by frog
George Monbiot says it like it is:
Think environmentalists are stooges? You’re the unwitting recruit of a hugely powerful oil lobby – I’ve got the proof
Read the case notes for this article hereWhen you survey the trail of wreckage left by the climate emails crisis, three things become clear. The first is the tendency of those who claim to be the champions of climate science to minimise their importance. Those who have most to lose if the science is wrong have perversely sought to justify the secretive and chummy ethos that some of the emails reveal. If science is not transparent and accountable, it’s not science.
I believe that all supporting data, codes and programmes should be made available as soon as an article is published in a peer-reviewed journal. That anyone should have to lodge a freedom of information request to obtain them is wrong. That the request should be turned down is worse. That a scientist suggests deleting material that might be covered by that request is unjustifiable. Everyone who values the scientific process should demand complete transparency, across all branches of science.
The second observation is the tendency of those who don’t give a fig about science to maximise their importance. The denial industry, which has no interest in establishing the truth about global warming, insists that these emails, which concern three or four scientists and just one or two lines of evidence, destroy the entire canon of climate science.
Even if you were to exclude every line of evidence that could possibly be disputed – the proxy records, the computer models, the complex science of clouds and ocean currents – the evidence for man-made global warming would still be unequivocal. You can see it in the measured temperature record, which goes back to 1850; in the shrinkage of glaciers and the thinning of sea ice; in the responses of wild animals and plants and the rapidly changing crop zones.
No other explanation for these shifts makes sense. Solar cycles have been out of synch with the temperature record for 40 years. The Milankovic cycle, which describes variations in the Earth’s orbit, doesn’t explain it either. But the warming trend is closely correlated with the accumulation of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. The impact of these gases can be demonstrated in the laboratory. To assert that they do not have the same effect in the atmosphere, a novel and radical theory would be required. No such theory exists. The science is not fixed – no science ever is – but it is as firm as science can be. The evidence for man-made global warming remains as strong as the evidence linking smoking to lung cancer or HIV to Aids.
The third observation is the contrast between the global scandal these emails have provoked and the muted response to 20 years of revelations about the propaganda planted by fossil fuel companies. I have placed on the Guardian’s website four case studies; each of which provides a shocking example of how the denial industry works.
Two of them are drawn from Climate Cover-Up, the fascinating, funny and beautifully written new book by James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore. If every allegation it contained could not be traced back to leaked documents (I have checked all the sources), their findings would be unbelievable. Nothing exposed by the hacking of the Climatic Research Unit’s server is one tenth as bad as the least of these revelations.
When I use the term denial industry, I’m referring to those who are paid to say that man-made global warming isn’t happening. The great majority of people who believe this have not been paid: they have been duped. Reading Climate Cover-Up, you keep stumbling across familiar phrases and concepts which you can see every day on the comment threads. The book shows that these memes were planted by PR companies and hired experts.
The first case study I’ve posted reveals how a coalition of US coal companies sought to persuade people that the science is uncertain. It listed the two social groups it was trying to reach – “Target 1: Older, less educated males”; “Target 2: Younger, lower income women” – and the methods by which it would reach them. One of its findings was that “members of the public feel more confident expressing opinions on others’ motivations and tactics than they do expressing opinions on scientific issues”.
Remember this the next time you hear people claiming that climate scientists are only in it for the money, or that environmentalists are trying to create a communist world government: these ideas were devised and broadcast by energy companies. The people who inform me, apparently without irony, that “your article is an ad hominem attack, you four-eyed, big-nosed, commie sack of shit”, or “you scaremongers will destroy the entire world economy and take us back to the Stone Age”, are the unwitting recruits of campaigns they have never heard of.
The second case study reveals how Dr Patrick Michaels, one of a handful of climate change deniers with a qualification in climate science, has been lavishly paid by companies seeking to protect their profits from burning coal. As far as I can discover, none of the media outlets who use him as a commentator – including the Guardian – has disclosed this interest at the time of his appearance. Michaels is one of many people commenting on climate change who presents himself as an independent expert while being secretly paid for his services by fossil fuel companies.
The third example shows how a list published by the Heartland Institute (which has been sponsored by oil company Exxon) of 500 scientists “whose research contradicts man-made global warming scares” turns out to be nothing of the kind: as soon as these scientists found out what the institute was saying about them, many angrily demanded that their names be removed. Twenty months later, they are still on the list. The fourth example shows how, during the Bush presidency, White House officials worked with oil companies to remove regulators they didn’t like and to doctor official documents about climate change.
In Climate Cover-Up, in Ross Gelbspan’s books The Heat is On and Boiling Point, in my book Heat, and on the websites DeSmogBlog.com and exxonsecrets.org, you can find dozens of such examples. Together they expose a systematic, well-funded campaign to con the public. To judge by the comments you can read on this paper’s website, it has worked.
But people behind these campaigns know that their claims are untrue. One of the biggest was run by the Global Climate Coalition, which represented ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, the American Petroleum Institute and several big motor manufacturers. In 1995 the coalition’s own scientists reported that “the scientific basis for the greenhouse effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well-established and cannot be denied”. The coalition hid this finding from the public, and spent millions of dollars seeking to persuade people that the opposite was true.
These people haven’t fooled themselves, but they might have fooled you. Who, among those of you who claim that climate scientists are liars and environmentalists are stooges, has thought it through for yourself?
Indeed!
(I don’t usually do the Farrar-style copy+paste+indeed but in this case, Monbiot summed it up perfectly!).
To our resident climate change trolls: this is your climategate thread. Get all foamed up and troll your little hearts out, I know you love it.
UPDATE 1 14/12/2009: The Standard and Tumeke have both written similar blog posts to this, today.
