“Cooking the books” Monckton replies to Cook

When Christopher Monckton debated at the National Press Club in Canberra last July, he showed exactly why the fans of a man-made catastrophe are so frightened of free speech and open debates. With no slides or other images, in a single hour, he still changed the opinions of fully 9% of the audience , including influential journalists who had expected nothing of the kind. The Roy Morgan polling organization tracked the moment-by-moment opinions of a representative sample of 350 people throughout the debate, and Gary Morgan, the CEO, announcing the result, said that in his long experience of polling he had never seen a swing like it in opinion on any subject in so short a time.

John Cook of un-SkepticalScience tried to rescue something from the event for the “cause”, but here Monckton shows how the claims that Monckton was “confused”, “lying” and “misrepresenting evidence” all come to naught, and if John Cook only had the manners (or curiosity) to ask Christopher first, he would have found that out before airing his poor research and logical errors in public. Monckton quotes peer reviewed references ad lib, and does calculations off the top of his head. Cook makes out that he is baffled by Monckton’s sources, which is odd because Monckton quotes the IPCC, Garnaut and other “consensus” documents, which we might have thought Cook would know well.

As usual, the point of the alarmist rebuttals is not to understand the science, or to find common ground to build a better understanding, it’s to put the words, “myth”, “lies”, “bizarre”, ‘trick” and ‘distort” into the same paragraph as the words “sceptic” and “Monckton” even if there is nothing to substantiate those terms. In other words, it’s just policy-driven PR dressed up as science.

What most disturbs me is that Cook underlies his entire reasoning with the logical fallacy that “consensus” is science, and that only the Chosen Ones are allowed to form an opinion. The attitude “Thou shalt not question our experts” belongs in a religion not in science, and shows that Cook is not even slightly skeptical  – what skeptic starts with the position “the experts are always right?”. Hailing consensus ought be anathema to any scientist in the quest for understanding.

The University of Queensland employs Cook now, so what does that “center of higher education” make of his low standards of reasoning or evidence and his anti-science values? It supports him, evidently. (The Quest for Knowledge being trumped by the Quest for Grants and Peer-Group Approval). The vice-chancellor has failed to answer a question from Christopher Monckton about why the university provides cover for Cook’s crude propaganda.

Cook claims the lesson for him is that “verbal debates are a mistake”. Which is true when you can’t reason and don’t have the evidence. Like any sore loser he tries to blame the loss on something else — claiming Monckton lies, yet here we can see that if Cook had stood up in the National Press Club, and made these claims with Monckton present, Monckton would have had no trouble refuting them, and quite possibly even more of the audience would have been converted. Open debate is the only way the truth gets tested.

Cook himself has been asked to post up Monckton’s rebuttal of his mistaken accusations on his website, but apparently lacks the intellectual honesty to do so. It is our pleasure to do for him what he should have done for himself in the interest of fairness and balance and the search for the truth.

Jo

 

Cooking the books

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Mr. John Cook, who runs a website puzzlingly entitled Skeptical Science” (for he is not in the least sceptical of the “official” position) seems annoyed that I won the 2011 televised debate with Dr. Denniss of the Australia Institute, and has published a commentary on what I said. It has been suggested that I should reply to the commentary. So, seriatim, I shall consider the points made. Since Mr. Cook accuses me of lying, I have asked him to be good enough to make sure that this reply to his commentary is posted on his website in the interest of balance.
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Chaotic climate

Cook: “Monckton launched his Gish Gallop by arguing that climate cannot be predicted in the long-term because it’s too chaotic because, [Monckton says],

‘the climate is chaotic…it is not predictable in the long-term…they [the IPCC] say that the climate is a coupled, non-linear, chaotic object, and that therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.’

… It’s really quite self-evident that Monckton’s statement here is incorrect.”

Reply: Paragraph 14.2.2.2 of the IPCC’s 2001 report says:

“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

My quotation from the IPCC, given from memory, was in substance accurate. Here and throughout, I shall ignore Mr. Cook’s numerous, disfiguring, ad-hominem comments.

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Consensus

Cook: “Monckton proceeds to demonstrate his confusion about the causal relationship between science and consensus: [he says: ‘the idea that you decide any scientific question by mere consensus [is incorrect].’ … He suggests that somehow climate science is done by first creating a consensus when in reality the consensus exists because the scientific evidence supporting the anthropogenic global warming theory is so strong.”

Reply: A consensus can be bought (as Jo Nova pointed out). Fashions in opinions come and go. Dr. Denniss had said he was satisfied with the science because there was a consensus. He had appealed repeatedly to consensus. Yet in the Aristotelian canon the argumentum ad populum, or headcount fallacy, is rightly regarded as unacceptable because the consensus view – and whatever “science” the consensus opinion is founded upon – may or may not be correct, and the mere fact that there is a consensus tells us nothing about the correctness of the consensus opinion or of the rationale behind that opinion.

Adding carbon dioxide to an atmosphere will cause warming, but we need not (and should not) plead “consensus” in aid of that notion: for it is a result long proven by experiment, and has no need of “consensus” to sanctify it. However, the real scientific debate is about how much warming extra CO2 in the air will cause. There is no “consensus” on that; and, even if there were, science is not done by consensus.

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Mediaeval warm period

Cook: “Every single peer-reviewed millennial temperature reconstruction agrees that current temperatures are hotter than during the peak of the [Mediaeval Warm Period]. …
Reply: At www.co2science.org, Dr. Craig Idso maintains a database of papers by more than 1000 scientists from more than 400 institutions in more than 40 countries providing evidence that the medieval warm period was real, was global, and was generally warmer than the present, sometimes by as much as 3-4 C°. Many of these papers provide millennial reconstructions.
 
Cook: “The climate scientists involved in creating those first millennial proxy temperature reconstructions are not under criminal investigation.”

Reply: The Attorney-General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Mr. Cuccinelli, issued a press statement on May 28, 2010, repeating an earlier statement that –

“The revelations of Climategate indicate that some climate data may have been deliberately manipulated to arrive at pre-set conclusions. The use of manipulated data to apply for taxpayer-funded research grants in Virginia is potentially fraud. … This is a fraud investigation.”

Fraud, in the Commonwealth of Virginia as in most jurisdictions, is a criminal offence. The Attorney-General’s investigation is being conducted in terms of the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act 2000.

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Is there a human fingerprint?

Cook: “The scientific literature at the time [of the 1995 Second Assessment Report of the IPCC] clearly demonstrated a number of ‘fingerprints’ of human-caused global warming.”

Reply: The scientists’ final draft of the 1995 Report said plainly, on five separate occasions, that no evidence of an anthropogenic influence on global climate was detectable, and that it was not known when such an influence would become evident.

However, a single scientist, Dr. Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, rewrote the draft at the IPCC’s request, deleting all five statements, replacing them with a single statement to the effect that a human influence on global climate was now discernible, and making some 200 consequential amendments.

These changes were considered by a political contact group, but they were not referred back to the vast majority of the authors whose texts Dr. Santer had tampered with, and whose five-times-stated principal conclusion he had single-handedly and unjustifiably negated.

We now have the evidence of Prof. “Phil” Jones of the University of East Anglia, in one of the recently-released Climategate emails, that the warming of the past century falls well within the natural variability of the climate – consistent with the conclusion that Dr. Santer had negated.

——————————

The IPCC’s fraudulent statistical technique

Cook: “Monckton proceeds to make another bizarre claim about the IPCC reports which we’ve never heard before: that they use a ‘fraudulent statistical technique’ to inflate global warming’ … As long as the claim sounds like it could be true, the audience likely cannot determine the difference between a fact and a lie.”

Reply: Mr. Cook is here accusing me of lying. Yet my email address is well enough known and Mr. Cook could have asked me for my evidence for the fraudulent statistical technique before he decided to call me a liar. He did not do so. Like the hapless Professor Abraham, he did not bother to check the facts with me before making his malevolent and, as I shall now show, baseless accusation.

The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, 2007, carries in three places a graph in which the Hadley Center’s global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset from 1850-2005 is displayed with four arbitrarily-chosen trend-lines overlaid upon it. At each place where the altered graph is displayed, the incorrect conclusion is drawn that because trend-lines starting closer to the present have a steeper slope than those starting farther back, the rate of warming is accelerating and that we are to blame.

I wrote both to Railroad Engineer Pachauri (in 2009) and to a lead author of the 2007 report (in 2011), and visited both of them in person, to report this defective graph. They both refused to have it corrected, though neither was able to argue that the technique was appropriate. I have now had the data anonymized and reviewed by a statistician, who has confirmed that the technique is unacceptable. In the circumstances, the refusal of the two senior IPCC figures to correct the error constitutes fraud and, when the statistician has been shown the context of the data that he saw in an anonymized form, the police authorities in the relevant nations will be notified and prosecution sought.

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Climate sensitivity

Cook: “Where Monckton gets this claim that the Australian government’s central climate sensitivity estimate to doubled CO2 is 5.1 C° is a complete mystery.
Reply: The “mystery” could and should have been cleared up by Mr. Cook simply asking me. The estimate is that of Professor Ross Garnaut, the Australian Government’s economic adviser on climate questions. It is on that figure that his economic analysis – accepted by the Australian Government – centres.
Cook: “Monckton also repeats a myth … that most climate sensitivity estimates are based on models, and those few which are based on observations arrive at lower estimates. The only study which matches Monckton’s description is the immensely-flawed Lindzen and Choi (2009).”
Reply: I am not sure what qualifications Mr. Cook has to find Professor Lindzen’s work “immensely flawed”. However, among the numerous papers that find climate sensitivity low are Douglass et al. (2004, 2007) and Coleman & Thorne (2005), who reported the absence of the projected fingerprint of anthropogenic greenhouse-gas warming in the tropical mid-troposphere; Douglass & Christy (2009), who found the overall feedback gain in the climate system to be somewhat net-negative; Wentz et al. (2007), who found that the rate of evaporation from the Earth’s surface with warming rose thrice as fast as the models predicted, implying climate-sensitivity is overstated threefold in the models; Shaviv (2005, 2011), who found that if the cosmic-ray influence on climate were factored into palaeoclimate reconstructions the climate sensitivities cohered at 1-1.7 C° per CO2 doubling, one-half to one-third of the IPCC’s central estimate; Paltridge et al. (2009), who found that additional water vapor at altitude (caused by warming) tends to subside to lower altitudes, allowing radiation to escape to space much as before and greatly reducing the water vapor feedback implicit in a naïve application of the Clausius-Clapeyron relation; Spencer and Braswell (2010, 2011), who found the cloud feedback as strongly negative as the IPCC finds it positive, explicitly confirming Lindzen & Choi’s estimated climate sensitivity; Loehle & Scafetta (2011), who followed Tsonis et al. (2006) in finding that much of the warming of the period 1976-2001 was caused not by us but by the natural cycles in the climate system, notably the great ocean oscillations; etc., etc.
 
Cook: “Monckton at various times has claimed that climate sensitivity to doubled CO2 is anywhere between 0.2 and 1.6 C°.”
Reply: I have indeed done climate sensitivity estimates by a variety of methods, and those methods tend to cohere at a low sensitivity. The IPCC at various times has claimed that a central estimate of climate sensitivity is 3.8 C° (1995); 3.5 C° (2001); and 3.26 C° (2007); and its range of estimates of 21st-century warming in the 2007 report is 1.1-6.4 C°. Ranges of estimates are usual where it is not possible to derive an exact value.
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Carbon pricing economics

Cook: “Monckton employs the common ‘skeptic’ trick of focusing on the costs of carbon pricing while completely ignoring the benefits.”
Reply: On the contrary: my analysis, presented in detail at the Los Alamos Santa Fe climate conference in 2011, explicitly calculates the costs of taxing, trading, regulating, reducing, or replacing CO2 and sets against the costs the cost of not preventing the quantum of “global warming” that will be reduced this century as a result of the “investment”. Yet again, if Mr. Cook had bothered to check I could have sent him my slides and the underlying paper.
Cook: “Economic studies consistently predict that the benefits [of carbon dioxide control] will outweigh the costs several times over.”
Reply: No, they don’t. True, the Stern and Garnaut reports – neither of them peer-reviewed – came to this conclusion by questionable methods, including the use of an absurdly low inter-temporal discount rate. However, if one were permitted to use the word “consensus”, one would have to point out that the overwhelming majority of economic studies on the subject (which are summarized in my paper) find the cost of climate action greatly exceeds the cost of inaction. Indeed, two review papers – Lomborg (2007) and Tol (2009) – found near-unanimity on this point in the peer-reviewed literature. Cook is here forced back on to the argument from consensus, citing only an opinion survey of “economists with climate expertise”. However, he does not say how many were interviewed, how they were selected, what weightings and other methods were used: and, in any event, the study was not peer-reviewed. Science is not, repeat not, repeat not done by opinion surveys or any form of head-count.
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Abrupt warming

Cook: “Monckton proceeds to claim that abrupt climate change simply does not happen:

‘Ask the question how in science there could be any chance that the rate of just roughly 1 C° per century of warming that has been occurring could suddenly become roughly 5 C° per century as it were overnight. There is no physical basis in science for any such sudden lurch in what has proven to be an immensely stable climate.’

The paleoclimate record begs to differ. A stable climate is the exception, not the norm, at least over long timescales.”

Reply: Mr. Cook displays a graph of temperature changes over the past 450,000 years. At the resolution of the graph, and at the resolution of the proxy reconstructions on which it was based, it would be quite impossible to detect or display a 5 C° warming over a period of as little as a century.

Global temperatures have indeed remained stable over the past 100 million years, varying by just 3% either side of the long-term mean. That 3% is around 8 C° up or down compared with today, and it is enough to give us a hothouse Earth at the high end and an ice age at the low end.

However, very extreme temperature change can only happen in a very short time when conditions are very different from what they are today. For instance, at the end of the Younger Dryas cooling event, 11,400 years ago, temperature in Antarctica rose by 5 C° in just three years, according to the ice cores (which, over that recent period, still have sufficient resolution to allow determination of annual temperatures). No such lurch in temperatures has happened since, and none is reasonably foreseeable.

We now have confirmation from the UK Met Office that there has been no “global warming” to speak of for 15 years. That is hardly the profile of an imminent 5 C° increase in global temperature. Bottom line: a stable climate is the rule, not the exception: and nothing that we can do to alter the climate can cause a major change such as that which terminates ice ages. Remember Canute: our power is limited.

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Human influence on the climate

Cook: “There has never before been a large human influence on the climate, so why should we expect it to behave exactly as it has in the past when only natural effects were at work?”

Reply: I did not say that the climate will behave “exactly” as it has in the past. We are capable of exerting some influence over it, but not very much. The notion that we can exercise a large influence is based on the mistaken idea that the initial warming from a doubling of CO2 concentration (which might be about 1 K) will be tripled by net-positive temperature feedbacks. This unfortunate assumption is what truly separates the IPCC from scientific reality. The IPCC makes the mistake of assuming that the feedback mathematics that apply to an electronic circuit (Bode, 1945) are also applicable to the climate. In two very important respects that the models are tuned to overlook, this is not so. First, precisely because the climate has proven temperature-stable, we may legitimately infer that major amplifications or attenuations caused by feedbacks have simply not been occurring.

Secondly, the Bode equation for mutual amplification of feedbacks in an electronic circuit has a singularity (just above the maximum temperature predicted by the Stern report, for instance, or by Murphy et al., 2009) at which the very strongly net-positive feedbacks that reinforce warming suddenly become just as strongly net-negative, dampening it. I have not yet heard of a convincing physical explanation for any such proposed behaviour as applied to the climate. But if we must use the Bode equation then it necessarily follows from the climate’s formidable temperature-stability that the feedback loop gain in the climate system is either zero or somewhat net-negative. A climate subject to the very strongly net-positive feedbacks imagined by the IPCC simply would not have remained as stable as it has.

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Has Earth warmed as expected?

Cook: “Monckton … repeats … that Earth hasn’t warmed as much as expected … [He says} ‘If we go back to 1750 … using the Central England Temperature Record as a proxy for global temperatures … we’ve had 0.9 C° of warming …’.  It should go without saying that the temperature record for a single geographic location cannot be an accurate proxy for average global temperature.”

Reply: Central England is at a latitude suitable to take the long-run temperature record as a fair proxy for global temperatures. However, if Mr. Cook were unhappy with that, he could and should have contacted me to ask for an independent verification of the 0.9 C° warming since 1750. Hansen (1984) found 0.5 C° of warming had occurred until that year, and there has been 0.4 C° of warming since, making 0.9 C°. Indeed, in another article on Mr. Cook’s website he himself uses a value of 0.8 C° in the context of a discussion of warming since 1750.

