Russell Brown on climate change sceptics
Russell Brown has a great article over at Public Address about the state of the NZ Herald. Brown particularly takes a look at the latest offering from NZ Herald columnist Fran O’Sullivan on climate change. It seems that Fran has unfortunately relied on a bunch of bunkum evidence supplied by the US Christian Right. It’s worth quoting at length:
O’Sullivan’s column now reads like a wingnut blog, with all the bitter, conspiratorial muttering and graceless prose that implies. Case in point: her predictions for 2008. She starts with a couple of punts made more in hope than judgement: “Helen Clark is rolled,” and “New Zealand explodes in wave of civil disobedience,” over the EFA. And then there’s this:
3. Climate change science consensus breaks
More prominent scientists will dispute the extent of the man-made global warming scenario. Four hundred scientists, many of them current and former participants in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have already criticised claims by the panel and former US Vice-President Al Gore.
A minority report issued by the Senate environment and public works committee lists the scientists by name, country and academic/institutional affiliation and features their words, biographies and weblinks to their peer-reviewed studies and original source materials gathered in 2007. In New Zealand, rational scientists will still be demonised by Government and some business organisations.
This is pure wingnut talking point: Google will find pages and pages of almost identical claims on American websites. But perhaps a newspaper with pretensions to quality should try harder than that.
Let me help: the “report” comes from the office of Republican Senator James Inhofe, who is, by the standards of a developed nation, crazy. Inhofe has declared that “I don’t believe there is a single issue we deal with in government that hasn’t been dealt with in the Scriptures,” which ought to be the place of first recourse for matters ranging from foreign policy to homosexuality. He has stated that the “spiritual door” for the 9/11 attacks was opened by God because the US government was insufficiently supportive of Israel. Inhofe is also freakishly paranoid. He has repeatedly stated his belief that global warming is a “hoax”.
Nonetheless, you might have assumed that the 400 “prominent scientists” heralded in Inhofe’s report had relevant expertise, or at least they were all actually scientists (or to put it another way, that O’Sullivan has actually read the list she is recommending to her readers).
Regrettably, neither is the case. The list includes TV weathermen and economists (Update: and three TV gardeners!) as well as people who are scientists but have no relevant expertise, and notorious credential-inflaters like Timothy Ball.
The report deceives in various other ways. In support of the idea that the tide is turning, the official release cites “Paleoclimatologist Dr. Tim Patterson, professor in the department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa, recently converted from a believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic.” I suppose reasonable people could differ on the meaning of “recently”, but Patterson has been publicly lining up with climate sceptic groups since at least 2002.
You might also want to be careful of claims that people on the list have been part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In most cases, that means they have been expert reviewers. Which still sounds pretty flash. Until you realise that anyone can be an expert reviewer. You just have to ask for a copy of a draft report.
Okay, so — surely all these people have made some common declaration on climate change, or at least confirmed to Inhofe’s office that their view is what he says it is? Well, no. It’s a clippings list, compiled by his staff from news reports that could conceivably be taken as indicating global warming denial on the part of the subject. Inevitably, it includes people who actually regard anthropogenic climate change as a fact.
On the other hand, here’s a useful, and rather long, list of organisations that explicitly endorse the following conclusions:
1) the climate is undergoing a pronounced warming trend beyond the range of natural variability;
2) the major cause of most of the observed warming is rising levels of the greenhouse gas CO2;
3) the rise in CO2 is the result of burning fossil fuels;
4) if CO2 continues to rise over the next century, the warming will continue; and
5) a climate change of the projected magnitude over this time frame represents potential danger to human welfare and the environment.
The list includes the scientific academies of 19 countries, including the US, Britain, Japan and New Zealand, a slew of US government agencies, the World Petroleum Council, and dozens of multinational corporations. You could also add our own Meteorological Service and National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.
None of these organisations, are, apparently, “rational”.
Of course we should question and revisit scientific conclusions. It’s what scientists do all the time. But we should also be able to smell bullshit when it is served up, and O’Sullivan doesn’t appear to have made even the most modest effort to do that. She has a long and admirable record in journalism, but columns like her last one are an embarrassment not only to herself, but to her paper.
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Shoot-the-messenger stuff again from natural cause deniers. Lame
Meanwhile, less dramatic and newsworthy was the announcement that satellites recorded that the Antarctic sea ice had reached the highest level ever.
British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would make 2007 the hottest year on record. After 2007 was actually lower than any year since 2001, the BBC still proclaimed: “2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.
I predict one thing for 2008: alarmist will reach epidemic proportions.
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Where do our politicians stand on global warming..?.
[Ans…On the fence and getting others to do their dirty work… Ref Kiwiblog National.. Not PC… Act]
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Warmer Air May Cause Increased Antarctic Sea Ice Cover
ScienceDaily (Jun. 30, 2005) — WASHINGTON - Predicted increases in precipitation due to warmer air temperatures from greenhouse gas emissions may actually increase sea ice volume in the Antarctic’s Southern Ocean. This finding from a new study adds evidence of potential asymmetry between the two poles and may be an indication that climate change processes may have varying impacts on different areas of the globe.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050630064726.htm
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Is there nothing global warming cannot do!
It will plunge us into an ice age next….