UPDATE 2 14/12/2009: If that wall of text is too much for you, this entertaining video is great instead
Published in Environment & Resource Management | THE GAME by frog on Fri, December 11th, 2009
Tags: climate change, climate change denial, climategate, denial, Monbiot
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
yah. Provide your reasons please. One would think...
We have dupes who comment here regularly.
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and it’s not happening.
and it’s not humans causing it.
and’ um cosmic rays and stuff.
and if it does get hotter it’ll be nice.
hey this denial stuff is easy…
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“Even if you were to exclude every line of evidence that could possibly be disputed – the proxy records, the computer models, the complex science of clouds and ocean currents – the evidence for man-made global warming would still be unequivocal. You can see it in the measured temperature record, which goes back to 1850; in the shrinkage of glaciers and the thinning of sea ice; in the responses of wild animals and plants and the rapidly changing crop zones.”
The first part of the paragraph lists the things that are now disputed.
The second part assumes that we ignore those disputed parts and goes on to list other evidence that we should rely on.
The problem is that the second part doesn’t list evidence, it links effects – what happens when the earth warms.
What happens when the earth warms is not evidence that humans are causing the warming.
Which leaves us back with the first part of the paragraph – which is disputed.
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The problem is that the second part doesn’t list evidence, it links effects
“You can see it in the measured temperature record”
i would have thought that was evidence
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“Even if you were to exclude every line of evidence that could possibly be disputed – the proxy records, the computer models, the complex science of clouds and ocean currents – the evidence for man-made global warming would still be unequivocal.”
I read that as: if you threw out the proxy records and models that are disputed while keeping the proxy records and models that are not disputed, the evidence for man-made global warming would still be unequivocal.
In any case, the bits about the political dimensions and the denial industry are the most interesting parts of the article for me, rather than the science.
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We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities. The evidence and the science are deep and extensive. They come from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across the world who adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity. That research has been subject to peer review and publication, providing traceability of the evidence and support for the scientific method.
The science of climate change draws on fundamental research from an increasing number of disciplines, many of which are represented here. As professional scientists, from students to senior professors, we uphold the findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which concludes that ‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal’ and that ‘Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations’.
followed by about 2000 scientists names
Not bad, considering they probably got this together in the last few days
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How is that worth any more than all the petitions opposing it frog?
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In reply to your link to the petition from the met office;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6951029.ece
“One scientist told The Times he felt under pressure to sign. “The Met Office is a major employer of scientists and has long had a policy of only appointing and working with those who subscribe to their views on man-made global warming,” he said.”
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Global temperature observations for the past 100+ years are not seriously disputed. The vast bulk of these observations are made to support weather forecasting operations. Because of the importance of weather forecasting, a huge amount of effort is put into ensuring these observations are as accurate and reliable as possible. These observations show the global average temperature is increasing; even when you discard observations which may be affected by localised urban effects, poor siting and so on. Its not controversial at all. Furthermore, most of these data are in the public domain for free (I could provide you with details on how to get them if you are interested); anyone is free to re-analyse the data.
Sweetdisorder: That quote about the MetOffice only appointing and working with those who subscribe to their views on global warming is utter bullshit. Most of their staff don’t work on climate research, so why would the organisation care what prospective staff members thought about global warming?
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samiuela,
Proof of rising temperatures is not proof of anthropogenic global warming.
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You are already on the plane, it’s been accelerating for a long time now, but to keep flying it must, Must, MUST keep going higher/faster.
How do you get the plane to glide down to a more appropriate speed/altitude?
Or… How do you get off?
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rimu,
Absolutely, if the pilot is happy to take off, I would value his judgement.
Remember the pilot is just as keen and motivated to return to his/her family after work as you are, so the likelyhood of your scenario is zero.
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Hmm. Who’s the pilot?? Are we stretching the analogy beyond breaking point??
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- “Global temperature observations for the past 100+ years are not seriously disputed.”
That’s entirely incorrect. There are fundamental problems with the temperature history: not least with the way the data has been manipulated to add a completely false warming trend.
For example:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/11/giss-raw-station-data-before-and-after/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
And there is also the very significant urban heat island effect, which again adds a large false warming trend to the chart:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/picking-out-the-uhi-in-global-temperature-records-so-easy-a-6th-grader-can-do-it/
It’s not that the temperature history is “not seriously disputed” or even that it is unreliable; it’s that it is demonstrably false.
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rimu,
The analogy is fatally flawed becasue it leaves out common sense.
Yes I would take the word of the qualified mechanics over the rabble.
But common sense tells me that there are other “players” opnions to consider and that taking the mechanics “all knowing” view is but a considerations in the overall decision.
Same as in climate change, the scientists have one opnion (peer reviewed and all). But there are other players opnions (and more importantly motivations) to consider.
People like Al Gore (keen to clip the ticket), the UN (who wants to create global control of carbon credits and their distribution), Goldman Sachs (who want to expand their bottom line), etc.
While the mechanics are like climate scientists, they are “controlled” and “renumerated” by others. They will have a vested interest in outcomes.
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nommopilot,
As has been shown here before, there are plenty of peer-reviewed studies of solar and land-use change etc which more than account for recent warming, i.e. these studies, taken together, account for more than 100% of recent warming.
And let’s not forget that the alarmists hijacked and corrupted the peer-review process to pass their dodgy stuff through on the nod whilst blocking alternative studies.
Until that entire process is worked through again transparently, the “peer review” label (or lack thereof) means nothing.
It’s like the undocumented manipulations of their secret temperature record: it is worthless until redone in its entirety in a scientific manner,i.e. one that can be replicated.
Example of the UN’s openness on this issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUtzMBfDrpI&feature=player_embedded
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BP – if you don’t know squat, leave the discussion to those who do know plenty.
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The key issue with that analogy is that the mechanics work for the airline who have an incentive FOR the plane to fly. So them saying it’s not safe is significant.
Ideally, politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, etc would want the planet to ‘fly’ too. But it seems to me most of them have more incentive for it to crash (or at least be seen to be going to crash) than not.
