How To Be A Global Warming Sceptic

[CapelDodger]

This is a very strong unambiguous claim. I'd like to pursue this in terms of HTBAGWS. Can anyone supply evidence, for or against, this claim? I think it would be instructive re the OP.

There is none. It's a belief, and belief does not demand evidence. Belief transcends evidence.

 

[CapelDodger]

The claim by Diamond was pretty clear, the request by you in reference to it also. Mhaze has jumped around it on his pogo stick like a master.

Nice picture . Out-of-control but never quite falling over. It's like a circus act.

 

[Bananaman]

An emerging truth
Wednesday, 9th April 2008


There is now unequivocal evidence that the temperature of the planet is dropping like a stone. As the DailyTech site reports:

All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASAGISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously. A compiled list of all the sources can be seen...The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years.
Here’s some other data you may not have seen. The troposphere hasn’t warmed for the past five years. And the oceans haven’t warmed for five years either, which has got this poor NPR reporter scratching his head, poor chap:
Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them. This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.
And here is Ross McKittrick (who exposed the fundamental flaw in the research underpinning the whole of MMGW theory, the hockey-stick curve whose upward warming trend was achieved by omitting several hundred years of global climate history) revealing that there is an error in groundstation measurements such that past warming as measured by near-surface air has been over-estimated by 100% for over 20 years to 2002 (since when there has been cooling). While at Climate Audit, John Goetz says that the temperature record for 2005-2007 has actually been falsified to produce an upward trend. Crumbs!

Now look at this curious development. The British government, as we know,has swallowed the predictions of man-made global warming and is busily trying to persuade us that it is committed to reducing carbon emissions to counter the threat that we’re all about to fry. Yet HM Treasury has posted on its website a paper about solar cycles, which says:
Based on solar maxima of approximately 50 for solar cycles 24 and 25, a global temperature decline of 1.5°C is predicted to 2020, equating to the experience of the Dalton Minimum.
And it also concludes:
A rural US temperature data set shows that recent and current temperatures remain below the average of the first half of the 20th century.
If the Treasury thinks it is worth putting up on its website a paper forecasting global cooling, why is the British government adopting policies, including green taxes and intrusive lifestyle prescriptiveness, to deal with precisely the opposite eventuality?

Now, you may not know about this sudden deadly chill in the MMGW atmosphere because the BBC hasn’t told you. To be more precise, it did try to report this — but then appears to have altered its report under pressure from a global warming activist. This story by Roger Harrabin, headlined 'Global temperatures “to decrease,” ’ was captured a few hours after it appeared on the BBC website on April 4. Later that day, strange things happened to this story. The headline changed from ‘Global temperature “to decrease” ’ to ‘Global warming “dips this year”; so did the content; but then the headline changed back again to ‘Global temperature “to decrease” ’. Google searches from that day show the two titles with their different time references, although the article is thought to have retained the original time of release throughout on its webpage:

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Global temperatures 'to decrease' Global temperatures will drop slightly this year due to the effects of La Ninanews.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7329799.stm 17 hours ago - Similar pages

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Global warming 'dips this year' Global temperatures will drop slightly this year due to the effects of La Nina, UN meteorologists say. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7329799. 6 hours ago - Similar pages stm

Baffled? Here's the explanation. This site proudly reproduced an email exchange between Harrabin and a global warming activist, Jo Abbess, who introduced it with these words:

Climate Changers,
Remember to challenge any piece of media that seems like it's been subject to spin or scepticism. Here's my go for today. The BBC actually changed an article I requested a correction for, but I'm not really sure if the result is that much better. Judge for yourselves...

As you will see from this remarkable exchange, Abbess demanded that Harrabin change his report because it would

play into the hands
of global warming sceptics. Harrabin rebuffed her on the grounds that
We can't ignore the fact that sceptics have jumped on the lack of increase since 1998. It is appearing regularly now in general media.
But when she told him there could be no debate about this because it was
an emerging truth
and threatened to circulate his remarks so that he
might appear in an unfavourable light because it could be said that you have had your head turned by the sceptics
he caved in and said
Have a look in 10 minutes and tell me you are happier. We have changed headline and more.
Appalling, no? But then, the headline mysteriously reverted to the original (although the altered text appears not to have done so). Might that have been because he realised to his horror that the email exchange was now in the public domain? (And how — it’s even hit the US in the Glenn Beck show which seemed to show the BBC report had changed yet again from the revised version disclosed in the email exchange.)

It’s an emerging truth all right —but not quite the one Jo Abbess had in mind.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/601511/an-emerging-truth.thtml

An interesting read and if you go to the page, it links to many fascinating articles.