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Even Owen McShane is included in Inhofe’s list of prominent scientists! You are very kind to Fran O’Sullivan, but she has frequently clutched at ideological straws in climate change issues, and is strongly behind the Herald’s crusade over the Electoral Finance Act.
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:36 pm
BluePeter,
I am not up-to-date on the science, but I know there was some speculation that freshwater from melting ice sheets in Greenland and the Arctic might stop the gulf stream from reaching as far north as it does, resulting in a cooler climate in North America and Europe (this was also the theme of a somewhat unrealistic movie a couple of years ago). This is what happened at the end of the last ice age, when the ice sheets over North America melted. This resulted in a cooler period of about 1000 years, known as the Younger Dryas. I don’t know if there is enough fresh water in Greenland to do this again … a quick literature search would find what the current thinking on the issue is. In any case, such a “ice age” would be regional (Europe and North America), not global.
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Forgive me the plug, but Hot Topic got there first. Russell is kind enough to note that I gave Fran a “good fisking” in a comment.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:32 am
Henry- thanks for linking that, I was shocked to read about what finally convinced the USA not to get in the way of the climate change consensus of the rest of the world.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:48 am
BluePeter - I thought this was one of the better articles I’ve read in a while. He does a good job of undermining her, and then criticises her for not doing the basic research that would have highlighted that most of the information she was relying on was rubbish. Pretty unfair to describe this as attacking the messenger (interesting to see you didn’t add the usual ‘instead of the message’, seeing as he did such a good job of that).
January 4th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
BluePeter, “Antarctic sea ice had reached the highest level ever” - Rubbish. Provide a reference for that statement please and I’ll take it seriously.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
One thing the left has done very well is to polarize the debate between ’sceptics’ and ‘believers’. While I think most people would take a middle ground and say that they arent convince or that they dont believe the damage will be as bad as predicted they are forced to take one side or another. The media subscribes to this as well. Fox News is the only channel I have seen recently who actually debate the existance of global warming.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Stuey
http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2007/09/antarctic-sea-i.html
January 5th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Nick C said: Fox News is the only channel I have seen recently who actually debate the existance of global warming.
You mean the Fox Republican Propaganda Channel, Nick: http://www.outfoxed.org/
January 5th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
um..!..seeing as i broke the story on the first of january..of nandor resigning from parliament
and now that kiwiblog/radio/dompost have covered the story..
(only ‘dear old aunty’ herald is still playing catch-up..)
and that it is now the fifth of january..
when do you think the topic will be raised here..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
January 5th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
It’s all starting to sound a little desperate, isn’t it. You know, trying to rubbish anyone who disagrees with you.
- “you might have assumed that the 400 “prominent scientistsâ€? heralded in Inhofe’s report had relevant expertise, or at least they were all actually scientists…Regrettably, neither is the case.”
Well, I went to the report page you helpfully pointed to above, and many of the contributors seem to be real experts. Would you like me to list them for you here? Or shall we pick one at random…
– ‘USA: Climatologist Robert Durrenberger, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, and one of the climatologists who gathered at Woods Hole to review the National Climate Program Plan in July, 1979: “Al Gore brought me back to the battle and prompted me to do renewed research in the field of climatology. And because of all the misinformation that Gore and his army have been spreading about climate change I have decided that ‘real’ climatologists should try to help the public understand the nature of the problem.’ —
Of course, they’re not all as qualified as this gentleman. But, for comparison, what of the credentials of the contributors to the IPCC’s efforts that you seem to think we should take as gospel? Well, let’s see…
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2007/12/physician-heal-thyself.html
Laughable, isn’t it. A bunch of self-important activists. And let’s not forget the censoring and airbrushing of dissent that is such a feature of the IPCC.
- “On the other hand, here’s a useful, and rather long, list of organisations that explicitly endorse the following conclusions…”
How can an organisation or a company agree or endorse anything? It is an entirely meaningless statement. For example, some in NASA agree with the theory, and others oppose it. And just how much credibility do you think you are gaining by saying that the CEO of the Sara Lee Corporation endorses the supposed consensus? I mean, you attempt to discredit an inconvenient report by disparaging the credentials of some of its contributors, and in the next paragraph you are boasting that the manager of a cake firm agree with you.
And I seem to to recall reading in “Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death” (http://www.eco-imperialism.com) that the motives of the directors of BP (another of the companies on your list) in claiming to agree with the AGW theory were cynical and oppportunistic to say the least. Maybe you should read the book?
So, if you’ve quite finished throwing mud, we are back to looking at the evidence for ourselves. And the fact is that what hard evidence exists actually contradicts the theory. All you have are the hyped but worthless dabblings of activists who attempt, in their crude and ignorant way, to create very basic computer models of a few elements that moderate the climate.
January 5th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Why is Nandor leaving? I imagine since he lead a topic “The Greens aren’t a left wing party” and was set upon by an Alf’s Imperial Army of assorted leftists he feels he is pushing the proverbial, trying to get the party into the middle ground?
January 5th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Soime of those names mentioned look so familiar.. yet one can only say how familiarity breeds contempt.. interesting perhaps was so far as I know the Xright associated with those so-called 400 scientists. X-right have to be the last word on science and scientists.. riiight. Yet - the charity in me says - they need amis, too. Not neighbours, oh nossir, they requires love thys and all.. just amis.. for a day ..or so.. to get by.. Jimmy Inhofe is not enough..