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really Wat? it’s funny then that the denialists main tactic in the debate is to repeat long-debunked talking points ad nauseum and wave a couple of emails about as their proof rather than these scientific findings you allude to (yet fail to reference).
as for the vested interests argument, you fail to recognise the people currently clipping the pollution tickets have a considerably greater vested interest in maintaining the status quo. checked exxon’s profits lately? I think you’ll find their executives are making a bit more than your average climatologist.
BP “Well, isn’t that the exact same level of argument we’ve been putting up from warmists, in reverse.”
no the argument from ‘warmists’ is “hey, look at all this evidence from thousands of well-regarded scientists from different fields who have shown through a range of different approaches that CO2 released from sequestration by mankind (in addition to the natural carbon cycle) in the last hundred years, combined with the massive deforestation of the past two hundred years is causing the earth’s atmosphere to absorb increasing amounts of solar energy which is driving unprecedentedly rapid increases in temperature and polar melting.”
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The “smoking gun at Darwin” is not about HadCRUt. The record is public. Does NOAA publish what it does to “homogenize the data”? Yes it does. Does GHCN provide the temperature data? Yes IT does. Does it maintain the station data? No it does not. The writer cannot work out why the Australians say something changed and fails to look in the one place where the station data IS kept.
Maybe he should ask someone who actually has the data about stations and reasons for the data to be adjusted, of which there are many (including observation times, equipment changes and station relocations). He might start here.
He fails even to ASK politely, for the station metadata for Darwin from the people who have it… (note that such a request would require someone to dig out paper or microfiche records to copy for him to peruse). Instead he immediately leaps to the conclusion that the scientists are ALL in collusion (since well before the advent of any alarm about this BTW) and alleges that they altered the data in unjustified ways.
He might look up the published literature about how DETAILED the records are that the Australian Met office keeps to ensure that the adjustments make sense.
http://134.178.63.141/amm/docs/1996/torok.pdf
http://reg.bom.gov.au/amm/docs/2004/dellamarta.pdf
Now I reckon that the Aussies are well aware of how far Darwin is from everything else, and that the author of this particular baseless accusation would have served truth better if he’d done something more useful than posting the just the half he felt was useful to his argument.
Saying what I actually think about the utter rubbish that is commonly posted on WUWT would involve a lot of reserved words. I do suggest however, that getting information from someone who actually HAS it would go a long way towards clarity.
That’s what I TRY to do.
It is a pity that the people who buy into the scams from the doubt manufacturing industry are so eager to find a conspiracy of scientists who are quite frankly incapable of doing anything of the sort, and so blind to the conspiracy of the people who invented the damned things, those who run the planet and have ruined the economies of most of the countries on it.
BJ
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Proof of rising temperatures is not proof of anthropogenic global warming.
However, when you take it together with a well established theoretical explanation that carbon dioxide slows the loss of heat energy, it is extremely convincing.
So a question for the climate deniers here:
Let’s say there was a planet the size of the earth, except that it was made of pure solid quartz, was perfectly spherical, had no water, and had a perfectly homogeneous atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen in the same ratio as the average for the earth’s atmosphere. Now let’s say we added 800 ppm carbon dioxide by mass to this mix – would the planet get warmer, cooler, or stay the same?
So my next question – do you agree that humans are raising carbon dioxide levels in earth’s atmosphere?
If you’d agree that the above hypothetical planet would get warmer when CO2 was added, and that humans are adding CO2, and that the planet earth is warming, surely you must agree that it would require quite a lot of evidence to the contrary to say that it isn’t human activity that is warming earth?
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That isn’t in dispute, none of it. It is commonly and utterly misunderstood by far too many people. Nor is there any dispute about how long ago the planet last saw CO2 levels like what we have now.
The second thing that isn’t in dispute (sorry folks) is that the temperature is rising and rising without ANY better explanatory theory. That makes AGW robust people.
Recall please that we are discarding things that are disputed. We have no undisputed evidence of what the clouds are doing, increases in Galactic Cosmic Rays or changes in Total Solar Radiation. In fact the evidence against all of those things is far more profound than the suspicions of a few denialists that somehow this is a big conspiracy on the part of scientists. All such theories are struggling with serious problems. Worse, they rely on a coincidence to be explicative in PLACE of CO2/CH4.
The gradual decline of temperatures towards the next glaciation in THIS interglacial period very clearly appears to have stopped and reversed. In another 100 years that will be much clearer of course.
In the paleoclimate data we can examine a few things about what conditions were like back 3 million years ago when we last had these CURRENT levels of CO2… and the temperature was a few degrees warmer.. and the ocean was at least 20+ meters deeper.
Occam tells us not to invent extra stuff if we have a simple explanation for something. We do. Who is inventing extra stuff? Who is manufacturing a confusion?
Some of the skeptics here have real working brains. I wish they would consider who has major motives to try to keep us from taking action… instead of focusing on scientist’s much more minor motives for trying to persuade us to take action.
respectfully
BJ
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wat dabney – global cooling alarmist.
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Sorry for the lack of clarity in that.
BJ
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wat usefully provides a link to 450 papers that challenge the AGW theory. Pity that most of these papers cost $18 (USD?) to view, at least amongst the first few I checked. At least this goes to explain why the denialists are so vocal – they get paid to be vocal! But I did find one that was a free PDF download – a 2004 paper showing discrepancies with some 2002 general circulation models. Come on! Computer climate models have advanced significantly in the last 7 years, but they still come to the same overall conclusion – increased CO2 leads to increased temperatures.
Trevor.
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help me out here, wat. I’m a bit slow
does the climategate email saga show that
* there is no warming at all
* there is warming, but humans didn’t cause it
* or something else
??
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Slightly off topic: most drug company science would fail Mr Mobiot’s criterion for scientific integrity. Is it intended to apply only to publicly funded science?
