Unbelievable. Now if governments and investors are putting in that sort of money, they are not expecting someone to come back and say, sorry chum, it ain’t happening after all.
You get what you pay for.
Alan Reply:
December 8th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Well, I was making the point that CO2 is a known greenhouse gas. That’s fact, not theory. So it is not just association; there is good reason to expect that increased CO2 would put up temperatures.
I do agree with you that the detailed connection between cause and effect has not been demonstrated convincingly, but I am aware that these scientific theories are slow to produce detailed results. It’s a very complex problem. I was just trying to make the point that in the absence of reliable information, in the presence of a possible serious danger, it is fairly sensible to take action to alleviate it. Particularly as I agree with the point that a lot of what we would do is sensible anyway and our industries can make profit from it. For example research into getting away from imported fossil fuels and on to wave and tidal power (of which we have a plentiful supply of the raw material, but alas so far no good way of extracting the power) seems to me to make a lot of sense. Insulating our houses seems good sense. Buying cars that use less fossil fuel makes good sense.
I agree there is a danger that people will be seduced by the large amounts of money offered for providing support to the global warming theory, although I think this will mainly be unconcious rather than deliberate manipulation of data. I don’t think the data is being manipulated on any large scale basis (but I know I cannot prove that).
Governments often have to act in the absence of certainty. It’s one of the skills of government to know when it is safe to wait for more information to increase the certainty, and when it is more sensible to make the decision because if you wait too long it will be too late anyway. (Actually that’s true of almost all compex decisions, in industry, in the military, as well as in government).
Alan Reply:
December 8th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Reply to Mr Stallard:
EU sounder economy – you quote fishing and agriculture as contradicting this. I agree – but we were late in entering the EU and had to settle for the terms we could get. It’s not reasonable for those who opposed our entry to argue that the terms were poorer than we would have got if we had joined earlier, when they were the people who delayed our application. We will have similar criticisms when we join the euro; we won’t get terms as favourable as we would have got at the start, and those who oppose it now will say that it is a bad deal. And they will be right – they have ensured we will get a worse deal. Remember fishing and agriculture are small parts of our economy, even though they are politically important.
Larger markets – larger than we would have outside the EU. Even UKIP accept we have to trade with the EU – they think that they will miraculously negotiate better terms. In their dreams they probably do, but do you want them to risk it in the real world?
Reliable currency – well, ours has depreciated by about 25%, paid for by people like me who have savings and benefiting those who borrowed and will be able to pay back in a lower value currency. In Greece those who saved still have money; those who borrowed (including the government) have to pay it back. That’s a reliable currency. A reliable currency frightens governments – they have to pay their bills. Ours wasn’t frightened enough early enough. Well, they are not that frightened even now, because they think they can devalue the currency until they get to a level at which it can be paid back. But you can sense the fear that people will stop buying UK Government debt. It could be those who have loaned us money that will force us into the euro; almost the worst way of entering. But it would be one way they could be sure of getting their money back.
Controlling banks – I think our method of regulating banks was a failure. We have to try something else.
Thanks for telling me about Open Europe. Another group that I can put right!
I hope you don’t feel that I have treated your comments too flippantly. I do respect your views and think they are reasonable. But I see the balance of the argument lying in favour of EU membership. It’s another situation, like climate change, where we can’t have the exact information that we would need for a reliable decision and must base what we do on unreliable and inexact information. I choose one way, and you are choosing another.
Mike Stallard Reply:
December 9th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
The main problem to me actually is not the economic one.
The European governmental system is in no way democratic.
The parliament is neatly controlled and there is usually nobody in the chamber.
The Commission is unelected and therefore weak. It has a lot of power, though. As yet, we have not felt its true force. And, of course, because it is not democratically controlled it is wide open to Fascism. It is all too easy to take over something secret.
Finally there is the small matter of English Common Law, honed over the centuries into a fair and just system of justice by your peers. This has simply been sidestepped and the European model is completely different. We can feel already its injustice in family courts, which have no jury and no public, the CRB check, which assumes guilt, the Declaration of Rights, where the government decrees what rights you have, and extradition, which assumes that other European countries have the same legal system. They don’t. Soon it will be supported, no doubt, by a Police force.
Today I had to do a couple of hours totally pointless paperwork for the EU. It was full of half truths and boxes to tick. If you get the slightest detail wrong, the whole lot is sent back. Yet the EU books have not been signed off for a decade. And Marta Andreassen shows the sheer corruption going on at the Commission level.
Indeed, sadly I believe much of the underlying data has been destroyed. Clearly the actions of someone whose data set supports absolutely his conclusions, with nothing to hide at all.
I think I will try the same approach with my good lady ~ “No darling my credit card bill proves I do not have a mistress who I have been taking to hotels and buying expensive presents for. Sadly I have destroyed it but the risks to our marriage are simply too great for you to continue with this sceptical approach, so please believe me when I say the truth is settled. I will now need a large sum of money for secretive and unproven expenditure and for you to modify your behaviour significantly”
I think her scepticism would be reasonable and frankly, so is ours.
Quite honestly John, I simply do not believe a word of anything the Government now tells me, such is their record for spinning a line, and being more than economic with the truth on almost every subject.
The sad fact is that this Labour Government has wrecked any sort of trust people had in Politicians, and this will be the case for many years, until someone tells us some real home truths, in some fairly basic language, with some actual proof of what they are saying.
More to the point, to actually look like they have the best interests of population of this country to hand.
In short we need a real Patriotic Statesman of substance.