The significance, of course, is that the radiative forcings we have caused since 1750 are equivalent to those from a doubling of CO2 concentration, suggesting that the transient sensitivity to CO2 doubling is around 1 C°.

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Cook: “… Human aerosol emissions, which have a cooling effect, have also increased over this period. And while 3 C° is the IPCC’s best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity, the climate system is not yet in equilibrium. Neglecting these two factors (aerosols and thermal inertia of the global climate), as Monckton and Lindzen have done, will certainly give you an underestimate of equilibrium sensitivity, by a large margin. This is how Monckton supports his lowball climate sensitivity claim – by neglecting two important climate factors.”
Reply: Once again, Mr. Cook has failed to check his facts with me. Of course my calculations include the effect of aerosols (which, however, is by no means as certain in its magnitude as Mr. Cook seems to think). And of course I have not ignored temperature feedbacks (which Mr. Cook mistakenly confuses with “the thermal inertia of the global climate”: actually, it is I who have been arguing that there is considerable homoeostasis in global temperatures, and he who had earlier been arguing that global climate was not stable). If I am right about temperature feedbacks (see above), then the equilibrium sensitivity will be about the same as the transient sensitivity – around 1 C°. And that, on most analyses, would actually be beneficial.
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Cook: “The warming over the past 60 years is consistent with the IPCC climate sensitivity range and inconsistent with Lindzen and Monckton’s lowball climate sensitivity claims. Monckton claims the observational data supports his low sensitivity claims – reality is that observational data contradicts them.”

Reply: Warming from 1950 to date was 0.7 C°. Net forcings since 1950 were 1.8 Watts per square meter, using the functions given in Myhre (1998) for the major greenhouse gases and making due allowance for aerosols and other negative anthropogenic forcings. The transient climate-sensitivity parameter over the period was thus 0.4 Celsius degrees per Watt per square meter, consistent with the 0.5 derivable from Table 10.26 on page 803 of IPCC (2007) on each of the IPCC’s six emissions scenarios. In that event, the transient warming in response to a doubling of CO2 concentration over the present century would be 0.4(5.35 ln 2) = 1.5 C°, again using a function from Myhre (1998). Interestingly, the IPCC’s implicit central estimate of warming from CO2 this century, derivable by two distinct methods, is also 1.5 C°.

In short, even if the IPCC is right about the warming this century from CO2, that warming is simply not going to be enough to cause damage.

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Lying

Cook: “Monckton spent almost the entire debate misrepresenting the scientific (and economic) literature at best, lying at worst.”
Reply: Now that readers have had a chance to hear both sides, they will be able to form a view on who was lying and who was not.

 

This page replies to Cook’s claims which were made in “Monckton Myths #17 Part I and Part II”.

 

Monckton has responded to his critics in detail many times:

Don’t mock the Monck on the House of Lords question (WUWT)

Monckton responds to “potholer54” on those obsessive video compilations (WUWT)

Monckton answers a troll (WUWT)

35 Inconvenient Truths (The errors in Al Gore’s movie) (SPPI)

Monckton debunks Abraham

Viscount Monckton answers Megan Clement of “The Conversation”

The Monckton v Deltoid (Tim Lambert) debate (by Jo Nova)

Lambert’s Pinker-tape “ambush”: PR stunt (by Jo Nova)

All my posts tagged Christopher Monckton

Monckton has had an open challenge out to Al Gore for years

(Presumably Al knows he can’t win).

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8.9 out of 10 based on 117 ratings

244 comments to “Cooking the books” Monckton replies to Cook

  • #
    John Brookes

    I will follow the advice of the song, and start at the very beginning. Monckton says that the IPCC report says:

    “In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

    Which is fine, except that is just part of a paragraph, the rest of which reads:

    “The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.”

    So if Monckton was arguing that precise knowledge of future climate is unknowable (and one would surely never argue otherwise), then he is right. But if he is arguing that we can’t know *anything* about future climate, then he is wrong. Clearly Cook interpreted Monckton’s statement as the latter, when Monckton meant it as the former. Plenty of Monckton groupies would have had the same interpretation as Cook, and Monckton probably wouldn’t bother to correct them.

    That’s a start.

    11

    • #

      Clearly Cook interpreted Monckton’s statement as the latter, when Monckton meant it as the former.

      that was a start eh John?

      Clearly you missed this bit in the post…

      and if John Cook only had the manners (or curiosity) to ask Christopher first, he would have found that out before airing his poor research and logical errors in public.

      Speaking of following song advice, C(r)ook should have followed this one…

      http://youtu.be/TL0EoXdpOqg

      20

      • #
        John Brookes

        And Monckton is no doubt dreaming of Gina as he listens to this

        00

        • #
          wes george

          Monckton is dreaming about Gina?

          Gosh, Johnny that’s your science-based argument for the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis? Must be a real face-palm moment at UQ.

          But it’s your taste in music where you really come unstuck for me.

          Not only are you in total denial (that word is taking on a whole new life in 2012) but you’re a hopeless dag.

          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-j3xITvYQY

          Chill.

          10

          • #
            Streetcred

            Johnny got ‘bitch-slapped’ bigtime by Markus over at WUWT so he’s probably come back here to recover, LOL ! Like a shell-shocked Stormtroop wandering aimlessly getting smacked about the head … Cook is coming to know that feeling as well I’d expect. You’d think that by now UQ would be growing tired of scandles involving its staff.

            20

        • #
          theRealUniverse

          Does the undeniable extreme cold in the NH at the moment scare the crap out of you John? Oh sorry its get cold when it warms. Of course how stupid.

          10

          • #
            Bob

            No no no, that IS warming, relative to how much the rest of the planet is cooling. It’s sort of like how spending 900 billion dollars you don’t have instead of a trillion can be called a budget cut. Or something.

            Don’t worry though, if it gets too cold because of global warming, we can just pass a law that the UN will save us.

            What I’d like to know is if these scum really did destroy the historical temperature record by ‘adjusting for anomalies’ and then ‘misplacing’ the original raw data!!!

            Is the raw data set really GONE?!?!??! If that’s true, lock them up and throw away the key.

            10

    • #
      KeithH

      Gee JB.Thanks for the rest of the IPCC paragraph. That’s one of their best statements of pseudo-scientific gobbledegook from amongst many others. All boiled down, it says “You need to throw heaps more grant money at us as well as provide more and bigger computers to create many more ‘what if’ scenarios which in reality, as with earlier versions, will only serve to confirm the preconceived notions and biases of “The Team’ in pursuit of ‘The Cause’!

      A classic example of the world of CGR – Computer Generated Reality in which ‘The Team’ chooses to live!

      10

    • #
      Eric Anderson

      John, I understand your point and appreciate the rest of the paragraph you provided.

      It sounds like the IPCC is saying (i) we are left to generating ensembles of models, (ii) it is really a statistical question, and (iii) they need lots more compute power and *new methods* of diagnosing the models.

      I dunno. It kind of seems like a fair summary for Monckton to say that prediction of long-term states is not possible. We could have a separate discussion about the to-date predictive capability, or lack thereof, of the models. We could talk about different inputs and feedbacks to the models and parameters to be tweaked. We could point out that models are acknowledged to poorly handle clouds. It is possible someone could still exercise (despite the track record to date) that the models have some valuable predictive capabilities over the course of many decades and that we should take them seriously. But it is an entirely fair point that we simply don’t know what the long-term state will be. That is a very important point for the lay person, and the policy maker, to understand, and on balance is probably a more accurate assessment of the state of the science than giving an impression that we do know.

      00

    • #
      bananabender

      “Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.”

      It isn’t “computationally intensive” – it is computationally impossible.

      Airbus and Boeing wouldn’t bother doing expensive wind tunnel tests if they could just model (chaotic and non-linear) turbulence on a computer.

      00

    • #
      Carlos

      Is this is your way of saying that you believe in AGW and Moncton is a fraud? If so, I would think you could have presented a detailed step-by-step repudiation of most of the points made. But of course, you didn’t.

      This is not an argument about supposed intentions and he said, she said. It is about a very big picture which, while slowly coming into a clearer focus, shows a pattern of flaws and agenda driven science tinged with greed and zealotry by establishment groupies. Si?

      10

    • #
      Lawrie

      Congrats John for being first commenter. Thought you would appreciate this from Germany’s biggest selling daily, 16 million circulation;

      http://notrickszone.com/2012/02/06/body-blow-to-german-global-warming-movement-major-media-outlets-unload-on-co2-lies/

      Seems a few more cats are out and about. The bag has a loose string. Hope the kitties are wearing booties since Germany has the coldest weather for 26 years.

      10

    • #
      John Kannarr

      I can see how an ensemble of results from models can give us a probability distribution of model results. I don’t see what relevance that necessarily has to what we can expect to happen in the real world, unless we have some strong assurance that all those models are accurate. Isn’t that what we need to find out – whether they are in fact accurate? And in a chaotic system like climate, how is that even possible?

      10

  • #
    KinkyKeith

    Come on JB stop mucking about the fountain.

    Cookie would only have one interpretation but you say ” Clearly Cook interpreted Monckton’s statement as the latter.”

    Don’t think so. By now even Cookie would understand the relevance of time frames in looking for a climate influence.

    The only game in town is Man Made CO2 did it.

    There is no other game for warmers , it would deny their own raison d’etre.

    Totally illogical, ask Tristan, he’s good at working out conundrums like that.

    00

  • #
    John Brookes

    I wrote both to Railroad Engineer Pachauri (in 2009) and to a lead author of the 2007 report (in 2011), and visited both of them in person, to report this defective graph. They both refused to have it corrected, though neither was able to argue that the technique was appropriate. I have now had the data anonymized and reviewed by a statistician, who has confirmed that the technique is unacceptable. In the circumstances, the refusal of the two senior IPCC figures to correct the error constitutes fraud and, when the statistician has been shown the context of the data that he saw in an anonymized form, the police authorities in the relevant nations will be notified and prosecution sought.

    I seem to recall someone arguing somewhere that arctic sea ice was recovering, and that they supported that argument by using the data from 2 individual months over a 30 year period. I’m pretty sure that I could find a statistician, or even 100 statisticians, who would confirm that the technique of carefully choosing 2 data points out of several hundred and using these to announce the recovery of arctic sea ice is unacceptable.

    But no one we know would do such a naughty thing, would they? Because if they did, surely they’d be worried that the local bill would be knocking on their door at 5am…

    01

    • #
      John Brookes

      No one going to try and defend the indefensible here?

      01

      • #
        cohenite

        What’s indefensible John?

        00

        • #
          John Brookes

          Well bugger me cohenite (a figure of speech, you understand), I can’t find where I originally read the stuff that caused me to write that comment.

          Maybe you could help and point me to Monckton’s testimony to congress.

          02

      • #
        wes george

        I seem to recall someone arguing somewhere that arctic sea ice was recovering…

        Do we have to explain to you how rational debate works every second thread?

        Recovering from what? Your bad assumptions about the nature of climate?

        It’s up to your side to show that Arctic Sea ice is in precipitous decline and that decline is due to anthropogenic warming. The warmists simply have not fulfilled the burden of proof required to establish their hypothesis as useful description of climate.

        We can show that Arctic ice levels today are not historical anomalous by half a dozen different methods. For instance, Vikings buried their death in places on Greenland that are still solid permafrost today. They could not have dug those graves in permafrost. At the other end of the planet Elephant Seals once had breeding grounds on the Antarctic mainland. No elephant seal colonies can rear young on the Antarctic continent today because it’s to, uh, COLD.

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        James

        “I seem to recall someone arguing somewhere that arctic sea ice was recovering, and that they supported that argument by using the data from 2 individual months over a 30 year period. ”

        Well if you gave us something actually concrete to comment on – if you can be a bit more specific about who the someone is and where somewhere is we might be able to understand what on earth you are on about and we might be able to make an intelligent comment either way.

        BTW do you realise that picking a single comment from what I assume is a person’s body of work is exactly the kind of statistical misrepresentation you then go on to accuse this person of performing with arctic ice?

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      theRealUniverse

      “who would confirm that the technique of carefully choosing 2 data points”

      I think your criminal mates at the IPCC would know this pretty well eh?

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      Eddy Aruda

      John,

      I wish to apologize to you for being so harsh in the past. I read a comment by you on a previous post on this site where you claimed to be on anti depressants. I hope they work for you!

      Here is a reality check for you, much of the ice in the arctic melts every summer when it warms and then the ice mass increases in the winter when it cools.

      Are you with me so far, John?

      Satellite data only goes back a few decades. We do know from historical accounts that the ice goes through periods when it is either waxing or waning. We also know that the thickness of the ice is influenced by ocean currents (e.g. Arctic oscillation, pacific oscillation) because these currents affect the wind direction.

      Still with me, John?

      Now, the ice floats on the water. When the wind blows the ice towards the south it tends to result in more ice melting. When the wind blows the ice northward it tends to compact and there is less melting.

      Now, just nod your head John and stay with me, okay?

      We know it can’t be rising temperatures because, as the UEA and NASA have recently admitted, the warming stopped in 1987.

      There you go, John, and thanks for hanging in there! Please tell your care giver that I said it was okay for you to have a little extra dessert tonight!

      Hang in there and PLEASE keep taking your medicine!

      Thanks, John!

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    Colin Davidson

    JB in his post above, does not put the Monckton portion he cites in context, which I now supply. The passage he cites is preceded by:

    “Cook: “Monckton proceeds to make another bizarre claim about the IPCC reports which we’ve never heard before: that they use a ‘fraudulent statistical technique’ to inflate global warming’ … As long as the claim sounds like it could be true, the audience likely cannot determine the difference between a fact and a lie.”

    Reply: Mr. Cook is here accusing me of lying. Yet my email address is well enough known and Mr. Cook could have asked me for my evidence for the fraudulent statistical technique before he decided to call me a liar. He did not do so. Like the hapless Professor Abraham, he did not bother to check the facts with me before making his malevolent and, as I shall now show, baseless accusation.

    The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, 2007, carries in three places a graph in which the Hadley Center’s global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset from 1850-2005 is displayed with four arbitrarily-chosen trend-lines overlaid upon it. At each place where the altered graph is displayed, the incorrect conclusion is drawn that because trend-lines starting closer to the present have a steeper slope than those starting farther back, the rate of warming is accelerating and that we are to blame.”

    The IPCC, as an expert body, has a duty of care to ensure that its works are as free from error as possible, and to correct such errors as are identified as soon as they are exposed and verified. This duty of care is a legal requirement on all experts. There is no such legal duty of care on non-expert citizens, such as myself or JB. His argument over the alleged heating or cooling of the Arctic therefore does not hold water.

    And even if it did, there is no ground to excuse the IPCC from its own public, legal, duty of care. Did the IPCC verify the reported error? If so, where is the publicly available report? In the case that it did not attempt to verify the reported error, it is in breach of its legal duty.

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    MikeW

    Thanks John for at least sort of trying..
    The $CAGW” Ponzi Scam dies a slow death when it has supporters like John..
    🙂

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      Markus Fitzhenry

      Slow and nasty with a bit of luck.

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        Streetcred

        Nice bitch-slap on the JB this morning, Markus. LOL!

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          Markus Fitzhenry

          I know, isn’t it easy.

          Actually some times, I get embarrassed, as I can defeat the warmest foe with half my mind tied behind my back.

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            Otter

            ‘with half my mind tied behind my back’

            Rush fan?

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            Markus Fitzhenry

            I have talent on loan from… God.

            Rush Limbaugh.

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            Otter

            I don’t agree with everything he says- more the Way he says it, sometimes- but it is fun to watch him Accurately predict what the Democrats / Left will do. And he does make an effort to Educate himself on climate change, which is more than I can say for the people I argue with on other sites. Brooksie, just doesn’t cut it.

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            John Brookes

            Go on, pat yourselves on the back.

            “Hey guys, guess what I did the other day? Thats right, I was mean to someone on the internet!”

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            Markus Fitzhenry

            “”Mean”” JB? That’s what girls say about each other.. Here, we are absolutely ruthless assassins.

            Besides, we are just trying to help you by showing you the way.

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    Sonny

    “The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.”

    In Other Words: BULLSHIT BAFFLES BRAINS.

    The IPCC and it’s assortment of conspiring scientists are only interested in the sorts of statistics that bolster their “the worlds coming to an end and it’s all man’s fault so keep the cash flowing” alarmist agenda.

    That’s why they reject real measures of statical significance such as r and r2 an use RE as a measure of statistical significance. That’s why they cherry pick temperature proxies from trees that aren’t infact responding to temperature, that’s why they invent short centering methods for principal component analysis. That’s why they HIDE their data and codes, reject FOI requests, and send disgusting emails to each other outlining all their dirty tricks.