Okay, now I’m a little sorry to confess how I came through to advise Russell et al about an intelligent new site with a piece up called “Weedkiller Wallies or What”.. which looks to me as offering a sensible and sophisticated line of argument re gm-free commercial practices as and wherever they may apply.. incl. nz.
http://www.commandrj.livejournal.com finds it - as I say sorry if this unduly breaks the thread here..
best now..
Ars.
January 5th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
“You mean the Fox Republican Propaganda Channel”
My view on Fox is that they are just very Pro-American. The thing is that all the Dems come across as so anti-american that it makes them look pro-republican. They arent nearly as bad as the Liberal media though that pretty much dominates everything other then Fox News. They refuse to admit progress is being made in Iraq despite the evidence although they were quite happy to report the mass deaths. And what about the world section front of todays Dom Post, it had heaps about Obama but nothing about Huckabee.
Besides the fact that they still hold debate as to the existance of global warming proves that they are neutral i would have thought.
January 6th, 2008 at 12:16 am
Nick C: “One thing the left has done very well is to polarize the debate between ’sceptics’ and ‘believers’.”
Total rubbish. Can you provide a single example of this happening? Any evidence at all? Who are “the left” anyway?
January 6th, 2008 at 12:56 am
Mouldwarp, did you notice that Russel was quoting Russell Brown - it was him that dissed the scientific expertise of the 400, not our Russel.
Skimming the report I can certainly see that there are some well qualified individuals cited, but most of them just seem to be expressing caution or reiterating scientific uncertainty or railing against media hype or saying that mitigation efforts will fail and that adaptation is better. They are certainly not all saying AGW is a hoax. Most of them never express an opinion on AGW or not at all, they just are quoted on a single detailed issue. For example there is a polar bear specialist who says that polar bears will survive a melted ice world because the fossil record shows they have survived at least one warm period in the past. That scientist is being counted as one of the 400 disbelievers in AGW when I would read his quote and see it as someone who does believe in AGW but just thinks that a species will be able to adapt and this is “encouraging”.
It is certainly wrong of some bloggers to characterise the list as lacking in credentials, e.g.
But Inhofe has certainly cherry picked quotes, and has certainly bulked up his list, not with the unqualified, but with people who do believe in AGW but just express reservations about some part of it.
January 6th, 2008 at 1:29 am
BluePeter, I’m sorry for questioning the accuracy of your fact reporting. That observation (that Antarctic sea ice reached its maximum extent since 1979 in 2007) is certainly interesting and I would agree that it is underreported because I haven’t been able to find much discussion on why that might be (beyond JH’s ref from 2005). It seems to be to do with the fact that most of the Antarctic sea ice is annual - the Antarctic sea ice varies from 2 M km to 16 M km each year, whereas the Arctic, (while still highly variable), is more composed of ice that lasts between years - it is this that makes the summer minimum in the Arctic more important than the statistically insignificant increase in winter maximum in the Antarctic.
As accuweather said
January 6th, 2008 at 7:43 am
OK Mouldy… I’m calling you on this one. The EVIDENCE indicates, with increasing certainty, that the theory is going to see 2 meters of ocean rise, and increased drought and other climate nastiness by the end of the century. I can scarcely contain my glee at having to play “whack-a-mole” with you on this stuff again, but this unsupported statement of yours
So, if you’ve quite finished throwing mud, we are back to looking at the evidence for ourselves. And the fact is that what hard evidence exists actually contradicts the theory.
… is at odds with reality. Nor are we particularly “desperate”… at least not in the sense you mean it. Acting on this problem 10 years ago would have been dead easy, now it is deadly difficult and another 10-15 years of inaction will leave us unable to stop what we’ve started…. unless we’ve already unknowingly crossed that tipping point. That does provide us with a form of desperation… the denial ( and Libertarians are the most vocal deniers) continues.
So… lets see what you’ve got. Anything new? I certainly haven’t heard anything new out of Inhofe… the man who is living proof that “intelligent design” isn’t.
Hell, he included Kurzweil on his list of 400… and Kurzweil’s statement was simply that there would be a techno-fix for the problem NOT that there was no problem.
BJ
January 6th, 2008 at 8:21 am
Fox news is compulsory viewing if only to find out what is actually happening.
The left wing pinko media simply have no interest in reporting the truth.
January 6th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Nick
Faux news is infotainment, not news. Cheney’s favorite channel? I’d rather watch a test pattern. In fairness, none of the commercial news services is worth the time spent watching them. I’d rather hear the BBC and NPR news thanks… and if I have a chance I try to pick up the Russian version as well. Truth is hard enough to get without one-sided propagandists spewing total lunacy in your ears.
IIRC the difference between Faux and the others was that people who spent more time listening to faux were less-informed…. and the more time they spent listening the less-informed they were.
Not about opinions. About facts.
January 6th, 2008 at 10:06 am
When will we all wake up and realize that,our Godless ( otherwise known as progressive ) liberal organization’s and faithless media moguls have an agenda. There’s actually purpose and a tunnel vision goals behind the absurdities we hear in the press day after day . It is big business shaping our perceptions with tainted information .