We have had lies over Immigration figures.
Lies over the EU
Lies over Budget announcements (read the small print)
Lies over the 10p tax rate.
Lies over going to War.
Lies over the Nations trading deficit.
Lies over Public expenditure.
Lies over expenses.
And now, doubt at the very least over climate change Science.
Also only this week RBS given a clean bill of health by the Treasury, only one week before it was effectively bust.
Do I think Mr Cameron has the balls and policies to get us out of this mess ?.
No not on present showing (unless he has a more sensible hidden agenda) but he probably is the best of the worst options.
How sad is that for UK PLC.
I would add
7) Find out if warming is likely to be beyond previous records – the Medieval warming & Climate Optimum before 5,000BC – both of which were periods of fecundity. If not then warming is going to be beneficial & should not be opposed.
On a semi-serious note it is indeed within the capacity of Britain to end global warming by putting large amounts of SO2 crystals into the stratosphere & increasing the Earth’s reflectivity. That would cost well under £100 million. It is only semi serious because I would oppose doing it until we know that warming is a problem & that the real danger is not an ice age, which such action might bring nearer. That is also the answer to Brown’s argument that we ought to spend billions on the off chance the theory is still correct.
Stuart Fairney Reply:
December 5th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Smart as ever, but as I think you know, the AGW crew don’t want a solution, they want a stick to beat the hapless and unthinking with. A ’solution’ would be a disaster for them ~ they would have to get real jobs.
The suggestion that EUsceptics are also global warming sceptics, because as EUsceptics we oppose the actions of the EU related to global warming, is rather to miss the point, infer an ideological link between the two and turn the EUsceptic argument in relation to the EU and its Global warming perspective, on its head.
Many who have looked at the methods used by the global warming clique, from the IPCC very selective use of only one set of studies from one side of the scientific debate, the questionable reliance on a (word left out) system of peer review, the attempt to silence studies that do not confirm the theory, all point to problems with the whole argument for anthropogenic Global warming.
Thus questioning the argument that the science is settled stands on its own and is unrelated to any anti EU feeling one might have.
Of course the fact that the EU is using Global warming as another excuse to extend its power of regulation and to encourage higher taxation. Is a pointer to the dangers of allowing such an organisation to become our government, as it is unaffected by and divorced from the voter, hence it can ignore the effects of its own polices.
OK, we get the message: global warming toryism is not your fault.
Which doesn’t alter the fact that UKIP have always been straightforward sceptics on the whole global warming scam, and this new Pearson chap has confirmed that position.
And I live in a very tight Tory/Labour marginal.
Interesting articles by one of the worlds leading Climate Scientists – Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachussettes Institute of Technology. Lindzen is arguably the best of all climate scientists – sceptics and believers.
These two articles are easy to read ….
“Carbon Dioxide irrelevant in climate debate says MIT Scientist”
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2009m8d18-Carbon-Dioxide-irrelevant-in-climate-debate-says-MIT-Scientist
“In a study sure to ruffle the feathers of the Global Warming cabal, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT has published a paper which proves that IPCC models are overstating by 6 times, the relevance of CO2 in Earth’s Atmosphere. Dr. Lindzen has found that heat is radiated out in to space at a far higher rate than any modeling system to date can account for.”
Resisting climate hysteria
by Richard S. Lindzen
July 26, 2009
A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/07/resisting-climate-hysteria
“The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well………….”
ManicBeancounter Reply:
December 6th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
This is one half of the problem of the double-sixths.
The other is that even if the proposed treaty is successfully implemented (and if the median forecast of a 3 centigrade rise in temperatures is correct), then this treaty will only achieve a reduction of less than 0.5 degrees.
So, to repeat
- the latest peer reviewed paper, based on the best measurements available say that a revised forecast of warming for this century should be one-sixth of the current.
- 192 countries are being press-ganged into “saving the world”, with a solution that will, at best, achieve one-sixth of the target.
Either of these points should be enough to cause a reassessement.
When the Isrealis attacked the Gaza strip earlier this year, a new term entered the language – “proprotionality”. Perhaps that term should be applied to the Copenhagen agreement.
Climate change and asteroids: by way of contrast…
From NASA Near Earth Object Programme
Asteroid Impactor Reported over Indonesia
October 23, 2009
“On October 8, 2009 about 03:00 Greenwich time, an atmospheric fireball blast was observed and recorded over an island region of Indonesia. The blast is thought to be due to the atmospheric entry of a small asteroid about 10 meters in diameter that, due to atmospheric pressure, detonated in the atmosphere with an energy of about 50 kilotons (the equivalent of 110 million pounds of TNT explosives). The blast was recorded visually and reported upon by local media representatives…”
On 06 November a 7m asteroid passed Earth at a distance of
14 000km. Apophis is a very large asteroid – about 500m – being tracked but now thought unlikely to hit Earth (2.7% chance).
The Indonesian asteroid was a small one but look at its blast effect. It is known asteroids pass or hit Earth regularly.
Catastrophic impact of an asteroid with Earth statistically happens every 100 000 years, and we are overdue. The possibility of such an impact is more likely (and as ompossible to predict) as catastrophic climate change.
None of this is disputed: a case of when, not if.
The difference between asteroid impact and future climate change is that the former will happen suddenly bringing immediate problems; the latter will happen over generations allowing time to prepare and adapt.
The science and evidence of asteroid impact, and its likely outcome, is quite clear and nobody “denies” the possibility or the evidence from past and present.
Yet there is no concern whatsoever expressed by politicans or so-called Environmentalists. Why?