    But I digress. Monckton won this debate because he was debating an economist on a scientific issue. The real question is why one of our prominent climate scientists didn’t step up to the plate and clean the floor with Monckton.

    The reason… Fear! Lord forbid that a mongrel like Monckton should ask some difficult questions…

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    Ross James

    It will indeed a slow death. The misled will realise eventually they were wrong.

    Prediction: You aren’t seen nothing yet folks – the next decade and ending will collapse many a theory.

    Clearly to win an argument now is baseless as time waits not for any man – i.e. with an opinion.

    A non-climate “expert” challenging, well just about everyone’s results from data – brave but a very foolish man.

    Data fudge – just who is doing the fudging?

    Doubt – is the official author and “winner”.

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      Markus Fitzhenry

      Ross, have you any opinion on doomsayers? Is Harold Camping your dad? Just wondering, no offence, OK?

      Environmental doomsayers may still be claiming that we must radically reduce carbon-dioxide and other “greenhouse” gas emissions in order to prevent catastrophic global warming, but they cling to that position despite the fact that the warming they’ve been forecasting has not occurred.
      Global temperature is dropping, not rising.

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      BobC

      Sounds a little desperate Ross, but I’ll go along with you. You are right that the only proof that the climate can be forecast is to actually forecast the climate accurately.

      The warmists have tried pretty much everything else (including politics, scorn, fudging data, dodging FOIA requests, etc.) to convince the world that you can forecast the climate. You have deservedly failed.

      Now you threaten to actually live by the results of a forecast! Good on, mate.

      However, you are uncharacteristically vague here:

      Prediction: You aren’t seen nothing yet folks – the next decade and ending will collapse many a theory.

      I presume (from your past contributions) that you’re talking about skeptic theories, but you could be talking about the collapse of CAGW theory. This isn’t an attempt to make an unfalsifable prediction is it? Leaving yourself some plausible deniability cover?

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        Ross James

        Hi Bob,

        Plausible deniability is a very interesting phenomena. We have seen this plenty of times in politics.

        For example when the now Opposition Leader* was speaking about climate change a few years back – he clearly stated on video a carbon tax was you guessed it – the best way FORWARD. In a few short years the Prime Minister* now echoes the same words.

        * As the tradition of good manners its most likely high time we returned to respecting the office of leaders. If we do they may well begin to listen again to the mere mortals of lesser estates in our society.

        The Dunning–Kruger effect is also yet another interesting phenomena. A cognitive bias in which the unskilled suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes particularly in logical fallacy and knowledge outside their normal ability to access.

        I will say this to you looking you in the eye. I believe based on recent evidence of the last three years of climate tracking we are on course to catastrophic results.

        Never before have some many issues being played out now meet the perfect storm. What timing!

        1. Instability in financial markets – this due to not political ideology. It is caused by factors like over driven consumerism – credit / money lender practice / banking / oil rises / food shortages / localised climate failures beyond norms / extreme weather events / earthquake / over spend on defence / shifts in global labour practice / democratic failure etc etc
        2. Instability due to vast national populations seeking illegal mass migration
        3. Peak Oil – it’s real and for that you should follow some of the old timers within the Republican Party of the US. These die hards of the Conservative Right will tell you bluntly: Oil peaked in 2002.
        4. The demise of democratic power and shift to the greater population nations as they develop
        5. The dramatic alteration of climate affecting the normal seasons globally*

        Examples are easily cited many times – the record mild winter USA, the record cold Europe, and the unusual shifts in the polar circulation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_weather_events) which climate global warming models predict as the Arctic (at record temperatures right now) and sea ice recession continues unabated (rise and fall recoveries are doing more poorly by inter-seasonal.

        6. World Population Growth – http://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_totl&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=world+population
        7. Climate Change Prediction (no 205) if certain criteria are met i.e. acceleration of sea level rises
        8. Australia’s return to drought when El Nino returns and estimates I have seen in papers peer reviewed indicate that the 1998 record temperatures will be exceeded many times over as we move toward the later part of this decade. Where are the ice crystal obsessive then? I will also crave and pine for decent winters.
        9. The world has the wealth and the resources to provide everyone the opportunity to live a decent life. We consume too much when market relationships displace the bonds of community, compassion, culture, and place. We consume too much when consumption becomes an end in itself and makes us lose affection and reverence for the natural world. * Copyright © 1997 by Mark Sagoff. All rights reserved.
        The Atlantic Monthly; June 1997; Do We Consume Too Much; Volume 279, No. 6; pages 80-96.

        Never was so much owed by so many to so few was a wartime speech made by the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on 20 August 1940. And it looks like history will be repeated in those words.

        These things will most likely not directly affect baby boomers and older folk writing on this forum – except the present young adult who will be on the cusp of these changes when they begin to bite economics globally. There is no cure for the apin that is going to come.

        We consume too much when market relationships displace the bonds of community, compassion, culture, and place.*

        Never forget that. We are community. And if you are an Australian – we are Australian first.

        ——————

        Ross, The Dunning–Kruger effect is real but useless, it applies potentially to both sides. Those citing that we ought “obey the experts” in science are demonstrating it. Only the evidence will separate who is right and who is “DK”. — Jo

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          Ross James

          [Snip. Ross, point noted, but no one could see the Ed comments bar you and I, and your comment was condescending and ageist. –Jo]

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          BobC

          Ross, do you ever link supporting data? Most of your facts are either bogus or irrelevant. Give us some supporting links and we can talk, otherwise you’re just whistling in the wind.

          On just one, “Peak Oil”. The revolution in extraction techniques has produced a bonanza of new reserves, and shows no signs of slowing down.

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            BobC

            Ross, I realize you do have some links, but your conclusion that these “dots” of information link into a conclusion that CAGW is imminent is entirely unsupported.

            Kindly provide some support for your giant leap of faith.

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      Eddy Aruda

      Ross James
      February 6, 2012 at 7:08 pm · Reply
      It will indeed a slow death. The misled will realise eventually they were wrong.

      You wouldn’t admit to being wrong if I smacked you over the head with your own broken hockey stick! You ramble on like a studdering druid uttering a feeble incantantation.

      Prediction: You aren’t seen nothing yet folks – the next decade and ending will collapse many a theory.

      Actually, Ross, your CAGW hypothesis won’t last another year. Stick a fork in it Ross, it is done!

      Clearly to win an argument now is baseless as time waits not for any man – i.e. with an opinion.

      Try making an argument supported by empirical evidence instead of uttering your usual non sequitur BS. We might find your “opinion” tolerable if it was at least half witty or somewhat humorous!

      A non-climate “expert” challenging, well just about everyone’s results from data – brave but a very foolish man.

      So, what makes you a climate expert, Ross? You are not brave but you are foolish!

      Data fudge – just who is doing the fudging?

      Perhaps Jimbo Hansen? Or maybe he is incompetent? After all, he keeps “adjusting” the data, will he ever get it “right”?

      Hansen always adjusts his numbers to show earlier years as being cooler and the recent years as being warmer. He never finds an error which forces him to do the opposite. What are the odds of that happening? I know, why don’t you author a paper on it and let us know which peer reviewed journal will be publishing it? I can’t wait to see that!

      Doubt – is the official author and “winner”.

      Google “free courses on grammar and writing” and try to improve your writing skills, Ross. You are an embarrassment to the hockey team and to every gullible fool on the planet. You are so pitiful and pathetic that even P.T. Barnum wouldn’t take your money!

      Report this

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        Ross James

        Eddy,

        At three crucial times in my childhood development and at times of my crucial schooling my health failed – sometimes missing up to three months schooling. Add the English as we know it from a country perspective from the hills of black soil Western Queensland, I think I am slightly entitled to a legitimate impediment here.

        Your arrogance – or should I say my highness, we try to do our best.

        Try to be more polite.

        Ross J.

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          wes george

          Ross, you aren’t entitled to argue by logical fallacy no matter how [snip c’mon Wes] you are.

          This is a debate about whether Anthropogenic global warming is real and catastrophic. CAGW.

          Here’s your totally ridiculous argument debunked:

          1. Instability in financial markets –

          Off topic. nothing to do with CAGW.

          2. Instability due to vast national populations seeking illegal mass migration

          Off topic. Illegal immigration is not evidence for CAGW.

          3. Peak Oil – Oil peaked in 2002.

          Off topic.

          4. The demise of democratic power

          Hello?

          5. The dramatic alteration of climate affecting the normal seasons globally*

          There is plenty of evidence that it was much warmer during the Medieval Warming Period without human CO2 emissions than today and of past climate change on the order of a magnitude greater than today. We seem to be in a rather quiescent period of climate just now with fewer tropical storms and no real Temperature trends worth mentioning.

          http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html

          Modern 20 th century warming was not anomalous, but part of natural variation. The principle of parsimony suggests that whatever climate model we settle upon must be able to explain past dramatic climate variation before the modern era as well as contemporary warming and the cooling of the last decade.

          CAGW theory fails this fundamental test of a useful hypothesis.

          Examples are easily cited many times – the record mild winter USA, the record cold Europe, and the unusual shifts in the polar circulation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_weather_events) which climate global warming models predict as the Arctic (at record temperatures right now) and sea ice recession continues unabated (rise and fall recoveries are doing more poorly by inter-seasonal.

          Weather is not climate.

          Records made on a relatively short climatic scale of less than a hundred years or in the arctic often less than 30 years are made to be broken. Furthermore, you have misrepresented the Arctic sea ice coverage as Baa humbug shows further down the thread. In short, the media has lied to you and you believed them without making further inquiries on your own. How incurious of you.

          Never was so much owed by so many to so few…

          That’s not scientific evidence of AGW, Ross.

          These things will most likely not directly affect baby boomers and older folk writing on this forum.

          Non sequitur…

          We consume too much when market relationships displace the bonds of community, compassion, culture, and place.*

          Non sequitur…

          6. World Population Growth

          Non sequitur…

          7. Climate Change Prediction (no 205) if certain criteria are met i.e. acceleration of sea level rises

          Predictions for 2050 can not be tested and so can not be entered as evidence for anything other than the bias of the modellers. All scientific statements must be testable from the moment they are expressed.

          8. Australia’s return to drought when El Nino returns and estimates

          The Pacific oscillation is a cycle of weather the droughts and floods it produces have nothing to do with AGW.

          I have seen in papers peer reviewed indicate that the 1998 record temperatures will be exceeded many times over as we move toward the later part of this decade. Where are the ice crystal obsessive then?

          Predictions can not be entered as evidence into a rational debate. Or else all we have to do is predict that you are wrong. Thus cancelling out both statements.

          9. The world has the wealth and the resources to provide everyone the opportunity to live a decent life.

          Ross you have just had what could be called a total ideological melt down. Every argument you have presented for CAGW is really a manifestation of some other socio-political problem which has absolutely nothing to do with the scientific evidence for or against anthropogenic global warming.

          It reveals Warmists are motivated by a socio-economic agenda that has nothing to do with the climate and everything to do with perceived social injustice.

          While I might well sympathise with some of your social fears, the way in which you would manipulate climatological science as a tool for a political agenda is simply not fair dinkum.

          The only person you have deceived is yourself.

          Never forget that. We are community. And if you are an Australian – we are Australian first.

          You have to shown your faith in AGW is based upon irrational fear and loathing unconnected with the science, rather than a rational examination of the evidence for AGW.

          You won’t even discuss the science involved.

          Your statement above is an omission that there is simply no rational argument for CAGW any longer. I don’t particularly fault you, in fact, your argument above is a typical representative of what we normally encounter in anthropogenic global warming debates, a strange mish-mash of irrational fear combined with laundry list of social grievances, with no science to back up their claims.

          What you lack is not only good reasoning skills but a sense of historical perspective and imagination. You have an ulterior agenda you haven’t even admitted to yourself..

          You are a fearful and angry man, afraid that the future will unfolded in terrifying ways. Angry because, well, only you know for sure…

          If you would read history you will find that at few points has humanity ever been assured its destiny was secure. Fear of the future can be a force for the good, it’s a factor in driving humanity ever forward with the socio-technology evolution required to meet the challenges ahead.

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            wes george

            Whoops, my apologies. Got carried away. Thanks for the moderation. I would have snipped that myself on second thought.

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      Bob_FJ

      Ross,
      Uh?
      Really?

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    Mydogsgotnonose

    Monckton’s problem is that not being an engineer he has missed the most basic scientific mistakes of the IPCC so has confronted the likes of the odious Cook on their home ground. The IPCC climate models are bunkum because of 5 basic physics’ mistakes.

    The most important is the claim of 100% direct thermalisation of IR. Thus cannot happen. In 1993, IR specialist Will Happer warned of this and left the US DoE, refusing to lie for Gore saying ‘I don’t need the money’. In reality, the thermalisation is at second phases, aerosols like clouds. That’s why present CO2 climate sensitivity is probably slightly negative with recent and end of ice age warming not from GHGs.

    The next one is the claim [see Trenberth and Kiehl 1997] that the IR radiation from the Earth’s surface is 390 W/m^2. Because this is the flux for a black body at the average Earth’s surface temperature of 15°C, this could only be the case if there was no atmosphere.

    As a heat transfer expert with many years in metallurgical plants, I can tell you for a fact that, for emissivities like the Earth, you have to reach >120°C before radiation can exceed convective heat loss when air is present.

    The only way they make the sums match is by imagining that the IR emitted by the cooler atmosphere can, when absorbed by the Earth’s surface, add to the energy from the Sun.

    Every engineer who is shown these amateurish calculation says ‘How can they do this, it’s the most elementary mistake you can ever make’.

    Add in the other mistakes and what we have is an appalling waste of money by these people. You can’t fix it because the reputations of Trenberth, Lacis and Hansen etc. are based on this fantasy physics.

    The models have to be rebuilt from the ground up by competent physicists/engineers. Climate science degree courses need to be shut down until they teach correct science, not a new Lysenkoism; fantasy physics by amateurs.

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      Well said. Both alarmists and scpetics should recognise that there are(roughly) two types of sceptics. The ‘deniers’ and the luke-warmers. The luke warmers believe the core concepts such as the ‘green house gas effect'(*LULZ) is real but, the estimates of radiative feedback forcings are exagerated by many factors.

      Whereas, the deniers, let’s call them refuters, believe the concepts presented by the IPCC are pure psuedo-science, bottled and distributed for mass consumption by a lazy ignorant society that actually believes what the glowing box in the corner tells them to think.

      The reason why Monckton takes the position he does is to reduce the amount of noise in the debate. He concedes points which the majority of luke warming scientists actually maintain themselves so as to bring the weight of their arguments against the establishment paracientists. After all, Monckton himself is no scientist. he is merely a communicator and takes an argument common to the most numerous and recognised group of dissenters. So, if you look at it from a matter of political expediency, why he argues what he does makes perfect sense.

      Personally, I wish he wouldn’t say some of the silly stuff he says or, involve himself with some communicators that have poor credibility among the general public. But, that’s his choice and from my point of view it doesn’t change the science, which invalidates even Monkcton’s arguments.

      True believer PRO TIP: use Monckton’s arguments against you friends. See how credible your faith really is.

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      Bob_FJ

      Mydogsgotnonose,
      Nice post!
      Visit Tallbloke’s shortly where he is planning some interesting stuff, in my perspective as an engineer.

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    Bruce D Scott

    Thank you Jo, I find this site truly edifying, yes I mean edifying. Strip away the decades of lies and fraud by the warmists, and now the truth is starting to assert it’s authority. To my mind, that is edifying.

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    Tristan

    A consensus can be bought (as Jo Nova pointed out).

    Fashions in opinions come and go.

    Yet a consensus of experts is still a consensus of experts.

    Dr. Denniss had said he was satisfied with the science because there was a consensus. He had appealed repeatedly to consensus. Yet in the Aristotelian canon the argumentum ad populum, or headcount fallacy, is rightly regarded as unacceptable because the consensus view – and whatever “science” the consensus opinion is founded upon – may or may not be correct, and the mere fact that there is a consensus tells us nothing about the correctness of the consensus opinion or of the rationale behind that opinion.

    In short: ‘A consensus, even from a field of experts, may be incorrect’. Absolutely! However it’s often the best source of knowledge we have and therefore consensuses of experts often guide decisions.

    Adding carbon dioxide to an atmosphere will cause warming, but we need not (and should not) plead “consensus” in aid of that notion: for it is a result long proven by experiment, and has no need of “consensus” to sanctify it.