January 6th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Dad4justice: Why do you wield the words “godless” and “faithless” like they’re some sort of weapon? Since when was it not okay to be secular in New Zealand? We have religious freedom here. That includes the freedom to forego religion. I’d humbly ask you to consider turning down the hate speech.
While I couldn’t agree with you more about big business attempting to taint information and influence our perception, I don’t see any real motivation for them to do it for the benefit of liberal organisations, especially when the Business Roundtable is so cosy with National.
January 6th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
“Total rubbish. Can you provide a single example of this happening? Any evidence at all? Who are “the leftâ€? anyway?”
Stuey you see it all around you, when was the last time someone took a middle ground on global warming? Thing is the media and the green party dont allow them to. John Key wants to put the economy ahead of emmisions reductions and let the bigegr nations take the lead, so he is accused of being a climate change sceptic. Even the title of this thread is proof.
January 6th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Ari - it was not hate speech, just good old fashioned truth my friend . Everybody has a right to believe what they want,however the left continue to force agendas of little substance .
Freedom by fear is just another way of saying socialism has a heart.
January 6th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
bjchip,
It appears that you have yet again fallen into the trap of believing that evidence of climate change is automatically evidence in favour of your AGW theory. Remember, climate change is the norm. It is natural and inevitable.
Hence, there was a strikingly *low* number of hurricanes last year (in direct contradiction of what you alarmists have been promising), and 2007 was the coolest year since the beginning of the century (not the warmest, which is what you alarmists had predicted in January). In fact, the temperature has pretty much stayed the same since the beginning of the century (contradicting the idea of inexorable climate forcing). You get the idea.
In fact, the temperature trend flatly contradicts your AGW theory, but is compatible with the sound scientific position that attributes climate change overwhelmingly to variations in solar activity -
“Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.”
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/94768732.html
Incidentally, on the subject of biased news sources, it was intersting to see how the fact that 2007 was the coldest year since 2001 was reported: “2007 data confirms warming trend” says the BBC. You’ve got to laugh.
January 6th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
ari, In what way are “Godless” “faithless” and “hate language” connected?
January 6th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
You seriously don’t think implying someone has no faith in anything because they don’t believe in organised religion is neutral speech, do you Kevyn?
That challenging someone’s views because of their religious beliefs and no other reason at all is legitimate? Because I think that is hate speech. It would be hateful if I implied Catholics were ruining New Zealand politics, it would be hateful if I said it of Anglicans, it would be hateful if I said it of jews, of muslims, or of traditional Maori beliefs and customs. Why would it *not* be hateful when such broad generalisations are turned to the secular community?
Dad- you’ve not really explained how anything was of “little substance”. You’ve just made broad sweeping claims with only a single speculation to back them up. What is freedom by fear? I would’ve called the two mutually exclusive- while freedom may be a scary concept, it requires bravery to actually carry through. The bravery to stand up and make decisions. The bravery to be heard when you stand to lose respect or even safety. You can’t have freedom by fear. You can only have a dictatorship- a place where the media is fed by political bias if it even exists, quite like Faux News- but that has no bearing on climate change or skeptics. I’m truly sorry if you feel that the liberal side of politics is out to damage you or the country, but I’ve not seen anything that I find even mildly convincing of real malice or even misguidedness yet. Just a large amount of people getting themselves excited about misunderstanding some of our new legislation.
On the original topic- I can respect people who say things like “we don’t know how many parts per million of carbon will cause permanent damage- maybe it is 550, or maybe it’s actually closer to 450.”, or who are noting the odd ways in which the climate seems to be resilient to the warming effects that are going on. That’s fine and it’s admitting that some of the forecasting is muddy, and that the climate is a complicated place that can have contradictory things going on inside it sometimes. But we do have good, solid consensus for at least some very conservative estimates, and those estimates tell us we need quick action to avoid permanent damage. And those estimates are the ones that don’t think the problem is necessarily that bad.
As for the extremist skeptics who think that any warming is completely natural and nothing to worry about, they don’t give any good evidence for their position. Sunspots has been fairly and thoroughly debunked. They call attention to complications in the model- that’s true, there are complications, but they don’t prevent us from seeing the very real danger. Global averages continue to rise even if some areas have been colder. Global temperature continues along the trend that we have thus far concluded is associated primarily, although not exclusively, with the level of carbon in the atmosphere.
You’re welcome to believe differently, but if you expect us to believe you, you need to come armed with good observations, experiments, and/or modelling to make your case.
January 6th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
ari, if you genuinely believe that speech is either neutral or hateful then you are an unwitting victim victim of relativist indoctrination. A statement is only hateful or malicious if it is motivated by hate or malice. It wouldn’t be hateful if you implied that Catholics were ruining New Zealand politics unless you hated catholics (or politics). It could certainly be a false, ignorant or unsubstantiated statement but that doesn’t imply hatred.
Unfortunately, whilst relativism is popular amongst educationalists because of the belief that it will reduce unhealthy discrimination they have ignored the possibility that it will be equally as effective at reducing healthy discrimination. The first victim is language. It is healthy and essential to discriminate between words such as dislike, distaste, fear and hate. The subtle differences in meaning are most important to a harmonious society.
Limiting understanding of words to such broad groupings as positive and negative limits all understanding within society and will eventually lead to society fragmenting into irreconcilable groups or tribes.