If politicians/Environmentalists are so concerned about hazard to the future Earth, is spending untold trillions on detection and means to destroy or deflect large objects approaching Earth any less justifiable than doing the same for climate change where the evidence is less clear and outcome neither predictable nor sudden?
Or is it just that Mankind cannot be blamed for asteroids and cannot be taxed and regulated to “prevent” them and asteroids make a poor eco-cause?
And ask if this Global warming slush fund will do any good, or just another means to pick the pockets of tax payers? We have the evidence of the Aid programs where after 50 years and $1.5 trillion dollars of Aid, there is precious little evidence that this policy of Aid welfare has done any good. Now another vehicle to pick our pockets is being created, here Gordon Brown, he the lover of big Government, imperiously demands that a $100 billion per annum fund is created. Oh yes, how was this figure arrived at ?
How is it going to be spent?
And most importantly what will be the measure of success for spending this money?
So far there has been no scrutiny of this, it looks like its going to be another Aid circus, where a myriad of vested interests will be toughing it at the expense of the tax payer, and ensuring the funds keep following without ever having to justify what they are doing as they will emotionally black mail Governments to keep the funds following without any empirical evidence of have achieved anything.
I believe it possible that climate change may be taking place, this is perfectly natural. What I have not yet seen is any real evidence that it is man-made.
Thus if we are to have these rather dishonest “green” taxes, at least they should all be put away for the future in case global warming (natural or man made) actually happens. Dealing with the possible effects, by enhancing our sea defences, improving our flood relief schemes, providing greater water storage, etc, all provide assets (and work) which would be valueable even if warming does not occur.
I think that we are all agreed that glogal temperatures change. What we really need to know is whether the temperature is rising or falling? They are fundamentally different – as are any measures to be taken. Whether we can make any difference at all is what matters.
Finally when are scientists going to take into account the role of water vapour as a greenhouse gas? There is some 14% of it around us but it is usually ignored in the calculations.
ManicBeancounter Reply:
December 6th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
The climate models do take account of water vapour. They assume that temperature rises caused by CO2 will cause water vapour levels to rise. This will magnify the CO2-induced temperature changes by 2 to 6 times.
As the Yorkshireman cites above, actual measurements taken from satellites indicates this assumption to be false.
Dr Bernard Juby Reply:
December 7th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Thanks for that – but true scientists should never make assumptions unles or until they are proven.
Perhaps its because CO2 in the atmosphere is at it’s lowest for 250 million years!
Seems to me there are so many climate change sceptics because the climate is visibly staying the same. Common sense is part of our national character and it makes no scientific sense that a puny species occupying a very small percentage of that part of a planet that is not always covered with water could affect the atmosphere swirling in layers above it. I do not believe that natural disasters, floods, droughts, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions et al, can be blamed on any human being – that is God’s job, not ours.
The magnetic field of the sun and of the planet Earth deflects cosmic particles on their way to the lower atmosphere where water vapour awaits something to condense around precipitate. Those magnetic fields change depending on the path the sun takes as it travels through the spiral arm of the Milky Way, causing alterations in sun spots and solar winds. All this we can see happening (aurora borealis, flash flooding, el nino, and other patterns), but man made climate change we cannot. Until Climate changists can present visible and credible evidence the majority of us will remain healthily sceptical. Show us what unadulterated data you are using for our own independent analysis, Gordon!
An excellent post John. This site may be of interest?
http://www.john-daly.com/
The man-made global warming brigade are expecting largesse from the Government in the form of taxes and quango-jobs – so they can’t possibily admit that the science is (a) not proven and (b) possibily wrong.
The EU is depending on taxes to ‘prevent climate change’ being levied across all the nations of the EU so it has it’s own direct funding stream from individuals (rather than their national Governments). This is to be the first step on the road to direct taxation from Brussels, and all justified by the international ‘crisis’ of global warming.
The earth has heated up and cooled periodically – the UK in Roman Times was considerably warmer than the last century; vinyards were common as far north as the midlands. There was a mini freeze in the 18th/19th century when the Thames froze over several times.
I don’t dispute that the earth may be going through one of it’s periodical warming phases – but there is no concrete proof that it is caused by man-made C02 emissions. However, in order to justify the drastic changes to our lifestyles which the Government wants to introduce and the taxes both the Government and the EU wish to impose, they can’t allow any deviation from their propaganda.
Most of the problems afflicting the earth are caused by over-population; particularly in poor countries. Introducing a global system of education for women and free contraception would do more to help save the planet than any amount of low-energy light-bulbs …. but dealing with that would mean taking on (forces -ed) who have a vested interest in subjugating women and keeping the population needy and dependent on their church/mosques/priests/mullahs etc….. so that isn’t going to happen.
Joe Public Reply:
December 7th, 2009 at 12:02 am
vinyards in England?
so?
here’s what the experts say:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/medieval-warm-period-mwp/
“Why are there so many climate change sceptics?”
I don’t know any. The problem with the term “climate change sceptic” is that it portrays people as stupid to actually deny that the climate changes. This is the phrase used by “Friends” of the Earth or the BBC. The scientists (and others) who question the current “consensus” are not sceptical about climate change, but the cause of this change. So please do not use the words of the “Green” movement, who are the most anti-scientific group ever to hold sway over our lives. All scientists should be sceptical.
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
Lord Keynes
I strongly agree with your statement but I suggest step zero is to rigorously review and document the base data and agree it’s accuracy and key assumptions before any analysis.