    Yet many people (including more than a few on this blog) don’t accept that CO2 causes warming. They don’t accept the experiments that Monckton claims ‘prove’ that interaction. Who to believe eh?

    However, the real scientific debate is about how much warming extra CO2 in the air will cause. There is no “consensus” on that; and, even if there were, science is not done by consensus.

    The consensus is that ignoring the issue will almost certainly be worse than attempting to mitigate it. Although science is not ‘done by consensus’ the state of the science at any given point is reflected in the opinions of the experts.

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      Mydogsgotnonose

      See my post above. Can a consensus of ‘experts’ who believe that the earth radiates energy at a rate which assumes no convection and this is explained by nonsense physics called ‘back radiation’, a fundamental failure to understand heat transfer and thermodynamics, be trusted?

      The ‘consensus’ is fundamentally wrong as any professional scientist or engineer not programmed in the IPCC fantasy physics will tell you.

      The gloves are off. The great masses of honest technologically-trained people are rising up to say enough is enough and the likes of you and Cook must attend remedial education, or should I say deprogramming?

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        Mydogsgotnonose

        PS the CO2 experiment by Tyndall and the ‘PET bottle experiment do not prove high CO2-GW. The belief in this from these experiments is evidence of the appalling failure of people in climate science to do basic scientific analysis.

        This is because the absorbed IR is scattered and absorbed by the vessel walls which warms the gas up, not direct thermalisation. However, at ambient temperature, CO2 is a very unusual gas and the coefficient of thermal expansion is higher than air. Slacken the PET bottle cap and the temperature rise is much lower.

        Another issue is that between 250 K and 350 K, Cp rises by 13.1%; real scientists are now studying the physics from partial molar data so as to get at the basic data ignored by climate science.

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        Tristan

        I’ll let the slightly less ‘skeptical’ ‘skeptics’ deal with noose.

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      Robert

      Would that be the self proclaimed “experts” who continue to claim that one must be a specialist in climatology in order to understand it and make any sort of valid claims about it.

      The same self proclaimed “experts” who then state theirs is a multidisciplinary field as they issue statements to the press proclaiming how someone who is a specialist in a particular field (which happens to be one of those multidisciplinary fields that make up climatology) yet is skeptical doesn’t know what they are talking about because they aren’t a specialist like your vaunted climatologists claim to be?

      You know, the same crew you support who claim a statistician can’t understand climatology because they aren’t a climatologist even though the climatologist is basing their argument on statistics which that statistician understands far better than they do.

      Those sorts of “experts”?

      A consensus of self appointed experts is still a consensus of those who really don’t know but want everyone to think they do.

      In other words meaningless.

      And when the 97% is only 97% of the fractional percent that were actually asked that “consensus” means even less.

      Nice try though.

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        John Brookes

        Experts, hey. And these experts, they are, like, so unreasonable, they expect you to be, like, competent at stuff.

        They are so up themselves, they think they can tell if you understand, like, things. But I don’t have to know stuff, because its all a fraud created by rich climate scientists aiming to establish a world government. And I listen to Alan Jones, and he is so mad about this stuff, you should listen to him!

        Besides, they are having a freezing winter in Europe this year, so cold that everyone has forgotten about the Russian heatwaves. Those warmists are on the run now. We are closing in for the kill. This fraud will be exposed, and there will be a price to pay!

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          BobC

          Nice simulation of an idiot there, John. Not, however, representative of the many scientists and engineers (many on this blog) who are skeptical of the IPCC’s version of “science”.

          You can always tell when John has run out of meaningful things to say — he resorts to ridicule. Have you ever considered just not commenting?

          (At least, I hope it’s a simulation, for your sake.)

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          Otter

          Go back to {snip} 79-year-old men, brooksie. You’re better at it.

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          Eddy Aruda

          Thanks for taking your medicine John and it appears to be working!

          Speaking of experts, if only climate scientists are to be trusted because climate is their area of expertise then why are most of the individual’s on the highly vaunted list of 2,500 from the IPCC NOT CLIMATE SCIENTISTS? Why are so many of them not even scientists (e.g. Lawyers and Greenpeace members)?

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      bananabender

      In short: ‘A consensus, even from a field of experts, may be incorrect’. Absolutely! However it’s often the best source of knowledge we have and therefore consensuses of experts often guide decisions.

      A totally ridiculous argument.

      The vast majority of doctors and dietitians believe that saturated fat causes coronary heart disease. We spend billions of dollars a year on cholesterol lowering drugs. This is despite the fact that no quality human clinical trial has ever shown that either saturated fat or dietary cholesterol causes CHD.

      Just because most “experts” consider something to be a fact doesn’t make it so.

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        This is especially where the “experts” have a vested interest in maintaining their position. ‘Get Rich Quick’ or ‘Beat the Lottery’ schemes are of this kind. Like climatology, they often claim to perceive knowledge beyond the comprehension of the uninitiated.
        Similarly, the political process puts great store in image. Politicians have a vested interest in appearing to be highly influential and serving the public good. It is political suicide to say ‘hey, I messed up’, or ‘actually my opponent is more capable than I am.
        Scientific researchers do not do their job for the money – at least the ones in the UK. They are more motivated by changing the world, and getting funds to pursue the next research project, or climbing the academic ladder.
        I would propose that many genuine scientists are getting sucked into the whole status / funding scene, mixed in with the highly political nature of the subject. Any lay person who reads around the subject knows that John Cook’s claims are spurious, but does not know how to analyse this. One clue might help. Looking to a criminal case in law, if the prosecution’s case relied on the opinion of experts then the case would be dismissed as based on hearsay evidence. Even worse, if the prosecution’s case was based on ‘we cannot think of, or find evidence for, an alternative explanation‘, the accused may be able to later sue for malicious prosecution.

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      Markus Fitzhenry

      Tristan Says;

      “In short: ‘A consensus, even from a field of experts, may be incorrect’. Absolutely! However it’s often the best source of knowledge we have and therefore consensuses of experts often guide decisions.”

      Baa. Baa.

      Thank yoknowwho that fine gentlemen, like Christopher Monckton, still walk this Earth. Can you imagine being in Tristans’ utopia accepting gospel from men of lesser value.

      Christopher Monckton would never walk that line, it is minds like his that progress us. Simple little sheep flowing the ‘Mans’ line end up in a communistic intolerance. Although Christoper is not a specialist in Climate, his critical mind can see a fraud a mile away, and he stomps on them with great immediateness.

      He suffers no fools.

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      wes george

      Yet a consensus of experts is still a consensus of experts.

      Tristan why can’t you and Johnny learn your lessons? We have explained to you in the past the difference between Science and Politics. What bit don’t you understand?

      Science is never determined by consensus.

      I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

      Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.

      In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

      –Michael Crichton speaking at Caltech in 2003.

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        John Brookes

        Science is *always* determined by consensus. Because if you are right about something, but everyone else thinks you are wrong, your science won’t make the light of day. Its only by convincing people that your science will be accepted.

        Galileo was right, and we know so because over time more and more people became convinced that his explanation was best.

        Michael Crichton was, of course, a great scientist. I particularly liked his work on dinosaur cloning.

        (The man had TWO complete college degrees.Wrote best selling books.Created the Emmy award winning accurate medical based ER television show.Produced several successful movies.Won an Oscar.Won Emmys.Gives well attended speeches.Dinosaur cloning is being considered seriously by geneticists.Yeah he is barely qualified to speak about science in general) CTS

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          Hmm! John,
          our erstwhile moderator mentions TWO complete degrees after you slagged off on Michael Crichton, and you also disparagingly mentioned Julius Sumner Miller above.

          Professor Sumner Miller also had TWO complete degrees.
          A Bachelors Degree in Philosophy, and a Masters Degree in Physics.

          I guess Science for you is, er, in the eyes of the beholder, and your eyes seem to be looking down a straw.

          Tony.

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          Eddy Aruda

          Wow! Those meds sure wear off fast, don’t they John?

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          bananabender

          Dr Micheal Crichton MD was a graduate of the Harvard Medical School and worked as research scientist at the Jonas Salk Institute before becoming a writer.

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      Tristan

      You know, the same crew you support who claim a statistician can’t understand climatology because they aren’t a climatologist even though the climatologist is basing their argument on statistics which that statistician understands far better than they do.

      A) Citation?
      B) Plenty of time-series analysts on the side of climate science.

      A consensus of self appointed experts is still a consensus of those who really don’t know but want everyone to think they do.

      Self-appointed? When, where?

      And when the 97% is only 97% of the fractional percent that were actually asked that “consensus” means even less.

      Pretty easy to calculate the .95 confidence interval for 75 out of 77. It’s 90-99%, median 97.

      Nice try though.

      Thanks!

      This is despite the fact that no quality human clinical trial has ever shown that either saturated fat or dietary cholesterol causes CHD.

      Not my field but some quick perusing of the meta-research leaves me thinking this is likely to be a reasonable stance:

      A May 2011 extended feature in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association published an edited summary of a debate at the American Dietetic Association’s 93rd conference. Regarding saturated fat, the key point agreed upon by the panel and scientific community at large was that “Researchers agree that replacing saturated fat with healthy PUFAs is beneficial for health and [cardiovascular disease].” Recommendations for dieticians emphasized using mono- and poly-unsaturated fats whenever possible, avoiding trans fats, that while “The evidence against saturated fat may not be as strong as dietary guidelines have interpreted [it is clear] that PUFAs (especially) and MUFAs are healthy fats”, and that while there is room for saturated fats within the diet but “[they] should not be viewed as good for you”

      Just because most “experts” consider something to be a fact doesn’t make it so.

      As I said already, that is absolutely true, however it is also true that consensuses of experts are among our best sources of information for many topics.

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        Tel

        “Self-appointed? When, where?”

        Show me something else backing the climate establishment, not including other members of the same establishment. Or at least show me someone backing to climate establishment who doesn’t have a strong career incentive to do so. Degrees in “climate science” are a new invention. Give it 100 years and see what settles out. I’m not saying this is not worthy of study, but after 30 years they are suddenly the smartest bunch of people on Earth? Naaaa.

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          John Brookes

          Show me something else backing the climate establishment, not including other members of the same establishment. Or at least show me someone backing to climate establishment who doesn’t have a strong career incentive to do so.

          Well me, for example. And lots of people I know.

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            I hate to say it, but Tristan and John make absolute rational sense. There are forces out there beyond our control.

            If you absolutely can’t think for yourself then there is a certain logic in being a gullible serf to the mainstream. 😉

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        Tristan

        Show me something else backing the climate establishment, not including other members of the same establishment.

        Like what?

        Or at least show me someone backing to climate establishment who doesn’t have a strong career incentive to do so.

        The thing people don’t seem to grasp, is that you don’t do science for the $. Because there isn’t much $. All the academics I know could (or have already) ditch their academic positions and walk into a much more lucrative job. The reason people stay in science is because they want to practice science. The idea that they’re all in cahoots to keep their positions is nothing short of tinfoil quackery.

        but after 30 years they are suddenly the smartest bunch of people on Earth? Naaaa.

        Of course not, every field contains its mix of mediocrity and brilliance. Climate Science is no different.

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          BobC

          Once again Tristan, you are talking about things you have absolutely no knowledge of:

          Tristan
          February 6, 2012 at 11:20 pm · Reply

          The thing people don’t seem to grasp, is that you don’t do science for the $. Because there isn’t much $. All the academics I know could (or have already) ditch their academic positions and walk into a much more lucrative job. The reason people stay in science is because they want to practice science. The idea that they’re all in cahoots to keep their positions is nothing short of tinfoil quackery.

          Have you worked as an academic? Have you ever depended on soft (grant) money for your salery? I have, and everything you say in the above paragraph is bunk. Scientists who work on soft money have, as their first goal, getting more grants. Fail at that, and they are removed from the set. The availability of soft money for a specific cause selects for scientists who will do what it takes to receive it. Eisenhower understood this perfectly 50 years ago.

          There is a lot of money available for AGW research — as long as it reaches the right conclusions that is.

          What jobs are available for climate scientists with a track record of false predictions based on fudged data? There are lucrative positions available for scientists who are consistently correct about the climate, such as Piers Corbin, but he is mocked and attacked by the AGW crowd. (BTY: Piers thinks we are in for an ice age soon.)

          In fact, scientists who don’t know how to use Excel and have a poor grasp of math probably have no other options than academia.

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          Tel

          Well you didn’t actually answer my question, but you want to put forward the argument that there’s no money in the climate caper. Here’s just one example, of a half a million dollars of “stimulus” money, to be spent over three years:

          http://papundits.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/climategates-michael-mann-received-stimulus-funds-media-mum/

          Sure, some of that might go to new computers and perhaps a desk or two, but I’d guess the lion’s share goes in salaries, and anyhow whoever gets to choose where the money is spent suddenly becomes a very important person. When you go looking, you find an aweful lot of taxpayer money getting shunted into the green industry in the last few years, so your claim that monetary rewards are not available is not to be taken seriously.

          You also want to argue by dint of good character, which could equally well apply to Monkton, he seems a nice enough chappie. For that matter (so I’m told) the Koch brothers are remarkably generous people, which would speak well of their character I guess.

          But for a scientist to systematically dodge FOI requests, and encourage others to delete material, rather than allow independent scrutiny of their work, especially when this work is of public interest and paid for by the public purse does not meet my criteria for good character. You know who I’m talking about.

          All of this is beside the point, you want to argue by authority, then I’ll repeat the question: What authority does the climate establishment rest on besides it’s own?

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            Tel,
            you mention:

            ….but I’d guess the lion’s share goes in salaries….

            Speaking of salaries, I see that the UN has passed its Budget for this upcoming year.
            While they have shown some form of fiscal responsibility by trimming some of their costs, indicated by a slightly smaller overall bottom line for the initial appropriations for the 2012–2013 budget, at $5.15 billion, $263 million lower than the final expenditures for the 2010–2011, it seems that responsibility does not apply across the board.

            They have awarded themselves a 3% pay rise, across the board.

            Now, wait for this bit.

            As part of that fairly substantial budget, it seems most of it goes in paying themselves. It says at this link:

            …..74 cents out of every dollar the United Nations spends is related to personnel costs.

            Hmm! Maybe Kevin Rudd is being somewhat perspicacious in seeking out a position after his, er, job here is complete.

            Tony.

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          bananabender

          All the academics I know could (or have already) ditch their academic positions and walk into a much more lucrative job.

          You are hilarious. Most academics are considered totally unemployable by the private sector. They stay in academia because they are in a comfortable rut with no real option to escape.

          I have met exactly one science academic (an Associate Professor) who managed to gain a highly paid in the private sector. He only got the job because one of his mates recruited him. The career move turned out very poorly for both him and his employer.

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        BobC

        Tristan, you could at least pretend that you are following the same standards you demand of others:

        Tristan
        February 6, 2012 at 10:38 pm · Reply

        You know, the same crew you support who claim a statistician can’t understand climatology because they aren’t a climatologist even though the climatologist is basing their argument on statistics which that statistician understands far better than they do.

        A) Citation?

        Then, without a pause:

        B) Plenty of time-series analysts on the side of climate science.

        Uh… Citation?

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        Tristan

        B) Plenty of time-series analysts on the side of climate science.

        Uh… Citation?

        David J. Thomson
        Peter Guttorp
        Mark Berliner
        Richard L. Smith
        Leonard Smith
        Jürg Hüsler
        Sally Morton
        Murali Haran
        Grant Foster….

        I could go on but I won’t.

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          Robert

          Odd looking “citation” wouldn’t pass with any educator I’ve ever had. Looks more like a list. Perhaps a claim. Certainly not a citation.

          Can’t blame you for not going on.

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          Bob_FJ

          Triatan,
          Do you have any links? (clickable hyperlinks)

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      Tel

      “consensus of experts”“field of experts” … blah blah.

      You forgot to say, “self proclaimed experts”.

      Turtles, all the way down.

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    Catamon

    LOL, is Monkton doing something new at the moment, or is the OP post just recycled fanboi stuff??

    I’ll take that he did change the opinions of 9% of the audience on faith, but i’d think a disappointing qualification anyone would have to apply to that statement is that it was the NPC after all.

    Anyway, I would have thought by now attributing any sort of credibility to dah Monker would pretty much qualify as indefensible slavish stupidity.

    I really liked potholer 54’s series on the man, where he actually debunks and humiliates Monkas with….more Monkas!!

    And then, just to tie off any loose ends, Monkton responds (yay!). Which is really just sticking his head up for another kicking in two parts.

    Hilarious. Hmm…. and he has Gina’s ear. Sad reflection on the state of the credulous wealthy in Oz huh?

    (Why did TWO government climate panels cancel his testimony at the last minute after been invited by those same two panels? Rude no?)