 

[a_unique_person]

There is now unequivocal evidence that the temperature of the planet is dropping like a stone. As the DailyTech site reports:

No. There have been similar dips in the temperature record in the past. Haven't they heard of El Nino and La Nina? Obviously not.

who exposed the fundamental flaw in the research underpinning the whole of MMGW theory, the hockey-stick curve

No, it's maybe ten percent of the case. Read the IPCC report. Understanding and attributing AGW. The 'stick' is just a minor player.

 

[Diamond]

So? It does not change the fact that the GWSceptics we see on forums like this are invariably right-wing to a degree that is almost funny.

They are invariably right wing when "right wing" is defined as anyone politically to the right of Trotsky.

Sure, I have a strong bias against right-wing anti-science liars. It would work better if you started the thread, though.

I just have a bias against anti-science liars. Right wing or left wing.

 

[Diamond]

No. There have been similar dips in the temperature record in the past. Haven't they heard of El Nino and La Nina? Obviously not.

There have been many similar drops in the past. Its too early to tell if the levelling off and very recent fall are anything more than normal variation in a chaotic system.

No, it's maybe ten percent of the case. Read the IPCC report. Understanding and attributing AGW. The 'stick' is just a minor player.

No, that's just typical "climate change denial" from you. The HS was a key player in the promotion of the IPCC TAR and subsequent attempts to promote the false idea that the warming of the 20th Century was unusual in the context of natural change in the last 1000-2000 years.

When you find out that the HS was used to calibrate the supposed sensitivity of the climate to carbon dioxide in climate models, then you start to feel a lot less sanguine about this quite gratuitous scientific fraud.

What sets the HS apart is that it supposedly shows carbon dioxide rise leading temperature rise. But its a fake.

Dr Mann did show the rest of climate science how to produce an opaque piece of statistical rubbish, get it through the wide-open gate of peer review, and secure academic tenure and future funding. The IPCC got its totem of human-induced climate change and environmentalists like James Lovelock got his defining graph:

For several tears now I have had on the wall above my desk that amazing graph of the temperature of the northern hemisphere from the year 1000 to the year 2000. It was produced by the American scientist Michael Mann from a mass of data from tree rings, ice cores and coral. It is called in America, mostly by sceptics, the “Hockey Stick” graph. This is because it looks like a hockey stick lying flat with a striking end pointing upwards. I keep it in view to reinforce my arguments with sceptics of global heating and also as a reminder of how severe it will be. The graph shows the natural fluctuations of temperature, and for the first 800 years of the past millennium there is a slight but perceptable downward trend, which, if projected, points to an ice age in about 10,000 years.

Then, at the start of the industrial period, it slowly begins to rise, and with ever increasing acceleration it climbs to reach temperatures nearly 1C above the long term average. A single degree rise temperature may seem trivial, but remember we are looking at an average for half the world, the northern hemisphere. The difference between the long term average of the graph and the ice age, 11,000 years ago, is just over 5C. The IPCC 2003 report suggests that the line of the Hockey Stick graph might rise another 5C during this century. This is about twice as much as the temperature change from the ice age to pre-industrial times.

- James Lovelock - The Revenge of Gaia

 

[Diamond]

I rather think so. What's more, it warms the LIA, the coldness of which was one of the orignial under-pinnings of GWScepticism. "We're just coming out of the Little Ice Age", that sort of thing. Now we get a warm period two centuries after the Greenlanders started suffering from global cooling? WTF is that all about?

There is simply no consistent GWSceptic position, apart from "Whatever it is (and it may not be anyway) it's not AGW."

This is one of CD's famous dodges. The apparent warming in the re-analysis of MBH98 is a statistical artifact of the proxies that MBH used, which when correctly cited without certifying whether Mann's method is correct or not show that the early 15th Century was warmer than MBH98 showed it to be.

There was a smaller cooling period called the Sporer Minimum in the 15th Century before a small warm period and then the full blast of the Maunder Minimum (this was in the days when solar variation controlled climate),

Also (and this is typical for CD's dodgy ways), there is no skepticism that the 20th Century saw warming. So I've no idea what a "GWSceptic position" is supposed to be unless CD is purloining the use of the words Global Warming to mean "Global Warming caused principally by carbon dioxide enrichment of the atmosphere, that enrichment coming principally from man-made sources"

Its too late CD. I can recognize Newspeak when I see it.

 

[TrueSceptic]

[/INDENT]Please refer to (b) in the chart in 1165. I quote from the legend:

"(b) Without the bristlecone pines , the hockey stick disappears".
​

This refers to the Graybill pines which Diamond mentioned.

Is the matter now clear?

What is the origin of that chart? Where are the supporting data?

 

[TrueSceptic]

Dup

 

[TrueSceptic]

There have been many similar drops in the past. Its too early to tell if the levelling off and very recent fall are anything more than normal variation in a chaotic system.

Obviously correct.

No, that's just typical "climate change denial" from you. The HS was a key player in the promotion of the IPCC TAR and subsequent attempts to promote the false idea that the warming of the 20th Century was unusual in the context of natural change in the last 1000-2000 years.