Science is supposed to be based on scepticism, an issue is verified or disproved through systematic investigation. How can this be done if there is no objectively proven base data and starting point.
The surface-stations site (http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm) suggests that a number of monitoring stations in the US are compromised, one example has an air-conditioning vent very close to a temperature sensor. Might there be similar compromises of the Met Office and other data? It seems to me that even modern measurements may have a large degree of uncertainty just like past values which are based on proxy information
As to why there are so many sceptics, I suspect we came out of the woodwork when Brown, Milliband and others suborned so-called scientists to support their new religion and create a new tax creation and citizen control scheme.
I posted my contribution this morning but you have seen fit not to publish it. I should welcome an explanation.
Reply: I will do so, but if you will make personal attacks on named individuals without supporting evidence I need to edit it. That takes time. I do those as and when I can spare the extra time to do so.
Thanks. If you mean my reference to Miliband listen to yesterday’s World at One.
JR: “The main reason many people are climate sceptics is they do not like the remedies the warmists recommend.”
NO!
The main reason many people are climate [heating] sceptics is because the arguments put forward to support climate heating, are flimsy. The evidence put forward to support the arguments is manipulated and discredited.
The argument lately put forward by the UEA to justify refusing to make the base data avaliable for scruteny is that it doesn’t belong to the UEA. Err! excuse me this is data that has been collected largely by people working for the governments of the world at the expense of the tax payers.
The Met office publishes items of this data via the BBC and other broadcasting chanels every day and have done for the last forty years. Its usually called the weather report. By and large the data the UEA refuses to release has already been published over the last 50 years.
Every major city has its own met office collecting this data, usually at the government (tax payers) expense, to say the UEA heavily financed by various government bodies do not have the right to diseminate the raw data is ludicrous.
That excuse was not very convincing, then we hear that in fact they have ‘lost’ the raw data. They have LOST data they propose to use as the basis to tax the ‘bejesus’ out of us??
The whole think is incredible!
adam Reply:
December 5th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
my understanding is they havent lost it, they have destroyed it.
I agree with the Prof (from the UEA) last night on Newsnight.
Brilliantly, the BBC provided an American salesman to shout and laugh and make a loud noise in favour of “denial”. The prof quietly tried to make his case and then got ratty. I don’t blame him.
Eventually he said, in a tired voice: “Please can you get him to stop shouting?”
Exactly.
Brian Tomkinson Reply:
December 5th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
The trouble was the Prof couldn’t make a case and then he called the American an “arsehole” as the item ended for which the BBC had to apologise.
Jonathan Robson MSc. Reply:
December 6th, 2009 at 1:05 am
“..the BBC provided an American salesman”
Exactly, now why do it? Could it be because “scientist” versus “salesman” leads people to think “what does a salesman know about climate change”? Why didn’t the BBc invite Tim Ball or John Christy to put the opposite view?
Mike Stallard Reply:
December 6th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
I wonder…….
Mike Stallard, MA (Cantab), Cert Ed (Credit) Cert Theol (credit.
DennisA Reply:
December 7th, 2009 at 12:06 am
Like him or not, Morano is amply qualified to argue on this, as he has a major repository of contrary data and links to contrary data and conclusions, by highly credible climate scientists and climatologists and has been working on it for years, previously for Senator James Inhofe. He achieved what he set out to do, or rather Watson did it for him, showing the arrogance which permeates the released e-mails. What a silly performance he gave.
We are told the IPCC reports are by 2500 climate scientists when in fact this is totally untrue. For a start the 2500 did not produce the final report, a small clique of “climategate” scientists and colleagues did so, including significant contributions from Greenpeace and WWF. The IPCC has a major number of lead authors and contributors who are economists and social scientists, intent on social experiments to convince the populace that black is white. The adoption of the term “climate change” to cover cooling as well as warming came from the Tyndall Centre when global warming stopped happening.
Take just one factor, CO2 residence time. The warmers claim they can identify that all CO2 increases are coming from human emissions and that they stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, thus what we emit now will still increase temperatures for generations. There is a strong counter view that says this not the case, but will you see it reported? No, good news isn’t newsworthy.
Peer Reviewed Paper: Residence Time Of CO2 Is About 5 Years
5 Aug 2009
In a paper recently published in the international peer-reviewed journal Energy & Fuels, Dr. Robert H. Essenhigh (2009), Professor of Energy Conversion at The Ohio State University, addresses the residence time (RT) of anthropogenic CO2 in the air.
He finds that the RT for bulk atmospheric CO2, the molecule 12CO2, is about 5 years, in good agreement with other cited sources (Segalstad, 1998), while the RT for the trace molecule 14CO2 is about 16 years.
This of course invalidates the climate models and the whole AGW theory, but what would a flat earther know about it? Even that isn’t a Gordon original, it’s how that fine climate scientist Al Gore answers critics.
Bula from down under. The issue that we can somehow alter the natural cycles of waring and cooling by handing our wealth to Al Gore and his ilk so that they can “redistribute” it is the core reason why most don’t buy it. Communism by stealth is what Cap and Trade (and COP15) is all about. We do however need to be making baby steps to the day when mineral carbon is in short supply. To do that the least bureaucratic method is to tax mineral carbon and all products of mineral carbon with their own special VAT. Simply put if a container load of plastic toys arrives fro China the question is asked do you have a sustainable carbon certificate? No ? OK each tonne of plastic take X tonnes of mineral carbon and the carbon charge set by the governement is Y so here’s your bill. This is run by customs or IRD and no need for any new climate Tzars. We need the price of mineral carbon to increase and certified sustainable toi be tax free. We can monitor the climate for another 30 years to see if ther actually is a problem.