    (Why does people like Al Gore and a few others duck debate challenges with the Viscount? But those same people would show their incredible bravery to attack his presentations from afar and allow no rebuttal opportunities.Such rare displays of raw courage I have not seen before) CTS

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      Mydogsgotnonose

      Monckton is an amateur racked by guilt by advising Thatcher to support Kyoto and the, since 1997, fake IPCC science.

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        Catamon

        Nah, he may have had spoken in her presence at some point but seems the man was never actually an adviser to Thatcher. Hmm……. wonder if she even knew his name??

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          Mydogsgotnonose

          Come off it, he was a policy advisor the Thtacher.

          His problem is that because he is not a scientist, he is pursuing the wrong target.

          I and others with 4 decades’ post PhD in international research have weighed into the various areas and my latest foray has established the root error: everything else is aimed at covering up this basic mistake – to assume most heat transport from the earth’s surface is IR radiation at the level in a vacuum, then to frig everything else to fit by making elemetarily wrong assumptions.

          The result is the artificially high feedbacks as the imaginary energy goes round and round. Only time will prove whether it was fraud from the very start or plain incompetence. What Monckton argues about, the CO2 climate sensitivity, is probably irrelevant because the IR physics is wrong: it’s very much smaller and could well be negative.

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            KinkyKeith

            MonChienN’apasUnNez

            You ask “Only time will prove whether it was fraud from the very start or plain incompetence”.

            The very obvious thing here that everyone has missed is not the papers put out by the original Warmer Group.

            The problem was obviously with the peer review.

            The failure by peers to discover errors and sloppy or deliberately deceptive work is an indictment of them.

            It is the duty of anyone doing peer review to refer any sticky points on to more expert hands.

            This was not done: deliberately.

            Corruption. Fraud.

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            bananabender

            I and others with 4 decades’ post PhD in international research have weighed into the various areas and my latest foray has established the root error: everything else is aimed at covering up this basic mistake – to assume most heat transport from the earth’s surface is IR radiation at the level in a vacuum, then to frig everything else to fit by making elemetarily wrong assumptions.

            Meteorologists discovered in the 1920s that almost all heat transfer in the atmosphere is due to the evaporation and condensation of water.

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          MadJak

          Catamon:

          Nah, he may have had spoken in her presence at some point but seems the man was never actually an adviser to Thatcher

          Provide your source please there catamon. I can’t be bothered exposing your third hand propoganda again.

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          Anonymous coward Catawho dearest, you have not put up one iota of logical referenced reasoning here against CM, just turned up to shout “No it isn’t true” – even though Monckton has debunked the obsessive potholer whose main achievement was in spending hours slicing and dicing CM’s talks from the last five years to produce out of context contradictions. No CM is no saint, but you can’t attack his main points, his core reasoning, so you whine about his CV.

          If Monckton did not advise Thatcher don’t you suppose the person who did, or the dozens who worked with her would have come forward by now to say that his claim is false? It must be a conspiracy eh? All those senior advisors and staffers paid by Exxon…

          Please lift your standards. If you can’t substantiate a definitive statement don’t post it. – Jo

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            catamon

            even though Monckton has debunked the obsessive potholer whose main achievement

            I love your humor sometimes! Answering as he did, and then having his answers pretty much shown up as fluff well, doesn’t really count as “debunking” as far as i’m concerned.

            [slicing and dicing CM’s talks from the last five years to produce out of context contradictions.]

            A lot of that work actually went to sources as well. Anyhow, you are a fan of the “Climategate Final Nail” theory aren’t you? I thought that for “skeptics” quoting out of context passages was considered good practice?

            And on Monktons Adviser status?? Well, i’ll concede that he may well consider himself to have been one, but unsurprisingly overstates his importance.

            http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/16/margaret-thatcher-the-world%E2%80%99s-first-climate-realist/

            The Prime Minister’s policy unit had just six members,
            and, as a mathematician who was about to make a goodish fortune
            turning an obscure and hitherto-unnoticed wrinkle in the principles
            of probabilistic combinatorics into a pair of world best-selling puzzles,
            I was the only one who knew any science.

            So, faute de mieux, it was I who – on the Prime Minister’s behalf –
            kept a weather eye on the official science advisors to the Government,
            from the Chief Scientific Advisor downward.

            http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/22/thatcher-climate-sceptic-monckton

            This revelation might be news to Lady Thatcher. On page 640 of her 1993 autobiography
            Margaret Thatcher: The Downing Street Years, the former prime minister describes how she
            grappled with the issue of climate change, referring only to “George Guise, who advised me
            on science in the policy unit”. Indeed, given Monckton’s purportedly crucial role, it
            seems to be heartless ingratitude from the Iron Lady that she does not find room to mention
            him anywhere in the 914-page volume on her years as prime minister

            .

            Damn that heartless woman who refuses to give dah Monkers his due place in history after being her secret squirrel who was keeping all the other bods honest!!

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        The Black Adder

        The Lord is no amateur, my friend with a nose up somewhere!
        Give me the Lord before any ALP GOVT. Minister….

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          Catamon

          Hallelujah BA! Gimme that ole time skepticism!!

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          Tristan

          Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven program, or any model of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD Monckton thy Viscount am a jealous Viscount, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third (2001) and fourth (2007) reports of them that hate me;

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    lmwd

    Ah the wonderful Bob Carter on consensus…

    The Australian government and its climate-alarmist supporters are now trapped deep inside a blind alley with walls that are labelled “scientific consensus” and “public consensus”. These have always been political siren calls, but the first is a nonsense by definition, and, in that fickle fashion that public opinion often exhibits, the public consensus dramatically reversed its direction during 2009-2010, partly because of the Climategate affair and the attendant loss of IPCC’s virginity.

    http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2012/02/climate-review-i

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      Speedy

      I’m reading Rob’s “Counter Consensus for the second time”. It keeps getting better – the man is a genius or a saint or both!

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    Sonny

    “Indefensible slavish stupidity.”
    Ask Phil Jones to produce a plot in excel.

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    theRealUniverse

    No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs No GHGs
    NEXT….

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      Otter

      I was going to ask if there was a logical progression there, but we’re talking about AGW, so……. 😉

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    I just love it how some people think running N different models M times for X years ahead somehow has a baring on how accurate and significant the ‘sum’ of the whole will be. A sort of American bombing technique with every one having a different map!.. Maybe they are trying to tap into the wisdom of the crowds effect – by substituting people with models.. Reality follows its own view of reality, not the models.

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    Markus Fitzhenry

    I made a mistake once, and put Nitric acid into machine oil. That was alchemy. Started spitting the alphabet all over the place.

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    Tel

    Cook: “Where Monckton gets this claim that the Australian government’s central climate sensitivity estimate to doubled CO2 is 5.1 C° is a complete mystery.
    Reply: The “mystery” could and should have been cleared up by Mr. Cook simply asking me. The estimate is that of Professor Ross Garnaut, the Australian Government’s economic adviser on climate questions. It is on that figure that his economic analysis – accepted by the Australian Government – centres.

    If you want to check this one, read:

    http://www.garnautreview.org.au/ca25734e0016a131/webobj/garnautclimatechangereviewinterimreport-feb08/%24file/garnaut%20climate%20change%20review%20interim%20report%20-%20feb%2008.pdf

    Note that on page 23 is a table showing that under the “A1FI scenario” which is the “business as usual” scenario, and probably at this stage the most likely emission scenario to be expected, the total warming is predicted to be somewhere from just under 5 degrees C to just over 5 degrees C, by the year 2100.

    However on page 13, under the topic Climate Sensitivity the report clearly states:

    In the Fourth Assessment Report (2007), the IPCC estimates that it is likely that climate sensitivity is between 2°C and 4.5°C. It is considered very unlikely that climate sensitivity will be less than 1.5°C. Values substantially higher than 4.5° – including as high as 10ºC – cannot be excluded. The best estimate of the IPCC is about 3°C (IPCC 2007a).

    Thus, somewhere confusion between sensitivity and total warming has crept into the picture. From this distance it looks like Monkton’s confusion, but quite possibly Cook changed the topic sometime earlier and I guess I’m too lazy to follow the entire debate. Someone deeply interested really should get to be bottom on this.

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      John Brookes

      You can, of course, have a climate sensitivity of 3 degrees and a temperature rise of 5 degrees if the concentration of CO2 more than doubles.

      For myself, I still think sensitivity is ~2 degrees.

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    Joe's World

    Jo,

    This debate will NEVER happen.
    AL Gore knows his money is to stay away from anyone that could discredit his reputation to generate the wads of money.
    By keeping his followers in the dark, they still pass the cash.

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    memoryvault

    Tristan, Catamon, JB etc @ various:

    Meanwhile, it continues to get colder, and now people are starting to freeze to death in significant numbers.

    Your Plan B please?

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      John Brookes

      Well, mv, we know for sure that burning lots of coal won’t warm the climate!

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        AndyG55

        Congratulations.. you are finally learning !!!

        Does warm the house in winter though.. 🙂

        (Europe could use a goodly dose at the moment.)

        Burning coal is GOOD ! Releases lots of luvly BENEFICIAL CO2 that has been buried for way too long.

        The Plants are luving it.. Gaia APPROVES !!!

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      John Brookes

      And mv, I don’t get it, but if you look at the satellite temperatures, the temperature of the world has gone up for the last few days, not down. How could that be? You need to choose ch05, as the lower one (ch04) is no longer working.

      Could it be that Europe is not the whole world?

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        And mv, I don’t get it, but if you look at the satellite temperatures, the temperature of the world has gone up for the last few days, not down. How could that be?

        The world JB? If channell 5 (lower atmosphere) has warmed, then it is more than likely that the higher altitudes have cooled.
        Try the channels at above 10km and let us know if they have warmed or cooled.

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        BobC

        John Brookes
        February 6, 2012 at 11:40 pm · .

        Could it be that Europe is not the whole world?

        Yep — there’s also China, Japan, Mexico, and even Colorado

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      • #

        But it wasn’t cold in 2007…

        Oh yeah, I forgot. The warmists don’t actually have anything other than an affected short-term memory. And NOTHING or NOBODY will ever disprove their little religion with contrarian evidence.

        Catamon, why don’t you come back when you are able to demonstrate the ability to think for yourself.

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          Catamon

          Thankyou Waffy, but i’ll come back any time i feel like it petal.

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          Catamon

          Actually Waffy dear, are you the expect that when the sea ice is minimal it will affect the weather in the same way every year regardless of any other factors??

          Hmm……Lordy Lordy, to much kool aid methinketh.

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          BobC

          Congratulations Waffle, on stumping Catamon.

          Catty gets catty when he has nothing else to say:

          Actually Waffy dear, are you the expect[sic]…

          His spelling also deteriorates, indicating haste and possibly anger.

          He hopes he is being irritating, not realizing that he is really the blog clown.

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        Yeah look, there is no ice at the north pole, just some purple water.

        Anyone who believes the afterthought that lack of sea ice at the pole causes europe to freeze is a gullible fool who wants to believe so long as it fits the narrative.

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          Catamon

          ok Baa, explain why you think that there is no connection between a lack of sea ice in the Arctic and Europe’s current cold snap.

          remember, science, not pathetically indefensible slavish stupidity and ad homs is the order of the day at this place?

          Or was the above simply a “religious” style defensive knee jerk?

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            Now cat, I’m sure you’ll agree that the onus of explanations reside with those who make claims (and those who accept the claims)

            Therefore, if you’d be kind enough to explain the machinations of open water at the poles causing cold snaps in Europe, I’d be happy to respond.
            Who knows, maybe your explanation will convince me that the claim is valid, in which case we can then move on to debating the “pretty picture” and the “pretty graph”.

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          Catamon

          Maybe try something other than the pretty color pictures Ba??

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            Fair enough, point taken and well made Cat, good on you.

            Unfortunately it brings up a secondary problem for you.
            the graph at your link shows sea ice extent at low levels. levels very similar to 2007.

            How then do we explain the following……?

            Freak winter is Europe’s warmest for 700 years

            Last autumn-winter season was Europe’s warmest for more than 700 years, researchers say.

            The last time Europeans saw similar temperatures to the autumn and winter of 2006-07, they were eating strawberries at Christmas in 1289, according to Jürg Luterbacher at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and colleagues.

            Separately, the temperatures experienced during autumn 2006 and winter 2007 are likely to have been the warmest in 500 years, they say. But the sequential combination of two such warm seasons is a still rarer event – probably the first since 1289.

            http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12098-freak-winter-is-europes-warmest-for-700-years.html

            Though awkward, I don’t discount the possibility that there is an explanation as to why open water at the pole one year results in record warmth, then in another year record cold.

            Waiting in anticipation.

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            Catamon

            You see BA, i’m not actually asserting anything. I found the article an interesting possibility. These kind of connections may or may not be real and i for one think its good that people who know a bit of climatology and meteorology seem to be asking the questions.

            However, the kind of abusive kneejerk reactions even putting such a possibility up for discussion draws here are interesting and informative.

            Oh Mydogsgotnonose, if you look at the graph i linked to, they are plotting for areas of ocean >15% sea ice, whereas your link they plot ice concentration >30%. May not be directly comparable.

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            @catamon

            You see BA, i’m not actually asserting anything. I found the article an interesting possibility.

            OK fairnuff. I suggest when you provide a link, you accompany it with a few words, else we think you have read and understood the gist of the link and are prepared to discuss it.

            To date then, we’d have to assume that there is no connection between sea ice (or lack thereof) and European winter weather due to the contradictory winters of 2006-7 and 2011-12.

            Nice chatting with you

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            KinkyKeith

            Hi BaaH,

            Only a warmer would talk about a “lack” of or “excess” sea ice as indicative of anything much when we know that moisture evap from the equator and deposition at the poles is a major player in the system.

            It may seem paradoxical to a warmer that cold weather at the poles can reduce free ice by reducing creep of the ice mass towards break-off point.

            Large areas of open water may be indicative of “Cold” poles.

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    Paul D

    Re: Jo Nova and open debate – isn’t this what happens in a parliament? And you reckon good science comes from such discussions? Science isn’t about picking sides. The problem with political ideology and politics in general is that such groups are constructs of the human imagination. Left wing and right wing politics does not exist outside human existence, the LAWS of science do. So forgive me for saying that Monckton isn’t interested in science, and that open debate as perceived by Monckton may look good, but it produces no worthwhile science.

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      Paul, let me see if I’ve got this straight: Politicians do debates, and they don’t produce much scientific understanding, therefore debates don’t work for science. Hmmm.
      Then, big leap here, you’re a gifted psychic who knows what Monckton is “interested in”, even if Monckton says, and behaves consistently in the opposite way. Congratulations. You might have to explain your reasoning a bit further if you want to convince me.

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      Llew Jones

      Notice Jo has picked you up but you are doing precisely what you decry. Namely playing politics.

      Interesting that the Laws of Science exist outside the human mind? Where exactly? Unless of course you are a creationist.

      It goes like this in order of increasing certainty. Hypothesis – Theory – Laws. The fuller understanding of climate science is still at the hypothesis level and some of the evidence is suggesting that CAGW is a flawed and thus failed hypothesis.

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    Paul D

    Jo in the first place your article (like Monckton) is addressed to the wrong person. The author is not John Cook. If Monckton is incapable of getting this correct (he has a history of getting authors wrong as well as their sex). Do you honestly believe he is capable of getting anything else correct?

    Secondly discussions and debates have a limited capacity in any type of work. Or are you one of these people that sit in meetings all day? Personally I don’t have time for people that have no real skills other than being a ‘people’ person. Debates do not largely result in anything useful when it comes to developing a product, or developing mathematical representations of the world around us. Discussion with fellow peers does, whether they agree or not. Monckton is not a fellow peer, not in a science sense, nor in the UK parliamentary sense!

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      wes george

      Paul,

      What you are saying is the debate is over, because you can’t win it.

      If the Warmists could win debates on the strength of their argument does anyone doubt they wouldn’t be great supporters of rational and open public debate?

      The science is settled because they can’t prove it.

      If the warmest could show AGW was a useful scientific theory does anyone doubt they wouldn’t be great champions of Scientific transparency and reproducibility?

      Instead we get the Con Man argument…Trust Us!… combined with a deeply unethical view of how science is conducted, “why should we show you our evidence since you’ll just try to prove us wrong?”

      Monckton is not a fellow peer, not in a science sense, nor in the UK parliamentary sense!

      Desperate people in denial of empirical evidence and lacking any rational argument may choose to attack the man.

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    Tristan

    There are lucrative positions available for scientists who are consistently correct about the climate, such as Piers Corbin, but he is mocked and attacked by the AGW crowd. (BTY: Piers thinks we are in for an ice age soon.)