If you can’t discriminate you can’t think, you only thinkbelieve you can.
January 6th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
“…2007 was the coolest year since the beginning of the century (not the warmest, which is what you alarmists had predicted in January). In fact, the temperature has pretty much stayed the same since the beginning of the century (contradicting the idea of inexorable climate forcing)”
Mouldy… you know that’s old and you know its wrong which is why it never made it into any actual scientific paper…. nobody expects linear response to a forcing, inexorable means it you can’t ask it to stop, not that the results look like a straight line on a graph and the assertion is just plain wrong.
http://climateprogress.org/2007/12/11/nasa-hansen-2007-second-warmest- year-ever-warmest-year-likely-by-2010/
I am sure you like the data set you’ve picked to get the results you do. I just want to point out that NOAA and NASA have a different opinion of what the data says. Oh yes… and while the global temperatures DO respond a bit to the solar forcing, that IS in the models and it is not surprising to anyone.
…as is Abusamatov’s EXTREMELY popular and oft-quoted (as it IS a valid theory) theory about the solar irradiance cycles.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/g7u7p35842873614/
ARE NATURAL CLIMATE FORCINGS ABLE TO COUNTERACT THE PROJECTED ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBALWARMING?
CÉDRIC BERTRAND_, JEAN-PASCAL VAN YPERSELE and ANDRÉ BERGER
Institut d’Astronomie et de Géophysique G. Lemaître, Université catholique de Louvain
Climatic Change 55: 413–427, 2002. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
What that is, basically is a paper that Bertrand et.al. did by running a model with the maximum forcings that show up over the past 1000 years … to determine if it can overcome the AGW “Greenhouse” effects. The answer apparently is that it can’t.
The IPCC has this to say on the topic.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter9.pdf
However, that may be I regard Abusamatov as a having an honest alternative explanation of things. According to his data, we’ll know in about 10-20 years.
If he is wrong, and we did nothing, we’ve condemned our children and their children for a hundred generations to the penalties of OUR foolishness.
Perhaps you need to watch this. The guy is pretty good and his “appendices” are even better. This isn’t a game Mouldwarp…. You think it is fun to come here and drop the latest regurgitated nonsense,,,, except that this stuff has been up and down any number of times so maybe it isn’t exacly “latest”
(good grief… the reasoning behind your nom-de-plume ?! Mould + (time)warp… THAT’S why it keeps coming up ?) … probably not. I should actually ask (as I have occasionally wondered why anyone would choose such a name for themselves). Perhaps you should tell me so that I am not tempted to more extravagant speculations
Anyway… this link is to a very simple explanation of why I think you’re making the worst bet you can make here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg
The index is here… click to the right and look for whatever objection you wanted explained….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoUt4LhkKY0&feature=related
Risk Management. Game Theory.
You really need to look at this (and so does everyone else reading this blog) .
BJ
January 6th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Mouldwarp… My response is currently in moderation for whatever reason…. probably links…. you may have made a trap for yourself but I have no idea why you think I associate the two things the way you do.
I have to go back to work tomorrow and my responses will be curtailed. Shall I guess that you are a student? It seems that you surface every year at the same school breaks and then quietly fade away for a while. There might be other explanations for this so it is just a hypothesis at present.
BJ
January 6th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Strongly recommended…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoUt4LhkKY0&feature=related
The index to questions is on the right of the second link… pretty thorough guy.
Wish to heck he was teaching MY kids.
BJ
January 6th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
“John Key wants to put the economy ahead of emmisions reductions”
Which may not make him a “denier” but it certainly makes him just exactly as eager as any third-world nation that hopes to raise its economic performance relative to “the big boys”. On the one hand castigating the Indians and the Chinese for being “left out” and not having to comply with Kyoto and on the other demanding that we should do nothing until someone else does something.
Do you understand why I would call this a self-centered, selfish, hypocritical bit of policy… ? It isn’t “nonsense”… it is real enough and every political party on the planet has to face the question of which side of it on which to plant a flag.
I reckon Key is smart enough that we could probably negotiate with him and make some compromise that makes some progress. I don’t think English would be as capable. Just my opinion based on the news reports and positions they both seem to take.
—————-
Godless and Faithless might not be regarded as “hate” speech by you Kevyn, but as an Atheist who grew up in the USA, I recognize this for what it is. It is an excuse to treat the “godless and faithless” as non-human and it is often used in parts of the US for exactly that purpose. Maybe this isn’t a big problem here, but when I see these terms used the way D4d used them, my hackles go up and my claws come out. There is nothing relativist about this Kevyn. It makes it clear that D4d hates my ideas and me for having them.
I could assume that because the description is literally true that I should not take notice of it, but I know that if I take that course with most of “the faithful” I am taking a big risk. As a non-human I have no right to expect human considerations or courtesies to apply. My life is not even protected by the usual considerations of human-human behaviour. The whole thing breaks down.
Lecturing us about relativism is futile under the circumstances. …
D4d… I suggest that you may be correct about big-business, but how you relate that to liberals and progressives is quite unclear. Perhaps we Greens are secretly running the business roundtable? I really don’t have much but unpleasant insinuation from you at present. Since you apparently wish to attack us, be specific. Vague criticisms of our attitudes and agendas, calling us names is simply an indication of a lack of substance on which to base your discomfort.