Vinaka
Should say warming in first line.. Bugger!
great appearance on talk sport radio, well done
thanks
As someone with a traditional scientific education and training (Physics), I have yet to be convinced that it is possible to demonstrate the following things:
1. Does the data exist?
I am not talking here about records being thrown in the bin. My question is much more fundamental. Surface and sea temperature records do not exist in a convenient static matrix covering the planet, for the historical period under consideration. Weather stations, even in the western world, have been abandoned, or they have moved, or new ones established. And their environmental context has changed, often from open rural to residential or industrial. Only satellite data can give us that kind of information, and that is obviously only recent.
As for proxy data, there is no form of proxy which is present across the planet. Ice core samples, bristle cone pines, can only tell us something about the locations where they are found. And these proxies are themselves affected by influences other than temperature and CO2.
I am not convinced that a reasonably uncontroversial raw database exists. What may exist is a working set, which has been derived by mathematical algorithms used to interpolate and extrapolate from raw data, and somehow mesh the various components together into something that purports to represent the planetary climate map. What the weather stations would have said…..
2. Can it be modelled?
I have yet to come across a passable computer synthesis of the voice of a man in a quiet room, reciting from a script. Or a pendulum with two pivot points instead of one. Man made objects can be modelled reasonably well, because we made them, and know all there is to know about them.
Modelling complex natural systems, especially such a multivariate system as the planetary climate, is something I do not regard as within our capacity with any degree of certainty at all.
So my basic premise is that I am not confident that it is possible to do what the hockey team claim they have done.
John, I tend to agree. The case for being efficient and reducing pollution is a good one in itself to which I would add that energy security is vital too. Therefore to a large degree we don’t need to get hung up about climate change or rant on, or listen to rants, about climate change. All we need to do is set out a balanced policy for energy generation and high standards of home efficiency. That means building nuclear power, tidal etc.
Mike Stallard, you obviously havent seen Bob Ward from the London School of Economics (MMGW supporter). Or Ed Bigley (US MMGW supporter). Both of these went at opponents like attack hounds. Or maybe you didnt see Newsnight the other night when the UEA scientist Watson called a US politician an ‘a**hole’ live on TV.
And personally I dont like it when my PM calls me a ‘flat-earther’. That means that the majority of the British public are then.
JR: “The UK should participate in international conferences on the environment as a voice of reason.”
With milibrain cheer-leading the clamor for carbon tax, carbon credits and other carbon claptrap, if I had had a scintilla of doubt that I was right and they were wrong then Gordon Brown speaking on Television and referring to ‘flat earthers’ and ‘anti science’ then that scintilla of doubt has now been atomized.
Gordon Brown is an advocate of Anthropogenic Global warming.
Gordon Brown sold British Gold and got a good bargain for the British people.
Gordon Brown, “The NHS is safe in our hands”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5030012/Staffordshire-hospital-scandal-the-hidden-story.html
The man is a pathological liar, if he advocates a thing then, run! run as far from that thing as you can. Your wealth, your life may depend on it.
The point is, it is the UN that organises and promotes global warming/climate change not UK MPs. It is not the job of UK MPs to set out the science because they dont understand the science.
Somebody has to make the alternative case that maybe not everything the UN says is Gospel from Mt. Sinai, as our naive MPs seem to think it is.
Maybe the UN has an agenda of its own and wants our representative to sign onto a treaty they have never read, based on some emotional PR talking points.
We wont get funded for that work, oil companies or not. The funding is for the other side, through charities and QUANGOs.
Why are there so many climate change sceptics? I’m not sure that is correct John. I believe the proper term is Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) sceptics, because they know climate changes, they just don’t agree mankind is responsible.
But in answer to your question people could do a lot worse than read this explanation from someone who doesn’t like being called a “denier”.
http://www.tfa.net/the_freedom_association/2009/12/reason-is-absent-in-this-illogical-climate.html
I think it is funny how proponents of the climate change agenda jealously guard the status of who qualifies as an ‘expert’ in this debate. I heard one of them sneering at physicists and claiming that only those with phD’s in climate science were qualified to speak in this debate.
Who do these guys think will help develop the photovoltaic cell technology?
Maybe physicists will have a use after all.
It’s interesting isn’t it? 50% of the electorate don’t believe in man-made global warming. 40% are going to vote Tory. 40% would like to get out of the EU and about 50% would like us to leave Afghanistan – Now.
I wonder how much of an overlap there is between these groups?
APL: ever tried asking the UK’s Met Office for data? If its not on their website, they insist that you pay commercial rates for them assembling it for you. Publicly collected data here is subject to all sorts of odd commerciality constraints that prevent free exchange. The Guardian newspaper has had a “free our data” campaign for the last few years but with little result.
I’m not sure whether JR agrees with the “freedom” or “commerciality” arguments !
APL Reply:
December 6th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Billy B: “ever tried asking the UK’s Met Office for data?”
Met office forecasts have some commercial value, but historical data that have been published indiscriminately (broadcast on TV & Radio) I can’t see how that has much commercial value.
BillyB: “I’m not sure whether JR agrees with the “freedom” or “commerciality” arguments !”
My point it the data has already been published, a trip to the library with a microfiche could recover a centuries worth of published data in the course of one afternoon. If you were so minded, the information is in the public domain.
To suggest it is suddenly propitiatory is simply silly.