    If that is Piers prediction, he’ll soon be out of work.

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      Mydogsgotnonose

      He doesn’t think we’re in for an ice age, just a Dalton [30 years] or Maunder Minimum [70 years] cold spell.

      Both he and I, who studied together, think the IPCC consensus is totally dumb pseudo-science with no predictive capability and that CO2-AGW is near zero.

      His view is that it’s because transpiration exactly compensates. My view is that the dumb climate scientists have completely cocked up the IR physics, as well as the rest. The GCMs are fine though, just filled with fake physics for political reasons. Can’t have that can we?

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      Tristan

      Hopefully we do get a dalton/maunder min. It’ll take a couple tenths out of the warming.

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        Mydogsgotnonose

        The problem climate science faces is that its assumption of 100% direct thermalisation is plain wrong; thermalisation is mainly by cloud droplets and this ensures main CO2 climate sensitivity is much lower than claimed.

        Furthermore, because of self absorption near IR band saturation [it reduces the emissivity and absorptivity of the atmosphere facing the Earth’s surface], the scattering is taking place at greater height.

        This and the 4 other scientific mistakes means that none of the climate models can predict climate.

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      Eddy Aruda

      If that is Piers prediction, he’ll soon be out of work.

      Why don’t you compare Piers Corbyn’s forecasts to the Met office’s and get back to us with the results?

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    Peter Miller

    Jo

    You really do need to make a tedious pretentious bore cache in your comment section.

    Unlike alarmist sites, you should not censor the comments of the tedious pretentious bores, just place them in a cache, possibly just above the ‘Leave a Reply’ section, so everyone knows where they are and can easily avoid reading them.

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    Markus Fitzhenry

    And we cry, we cry loud and strong;

    Come writers and critics
    Who prophesize with your pen
    And keep your eyes wide
    The chance won’t come again
    And don’t speak too soon
    For the wheel’s still in spin
    And there’s no tellin’ who
    That it’s namin’.
    For the loser now
    Will be later to win
    For the times they are a-changin’.

    The line it is drawn
    The curse it is cast
    The slow one now
    Will later be fast
    As the present now
    Will later be past
    The order is
    Rapidly fadin’.
    And the first one now
    Will later be last
    For the times they are a-changin’.

    A true critic, is the good Lord Christopher Monckton of Beachley.

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      Joe V.

      Yeah, Delingpole gets a Double Page spread in Saturday ‘s Daily Mail. That’s Mainstream Media going further than it ever has before. It seemed curious reading all these familiar ideas in a mainstream paper though. A sign that the climate for enduring this green nonsense really is achanging.’

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    I see Bob Carter has an article published in the Australian, on line today. Could be behind a paywall.

    Something that I have not seen mentioned in all this debate, I use the term very loosely.

    What are the effects of the gradual depletion of the aquifers by the practice of irrigation and the like?

    Would there be any effect on the hydrologic cycle (increase in water vapour?) which in turn have any influence on climate?

    Would it have any influence on sea levels?

    Some feedback would be appreciated.

    I know this is relatively off topic but this thread has descended into an ad hom cat fight.

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    For the AGW crowd, verbal debates are a mistake. Especially as they can’t reason and don’t have robust evidence. Like all losers they blame their loss on other causes. Here they claim that Monckton lies, with no proof. More warmist exposure would have meant that even more of the audience would have been converted. Open scientific debate is the only way the truth gets tested. This is not the AGW way.

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    NetDr

    The CAGW crowd always loses in open debates.

    That is why they refuse to debate and use Lysenkoistic attacks to demonize skeptics.

    Anyone that disagrees with them is a tool of the capitalists!

    Sound familiar ?

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    pat

    these are the books being cooked, and singling out China is as dishonest as the rest of the reporting on CAGW:

    6 Feb: Financial Times: China creates turbulence over EU aviation levies
    By Joshua Chaffin in Brussels
    Additional reporting by Jeremy Lemer in Washington
    China’s decision to bar its airlines from the European Union’s carbon market represents the first turbulence since the aviation industry was forced to fly under the scheme a little more than a month ago.
    But it may signal much choppier conditions to come – both for airlines and the governments facing off against the EU over a policy that is the centrepiece of the bloc’s effort to fight global warming…
    Mr Tyler (Tony Tyler, director-general of the International Air Transport Association) warned that European carriers, in particular, could face retribution from foreign states, which do not believe the EU should levy taxes on their airlines – particularly when they are operating outside EU airspace.
    The extent of their response could become clear on February 21, when more than 20 governments, including the US, India and China, are set to meet in Moscow to discuss their discontent with the EU policy. The issue of retaliation is on the agenda…

    ***One thing European officials say they will not barter is their stature as the world’s leader in the fight against global warming. The carbon market, which forces companies to pay for their annual carbon emissions, is the main lever the bloc is relying on to deliver its goal of reducing emissions by 20 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020 – and possibly much further by mid-century…

    “The European Commission believes there’s a lot of bluffing going on,” Mr Tyler said. “Time will tell.”
    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e158dca8-50e4-11e1-8cdb-00144feabdc0.html

    6 Feb: NYT: James Kanter: E.U. Rebuffs China’s Challenge to Airline Emission System
    Much is at stake for Europe, which has sought to improve its international stature by spearheading initiatives on climate protection, including folding aviation into the Union’s six-year-old Emissions Trading System, in which polluters can buy and sell a limited quantity of permits, each representing a ton of carbon dioxide…
    “The savviest airlines are figuring out that it makes sense to participate,” said Annie Petsonk, the international counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental organization that favors carbon trading as a means to reduce emissions…
    The bigger worry for airlines is that they are looking at the thin end of an enormous wedge. The sums charged by the Europeans for permits could grow substantially in coming years if governments decide to auction a larger proportion of permits and if demand for the permits rises…
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/business/global/eu-rebuffs-chinas-challenge-to-pollution-plan.html

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    pat

    cooking the books?

    7 Feb: Courier Mail: Two senior Queensland dam engineers step down
    ONE of two Wivehoe dam engineers who have stepped aside is the lead author of a report branded a fiction at Queensland’s flood inquiry.
    John Tibaldi fronted the inquiry last week to defend the final report he penned for SEQWater about the operation of the dam before Brisbane and Ipswich flooded last year…
    The other engineer to step aside is Terry Malone, who finished giving his evidence to the inquiry on Sunday…
    She (Natural Resources Minister Rachel Nolan) said it was not correct to say the men had quit.
    “Making themselves unavailable is a fairer description,” she told AAP…
    http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/two-senior-queensland-dam-engineers-step-down/story-e6freoof-1226264365423

    when will Flannery be called to account?

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    Streetcred

    http://notrickszone.com/2012/02/06/body-blow-to-german-global-warming-movement-major-media-outlets-unload-on-co2-lies/
    Body Blow To German Global Warming Movement! Major Media Outlets Unload On “CO2 Lies!

    This is huge. More than I ever could have possibly imagined. And more is coming in the days ahead! The Bild piece was just the first of a series.

    Mark this as the date that Germany’s global warming movement took a massive body blow.

    Today, not one, but two of Germany’s most widely read news media published comprehensive skeptical climate science articles in their print and online editions, coinciding with the release of a major climate skeptical book, Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun).

    Germany has now plunged into raucus discord on the heated topic of climate change.

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    pat

    LOL: u can’t make this up.

    6 Feb: ABC: Jo Prendergast: Scientists say WA reef growth unsustainable
    New research has found some coral reefs in the Indian Ocean are growing at an unsustainable rate due to warming water temperatures.
    The Australian Institute of Marine Science says the most southerly reefs on the West Australian coast, have increased their growth rates by up to 23 per cent.
    Principal research scientist, Janice Lough, says that’s not sustainable.
    “Corals are already responding rapidly to the environmental changes that we’re imposing upon them…
    “There will be a threshold beyond which the corals are not happy with and they’ll just slow their growth down.”
    http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201202/s3423899.htm

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    Markus Fitzhenry.

    When will Flannery be called to account? You asked.

    “””?from: markus fitzhenry markusfitzhenry@gmail.com
    to: pfitzsimons@smh.com.au
    date: Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 3:53 PM
    subject: It’s Time
    mailed-by: gmail.com

    Hi Peter,

    Read not only the linked threat at Judith’s Currys blog, but also the 6 or so threads before it. I am a serious person Peter, I am going to be as conciliatory as I can, but I do have a freight train stacked.

    I do need you to speak sensibly to Tim, I do need to see some sign of reason very soon. My train will leave the station with very destructive capabilities, for those who have be propitiating the non science of AGW.

    I have embrued myself with the international elite of climate science and have scientific support lines. Check David Evans’ expose, on the Jo Nova site. It is time for Tim to act urgently, Peter, don’t make me force his hand. If I have to do that, he will be removed from his posts. Is that clear?”””

    8 days ago I asked his five eight, Peter Fitzsimmons, to tell Tim to be sensible. The very next day the idiots did this.

    tp://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/climate-change-a-fundamental-health-risk/story-fn7x8me2-1226257929702

    Warmest, carry no favor with me, OK?

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      Oh FITZHENRY…yes you! You inferred up the page that I’m a warmest (warmist) and I take issue with you here and now.

      Pulls out trumpet…this so called, cough, cough, ‘warmist’ has addressed a No Carbon Tax rally, followed trucks and others on a road trip to Canberra, has put his career on hold (going broke) to fight on the front line against the tax and will not relent until the whole scam is finished and the perpetrators are put before the courts to cleanse the noble profession of science.

      This ‘warmist’ has in this time met people and made close contacts with Senators, MP’s, scientists, people of note and has become a member of organisations that are fighting the good fight.

      A rather big trumpet blow, if I say so myself. When it is all over this warmist will pick up the broken pieces of his life and fade back into the background and few will ever know of his name.

      An apology is in order for the slur. Another thing…tone your posts down. It’s not a good look!

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        Markus Fitzhenry.

        This is the reality of it scaper, whilst your comments remain anonymous, I really don’t care what you think.

        “”This ‘warmist’ has in this time met people and made close contacts with Senators, MP’s, scientists, people of note and has become a member of organisations that are fighting the good fight.”” A rather big trumpet blow, if I say so myself.”

        http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/greenhouse-gases-cool-planets-volcanos-warm-them/

        A rather big trumpet blow, if I say so myself.

        And you are right, my comments scream out for those who can’t, and frankly, I don’t care how it looks. Now lets get out of the ring and continue the good fight together. 🙂

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    John Brookes

    Monckton:

    I have now had the data anonymized and reviewed by a statistician, who has confirmed that the technique is unacceptable. In the circumstances, the refusal of the two senior IPCC figures to correct the error constitutes fraud and, when the statistician has been shown the context of the data that he saw in an anonymized form, the police authorities in the relevant nations will be notified and prosecution sought.

    A statistician said so – argument by authority? What was his/her name, this anonymous statistician? Not William Briggs, was it, or Wegman?

    Now I’m not saying that the technique used was statistically sound. But if its not statistically sound then you should be able to generate a random data set that does not have that underlying pattern and get the same results. That shouldn’t be so hard, and would be rather more compelling than an appeal to an unnamed statistician.

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      catamon

      But isn’t Monkton the world greatest mathematician anyway? What does he need to appeal to an un-named statistician for??

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        Eddy Aruda

        What does he need to appeal to an un-named statistician for??

        Because unlike you he has class and humility and had someone else double check his math. Too bad “hockey stick” Mann and “one tree” Briffa didn’t do the same. They could have avoided a lot of embarrassment!

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          catamon

          he has class and humility

          Oh come on! Humility?? In what parallel universe Eddy??

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          Tel

          Be fair now Eddy, at least Briffa took the trouble to express his doubts in email to his colleagues. I think he also wrote an email to Nature which he was bullied for. He did try to get the message out.

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    Streetcred

    Germany’s Green Energy Supply Transformation Has Already Failed!
    http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/news-cache/germanys-green-energy-supply-transformation-has-already-failed/

    Energy expert Dr. Guenter Keil has closely examined Germany’s energy policy of shifting away from nuclear and fossil fuels and over to renewables. What he finds is a bleak picture. Years ago Germany ambitiously embarked on transforming its energy supply system, and hopes to supply at least 80% of its energy needs through renewable energies by 2050, and thus become a moral leader on environmental responsibility for the rest of the world.

    Dr. Guenter Keil’s report focusses in detail on the amazing absurdities of Germany’s Renewable Energy Feed-In Act and the country’s utopian Energy Transformation. The government, through intrusive meddling and ballooning bureaucracy, has maneuvered Germany’s energy supply system into a vicious death spiral: the more the government intervenes, the greater the mess becomes. And the greater the mess becomes, the more the government intervenes! Dr. Keil concludes:

    “Germany’s energy transformation has already failed. For Germans, the outlook is bleak. …the planned mismanagement is heavily damaging the economy and will fail spectacularly some years later because its economic and social costs will have become unbearable. The question remaining open is how many billions of euros will have to be destroyed before a new energy policy (a new energy transformation?) picks up the shattered pieces.”

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    MadJak

    O/T,

    It looks like there may have been some political interference with Wivenhoe dam after all. Oh Dear, Anna, what have thee done?

    Maybe a bit apprehensive about releasing water from the dam due to the predictions of the never ending drought being spruiked by some opportunists maybe?

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      What has received very little talk in all of this is the actual value of the water behind all those dams in SEQ.

      The Queensland Government introduced ever more draconian restrictions upon water consumption as Wivenhoe got down to 17%, every couple of months releasing new and stricter restrictions.

      At the same time, they kept bumping up the price of water to all consumers.

      Then, when the water grid was proposed, at the same time they introduced new scales for the sale of that water, incrementally introduced over a six year period, with the end result being that water was four to five times and more costly, considerably more expensive than it was originally.

      At no stage did they ease restrictions as Wivenhoe filled back up, as it had done on two previous occasions.

      What needs to be remembered here is that on the Friday prior to the actual major rain event beginning, both Wivenhoe, and Somerset (which flows directly into Wivenhoe) were both around 107% of capacity. Regulations state that once beyond 100%, both dams have to drawn back down to 100%. By the Monday morning, still prior to the major dump, Wivenhoe was at 148%, and Somerset at 155%. From there for the next 4 days both were up around 180%+.

      What happened on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday is the crucial thing.

      Now, back to the costs.

      With Wivenhoe at 100%, the value of that water to the State of Queensland is $2.6 Billion, and the holdings behind all dams on that SEQ grid are $5.2 Billion, at that rate of $2.75 per KiloLitre.

      Now perhaps you can see how money may have influenced reasons as to why the dam was kept so full.

      Details are at the following link, and admitted it’s a Post of my own, and it is quite long, but it needed to have all the information in the one place. There are two earlier Posts in that 3 Part series, both linked to in that third Post, and as you read it (if any of you do) note the date at the top, barely a week after the flood itself.

      Wivenhoe Dam Levels – The Critical Days

      Tony.

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    Hasbeen

    Well it would appear that the Brisbane floods enquiry is showing it’s not only warmist “scientists” among public employees, that cook the books.

    Wonder if government institutions run courses in doing it. If so, they need to add a unit on not getting caught. This lot nearly got away with it, & would have if the MSM had not got involved.

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    Ross James

    Just a Belief that global warming is occurring is a mistake on nearly every level.

    Primarily because beliefs are wind driven. Anti-warmists beliefs have a tendency to a political idealisation coupled to conspiracies. They are found in conservative rank and file – not just political. They are just plain and simple conservative. Pro AGW believers tend to want change and think revolutionary thought – we can change this. From a psychological point of view at least the two extremes can fall into belief patterning. Tribe mentality develops and all out war is declared. These are most likely remnants of our evolutionary process. Could it be also just human nature wanting to chant and throw spears at each other?

    Doubt strings are pulled or argument pushed to emotion is an art form of propaganda by “clever” men and if I may “clever” women. This is used at all levels to win an argument. We tug the issue both ways – all we care about is combining an argument from authority / figurehead. Throw in wild bouts of Dunning Kruger syndrome and we have a volatile mix whereby emotions and beliefs are set on fire.

    There are those who think they can overturn or negate over 120 years of science and physics within climate science. And yes the tribal mentality will allow it if they are on your side of the belief – no matter how wild a theory of personal belief is espoused or alternatives to the science. Faux and even facts can be misrepresented through spinning the context.

    We simply can not and should not rely on belief as a driver of our understanding. We need to rely on what science can reasonably show us when facts are represented in relevant context.