You have to know that if you hang out here and voice opinions without substance we will not go out of our way to make you more comfortable.
Just sayin…
respectfully
BJ
January 7th, 2008 at 4:32 am
bj, On rereading the various comments posted by d4j’s I can see what you mean. It has been very rare to have those sorts of fundamentalists views expressed in this country except on a couple of moral issues and in those areas those on the left are just as bad as those on the right. Perhaps this country was fortunate to mainly attract Christians of the “love thy neighbour” new testament variety rather than the hell and damnation old testament variety. At least the ones I have had conversations with seemed to have no trouble reconsiling their religion with living in a secular society on the basis that “vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord”.
I presume the Destiny church is espousing the sort of fundamentalist attitudes you are referring?
January 7th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Looks like nationals blue-greens are toast
I see Tony Blair converted to catholicism. After all the thinking he put into complex decisions, such as, whether to invade Iraq, he now believes in the earth> heaven , hell model of the universe. Maybe he over did the thinking and has decided to put a test pattern in his brain?…
January 7th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Tony Bliar is a consummate con artist and the blue greens are far from finished .
Check the toaster as the burnt bread smells like a fetid utopian stench .
January 7th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Bjchip,
I was exposed to a rather frightening example of the aforementioned US Christian fundie when I caught up with a former acquaintance yesterday. He is actually a Kiwi, but has spent alot of time in the US and our Pentecostol Churches are becoming heavily influenced by the US megachurches anyway. I’m a former Christian myself, but even when I regularly attended Church, I didn’t believe in the Bible as the authentic received word of God, because I was aware that it was a product of the Council of Nicea where Emporer Constatine wanted to strengthen his rule by consolidating the fragmented Christian church/religion under his “stewardship”, but the perspective of the modern Christian is filtered by their understanding of the Bible to an extent that anything at all can be justified by referencing a Bible passage.
According to this guy, Europeans owe their prosperity, wealth, and power to our forebears’ Christian righteousness and virtue, a religion that emphasises free choice and self-determination, and everyone else owes their poverty to their rejection of Christianity and therefore they are immoral and wicked. The deaths from the American invasion of Iraq can be dismissed, because God decides the time and manner of everyones death and those who refused to listen to God’s voice deserved to perish and go to hell, because they had an option to save their lives, but refused.
But don’t paint all Christians with a broad brush. My best friend is a very commited Christian, but he was as disgusted and angry about the Iraq war as I was, because he recognised innocent people died due to what was quite frankly a blatant theft of the country’s oil supplies.
January 7th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
By Blue Greens are finished I meant that if they really are Green (and some of them genuinely are they are having to give way to the right on 1. Climate change and 2. National is going to spin the line that the price of houses is two high because “greenies” are limiting the supply of land (more sprawl). He who pays the piper plays the tune.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Some posts have accused D4J of hate speech. From what I have read above, I would hardly classify it as hate speech. Furthermore, I am very suspicious that “hate speech” is used by some to justify muzzling other peoples freedom of expression. (Oh, and by the way, I am mot a right wing fundamentalist Christian, the exact opposite in fact).
January 7th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Nick C: “you see it all around you”
oh well it won’t be that hard for you to come up with some more examples of “the left” polarizing the debate between ’sceptics’ and ‘believers’ then will it?
“when was the last time someone took a middle ground on global warming?”
well, you can see it all the time in quotes by scientists who are naturally cautious and uncertain. Heck there are about 200 quotes from people taking a middle ground on AGW in the Inhofe list.
“the media and the green party dont allow them to”
well I can agree that the media often encourage polarisation of debate in order to generate controversy and sell papers, but does this mean that you consider the media to be “the left”. Or when you say “the left” do you mean the Green Party? Why not just say the Green Party then, rather than “the left”?
And how exactly do the Green Party stop people from taking a middle ground on AGW? Do we vet and censor everything that people write in the media or something? Hmm, we don’t seem to be doing a good job of it then, going by our media coverage.
“John Key wants to put the economy ahead of emmisions reductions and let the bigegr nations take the lead, so he is accused of being a climate change sceptic.”
Er sorry, I must have missed that, who exactly accused John Key of being a climate change sceptic?
“Even the title of this thread is proof.”
So convenient use of commonly excepted language to sum up a topic is now proof of the global conspiracy? Have you got your tin foil hat yet? No wonder you can see proof “all around you”.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Mouldwarp: “2007 was the coolest year since the beginning of the century (not the warmest, which is what you alarmists had predicted in January).”
I take it you mean globally?
Globally, the top 10 warmest years are, in order, 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2001, 1997 and 1995. That is strong evidence that the last 10 years have been the warmest since records began. As a natural system the climate is highly variable, you should expect global mean temp to go down and up from year to year - that’s why we calculate 5 year means.
Predictions that last year would be the warmest ever were because it was expected that this would be an el nino year. However it turned out to be a la nina year which lowered the temp.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7169690.stm
January 8th, 2008 at 9:23 am
boy i would’nt watch fox news even if you paid me, it’s the most beautifully created and scrypted live soap witth elements of real life thrown in to catch your attention. when it comes to gameshowing life pay them to get you elected.