When you find out that the HS was used to calibrate the supposed sensitivity of the climate to carbon dioxide in climate models, then you start to feel a lot less sanguine about this quite gratuitous scientific fraud.

So there we have it. MBH were guilty of fraud, plain and simple.

What sets the HS apart is that it supposedly shows carbon dioxide rise leading temperature rise. But its a fake.

A fake that the whole of mainstream science somehow missed? I suggest that it is vastly more likely that any evidence supporting this bizarre claim is itself fake.

Dr Mann did show the rest of climate science how to produce an opaque piece of statistical rubbish, get it through the wide-open gate of peer review, and secure academic tenure and future funding. The IPCC got its totem of human-induced climate change and environmentalists like James Lovelock got his defining graph:

And no one noticed? No one blew the whistle? It took the genius of MM to expose this obvious fraud?

- James Lovelock - The Revenge of Gaia

Lovelock's view is extreme. I sincerely hope he is wrong.

 

[TrueSceptic]

They are invariably right wing when "right wing" is defined as anyone politically to the right of Trotsky.

Typical attempt by right-wing liar to redefine terms to suit his own warped world-view.

Doesn't work, though, does it? It places anyone you disagree with on the extreme left.

I just have a bias against anti-science liars. Right wing or left wing.

Same here. It's just that the recent anti-science climate, in the USA at least, has been largely the work of the neocon Right.

 

[fsol]

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/601511/an-emerging-truth.thtml

An interesting read and if you go to the page, it links to many fascinating articles.

The Daily Tech article she points to takes it's starting point from Anthony Watts blog. It is nonsense stacked on top of nonsense. I knew someone somewhere actually read Melanie Phillips. I don't have that strong a stomach to force my way through it all. She starts off wrong, so I don't think I will have missed anything much.

 

[mhaze]

What is the origin of that chart? Where are the supporting data?

You've been given the citation, the article is online, aud all the supporting data is online. CA website, left side, main page. I take it you do understand now that it is the case, a well known one, that removing the pines does exactly what Diamond said.

Further, that using tree rings for temp reconstructions is no good.

 

[fsol]

You've been given the citation, the article is online, aud all the supporting data is online. CA website, left side, main page. I take it you do understand now that it is the case, a well known one, that removing the pines does exactly what Diamond said.

Further, that using tree rings for temp reconstructions is no good.

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/refs/WahlAmmann_ClimaticChange_inPress.pdf

Of course when you remove the bristlecones and use MM methodology the reconstructions fail verification.

 

[TrueSceptic]

The Daily Tech article she points to takes it's starting point from Anthony Watts blog. It is nonsense stacked on top of nonsense. I knew someone somewhere actually read Melanie Phillips. I don't have that strong a stomach to force my way through it all. She starts off wrong, so I don't think I will have missed anything much.

Phillips is notorious. She also writes for the 'Telegraph'.

 

[fsol]

Phillips is notorious. She also writes for the 'Telegraph'.

And the Daily Hate...umm Mail.

 

[TrueSceptic]

You've been given the citation, the article is online, aud all the supporting data is online. CA website, left side, main page. I take it you do understand now that it is the case, a well known one, that removing the pines does exactly what Diamond said.

I wanted you to confirm this. What this tells us is what MM claim to be the case, not what is the case. This shows only that you are willing to believe the claims made by 2 people in preference to the work of many climate scientists. It tells us far more about you than it does about the 'Hockey Stick'.

Further, that using tree rings for temp reconstructions is no good.

Again, why should I accept that claim? Because you say so? Because a couple of "sceptics" and their credulous followers say so?

 

[Bananaman]

She also writes for the 'Telegraph'.

So where in the popular press should she be writing?

Bananaman.

 

[TrueSceptic]

So where in the popular press should she be writing?

Bananaman.

Probably where she does now, I'd guess. If at all...

 

[a_unique_person]

There have been many similar drops in the past. Its too early to tell if the levelling off and very recent fall are anything more than normal variation in a chaotic system.



No, that's just typical "climate change denial" from you. The HS was a key player in the promotion of the IPCC TAR and subsequent attempts to promote the false idea that the warming of the 20th Century was unusual in the context of natural change in the last 1000-2000 years.

It's present, of course. It's not the case. The case stands alone even without the hockey stick.

When you find out that the HS was used to calibrate the supposed sensitivity of the climate to carbon dioxide in climate models, then you start to feel a lot less sanguine about this quite gratuitous scientific fraud.

What sets the HS apart is that it supposedly shows carbon dioxide rise leading temperature rise. But its a fake.

Dr Mann did show the rest of climate science how to produce an opaque piece of statistical rubbish, get it through the wide-open gate of peer review, and secure academic tenure and future funding. The IPCC got its totem of human-induced climate change and environmentalists like James Lovelock got his defining graph:

Huh, prove it.