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bjchip,
- “The second thing that isn’t in dispute (sorry folks) is that the temperature is rising and rising without ANY better explanatory theory. That makes AGW robust people.”
By “rising and rising” you presumably mean “hasn’t risen for about a decade.”
In what way does that make AGW “robust”? Surely it contradicts it.
And since when did ignorance become evidence in science?
- “Recall please that we are discarding things that are disputed.”
If you ignore numerous major climate drivers then what you are left with is completely worthless.
- “Occam tells us not to invent extra stuff if we have a simple explanation for something. We do. Who is inventing extra stuff? Who is manufacturing a confusion?”
So, natural climate variation it is then.
- “In the paleoclimate data we can examine a few things about what conditions were like…”
Like this, you mean?
“Paul Pearson of Cardiff University and his international team achieved a breakthrough recently, published four weeks ago in arguably the world’s top scientific journal, Nature.
They unravelled records of atmosphere, temperature and ice-cap formation 33.6 million years ago, when the Earth cooled from a greenhouse without ice caps, into something quite similar to our present day…
Pearson’s work contains a couple of remarkable results.
First the greenhouse atmosphere pre-cooling contained a CO2 concentration of 900 parts per million by volume, or more than three times that of the Earth in pre-industrial days.
We can’t be sure what triggered the Earth to cool despite, or because of, its changing green-house atmospheric blanket, but once it did, cycles of ice cap formation and glaciation commenced, apparently governed by the same variations in the Earth’s orbit that govern the ice ages of the past million years.
Second, while the cooling of the Earth took place over a time-span of around 200,000 years, the atmospheric CO2 first dropped in association with the cooling, then rose to around 1100ppmv and remained high for 200,000 years while the Earth cooled further and remained in its new ice ages cycle.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/climate-claims-fail-science-test/story-e6frg6zo-1225808398627
So, CO2 at 1100ppm whilst the Earth cooled and remained cold.
That will be because CO2 was not, is not, and will never be a significant climate driver.
greenfly,
- “wat dabney – global cooling alarmist. ”
I’ll need billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money before I can tell you just how bad it’s going to be.
And I know it’s a big ask but do you know of any MPs who would be willing to join me jetting around the globe staying at nice hotels and attending climate conferences along with tens of thousands of other hangers-on?
- rimu,
The Climategate saga doesn’t show any of the things you mention. What it does show is how a clique of key alarmist players conspired to corrupt and distort the science around this issue to ensure that a wholly false case is presented.
It shows that the peer-review process was hijacked, meaning that alarmist stuff was approved despite its lack of merit, whilst contradictory studies were suppressed.
And it shows that the temperature record is a work of forgery by activists pushing an agenda.
An important point is that much of this was known before Climategate by those who took an interest in the subject. The difference is that it can no longer be brushed off.
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And wat continues to push the discredited “CO2 saturation issue” line. This was based on a model of the atmosphere which assumed that all the CO2 interaction occurred at a fixed height. This model was shown to be inaccurate and insufficient over 50 years ago. The effects of CO2 in the upper atmosphere are far from saturated.
The effects of CO2 are far from negligible. It isn’t the most powerful greenhouse gas, as everyone accepts that water’s contribution is much higher. What is conveniently ignored when it doesn’t suit wat and other deniers is that water’s contribution to our current temperature is of the order of 30 degrees C of warming. Therefore if CO2 contributed only 3% of the greenhouse effect of water, we can expect a 1 degree C temperature rise – before positive feedback effects are applied, such as increasing the water vapour content and melting the polar icecaps.
Trevor.
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I agree, bj. It seems a hell of a long bow to suggest that thousands of scientists have somehow got together with some obscure but unifying motive to set out to dupe the rest of the world, including political leaders from virtually every country, who are right now meeting in Copenhagen. What might such a unifying motive be?…personal aggrandisement? financial gain? world government? what about job security? I can’t see any of those bringing such unity.
So I then wonder about the motives of those who so ardently deny AGW. What makes them argue so stridently against even the possibility of climate change and all that it might lead to? I don’t have to wonder long about a unifying motive. It’s the oldest one there is – the desire to survive, both physically and psychologically. I believe that the need to survive is what drives us all to seek comfort and security from whatever will provide it – including holding onto what is known, familiar and safe. So resist change, especially if it involves the threat of death. The deniers don’t want anything which will involve change to the reality they know and depend on.
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Philip – you have it in one.
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Philip – I agree. So I guess the next question is, how to we appeal to people who are living in denial for that reason?
Perhaps we should tone down the rhetoric… instead of continually fighting against these people, trying to convince them, which is unlikely to ever succeed because they are just avoiding facing the facts, maybe we should go with them – “yes, you are right, we can’t be absolutely certain about AGW. But surely it’s sensible to take some precautions, to try and prepare for the worse. And many of these things would make our lives better anyway – aiming for less pollution, better insulation, planting (and conserving) more trees etc.”.
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wtl – “But surely it’s sensible to take some precautions”
Give it a shot – put that proposal to Wat, Blue and or Owen and see how you go.
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Wat….
I wonder why you are wasting your time talking to us misguided fools on this obscure blog when your place is in Copenhagen telling the rest of the deluded world how wrong they are, including our own misled government. If you truly have the science to back your position then what have you been doing with it, apart from telling us all about it? You sound like a furious and frustrated fellow, and why wouldn’t you be, if we are the only people who are hearing you, rather than those who really matter.
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It’s important to remind “man made climate change” deniers, that the cause of the man made climate change is our use of non renewable resources. These resources are finite. So the current course is not sustainable – even if climate change were not a factor.
And in the end the cost of “climate change” policies is no more than the cost that will be imposed by the market as scarce resources deplete. There is a huge cost to an economic system if energy prices suddenly escalate because there is no replacement product available and there are worldwide shortages (which would place great strain on our co-existence).