As to Mr Redwood, he is deliberately inscrutable on the AGW topic, there could not possibly be a free exchange of ideas in the Tory party when David Cameron has sold out to a multimillionaire Anthropogenic Global Warming (advocate-ed) and prospective Tory party candidate.
Reply: I am not inscrutable. I use moderate language to ask the right questions, and to make sensible policy recommendations, as what matters most to me is what we do as a result of this scientific theory and its critics views.
APL Reply:
December 7th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
JR: “as what matters most to me is what we do as a result of this scientific theory and its critics views.”
Firstly, yes, it is a theory. No it’s not scientific!
Then consider this:
1. The contribution to the global release of ‘carbon’ by UK economic activity to Anthroporgenic Global Warming is variously characterized in the region of 1-2%.
2. Your role as an MP is to represent the interests of your constituents.
3. Reducing the already insignificant contribution of AGW can only be accomplished by reduction of economic and industrial activity in the UK in order to reduce ‘carbon’ output by 80% – cited in this BBC article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8141352.stm
Even if we were successful in reducing the UK ‘carbon’ output by 80% that would reduce the UK contribution to about a fifth of 2% that is the top most range of the UK contribution to ‘carbon’ globally.
Reduction by 80% would involve reducing the economic activity by a drastic amount. It cannot be done just by being more energy efficient or recycling, nor windmills.
If you agree to this course of action, are you really working in the best interests of your constituents.
Proposing to cut the ‘carbon’ output of the British economy by 80% implies huge redundancies and massive permanent loss of employment.
Do you want to be associated with that policy?
BillyB Reply:
January 5th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
I *have* tried asking the Met Office for historical data that they have already published (in daily chunks), and they DO want to charge you for collations of it. Yes it appears ludicrous. Hence the free our data campaign.
I believe the Americans do it differently. If data is derived from
public funds then its free coz you’ve paid for it.
Back here government agencies have profit targets and hang on to their/our data.
If Gordon Browns chooses to describe me a “Flat Earther” I minded to describe him “Pig Headed”. In fact this is a term I first though of applying to him in his days as the “Iron Chancellor” – “pig” being a type of iron.
APL Reply:
December 7th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Alan Wheatley: ““pig” being a type of iron.”
A rather useless brittle type too.
Climate change is the reason that the European continent became cut off from the British Isles.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/time-team-specials/4od#2922370
Who was responsible for that?
The climate is constantly changing and all we can do is try to adapt. The climate will not remain as it is now just because humans have decided they like it the way it is now.
The only thing that is “settled” is that Labour are past their “sell by” date.
Essential reading is Sunday Telegraph 6 Dec. Christopher Booker’s article “Climategate reveals the ‘most influential tree in the world’”.
Apparently CRU cherry picked data from the trees in Siberia, and one tree in particular “YAD061″ to support their case for global warming. This very worrying “discovery” is also highly significant also because it apparently gives the context for Prof. Jones’s emails re “Mike (Mann’s) Nature trick of adding in the real temps”. To quote Booker:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6738111/Climategate-reveals-the-most-influential-tree-in-the-world.html
“..The most quoted remark in those emails has been one from Prof Jones in 1999, reporting that he had used “Mike [Mann]’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps” to “Keith’s” graph, in order to “hide the decline”. Invariably this has been quoted out of context. Its true significance, we can now see, is that what they intended to hide was the awkward fact that, apart from that one tree, the Yamal data showed temperatures not having risen in the late 20th century but declining. What Jones suggested, emulating Mann’s procedure for the “hockey stick” (originally published in Nature), was that tree-ring data after 1960 should be eliminated, and substituted – without explanation – with a line based on the quite different data of measured global temperatures, to convey that temperatures after 1960 had shot up…”
At least some of the warming is due to an increase in radiated heat from the sun. If you put several facts together, the case is pretty strong:
- Average temperatures have increased on Mars (Source: John Redwood according to an article by Simon Heffer). I would like to know all about warming throughout our planet system.
- The highest temperature increases on earth have been at the poles, which is consistent with a combination of increased radiated heat and the ‘hole in the ozone layer’.
- We have had four ice ages, with three warm periods in between, and they certainly were not caused by man made pollution.
So how about the scientific community making a serious attempt to quantify this?
Mike Hulme, professor in the school of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia and the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research — a key figure in the promulgation of climate change theory but who a short while ago warned that exaggerated forecasts of global apocalypse were in danger of destroying the case altogether — writes that scientific truth is the wrong tool to establish the, er, truth of global warming. Instead, we need a perspective of what he calls ‘post-normal’ science:
“Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken. It has been labelled ‘post-normal’ science…The danger of a ‘normal’ reading of science is that it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, and that truth-based policy will then follow.
“Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights into the question if it recognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists – and politicians – must trade (normal) truth for influence. If scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the social limits of their truth seeking and reveal fully the values and beliefs they bring to their scientific activity.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/mar/14/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange
I am a sceptic and i couldnt make this stuff up John. Seriously, this is completely unacceptable.
This is a nightmare world of communist control freaks. They are desperate for the authority of science on their side so they co-opt it.
How far down this rabbit hole are we going to go, is political correctness going to tell us that scientific truth is now banned. Even Orwell couldnt imagine what these people are up to
I’m not a Green, I’m not a lefty, I don’t really care that much what’s happening to the planet but I am scientist and if anyone can point to me any published data (preferably in a mildly serious journal) that shows that global temperatures were hotter during the Medieval Warm Period, I’d love to see it.