    People need to understand, at the very least, that global warming is not about belief, it is simply about physics and math examined with observations and the resulting evidence lines that show substantially and with high confidence that of the many human factors involved in climate change increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is a primary and a significant factor.

    It is not environmentalism. It is not politics. It is not pseudo science.

    Without that understanding meaningful policy achievement is less possible for we of the tribe are on the war path. ….

    And as long we fight each like this – we cannot improve our lot and others lot in life in any shape or form. It would be that trust lies in a tribe rather then understanding that good men and women of high standing do sometimes want the greater good for everyone if they perceive danger ahead by what they understand by the evidence.

    That then should be your basis for debate – anything else and we as may well be apes on the hills beating our chests to the wind.

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      Eddy Aruda

      Thanks for your usual idiotic comment, Ross. I am having trouble falling asleep so I will print it out and read it!

      I always sleep well after commenting knowing that the titans on this site have my back. Some of the most brilliant people I have ever encountered post here regularly. I would list them by name but that would be more difficult than accepting an academy award and being able to thank everyone who made it possible in a reasonable amount of time!

      I am still in Texas so I guess I will end by saying, “good night, y’all”!

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      memoryvault

      Nice bit of re-worked cut and paste, John.

      http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/summary-docs/leading-edge/2011/sep-the-leading-edge

      Scroll down to the heading “OSS Analysis of IPSOS Poll”.

      Obviously, like all climastrology cultists, you are completely incapable of original thought.
      Would that be an example of the “tribal mentality” you write about, Ross?

      Oh, and by the way, original or not, it’s STILL complete crap, on so many levels it’s not even worth the effort of rebutting.

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      MaxL

      Ross James you are a plagiarist!

      If I were Jo or a moderator I would refuse any further comments from you until you apologize for your blatant plagiarism.
      I for one will refer to you as Ross (plagiarist) James until you own up.

      In any university that would get you expelled.
      You do not deserve the privilege of commenting on this site.

      (Thanks MV for showing us what a fraud he is.)

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    Paul

    Monkton is a hoax. He is simply cherry picking data, misrepresenting data and verbaling people. There are legitimate arguments against the theory of climate change, but not from that guy. He has been proven wrong and wrong again and he is willing to lie to achieve a political outcome.

    The science is what it is, not a socialist conspiracy or whatever else you think, it’s just the scientific method we have used since Aristotle.

    Start here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfA1LpiYk2o

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    Wow after a lot of babbling,hand waving and ad homonyms by the resident AGW believers.There is absolutely no credible counterpoint to the Viscount’s response to John Cooks silly blog post.

    It is a sure sign that they KNOW they can not do so because the Viscount has made a good expose of John Cook’s dishonest and inept presentation.

    I have been seeing this behavior on the warmists part all over the net these days.At one forum a rather obnoxious AGW believer has been silent since December 16 of last year.After he had posted the feeble Tamino post about The Real Global Warming Signal

    I did my part on the second PAGE

    Buzz has been quiet ever since my replies were posted.

    I wonder if he is slinking away like Matrix did over 2 1/2 years ago.When I gave him a beating and made a complete fool of him.He stopped that day and nothing since August 2008.

    My big post in reply. 29

    46

    Matrix’s first big reply

    My reply

    His dead on arrival reply

    Enjoy the last page especially post #104

    Buzz is the last determined AGW supporter in that forum.Maybe he is seeing the light?

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      Ross James

      Don’t be too quick on that one. The article and argument are very old and completely outdated.

      I have plenty of references, videos, charts, Power point refutations to link. But would Jo Nova publish them in fairness? Do you really think refutations is going amount to hill of beans around this “TRIBE” mentality here?

      ——————-

      REPLY: Ross, don’t waste my time by asking permission for something which has been done 1000 times on this blog. If you have the evidence, post it, but start with your single most important point, and without the condescending assumptions. Many of us here once thought CO2 was a problem, until we saw better evidence. Jo]

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    Truthseeker

    The value that Lord Monckton adds to the overall debate is his excellent ability to take the assumptions and calculations of the IPCC and show by clear and consise logic how they cannot arrive at the IPCC stated conclusions which justify destructive economic actions. The IPCC and alarmists are trying to push a political agenda for reasons of power, money and ideology. Lord Monckton exposes this in the areas that he has experience and expertise in which are the political process and mathematics.

    What Lord Monckton isn’t is a physicist and this shows in his perpetuation of the greenhouse gas myth. However the context of what he is saying is that he is refuting the IPCC position using the IPCC data and premise. In that context there has been no credible refutation of what he says. I do not use Lord Monckton as a source to describe how the physical climate works, but he is a good source on what is wrong in the political climate world.

    It is all about context and what is said must be evaluated with that in mind.

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    KinkyKeith

    That is the point Truthseeker.

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    Ross James

    To show the discord between what you are told by speech and what the real scientific community really wants to say to everyone about the science

    Monckton Assertion 1: High CO2 levels co-existed with equatorial glaciers, disproving the efficacy of warming from high CO2 levels.

    Scientists Dr. Lee Kump, Dr. Jeffrey Kiehl refute this assertion soundly.

    Monckton Assertion 2: Corals came into being during eras of high CO2, therefore high CO2 is not damaging.

    “…both of Monckton’s arguments are flawed.” – Dr. Jeffrey Kiehl
    “It is not possible for me to make any sense of Mr. Monckton’s assertions …Dr. Lee Kump

    Monckton Assertion 3: A high CO2 concentration is beneficial.

    Refuted by Dr. Ken Caldeira, Dr. Lee Kump
    Asserted statements like 40% INCORRECT and exaggerated………..Dr. Peter Reich
    extremely superficial.” – Dr. Michael MacCracken

    Monckton Assertion 4: If ocean acidification is occurring, it is not due to increasing CO2.

    largely irrelevant.” – Dr. Ken Caldeira
    anything else cannot be found Dr. Pieter Tans
    unavoidable – Dr. Nancy Knowlton
    profoundly wrong.” – Dr. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg

    Monckton Assertion 5: Global temperatures have varied due to natural causes in the past and there is nothing unusual about the recent rise.

    rests on the supposedly unprecedented current temperatures is simply false.” – Dr. Gavin Schmidt
    greenhouse gases exceed by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years – Dr. James Hurrell

    Monckton Assertion 6: The Earth is now cooling and the previous decades of warming have stopped.

    Global warming on decadal time scales is continuing – Dr. James Hansen and Dr. Reto Ruedy
    slight cooling over the last 7 years is meaningless – Dr. David Easterling
    failed to mention the role of natural variability.” – Dr. James Hurrell

    Monckton Assertion 7: Recent decades of warming were due to global brightening, not CO2.

    inconsistent with the changes that we would expect to occur due to natural variability alone.” – Dr. Benjamin Santer
    Monckton’s conclusions cannot be supported by climate physics, nor is it supported by more accurate versions of the data he used.” – Dr. Bruce Wielicki
    Pinker et al., (2005) he is totally misinterpreting the physics.” – Dr. Norman Loeb
    There is no basis for Monckton’s Pinker claims at all.” – Dr. Kevin Trenberth

    Monckton Assertion 8: The temperature response to radiative forcing (i.e. climate sensitivity) is very small and was over-estimated by a factor of 4 by the IPCC.

    Lindzen-Choi work not robust…misinterpret air-sea interactions in the tropics. … More robust methods show no discrepancies between models and observations.. have compared observations to models prescribed with incomplete forcings.
    incorrectly compute the climate sensitivity.” – Dr. Kevin Trenberth
    errors in the Lindzen-Choi work on climate sensitivity by Trenberth et al (2010) and Murphy (2010), noted by others
    possible to obtain empirical estimates of climate sensitivity based on observed responses to various forcings
    estimates (Annan & Hargreaves 2006) shows that climate sensitivity is constrained with high probability between 2 and 4.5 oC, with the most likely value around 3 oC,
    A value as low as that claimed by Monckton (~ 0.75 oC) has a vanishingly small probability of being correct.” – Dr. James Annan
    “The analysis of Lindzen & Choi (2009)…[hereafter…LC09]… erroneously applies global concepts to a limited region.” – Dr. Daniel Murphy
    “Global average temperature has risen about 0.8 oC since preindustrial times while the CO2 concentration has risen less than 40%,
    Monckton’s value of the climate sensitivity to be correct, the further 60% rise in CO2 concentration to reach a doubling would have to have no warming effect Dr. Michael MacCracken

    Monckton Assertion 9: Climate change is a non-problem. Even if the higher estimates of climate sensitivity were correct, there is no hurry to take any action.
    policy responses and they tell us that the most cost-effective emission trajectories involve starting now… Further delay will be costly.” – Dr. James Hurrell
    future carbon dioxide emissions would imply further irreversible effects on the planet.” – Dr. Susan Solomon et al.
    “…his [Monckton’s] argument is not only seriously in error, it is profoundly misleading and irresponsible.” – Dr. Michael MacCracken
    a decision to continue emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by increasing amounts, committing the world to higher levels of global warming and more sea-level rise, with associated adverse impacts.” – Dr. David Karoly

    Moncktons response as reported in the UK Guardian (21 September, 2010):

    “In a lengthy letter to Congress some months ago, in which I addressed questions from Congressmen about my testimony before the global warming committee, I had already refuted in detail the points now belatedly raised again by the scientists who have written to Congress. The scientists were unaware of my letter to Congress because they did not have the good sense or courtesy to contact me – or even to contact the vast majority of the scientists whose conclusions I had cited – before circulating to friendly news media their prolix, turgid, repetitive, erroneous and inadequate response to my testimony. From their calculatedly furtive approach, it is legitimate to infer that their exercise was motivated more by politics than by science. One of the lead authors is currently under criminal investigation for alleged fabrication of results: another has been caught out in repeated lies: a third admits to suffering a mental disability: and many of the scientists whom these lead authors invited to contribute are among the long-discredited clique of Climategate emailers. Accordingly, it is unlikely that Congress will pay much attention to their political rant, which displays a lamentable absence of quantitative detail and a pathetic reliance on fashionable but questionable forecasting techniques that have long been compellingly contradicted by hard data.
    The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley”

    MONCKTON resorts and attempts to show his opinion is somehow superior to the scientific understanding, evidence, observations, physics and mathematics that support the scientific consensus that shows that humans are in fact influencing the climate and causing global warming. The overall effect is simply that Monckton is further revealing that he does not have the science on his side.

    Read the full response from Climate Scientists here:

    http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/summary-docs/investigation-reports/Monckton-response.pdf

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      Mydogsgotnonose

      The IPCC scientific ‘consensus’ is based on 5 major scientific errors. To try and pretend this amateurish hodgepodge of 3 elementary mistakes and 2 more subtle errors has any validity is ludicrous.

      The models predict 3-5 times more warming than reality so are offset by imaginary cloud cooling based on a combination of incorrect physics and double real optical depth! No wonder they can’t predict climate.

      The problem with Monckton is that he bangs on about the details of climate sensitivity calculations when because the basic IR physics has been cocked up, there is very little if any CO2-(A)GW with most palaeo and modern warming from an entirely different mechanism.

      The tide is going out for this failed pseudo-science occupied by pseudo-scientists teaching incorrect physics. The big boys have decided enough is enough for this bunch of poseurs.

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        John Brookes

        By golly mydog, you sound like you know what you are talking about!

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          Markus Fitzhenry

          “”The tide is going out for this failed pseudo-science occupied by pseudo-scientists teaching incorrect physics.””

          I think he means you, jonnyboy.

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          Mydogsgotnonose

          The logic is straightforward. I was on a wing and a prayer 2 years’ ago when I first saw clouds behaved differently than the aerosol optical physics in the models predicted. I didn’t know at the time but the US top cloud physicist had come to the same conclusion.

          Last year I discovered that when you corrected the physics, you could explain end of ice age warming and much modern warming with no CO2-(A)GW. In October, I worked out the missing physics.

          Take away the cloud cooling and modern warming and CO2-AGW must be very low. So, I went into the climate models. The basic mistake is to assume all heat emitted from the earth’s surface is IR radiation at 15°C. They then fit everything else to that assumption. It’s ludicrously wrong but it predicts the high feedback so got the grants in.

          Since 1997 when it was found that CO2 lagged T, the whole discipline has been fraudulent as the Marxists at the core have maintained this new Lysenkoism. The World of academia is splitting into those whose careers depend on maintaining the status quo and those who realise it’s been a big lie, but careers can be made on the basis of realism.

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        Llew Jones

        Whether or not the GHG theory is fatally flawed it does seem that trying to get to CAGW, assuming the theory does describe the reality in a very complex climate system,is a very difficult task. The relationship between changing atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperature means temperature increases are constrained. This theoretical consideration is borne out by all the evidence to hand so we should on the basis of the GHG science be able to drop catastrophic.

        That evidence forgetting the GHG effect can equally point to natural increases in temperature producing those evidences of slight increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

        It is thus possible that none of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere, including land use inputs has anything to do with humans. Given that CO2 isotope ratios are no longer thought to be a valid human fingerprint. That the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is less than 50% of our emissions and the vast amounts of naturally produced CO2 churning through the system give some substance to that consideration.

        It is quite possible that all the human produced CO2 is absorbed by the biosphere and portion or all the extra atmospheric CO2 is a function of the natural warming that has occurred over the last several hundred years. Further there may well be capacity for the biosphere in a symbiotic manner to take up any future human CO2 emissions. I’m pretty sure the IPCC and sympathetic governments do not provide funds for such investigations.

        Murry Salby postulates that CO2 emissions produced by human activities are highly likely to be overwhelmed by the recycling of natural CO2 in the biosphere, which includes the oceans.

        If that is found to be so the GHG theory of Arrhenius, as a driver of global warming/climate change, will once again be relegated to the dustbin of history.

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      memoryvault

      To show the discord between what you are told by speech and what the real scientific community really wants to say to everyone about the science.

      Once again, Ross, utter crap.

      What the “Report” shows is what the “climastrology pseudo-scientific community really wants to say to everyone about the quasi-religion of climastrology science“.

      The REAL scientific community, by and large, are rarely mentioned in this “Report”. And that’s understandable, given that, by and large, the REAL scientific community is doing everything it can to isolate and dissociate itself from the climastrology religious fanatics.

      Pretty much every counter-claim referenced in the “Report” – peer reviewed or not – has been soundly rebutted by REAL scientists – you know – REAL physicists, REAL chemists, REAL geologists, REAL mathematicians, REAL statisticians and so on.

      Citing a “Report” quoting climastrology climastrologists all agreeing with each other – subject to the mandatory intensive over-use of disclaimer words and phrases, of course – such as “could”, “might” “may be”, “appears to”, “is possible” and so on, proves nothing and simply provides us with a working list of those people most likely to have their snouts deepest in the heavily taxpayer-funded “climate change” slops trough.

      .
      PS – Read any of the “climastrology” news out of Germany today?

      Must be VERY disheartening for you “true believers”.

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        Ross James

        Memoryvault,

        As I said to Jo the posting was a fruitless exercise but highlights just one of over 100’s of refutations on Monckton’s very selective reading of the science. No-one around here would be “converted” due to the Tribe mentality.

        Better still your response sounds so intelligent – “Utter Crap!”

        Not disheartening at all as core believers of non CO2 caused climate change according to recent studies have hardened even more. A core 15% of any given population. Still you have got to hand it to Lord Monckton – he would disagree with you that CO2 does not cause any warming!

        People change with the flow and ebb of temperatures – Memoryvault. Look out you could be next. How’s that ice going.

        Satellites indicate the polar streams have broken off into major streams – one with extreme heat and one with extreme cold.

        Pity about the hot spots as they would not exist at all in a non-warming world. Darn – where does all this latent heat come from. Think North man, North! Why is the US experiencing one of the warmest winters on record. Why the extreme cold. Darn – its Murphy’s Law.

        Show me an answer.

        Stick with facts please – I do. Climatrology and Anti-warmist-trology are tarred with the same brush. Pass.

        You know – it’s going to get cooler and cooler………………..Anti-warmist-trology.

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    Afizzyfist

    This site missing major VIP AGW stories germans dump AGW and Queeensland govermane likely to be sued for BILLIONS due to misinformed AGW *droughts(

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      memoryvault

      Actually, BOTH stories have been reported on and linked to in the comments section of this thread and the previous one today.

      I would not be surprised to learn that Jo is working up a report on either or both developments right now.

      You think maybe she has a newsroom full of journalists at her disposal 24 hours a day?

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      This is not a news service site, though many of our commentors will post links and comments to news events of interest.