So efficient use of these scarce resources and use of alternatives to reduce our rate of CO2 emissions is quite complementary to what our economic system should do anyway to efficently plan for the rundown of these non renewable resources.
Continuing economic growth can only occur if we develop renewable energy and worldwide, not just in the first world. This form of investment in the developing world is an investment in a growing world economy.
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Trevor,
“Therefore if CO2 contributed only 3% of the greenhouse effect of water, we can expect a 1 degree C temperature rise…”
Nope, that would be 0.1 degrees.
“But surely it’s sensible to take some precautions”
The precautionary principle could equally apply to meteor strikes, alien attacks or believing in god.
Of course, some of those are more likely than others, but oh look, now we’re back to the science.
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peteremcc – either you are taking something else into account that I am unaware of or you can’t handle percentages. 3% of 30 degrees is 0.9 degrees (0.03 x 30 = 0.9) which I have rounded to 1 degree because the 30 degrees is not a precise value.
Trevor.
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Even if the deniers dispute AGW, increased CO2 levels lead to ocean acidification which could have devestating effects on the fisheries on which much of the world’s population depends.
And reducing our dependence on imported oil and LPG would be good for our economy and our balance of payments.
Trevor.
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The usual cherry-pick from wat. 1998 was an exceptionally hot year. Depending on whose temperature values you use, this temperature has or has not been exceeded since. Wat of course chooses a temperature record that shows that 1998′s temperature has not been exceeded, thus allowing a claim that the temperature has not risen in the last decade.
Wat – tell me how many of the last 10 years appear in the top ten of the hottest years of the last 100 year – or whatever period you would like to provide data for? If AGW isn’t occurring and we are in a period of low solar activity, then there should be zero or 1.
Trevor.
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When temperature records for the past century are analyzed by statisticians who are ignorant of what the hell it was is, they detect the increase. Your position, that the last decade is the most important thing in the record is statistically speaking, noise.
Which contradicts your “contradiction”.
“If you ignore numerous major climate drivers”
Well no Wat, that wasn’t what I did.
What I did was point out that THOSE things haven’t done anything sufficient to drive this change over the past 150 years. All the scientific theories we’ve seen to the contrary are basically moonshine and (with the exception of Pielke who pins his explanation on land use changes) require cosmically unlikely coincidence to explain anything at all. With all such theories (including Pielke) based on research that is scientifically disputed and generally difficult to replicate… in short, in dispute.
However, the basis of AGW is not in dispute. The CO2 record is quite plain.
So, natural climate variation it is then.
Well only if you believe the unbelievable.. that the CO2 has no effect and the atmospheric physics are all wrong.
So, CO2 at 1100ppm whilst the Earth cooled and remained cold.
Interesting that someone who is so intent on the influence of the sun could neglect the point that the Sun was not so hot back then…. At scales of 33 million years, this reduction of insolation becomes significant and indeed the 900-1100 PPM of THAT time would actually make sense to yield similar temperatures to now from a colder sun. Figuring VERY roughly –
~1365 W/m2 of solar energy currently at our orbital distance
~0.2°C expected climate response to a change of 0.25 W/m2
The sun is 10% dimmer a billion years ago, 0.01% dimmer 1 million years ago
or 0.33% dimmer 33 million years ago.
That’s a significant difference – good for about 3.6 degrees of difference as I work it, omitting the effect of not having the albedo enhanced by having an ice cap… and with errors due to the coffee stains on the back of the envelope… roughly equivalent to what I’d expect from the elevated CO2… but since CO2 isn’t allowed to do anything in YOUR version of reality it would appear that your planet of 33 million years ago must be a lot cooler.
Did you really think that I would forget Solar? It counts and we have ALWAYS counted it. It just isn’t driving THIS change, this cycle. Nor is vulcanism.
I’d suggest not trying to go back that far. Closer to the present, a mere 3 million years ago, with the same levels of CO2 we have now, the stable temperatures were warmer. We’d probably do well enough with just a little less than the current CO2.
…key alarmist players conspired to corrupt and distort the science around this issue to ensure that a wholly false case is presented…
Except that there appears to be no distortion or corruption of the science.
You must explain your basis for this claim… I accept that you might think there is one based on the places you frequent, but I have seen nothing worthy of this claim in the mail. The clearest problem in these mails is the privately expressed attitude of Jones to the openness that science demands in order for it to function properly. His attitude probably exacerbated the distorting influence of paid for doubt manufacturing organizations like CEI, as a purely open approach would have led to more public debunking of their obvious obfuscatory efforts. You do persist in ignoring this. I do not think you quite grasp the difference between them and the science.
It shows that the peer-review process was hijacked, meaning that alarmist stuff was approved despite its lack of merit, whilst contradictory studies were suppressed.
Really? They published some awful papers and left all the questioned papers in the IPCC report… along with the papers that disputed their findings. What Jones might have wished to do per the e-mails, and what he and his associates actually did, seem somewhat at odds, which is what you get when you read private mail.
I enthusiastically endorse a shift to a more open direction for the CRU, which appears to be something that East Anglia is dictating as a result of this, and that may mean that Jones will be uncomfortable in his seat even if he is permitted to return to it.
BJ
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This one caught my attention. The money quote is from Phil Jones :
I hope you’re not right about the lack of warming lasting till about 2020.
Aha! Smoking gun!! These people WANT the world to warm, to vindicate themselves!
Not quite, actually.
Reading the whole series of emails, it starts with one from Mike MacCracken, who discusses the sulphate aerosol effect as it pertains to recent industrialisation in China and India. Contrary to popular perception, no climate scientist worth their salt ever claimed that anthropogenic climate change was all about CO2 and nothing else. There are a number of anthropogenic effects, some positive, some negative. Over the longer term, CO2 predominates. But in the short term, sulphate emissions from dirty industry are capable of masking or even overriding the effect of CO2 from those same industries– sulphates, the major component of smog, reflect sunlight and have a cooling effect. The bad news is that the sulphates drop out of the atmosphere fairly quickly, so the cooling effect is transient, whereas the CO2 effect is permanent and cumulative.