I asked a 16 yr old about the war on terror,I also asked him who owns iraqs oil and whether having being chipped with a gps unit in your arm will make life easier.
I then asked him about Wi-Fi and it’s unknown affects on the environment, and the plight of the bees?
My hope is “Goddang! please lord don’t let us become like the americans”
I also asked him what happened if Antartica brokeup?
His answer was “we own the oil”
January 11th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Dennis Dutton has a sight where one column has “Essays and research supporting the idea that global warming poses a clear threat to humanity, that it is largely caused by human activity, and that solutions to the problems of climate change lie within human reach.” and the other column
“Essays and research challenging the view that the world warming that began around 1880 is caused by human activity, that it constitutes a serious threat, or that the vagaries of the earth’s climate are within human control.”
The problem is that it suggests a sort of equality based on bulk until you read further comment from qualified people.
January 11th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
http://www.climatedebatedaily.com/
(that’s the link)
January 11th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Dutton debunked.
January 12th, 2008 at 12:10 am
bjchip,
- “Oh yes… and while the global temperatures DO respond a bit to the solar forcing, that IS in the models and it is not surprising to anyone.”
Actually it’s not in the models, because the mechanisms for solar forcing are complex and only now beginning to be understood. Do you still not yet understand that the models are completely useless and have no predictive skill whatsoever? Hell, even the handling of something as profound, obvious and fundamental as cloud cover is known to be very badly dealt with in these utterly useless models - they don’t even know if the feedback is positive is negative for heaven’s sake!
In fact, the likelyhood is that clouds *drive* climate change - rather than being driven by it - because they are seeded by particles of solar radiation and, in turn, modulate the Earth’s albedo.
Previously, the close correlation between solar activity and Earth’s climate was dismissed by some as being just an amazing, spooky coincidence of galactic proportions, because the increase in energy hitting the Earth during periods of high solar activity was too small to directly account for the variation in temperature. However, we are now beginning to really understand the much more complex mechanism by which the sun drives the Earth’s climate.
The awkward fact is that temperature changes over the last 100 years have very closely matched changes in solar activity, but have completely contradicted the CO2 AGW theory. Sorry, but that’s a fact.
stuey,
- “Predictions that last year would be the warmest ever were because it was expected that this would be an el nino year. However it turned out to be a la nina year which lowered the temp.”
That doesn’t make any sense at all. El Ninas/Ninos move heat around, they don’t *generate* any extra heat or *remove* heat, so cannot make one year - as a global average - any warmer or cooler than any other. Would you not agree?
And if that’s the case, shouldn’t we conclude that there is something profoundly wrong with these “global” temperature reports that we’re supposed to find so alarming?
January 12th, 2008 at 1:30 am
” Do you still not yet understand that the models are completely useless and have no predictive skill whatsoever?”
Gee Mouldy — I never knew you were a model!
(Happy New Year recipe : just ad hominem and stir!)
January 12th, 2008 at 2:20 am
Mouldwarp
You have a profound understanding of something…. I just have no idea what. It certainly has nothing to do with climate science, modeling of climate or the temperature of the planet. Did you bother to look at the link about risk management? The presentation however, is quite entertaining.
seriously
BJ
January 12th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Not true. You might want it to be true, but it isn’t. You are either profoundly misinformed, or a bad liar.
You clearly don’t understand the ENSO cycle and its impact on global temperatures either.
January 12th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Mouldwarp,
The current climate models are not useless. It is “easy” to run them retrospectively, to “predict” the climate of the 20th century; this has been done. These retrospective predictions can then be validated against observations. If the models were useless, they would not be able to model the climate of the 20th Century. In fact, many of the climate models recreate the observed warming during the 20th Century quite well. Notice that I am not saying anything about the cause of the 20th Century warming, just refuting your claim that the climate models are useless.
You need to revisit your meteorology. Clouds are not “seeded by particles of solar radiation”. In fact, clouds are formed when water vapour condenses upon tiny aerosol particles (salt from the sea, dust from the land, pollution etc). This is one of the reasons why research into aerosols is so active at the moment. You are however correct that clouds are one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate models.
January 12th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
samiuela,
- “The current climate models are not useless. It is “easyâ€? to run them retrospectively, to “predictâ€? the climate of the 20th century; this has been done. These retrospective predictions can then be validated against observations. If the models were useless, they would not be able to model the climate of the 20th Century.”
This is just curve fitting - fudging everything until your model matches a desired pattern. It certainly does not mean that the climate is being modelled in any meaningful way. These blatant fudges are termed “flux adjustments,” to try and make them sound scientific, and even those models which claim to no longer use them apparently still make use of “ad hoc tuning” to get the desired result (i.e. the same fudging process, by another name.)
- “You need to revisit your meteorology. Clouds are not “seeded by particles of solar radiationâ€?.”
No, you’re right. I meant to say cosmic radiation, and there is good evidence for this:-
http://www.spacecenter.dk/research/sun-climate/cosmoclimatology/a-brie f-summary-on-cosmoclimatology
http://www.spacecenter.dk/research/sun-climate/other/getting-closer-to -the-cosmic-connection-to-climate
Essentially, the state of the Sun’s activity determines how much cosmic radiation reaches the Earth, and thus strongly influences the amount of low cloud cover: Hence the strong correlation between solar activity and recent climate variation.