If they can’t, then they should perhaps stop repeating it?
there are lots of serious studies here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleolast.html
knock yourselves out, investigate all the different studies and reports and get back to me.
Stuart Fairney Reply:
December 7th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Joe Public, it is not the temperatures during the medieval warm period that are the substantive issue here, it is the very existence of the same that some scientists find inconvenient and wish to air brush from history.
alan jutson Reply:
December 7th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Joe public
Looked at the graphs you suggest.
Shows earth temp rising from AD 600 – AD1100 ie 500 years rising
Shows earth temp falling from AD1100 – AD1700 ie 600 years falling
Shows Earth temp rising from AD1700- present ie 300 years rising.
In all cases temperature varies up and down with the general trend shown in the direction indicated above.
Which sort of proves I would have thought, that the earths temperature rises and falls all the time within larger cycle trends.
Freddy Reply:
December 7th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
See the IPCC First Assessment Report, from 1990, Figure 7c, which shows the overwhelming consensus at that time – that thhe Mediaeval Warm Period did exist.
Then see the dozen or so “hockey stick” studies since then, which have tried to claim that temperatures were flat before the 18th or 19th centuries, and see how they have all been shown to be utterly wrong, relying as they do on a tiny subset of proxies, and incompetent misuse of statistics.
Joe Public Reply:
December 7th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
well, duh!
Look at the studies, all show global temperature warmer now than at any time during the MWP or the RWP. That’s it. End of. Look at it. See it. Get over it.
alan jutson Reply:
December 7th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Yes you are correct, by your own suggested graphs the earths temperature has risen 0.75 degrees (less than 1 degree) in 1,800 years.
Do you think this is the result of the huge growth in population, the industrial revolution, the effect of nature and the solar system, or some other cause which man can alter.
Science girl Reply:
December 8th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Well Duh,
Over the past century there has been an underlying increase in average temperatures which is continuing. Globally, the ten hottest years on record have all been since 1997.If emissions continue to grow at present rates, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is likely to reach twice pre-industrial levels by around 2050. Unless we limit emissions, global temperature could rise as much as 7 °C above pre-industrial temperature by the end of the century and push many of the world’s great ecosystems (such as coral reefs and rainforests) to irreversible decline.Even if global temperatures rise by only 2 °C, 20–30% of species could face extinction. We can expect to see serious effects on our environment, food and water supplies, and health.
Get over it .
I have this theory about man made Global Warming, I have similar theories on the Global Credit Crisis, the Global War on terror, and the Global Pandemic, my theory is remakably accurate in its ability to make predictions.
Basically the theory goes like this.
If Westminster says it’s true, then it’s not and is really about power and control of the masses.
Ask yourself do you solve pollution, road congestion and landfill problems with mass mass mass immigration.
Science girl Reply:
December 8th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Its not just Wesminster though is it. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree on the fundamentals of climate change — that climate change is happening and has recently been caused by increased greenhouse gases from human activities. The core climate science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was written by 152 scientists from more than 30 countries and reviewed by more than 600 experts. It concluded that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in man-made greenhouse gas concentrations.
You solve global problems by global co-operation – not selfish behaviour.
Adrian Peirson Reply:
December 10th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
You are assuming there is actually a Global Problem, just because Gordon Brown mentions it and it appears regulalry on the BBC does not make it a fact.
You will not know of this but recently 39,000 Scientitsts petitioned Obama saying that the Climate change debate was NOT settled.
3000, of these were PhD’s.
Who do I believe, 39.000 Scientists or you.
I’d be considerably more willing to listen to the climate change nonsense if it wasn’t advanced by intimidation by the usual state-control freaks.
And if I wasn’t sitting in semi-darkness thanks to them forcing me to use “eco bulbs”, without my consent or advance knowledge, I might be in a position to read the evidence.
“The main reason many people are climate sceptics is they do not like the remedies the warmists recommend”
I would not make this assumption. This certainly increases the importance of getting it right. But many, like myself, have the technical knowledge to ask hard questions are not convinced by the answers. There are too many major problems in the way the work has been done. It’s amazing, considering that governments fund the majority of researchers and the secrecy levels, that there are so many issues that should result in a political timeout while being investigated.
Now we have the CRU leaks, the flaws in the process are transparent to anyone with a computer programming background–not just physical scientist. And it’s out on the non-AGW technical websites, so don’t think that this can be glossed over.
John, taking your last paragraph :
[ It is a vary good idea to … ] Yes. But carbon credits etc. are not a good way of doing this. For example, CO2 sequestration will require more power – i.e. in the absence of nuclear, burn more fossil fuel than necessary.
[set out proper temperature series for the public to see.. ] Transparency looks like an unanswerable demand to me – a no-brainer. Will the leadership come out in favour of this ?
[could produce a climate model which did predict future patterns of temperature] Yes. Firstly, if you are a fan of Popper (many hard-core scientists are) this is the definition of a scientific theory – it has to make predictions which are subsequently tested. So far, AGW has not done so, so you can reasonably say that it is not even, at the time, science. Secondly, while we are waiting, you could test the models by running backwards (retrodiction) or removing the last (say) 10 years observations are running them forwards. But there are various ways of “cheating” – embedding the known data in the code, selecting just the right extrapolation algorithm etc.
[Then maybe more people would be persuaded ..] This is a laudable objective ! ?
Wouldn’t it have been better to close the Borders and plant tens of Billions of trees, what are trees made of, Carbon, where do they get it, they fix it from the atmosphere ( I was educated before the Dumbing down really started and have not had too many mercury laden Vaccinations )
What sort of country do we want to leave our children.
alan jutson Reply:
December 8th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Adrian
I agree with you.