I have wondered for a number of years now — and this email chain seems to validate this — whether the peaks and dips of global warming in the last few decades are tied closely to dirty industry. In the 90s, the Soviet bloc’s heavy industry collapsed. This followed hard on the heels of the rest of the industrialised world’s cleaning up their act: producing just as much CO2, but much less sulphate aerosols. The spike in global temperatures in the late 90s would, in my hypothesis, be a result of the CO2 effect no longer being masked by the sulphate effect. This theory would also explain rather nicely the flattening of the warming curve over the last decade, with the dirty Chindians coming on stream.
This is the subtext of the entire discussion. These guys don’t need to lay out the details of stuff that is well-known to them. Phil Jones’s quote, in this context, actually means : If sulphate aerosols from heavy industry mask the CO2 warming until 2020, that would be disastrous. My interpretation is that it would be disastrous for this reason : if there is no public policy response to counter global warming until 2020, because the warming is not manifest, then it will be too late to pull back from the tipping point.
Luckily, public policy makers are smart enough to understand these issues, which, sadly but unsurprisingly, are a bit much for the person in the street. At Copenhagen, the only people touting “Climategate” as a reason to do nothing are… the Saudis.
It comes down to credibility. Who are you going to believe? Medical research, or the cigarette companies?
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Ego.
They started off thinking they saw something. The further they got into it, the more people paid attention to them.
They were digging a hole.
Their reputations – their everything – rests on the world warming. They are vested. Some will be dishonest, and some will never see what is right in front of them because they are a product of their own history.
Part of the problem is we assume humans are rational. Scientists are humans, too.
Add systemic failure. The corporation might be evil, but the employees are not. They’re just doing their job.
Possible.
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Bluepeter replied: “Ego. They started off thinking they saw something. The further they got into it, the more people paid attention to them. They were digging a hole.”
What? Ego makes nearly all the cliamtologists want to agree with each other? Surely a climatologist driven by ego would actually want to prove the other ones wrong, not to back them up.
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“some will never see what is right in front of them because they are a product of their own history”
ok bp I’ll grant you it’s “possible” but is it likely? you want us to consider the possibility that scientists are vested but you do not acknowledge that the sources of most denialist information are thinktanks with funding from exxon. as per what this post is about.
you will never see what is in front of you because you are a product of your own trollness. you are vested.
do you acknowledge the possibility you are wrong? I do. have you considered what it would it take to convince you that you are wrong? for me it would be when a robust scientific study shows that climate change is not occurring with a reasonable hypothesis as to why not.
I’m not holding my breath.
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From what I can see, the theory and “proof” is being directed by a very small group of people. This groups process now looks decidedly dodgy, yet everyone else was basing their work upon their foundation work.
What happens when the pot-holed foundation is built on sand? It doesn’t mean that the roofing work wasn’t excellent.
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Looks like big oil is having a bet both ways by also backing green groups. Does that negate the truth on either side?
Because one side must be right….
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Of course.
It is the job of scientists to prove their theory, not for me or anyone else to prove a negative.
That isn’t science.
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BP
I accept your point, but the problem with that theory is that it will not, and CAN not lead to THOUSANDS of scientists falsifying data all over the world.
One or two might perhaps fall into the ego trap. Certainly Jones, McIntyre, and Mann all suffer from some inflated sense of themselves, and it shows in their interactions with one another (or in the e-mails), yet I would be astonished if any of them would alter a single number.
Their reputations – their everything – rests on the world warming
Actually very few are in THAT position. Most of them simply work for a living and don’t have any vested interest. If there isn’t warming then there is something else, and they still have jobs. Jones and Mann and McIntyre have put their egos on the line but I wouldn’t say that of the others (some HAVE become a bit polarized by McIntyre’s personality issues). They have not got their reputations on the line…and they clearly haven’t forgotten that “Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one” – Konrad Lorenz
Ego IS a powerful motivator, and so the best engineers and the best scientists intentionally suppress it. We know it quite well, as an enemy, and while it would be nice if I could always be “right” in the first place, I would rather be smart enough to accept correction to reach the correct solution to a problem. That is a highly valued characteristic in organizations like NASA. The problems are difficult and collaboration is required. It helps to be able to rely on your peers to help catch the mistakes.
Scientists are more comfortable with uncertainty than people who seem to crave absolutes… maybe related in some way to the apparent division between the right and left on this and other topics.
Freud’s observation is pertinent.
“It is a mistake to believe that a science consists in nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand only made by those who feel a craving for authority in some form and a need to replace the religious catechism by something else, even if it be a scientific one”
Without massive fraud however, the data tells us that it IS warming and it IS us.
That only makes it more apparent that there is indeed massive fraud… being conducted by organizations like CEI.
respectfully
BJ
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Which means (among other things) that the demand that the scientists “prove” their theories is not a tenable position to take.
BJ
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Not a small group at all. Nor do scientists take “direction” very well. Certainly large enough to ensure that the needed questions DO get asked.
You know that we humans do not organize well in groups of more than about 200. Which is another reason to doubt that Copenhagen will actually succeed
respectfully
BJ
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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wat a load
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You want me personally to waste the time repeating answers to each of the posts on these blogs and fisking them when the answers are already contained in the context threads on RealClimate. Hell, I have done several of them already… so it can’t be that hard. Then when I am done you’ll go to the next blog and ask me to do it again.
Seriously, all of those points/issues have been discussed and context provided which makes it QUITE clear that the most serious issue is Jones’ attitude towards openness.
Sorry mate. I’ve done enough today.