January 12th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
There is no strong correlation between solar activity and recent climate variation.
None. Nada.
January 12th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
The investigations of the tragic Kings Cross Station fire proved that mathematical models can reveal things that the experts are blinded to by their expertise. Most of the world’s leading fire investigator’s were involved in the investigation of this fire. All of them considered that fire could not have progressed the way it did without assistance. The computer model incorporated all of the expert knowledge on what can happen but none of the expert “knowledge” on what can’t happen. The model reproduced the fire behaviour precisely. The experts were dubious so they built a full size replica of the Station and fully instrumented it and then reproduced the known
January 12th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
conditions in the ealy stages of the fire. It was only when their model also proved that the impossible had happened that they accepted that the mathematical model wasn’t faulty. Their instruments had revealed previously unknown flame behaviour.
On the other hand, when the British army simulated the behaviour of a barrel of Guy Fawke’s gunpowder using the army’s weapons developement modelling software they underestimated the energy release by 30%. The modellers had had to estimate the behaviour of an oak barrel and had got it badly wrong.
So maybe mouldy is right but probably he aint.
January 13th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
To commenter jh..
re: the link you mentioned is subtitled: “A new way to understand disputes about global warming..
which clearly makes dispute the emphasis.. and to my reading a focus whose objective lacks relevance to any constructive needs-based debate..
one of my sidekicks puts it another way: what’s new about any old fools starting an argument?—could it be that the doctor seeks to assert that learning from a fool in this case will be profitable..?
January 13th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Mouldwarp,
Climate models are not just curve fitting models. In fact, many climate models are very similar to the numerical weather prediction models which are used very successfully to predict the weather for the next week or so (for example, the UK Met Office unified model can be run as a climate model or an NWP model, and much of the code used for climate modeling is shared by the NWP model). It is true that there are parameterisations in these models, for things such as convection and clouds. These are necessary because current computers are not fast enough to run the models at a high enough resolution to resolve the necessary detail to explicitly model the physical processes. However, it is incorrect to say these parameterisations are simply curve fitting models, they are based on a lot of physics and results from observations.
I’m not saying climate model are perfect; they aren’t (and they are a very long way from being perfect). However, the claims you make about climate models being useless are simply wrong.
With regards cloud formation, clouds form as a result of microphysics and large scale dynamics. You can have the necessary cloud condensation nucleii for cloud droplets to form, but if there is simply not enough moisture, a cloud won’t form. For example, over the Southern Alps, clouds often form because warm moist air from the Tasman Sea is lifted up (and cools and becomes saturated in the process) as it goes over the mountains. In other places, different atmospheric microphysics and dynamics are responsible for cloud formation. However, the basic processes behind cloud formation have been understood by meteorologists for a long time (many decades).
To the best of my knowledge, cosmic rays are not a major factor in cloud formation (and definitely not for low level clouds).
January 14th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Samiuela
http://www.scribd.com/doc/338170/svensmark-2007cosmoclimatology
http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v81/i22/p5027_1
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=42
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/index/index.php? p=504
Cosmic rays can indeed alter the physics of cloud formation in the lab, and low clouds are part of the research and theory.
What hasn’t been found is any reason to believe that this provides a valid alternateive explanation for the CO2 Greenhouse, or that it renders Greenhouse physics irrelevant.
If we assume that it is true the scale of coincidence demanded for this to be happening at the same time as the CO2 increases and Greenhouse reminds me of the phrase. “All things are possible, but some are more likely than others”. Mouldwarp hangs his hat on “anything but AGW” because he has an ideological investment in the result. He’s wrong to make that investment because Libertarian fears of an excuse to provide increased government powers are misplaced…. government already has the power to tax and destroy and coerce through force… it needs no excuse to do whatever it wishes. Libertarians make several well-meaning mistakes, but this one has been the most egregious and damning of all of them.
respectfully
BJ
January 14th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
samiuela,
Climate models are fudged (sorry, tuned) to match the apparent observed climate behaviour, that’s why they claim them to be accurate; and yet that is the very definition of curve-fitting (and of course, they are continually being modified and tweaked to try to maintain that fit.) It’s that simple.
I’m afraid the notion that such models have any predictive skill is not plausible: Their only value is as propaganda tools to try and make it appear that the AGW theory has been validated. It has not.
- “It is true that there are parameterisations in these models, for things such as convection and clouds. These are necessary because current computers are not fast enough to run the models at a high enough resolution to resolve the necessary detail to explicitly model the physical processes.”
…but also because there are major uncertainties in the actual physical effects of these processes - even something as basic and major as the feedback effect of clouds. And even a modest and reasonable tweak of just one such parameter forces a wildly different result to be spewed out from the computer.
If it were acceptable to use such simple abstract constants in place of properly understanding and modelling key elements of such a chaotic and infinately complex system, then we could all run climate models at home on the Commodore 64s in our attics.
So I repeat, these systems do not model the climate. They very crudely implement some aspects of it, and fudge the rest to get the desired result. They represent nothing but the distilled ignorance and prejudices of the people that configure them.
January 14th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Mouldwarp again trumpets his ignorance. He clearly understands less about climate models than he does about ENSO.