You are absolutely correct.
Planting trees is a very good way to get/increase carbon storage, then after they are mature, you can cut them down, and if you have planted the right trees you, can use them as a construction material, and replant some new ones.
Hence timber is one of the most eco friendly materials that is available on the planet
See the summary by Anthony Watts of report published 7 Dec. by Lord Monckton: “Climategate: caught green-handed”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/01/lord-moncktons-summary-of-climategate-and-its-issues/#more-13529
Also computer enthusiasts might be interested in the network ananlysis done by Anthony Watts, which suggests the emails were leaks, rather than a hacker at work – with obviously even more serious implications for CRU.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/07/comprhensive-network-analysis-shows-climategate-likely-to-be-a-leak/#more-13821
I am very impressed by your blog Mr. Redwood. You obviously know more about climate science than the Chief Scientist of the Met Office, the Chief Executive of the Natural Environment Research Council and the President of the Royal Society. Oh, and the vast majority of climate scientists in the world. They agree that since the internationally respected 2007 IPCC Assessment the evidence for dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change has strengthened. The scientific evidence which underpins calls for action at Copenhagen is very strong. Without co-ordinated international action on greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts on climate and civilisation could be severe.
Stuart Fairney Reply:
December 9th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Here are 31,000 American scientists who do not respect the IPCC view
http://www.oism.org/pproject/
But hey it’s settled because Gordon says so right?
Adrian Peirson Reply:
December 11th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Hand over the money or the baby polar bear gets it.
Anybody else notice the posters they are putting up now, one has a child building a snowman, the caption reads snowmen are against global warming too, or something like that…effectively saying, Give us the money or your child will never build a snowman again.
Another poster shows a dried up village pond with a childs toy sail boat resting on its side in the mud, IE, hand over the money or you and your son will never sail that toy boat together again.
I saw another a while back of a young mother Breastfeeding, the caption read, ‘am I doing it right’
The response caption read something like, visit NHS mother and baby or something like that.
Note it did not say, speak to your mother or your Granny, it said, ask the state.
This is all very sinister Mr Redwood.
Another thing I notice is with all the talk that goes on in Westminster, how come we never or hardly ever hear words like Love, decency, Beauty, tradition, honour, Justice, Integrity, British culture, tradition, heritage, truth.
Pace Science Girl,
The evidence for the reality of climate change is overwhelming; the understanding of the mechanisms of climate is improving; but the evidence for particular causation is pretty weak; and the idea that Copenhagen is a contribution to climate control is absurd.
Part of the trouble with the whole non-debate is that nutty deniers, cautious skeptics, mainstream scientists, iffy sociologists punting “human impacts”, greenies, and governmentalist hucksters, all tend to believe that strengthening or weakening one part of that four-part chain makes a difference to the validity of the others. All are susceptible to mistaking anecdote and groupthink for evidence.
Copenhagen cannot succeed in its own terms, even if all IPCC conclusions (ignoring the dodgy sociology and borderline feedback speculations) are correct, and governments both all agree and actually comply with a massive emissions reduction programme. (Which doesn’t seem to be on the table, because “fairness” to developing countries is supposed to trump supposed global peril.) If the absolute quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere is a primary forcing factor and continues to be so in every future global state, then any of the proposed reductions in emissions just delay warming, and not by much. Massive carbon capture, leading to net negative emissions sometime soon, would be needful.
Though the conspiracy-theorists are clearly wrong, one should hope the rational skeptics are right.
Any one still reading this might like to look at the OISM referred to above, reasearch it…
…and then just fall about laughing.
That’s the trouble with the internet. Even idiots who think the OISM are anything at all get to go on it.
I can’t believe people can be so stupid
John – firstly, thank you for taking my challenge to say what you think about climate change.
However, you still haven’t said what you yourself think on a single one of your points 1-6.
What is your view on them?
I’ve written a full blog post in response to your response. http://www.flourish.org/blog/?p=228
Reply: I claim no special insight into these scientific matters. I am not a meteorological or scientific expert. I specialise in the economy and finance, where my views are more worthwhile than my scientific views.
Francis Irving Reply:
December 19th, 2009 at 3:47 am
It’s not acceptable for you to not have a view on the science.
It’s too important, the consequences for our economy and our way of life are too potentially grave. You have to decide what you think the risk is.
Obviously, proposals to stop climate change are mad if you don’t believe the risks of it happening are significant. And if you believe the risks are significant, not taking out the cheap insurance policy of mitigation is mad.
You have to start by deciding what you think the risk is based on the science.
So, what do you think the risk is based on the science?
Reply: I have stated clearly what I would do. I want the UK to put in more water capacity to deal with any hot summers and the big increase in population. I want the Uk to tackle flooding in a number of specified ways, which will happen largely owing to the government’s decision to build on flood plains, and to some coastal erosion.
[...] Finally I was tipped over the edge, and challenged him to say whether he thought climate change was happening or not. It seems others have asked him the same thing, as he replied in full. [...]
One from today…I told some of the dev’s that some of the different dev’s furnish comments on QA defect tickets and that those were helpful to me. When I asked these different devs why they didn’t do the same thing they said “nobody ever reads those” and “I don’t have time for that” Uh, hi? Didn’t I just state I read them? It’s no coincidence that the devs who comment on their results have observably fewer faults in their computer code then the lot that believe there is no time for remarks and no one scans them anyway.