It seems you can’t be bothered looking for the truth, just for blogs by other people who ALSO can’t be bothered looking for the truth. I am not going to be your gofer.
Since Harry actually succeeded in reforming the data, it would seem that you are barking up the wrong tree … again.
You go ahead and keep working at it. Temperature rising faster than we have any record of it doing since the end of the last ice-age. CO2 rising 50 TIMES faster than we have any record of it doing, EVER.
I don’t know if YOU noticed, but the person who put that presentation together lied comprehensively with his pictorial sequence. He set the slope of the blade in the first image and never altered it while the scale of all the rest of the data was altered. You have some professional liars you are referring to Watt. I suggest that you stop.
You go to RealClimate or to Tamino’s blog and ask your questions. Politely. NOT like you do here. The people there can answer.
Also, try to check through the index to find the answers FIRST.
I am going to try to do some stuff I actually NEED to do.
BJ
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The only “CO2 saturation issue” is the fact that the ocean now absorbs much less CO2 than in previous decades, because it is approaching saturation (hence oceanic acidification). The idea that the atmosphere is “saturated” with respect to the absorption of radiation is seductive, to those who want to believe that it is not causing global warming, but honest to God sceptical scientists have shot that theory down in flames because it doesn’t pan out.
As for what is alarming in the recent data :
The decade now ending is by far the warmest in the historical record. 2009 is the fifth warmest year on record (as predicted in December 2008 by both the UK Met Office and NASA). 2010 will be hotter because of the emerging El Nino (La Nina has been depressing temperatures for the last couple of years). China and India are pumping out aerosols as fast as they are pumping out CO2, but they will clean up their air and there will be a sudden temperature spike when they do. The hole in the ozone layer is healing (there’s one anthropogenic climate change effect that is beyond all dispute), unfortunately since the hole had the effect of lowering temperatures over the Antarctic, there will be major warming there starting fairly shortly, with unpredictable effects on the icecap.
OK for starters?
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Consider these cynical thoughts from an article heavily based on Bloomberg in http://www.globalresearch.ca (whole longer article is 16449):
1. The giant banks (like JP Morgan) will make a killing on carbon trading. They are right now preparing speculative derivatives contracts that will allow their clients to hedge their future price risks. They will try to inflate the carbon market. They will recruit investors from hedge funds and pension funds and sell them (very speculative) carbon derivatives, just as they previously sold them bits of shonky house mortgages.
2. Bloomberg says the carbon trading scheme will centre round derivatives. Fund managers say speculators will end up controlling carbon prices.
3. Speculative derivatives are what caused the current economic crisis (CDS – credit default swaps).
4. Listen to some wise words from (Democrat) US Senator Maria Cantwell: “People are going to be cutting up carbon futures, and we’ll be in trouble… You can’t stay ahead of the next tool they are going to create.”
To me, this is one answer to “who benefits” or Cui Bono. This is going to be the new giant moneymaker for the banks.
I’d be less suspicious about whether we need to assume a future of warming, or whether it is a giant con (not the sort you might think), if I couldn’t find an answer like this. But I can.
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Alistair,
If I were you I’d learn a bit about the subject before dismissing accepted physics as “pseudo-science.”
As to the chart link you provided, can you please explain why you think it is significant and alarming.
1) It only goes back to the 1850s. How is such a blink-of-an-eye period significant in climate terms, and what makes you think that there is anything “wrong” with the temperature? Do you perhaps think the climate shouldn’t be changing?
2) It covers the period out of the Little Ice Age, so you’d surely expect to see appreciable warming?
3) Most of the warming occurs before significant CO2 emissions began.
4) The three decades after the war show cooling, when CO2 emission really ramped up.
5) It doesn’t show that the warming stopped a decade ago.
6) Do you agree that there is a significant urban heat island effect which adds an upward bias to the temperature recordings.
7) After the Climategate debacle (and notice this uses CRU data), can you tell us what manipulation has been done to the raw data to generate this chart? Can we see the raw data for ourselves?
So please explain why you think this is evidence of anything at all.
Why don’t you provide, say, a two thousand year climate chart? Is it because the Medieval Warm Period will immediately show the falsity of all the alarmism?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_hi-def3.gif
bjchip,
- “the answers are already contained in the context threads on RealClimate. ”
No, they’re not. That is a propaganda site intended to give the pretence of answers, whilst censoring those who point out all their errors.
As one of the leaked emails said: “I wanted you guys to know that you’re free to use RC in any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through, and we’ll be very careful to answer any questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not.”
So, thanks but no thanks. We can all go to Realcensorship for ourselves if we want to have the wool pulled over our eyes by charlatans. But feel free to knock yourself out.
- “Since Harry actually succeeded in reforming the data, it would seem that you are barking up the wrong tree … again.”
bj, you are Phil Jones and I claim my five pounds.
This is the standard of data processing you are defending:
“But what are all those monthly files? DON’T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look, there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names. And that’s useless …” (Page 17)
“It’s botch after botch after botch.” (18)
Oh, GOD, if I could start this project again and actually argue the case for junking the inherited program suite.” (37)
“… this should all have been rewritten from scratch a year ago!” (45)
“Am I the first person to attempt to get the CRU databases in working order?!!” (47)
“As far as I can see, this renders the (weather) station counts totally meaningless.” (57)
“COBAR AIRPORT AWS (data from an Australian weather station) cannot start in 1962, it didn’t open until 1993!” (71)
“What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah — there is no ’supposed,’ I can make it up. So I have : – )” (98)
“You can’t imagine what this has cost me — to actually allow the operator to assign false WMO (World Meteorological Organization) codes!! But what else is there in such situations? Especially when dealing with a ‘Master’ database of dubious provenance …” (98)
“So with a somewhat cynical shrug, I added the nuclear option — to match every WMO possible, and turn the rest into new stations … In other words what CRU usually do. It will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad …” (98-9)
And now it appears that they deleted the original raw data, so we cannot replicate what they did.