      If you have “news” of events of interest, then please post links with a short commentary.

      p.s. No, the Germans have not dumped AGW, and as far as the Flood Enquiry is concerned, this site is blessed with accurate expert commentary by blogger TonyfromOz. For example see HERE

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        Mydogsgotnonose

        I would disagree: the Germans are waking up to the fact that their greens are acting very similar to their Nazi antecedents and academics are choosing sides; support fake IPCC science by shutting down debate or maintain academic freedom.

        It’s interesting that ‘The Hockey-stick Illusion’ has been highly influential for the Germanic peoples; their tradition of adherence to authority has been badly shaken by the evidence of systemic Anglo Saxon academic fraud.

        It’s the end game.

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        Tristan

        It’s the end game.

        Oh it’s the end game at least once a week here. That coffin has had so many final nails hammered into it. We get more blockbuster evidence of the giant scam unraveling all the time. It’s an exciting time to be a paladin of liberty.

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          Mydogsgotnonose

          Come off it. The cooling by polluted clouds, recently increased by about 50% by Hansen, doesn’t exist.

          Correct the physics [took a bit of doing to get the second optical mechanism] and that cooling becomes heating.

          Ergo, the whole IPCC caboodle collapses.

          I’m now participating in the autopsy to see who made honest mistakes and who committed scientific fraud.

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          Oh it’s the end game at least once a week here. That coffin has had so many final nails hammered into it.

          I agree, we tend to proclaim the death of AGW regularly. More wishful thinking I’d suggest.

          But look at the bright side, those coffin nails…..we re-use them, so that final nail is a sustainable one.

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          Eddy Aruda

          Your consensus is so failed that a majority of people in the US no longer believe in the scam called CAGW. In fact, global warming belief peaked with the release of An Inconvenient Truth and things started to go downhill for the scam artists with the release of the first batch of climategate emails.

          Now, more and more experts and scientists are beginning to step forward and tell the truth.

          Final nail in the coffin? Maybe. However, we are past the tipping point and all the kings horses and all the kings men can’t put this scam back together again!

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    Warren

    Re confusion over ‘The Australian Governments central climate sensitivity to doubled CO2’ allegedly being 5.1C,according to Lord M. This is untrue. Garnaut’s modelling,refer to Ch.11 of his report, arrives at a best estimate temperature rise above 1990 levels of 5.1C by 2100 for a no-mitigation strategy,based on a sensitivity to doubled CO2 of 3C. Monckton was clearly talking about sensitivity to 2XCO2,comparing the IPCC’s central figure,his erroneus number for Garnaut and the low estimates he favours.

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      John Brookes

      Which makes sense, so won’t be welcome here.

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      Catamon

      [Monckton was clearly talking about sensitivity to 2XCO2,comparing the IPCC’s central figure,his erroneus number for Garnaut and the low estimates he favours.]

      Much surprisement. Monkton gets it wrong. Who wud a thunk?

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    Carl

    I think the following link contains offensive remarks!

    http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v65/i2/p22_s1
    (also a link on that page to download the 820KB pdf version – open access – Physics Today 2012-02).

    In case you haven’t seen it before, it is an amusing read.

    It comes from one of my professional societies, and it grieves me to say that it is from my main field of Physics, although it is only a general review-type magazine. The article is a love letter to Ben Santer of all people, and it is truly heart-rending (/sarc). I had just before read Monckton’s reply to Cook on your blog, which contains the following gem:

    “However, a single scientist, Dr. Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, rewrote the draft at the IPCC’s request, deleting all five statements, replacing them with a single statement to the effect that a human influence on global climate was now discernible, and making some 200 consequential amendments.”

    so it struck a chord – some scientist! It’s hard for an “outsider” to keep track of all the “team” members.

    That’s enough laughter for today.

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    Good Morning Jo,
    To say I’m purple with rage is an under-statement.
    How “gob-smackingly” ironic!!!!
    On the same day that an excellent obit. was read in the Senate by our Shadow Attorney General of Sir Zelman Cowan, who himself was a former Vice-Chancellor of this normally up-standing academic institution (Uni. of Qld.), this sub-standard academic performer has not only further sullied his own cred. but dragged UQ. into the gutter along-side!!
    How dare this Cook so-and-so opine that he should in future re-coil from debating deniers, esp. Lord Monckton.
    – How he can call himself an academic, and can still sleep at nights beggars belief.
    To “Greg Combet” Donna Laframboise..Maybe Mr Cook is simply just another delinquent teenager who thinks he’s a well-informed climate expert!!!
    [no need for all bold type, we hear ya’. mod oggi]

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    Monckton should concentrate more on the physics …

    Suppose you somehow placed a small metal marble-sized ball inside a hollow soccer ball-sized metal sphere and then sucked all air out to form a vacuum inside. Now, let’s assume the small ball was a few degrees hotter than the surrounding sphere. Further assume that the outer sphere is large enough so that there is much more radiative flux coming from it than from the smaller ball. This would be due to its greater surface area which would more than compensate for its cooler temperature.

    So, we have a net radiative flux going from the cooler sphere to the warmer small ball inside it.

    Will the small ball start to get warmer or start to cool?

    Physics says that the flow of thermal energy can only be from hot to cold. But we have net radiative flux going from cold to hot. Hence the small ball must be rejecting (scattering and reflecting) the cooler radiation from the larger sphere. The large sphere will however absorb and convert to thermal energy the warmer radiation from the small ball. They each “detect” the temperature of the other because they detect the peak frequency and that frequency is proportional to the absolute temperature – see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wien's_displacement_law

    The significance of this fact of physics is that a warmer Earth surface does not convert radiation from a cooler atmosphere to thermal energy. So the radiative atmospheric greenhouse effect is debunked.

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      John Brookes

      Sorry Doug, but you are wrong.

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        Truthseeker

        John, still struggling with that whole “construct an argument” thing are we? Doug is wrong … why? Because you said so? As an argument from authority this has to be the absolutely weakest argument that has even been posted on this site.

        Doug, Lord Monckton should stick with using mathematics to show how the IPCC “logic” is wrong within the context of their crap science. Lord Monckton has two abilities, mathematics and understanding political processes and organisations. He should stay out of physics because he is no good at it.

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          Maybe, but better still Monckton should partner with someone who does understand physics. At least he could accept that physics proves there can be no GH effect and he could refer people to papers such as Claes Johnson’s “Computational Blackbody Radiation.”

          I believe that there is no place for this “middle ground” that agrees there may be a slight GHE and that the IPCC has just overestimated the sensitivity. Why acknowledge that they are right in any sense when in fact they are totally wrong? Even that -18 deg.C figure is wrong because the Earth’s surface does not act like a blackbody, as explained on my site.

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      Gee Aye

      Debunked? Well then time to get on with other thing and Jo might as well close this blog. Doug, make sure you remember to publish before picking up your Blue Planet.

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    val majkus

    well I’ve sent Gina this message of support

    Hi Gina; I’ve read plenty about you recently and from what I’ve read you’ve risen even higher in my esteem than you were before

    As to Fairfax I am a small shareholder and I fully support you having a seat on the board; someone with your business experience could only be beneficial to a media company which is losing money; to such an extent that I am planning to sell my small shareholding

    So, go Gina!!!!

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    Michelle

    Well, I’m convinced. It is a warm and comfortable feeling that our mature, responsible, non-condescending science experts are conducting themselves so well in their game of “I know you are but what am I”. It’s so heartening to feel so confident about peer-reviewed data as opposed to a consensus that I guess the only logical conclusion is to keep arguing about vocabulary as that is going so well.
    So, I guess this means we all throw a party to celebrate our apparent harmless effect upon our world–you bring the toxic sludge, I’ll bring the food chemicals and we will Paarr-tay!!
    Grow up before the Lay-people get an idea that, judging from the wisdom of these posts, you are more interested in hair splitting, name calling and schoolyard bully tactics than anything else.
    Global warming, cooling whatever you want to think does not disturb me more than the fact that every day it is proven that human behaviour, growth and thought processes have not changed. As long as humanity remains unchanged, so to does my belief that humans are capable of anything to get what they want, how they want it and everyone else be damned.
    Question: What makes you think that “lay-people” believe the truth is coming from anyone within this issue?

    Anyone who uses solely another’s arguments, thoughts and printed/spoken words preclude and retard the ability to think for oneself.

    So, you all keep dipping pigtails in inkwells, I’ll stick to my recycling and reducing my fossil fuel comsumption. Oh, what an ignorant fool I am….

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      memoryvault

      Oh, what an ignorant fool I am….

      Well, at least you had the good grace to save one of us from saying it . . . . .

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        KinkyKeith

        MV

        Do you detect something in Michelle’s piece?

        AS we have deducted here, the CAGW myth morphed from Cat Global Warming to Climate Change

        and now it has all collapsed it has morphed to the only morally defensible area:

        a criticism of our grammar and manners.

        They have conceded that Man Made Global Warming via CO2 DOES NOT EXIST.

        We have moved one step closer to closing the Treasury money tap.

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          memoryvault

          I think it is indicative of far more KK.

          In just a week we have had the organisers of the coming Rio talk-fest announcing that “climate change” will be “off the table” and the new subject will be “sustainable development”.

          Next we have “GetUp” – an organisation formed with trade unionists’ funds to tackle the evil “climate change denial industry”, backing a campaign against Harvey Norman for their “unsustainable” use of Australian hardwoods in the furniture they sell.

          Through the same week we have had a significant drop in the efforts of our “old guard” climate cultist trolls, and now the appearance of a “new guard” who, it would appear are going to lambast us for “being ignorant” and not recycling – you know – in a sustainable way. Almost certainly young Michelle made her way here from GetUp or a similar site.

          We have already witnessed the death of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change (CAGW), which outlived its usefulness when the world refused to continue to warm. That led to the birth of Catastrophic Climate Change (CCC).

          CCC is now dead and buried due to the lack of catastrophes despite the efforts of the MSM to turn every single weather event into something “unprecedented”. I believe we are now witnessing the birth of the next offspring – “sustainable development”.

          I’m not sure how this will develop, but I can assure you of the following:

          1) – It will all be the fault of us greedy, selfish humans, and
          2) – The only “solution” possible will involve restricting the use of fossil fuels, some kind of humungous tax, and handing over political power to some form of trans-national, centralised planning body.

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      Truthseeker

      Doug, I have seen that paper, but it is a lot of mathematics and logic without much empirical verification. However, I think you have answered my question. Getting physicists to agree on anything IS like herding cats …

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    Off topic…as per usual.

    Time is running out to head off this CO2 tax. Got to bring this government down and a cunning plan has been hatched and sent off to a Liberal MP. Receptive? Looking good but yet to be approved.

    We’ll know on Wednesday if there is any fight left.

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      KinkyKeith

      Intriguing

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      memoryvault

      Here is a link to Andrew Bolt this morning, trying to get Dennis Jensen to reassure us that the Liberals have now “seen the light” regarding CAGW. From the 4.30 minute mark.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6X4hMzNFZ1U

      It is quite obvious from his repeated non-answers that even Jennsen, a scientist and a sitting Liberal member, doesn’t believe this is a foregone conclusion.

      And yet we STILL have people who think simply voting the Liberals in will actually change anything.

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        Mark

        MV

        Hear what you’re saying.

        On the one hand we have both Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt stating that, come hell or highwater, they will repeal the tax. On the other we have a drayload of weasel words when it comes to them addressing the “science”. They simply refuse to take the “sacred cow” out the back and slaughter it.

        Jensen probably doesn’t want to be seen being disloyal to the Liberal Party’s existing policy of…well, whatever it is. He knows that there would be no shortage of pimply-faced, tiny-minded journos all too willing probe what they would see as dissension in the Liberal ranks.

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          John Brookes

          Its worse than that Mark, Tony says he believes the science (but maybe he is fibbing).

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            Dave

            John Brookes,

            Julia Gillard tells the truth!
            Tristan knows the science of CAGW!
            Tim Flannery knows about drought & floods!

            These are relacements for the three biggest lies.

            The cheque is in the mail!
            I love you!
            and I promise not to c$%^&*%^&**((*&((&&&^!

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            Markus Fitzhenry

            Tony does know the science Brooksie, a little bird told him about it. And, Gina told him to wake up to hisself.

            That is why he’s been cocky lately about the repeal of the stuopid carbon tax.

            Watch this space Brooksie, full on firework display is about to happen. And, that is a better prediction than Hansen could ever make.

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    Here is a simple proof in 10 easy steps why the Greenhouse Effect is a physical impossibility.

    (1) The IPCC claim that radiation from a cooler atmosphere slows the rate of cooling of the (warmer) surface, thus leading to a greenhouse effect.

    (2) The “rate of cooling” is a 24 hour worldwide mean, so wherever the Sun is warming the surface (any sunny morning) the rate of warming would have to be increased by whatever process is slowing the rate of cooling.

    (3) Thus extra thermal energy must be added to the surface by such radiation in order to increase the warming rate in the morning and slow the mean rate of cooling calculated from both day and night rates.

    (4) Now the Second Law of Thermodynamics relates to heat transfer which is not the same as energy transfer. Radiated energy can be two-way, but heat transfer between two points is always one way and it is invalid to split such heat transfer into two opposite components and try to apply the Second Law to each. Physics doesn’t work that way.

    (5) Hence, the surface cannot warm faster in the mornings due to such an imaginary heat transfer, because that would be clearly breaking the Second Law no matter what. Nor can it slow the rate of cooling because of (4). And in general you would expect the same process to happen whether the surface is warming or cooling.

    (6) So, those photons from the cooler atmosphere are not being converted to thermal energy in the warmer surface, as Prof Claes Johnson proved in Computational Blackbody Radiation.

    (7) Hence the effect of the photons being either reflected or scattered is that there is no impact on the surface at all.

    (8) It is also clear that there is no significant transfer by diffusion or conduction from the atmosphere to the surface because the surface absorbs more solar insolation than the lower atmosphere, and we observe that the atmosphere is generally cooler and even cools faster at night than the surface.

    (9) So it really does not matter even if extra thermal energy is trapped higher up in the atmosphere because it does not affect what we call climate, and any such energy cannot make its way back to the surface, except possibly an insignificant additional amount in precipitation.

    (10) Hence there is no valid physical way in which backradiation or absorption by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause a significant atmospheric greenhouse effect.

    If I haven’t convinced you, read this paper Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within the Frame of Physics http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf

    “Unfortunately, there is no source in the literature, where the greenhouse effect is introduced in harmony with the scientific standards of theoretical physics.

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    I have posted my “10 steps” post http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/open-thread-weekend-7/#comment-890609 on many other forums (both for and against AGW) with a genuine desire to see if anyone can raise a valid counter argument. The following may help explain and reinforce what I have written there.

    Firstly, the actual amount of backradiation must be grossly overstated because the emissivity of the atmosphere is only about 20% I understand and it is colder than the surface and emitting in all directions into a full sphere rather than a hemisphere. So how could NASA’s energy diagram possibly be right in showing similar values for emission from the surface as from the atmosphere. I postulate that the instruments calculate the radiative flux from the temperature assuming emissivity is unity and emission into a hemisphere.

    But, whatever the amount of backradiation, it cannot transfer thermal energy from the colder atmosphere to the warmer surface as this would imply a heat transfer from cold to hot, which is against the Second Law of Thermodynamics. When the surface is warming on a sunny morning, for example, and net radiative flux is into the surface, how can additional heat be transferred from the colder atmosphere to the warmer surface against the Second Law. It can’t and all such radiation is reflected or (mostly) scattered and thus leaves no energy behind.

    It follows that, since backradiation cannot add thermal energy to a warmer surface, then it cannot increase the rate of warming in the morning or slow the rate of cooling in the evening.

    Backradiation is after all low energy radiation spontaneously emitted from a cold source. The peak frequency of the strongly attenuated spectrum is proportional to the absolute temperature (Wien’s Displacement Law) and such frequencies are usually lower than those in the radiation from the surface. Surface molecules “recognise” this and reject the low energy radiation which does not have enough energy to be converted to thermal energy. (See Prof Claes Johnson Computational Blackbody Radiation) http://www.csc.kth.se/~cgjoh/blackbodyslayer.pdf

    We see examples of this in radio broadcasts where we know the radiation is even lower frequency than that in backradiation. It is of course artificially generated, but its frequency corresponds to much lower temperatures than normally experienced on earth or in the troposphere. For this very reason it is scattered by the surface and by the atmosphere and is not converted to thermal energy because it is “colder” even than the backradiation. If this were not the case, then it would have been quickly quenched as all its energy would have been used up warming whatever it struck. So it would not travel the distances that we know it does. Basically the same happens to backradiation and it just keeps getting scattered off molecules in both the atmosphere and the surface until it happens by chance to escape to space.

    So the (latest version of) the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is (like the first version) a physical impossibility.

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