In fact, it is so shambolic that they probably can’t replicate what they did.
Yet you defend it, to your shame.
Anyone here who knows anything about IT will recognise it for the complete shambles that it is; an unprofessional disgrace which renders its output wholly worthless (and that’s leaving aside the fact that the “scientists” are both incompetent and dishonest in the way they secretly manipulate it.)
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“It is often a shortcut when you are struggling to read and comprehend all the science”
looking at politics is not a shortcut for understanding science. banks will position themselves in order to benefit from any change that comes along (they are among the most powerful entities in modern society). the powerful will always use their power to maintain their position.
are you saying that the banks are paying the scientists to distort their research? if so you’re talking about a huge conspiracy of which you must have at least some evidence other than the powerful will end up benefitting from the systems they themselves set up.
just because the finance world is impossibly corrupt (in the way a tumor is a corruption) does not mean that climatology is.
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If I were you I’d be wary about trying to patronise me on climate science. I won’t bother addressing you again, but I will correct some of the disinformation you have posted, for the benefit of impressionable readers.
At least one of the images in the “wattsup” slide show looked strangely familiar … here it is :
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/histo5.png
Gee wizz, it sure looks like the Mediaeval Warm Period was warmer than the present day!!
Let’s be transparent. Here’s the data behind the graph :
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
Nice! It turns out that the last data point in that graph is 0.0951409 thousand years before present (“present” being 2004 in this case).
So, the last century (a period of strong warming) is absent from the graph.
Another problem with that graph is that it uses only a single data set; this is very interesting if you’re actually interested in temperatures on Greenland glaciers, but you get more widely applicable results if you widen your data base.
For those who wonder what it looks like with all the available data, it’s something like this :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
(this plots ten different published reconstructions of global temperature over the past thousand years. They are a fair representation of the range of results appearing in the published scientific literature. Not one of them shows the mediaeval warm period as warmer than the present time. It is still controversial whether the MWP was a regional or planetary phenomenon.)
My question to you, Wart (it’s a rhetorical question, in that I’d be amazed if you answered it) : Given that you have posted demonstrably misleading (to put it mildly) stuff from a climate-cynic site, did you do so knowingly, or unwittingly?
To put it another way, are you
a) a liar, or
b) a fool?
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I quickly browsed your last post. There is at least one inaccuracy. Observations from the Cobar Meteorological Office did indeed begin in 1962. They would have been manual observations back then, as automatic weather stations weren’t around until later, but records have been made from this location from 1962, which is the important point. Prior to that, from 1882 to 1962 observations were made at the Post Office.
I can’t be bothered looking for more inaccuracies in your posting right now.
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Landa,
Your concern is legitimate,and the business bears watching. However, a look at the way the carbon-credit market works up until now may allay it somewhat.
Carbon credits from the UN Clean Development Mechanism have been traded for a number of years now. The European Union has the most mature carbon market, it’s an effective mechanism which helps to attain the EU’s emission reduction targets, most notably by shaping the electricity market to the detriment of coal.
No great issues with trading so far (there was a fairly major VAT scam which got busted this year, it’s no longer possible to work the system like this). The main issue is that, since allocations are decided years in advance, in a downturn the price goes down, which is unhelpful. A truly global mechanism will need the teeth to adjust available quotas on the fly.
Where it gets interesting is when the USA starts up its carbon market. Historically this is the right time, because market regulation is back in fashion, and mechanisms will be put in place to prevent the sort of speculative bubbles that have so damaged the world economy these past couple of years. So it’s reasonable to be optimistic about the regulation of the US carbon market; I would expect that the nature of derivatives will be severely restricted.
Having said that, there will inevitably be means by which Goldman Sachs etc can make bucks. Other than taking them out and shooting them, the rich are always going to find ways to get richer. I don’t believe that they are a significant force in driving for a Copenhagen agreement, in any case I haven’t seen any evidence of that.
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greenfly: I doubt it would work on hardcore CCDs, I was thinking of using it on people who are skeptical of climate change but not beyond hope.
Out of interest, I saw this posted on another thread, which goes into the denial-thing in more detail:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6031
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wtl – won’t work with warts!
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There’s a discussion on media watch about the reporting of climate change issues. It talks about the Close Up debate and there is a proposal to improve climate change reporting.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/mwatch/2009/12/mediawatch_for_13_december_2009
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I am trying to get other media to notice what the Dom Post is doing.
In the main sections of the paper, the reporting seems evenly balanced.
In the BUSINESS section only denialist work is featured. That paper has been seriously lopsided for at least 6 months.
BJ
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I don’t know why you guys are concerned about all this when the most pressing issue of our time is plainly…
Into which holes is Tiger driving his Wood?
Such distorted priorities
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Aw Geez Samiam… didn’t you hear the Florida State Trooper asking for the names of the ones he missed, on account of it would save a lot of work?
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This thread wouldn’t be complete without a link to the answers:
http://blog.greens.org.nz/2009/09/18/climate-change-answers-to-every-question-you-ever-had
but why isn’t this link (or a link to a page without the comments) more prominent on frogblog or the green’s main web pages? We also need those highly-moderated specific discussion threads on particular issues not covered well elsewhere such as the “the CO2 absorbtion lines are near saturation” claims, which was suggested months ago.
A lot of people have put in good work answering these distortions, but it takes people like wat only a few seconds to retype them again and it is a waste of time providing the required detailed answers again if there isn’t anywhere where we can provide a simple link to that provides those answers.
The creed should be “do it once and do it right” and then publish it (i.e. put it on the web where it can be easily found or referred to).
Trevor.
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trevor: http://blog.greens.org.nz/reference-pages/ just got made. Email suggestions to webmaster@greens.org.nz
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