Saturday
Dec052009
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Unthreaded
Dec 5, 2009 Climate Some of the comments threads are going way off topic, so I'm setting up an unthreaded post for people who want to point to interesting stories or put forward their own theories.
Reader Comments (472)
Did you miss the fun bit in Newsnight?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00p92nx/Newsnight_04_12_2009/
@ 11:40mins.
Take the statue away from him :)
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/03/al-gore-cancels-climate-lecture-copenhagen/
Thanks! - AJStrata
"Take the statue away from him :)
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/03/al-gore-cancels-climate-lecture-copenhagen"
You can strip him of anything, the Nobel Peace Prize, his honourary degrees, but the Oscar NO! The photo given at that link shows him giving one of his finest performances.
Read this disturbing news from Canada
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/dec/06/break-in-targets-climate-scientist
Is this;
a) a try to blacken "climate concensus" sceptics
b) a failed attempt by an overzealous sceptic
c) a failed attempt by a "standard" hacker who got attracted to this topic by the buzz
????
OK, so for just random thoughts, here's my thoughtful, tightly reasoned retort to Gavin, countering each of his and all of the other AGW faux-science apologists' glib, off-putting, cavalier, down-putting dismissals of legitimate protests to the so-called settled science: Ugh!! Now sit down and take your propers.
Meteorologist Art Horn: “The theory of global warming is lying on the canvas bloodied and dying.”
http://energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2665
(IPCC models fail yet again.)
The Devil's Advocate says:
Isn't it incumbent on the sceptics to say exactly what they would like to do, if anything, about CO2 emissions?
Jo Public might well think something analogous to the following which Phil Greenspun illustrates graphically ( http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2008/05/15/can-humans-affect-climate/)
in the following way:
"It occurred to me that it would be nice to get into a time machine and go back to a meeting of the Royal Society in London circa 1800. This would be my presentation:
Gentlemen: What I propose is that we humans breed ourselves up to a population of 6.7 billion from our current 1 billion. Next we will cut down all of the forests either to grow crops or to provide cooking fuel. We are going to dig and drill down into the Earth to bring up the remains of all previous vegetation and animal life, now in the form of coal and oil. We’re going to burn all of it and release the combustion products into the atmosphere. I do not expect this to have any effect on global climate.
I wonder how it would have been received by the scientific worthies of the day."
This isn't a logical argument for AGW but it does suggest the kind of problem that sceptics tend to brush under the carpet. Before some of us get on our raring-to-go high horse isn't it vital to demonstrate conclusively that there really is non-significant positive feedback due to CO2 levels (which might be masked by temporary climatic conditions). Seems to me this is almost certainly true but my opinion is worthless. However that goes for 99% of the population as well. Even sceptic climatologists have problems with Lindzen and Choi's paper on this subject. More work is needed.
// incumbent on the sceptics to say exactly what they would like to do, if anything, about CO2 emissions?
No - it isn't incumbent on anyone.
When the Jehovah's Witnesses come knocking is it incumbent on the poor householder to discuss exactly what to do about god ?
PS: "feedback" does not mean what you think. Positive feedback is when other factors cause a change to be amplified. Negative feedback is when other factors cause a change to dampened.
Example - if I leave the heating on in a room then the room gets hotter but the rate of heat loss increases with the raised temperature until it reaches a new equilibrium. This is negative feedback. Positive feedback would be if the room somehow got better insulated as it warmed and then got warmer and warmer. This would be unstable.
The natural world is full of negative feedbacks - eg heating the home or a free-falling object reaches a terminal velocity because drag increases with speed. I cannot think of any example of poitive feedback.
Here is proof of what this is all about: not warming, not scinece, but money:
"LAKSHMI MITTAL, Britain’s richest man, stands to benefit from a £1 billion windfall from a European scheme to curb global warming. His company ArcelorMittal, the steel business where he is chairman and chief executive, will make the gain on “carbon credits” given to it under the European emissions trading scheme (ETS)."
Link: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/industrials/article6945991.ece
Some editor must have had a sense of humour, because this report was placed right next to that on yesterday's 'Climate March' in London, in the paper edition of today's Sunday Times.
But don't hold your breath - nobody will follow up on the economics of AGW, they can't even 'do' ClimateGate ...
1984 had "News-speak" we get “Post-Normal Science”
CRUtape™ Letters and “Post-Normal Science”
December 6, 2009
While browsing through the FOIA2009.zip files, I ran across the term “post-normal science” in a Word document called HOT_proposal.doc.
http://emelks.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/crutape%e2%84%a2-letters-and-%e2%80%9cpost-normal-science%e2%80%9d/
Jack Hughes, I appreciate your response! However you have not been following along with the nub of the AGW argument. This is not a putdown! Please let me explain.
You say "PS: "feedback" does not mean what you think". What I mean by it is what Richard Lindzen and all other climatologists mean by it:-
I.e., CO2 is a greenhouse gas. By commmon agreement, a doubling of present CO2 levels would lead to only a one degree increase in global temperature which is not a cause for worry. However the small amount of heating induced by the presence of CO2 leads (because adding heat to water increases the partial pressure of H2O) to increased H2O which is a greenhouse gas. We have here therefore a mechanism for some sustained heating of the atmosphere. Unchecked this will lead to run-away warming. This is the AGW thesis. Yes, it's checked at present but will it remain checked?
Unfortunately it is not possible to argue that - because we do not observe very obvious run-away warming on our planet THEREFORE there is no +ve feedback. Both +ve and -ve feedbacks can be rendered temporarily insignificant in their effects (and undoubtedly are at present) by other natural processes. AGW-ists argue that various climatic phenomena (you ask them!) mask the +ve feedback induced by CO2 but if they cease to operate, then global warming will ensue. Even AGW-ists limit the effect to 5 or 6 degrees at which other processes act to cool the planet. That is their argument. The discussion about temperature records is a bit of a red herring.
Lindzen and Choi published a paper this year that found only negative feedback but I have to say that many climatologists (including sceptical ones) have been critical of their paper. I'm not competent to comment.
For an authoritative description see these links:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/04/video-of-lindzens-recent-presentation/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/27/lindzen-deconstructing-global-warming/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/04/spencer-on-finding-a-new-climate-sensitivity-marker/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/03/spencer-on-lindzen-and-choi-climate-feedback-paper/
BTW in the cells of your own body, there are hundreds of examples of positive feedback. And your cells don't necessarily self-destruct as a result though sometimes they do!
Incumbent? Yes, you are correct. It's a free world (just) thank goodness but if you imagine yourself at that hypothetical meeting of the Royal Society I think you'd look a bit daft and clueless NOT
responding to the supposition which turns out to be the case in 2009. It is in that sense I mean 'incumbent'.
OT but I'm not sure where else to ask
Lord Monckton of Brenchley - What is a "Lord" and what is "a Brenchley" ?
Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby - same with "Baron", "Blaby" ?
NYT: The Public Editor
Stolen E-Mail, Stoking the Climate Debate
Or, as The Times's John Broder, who covers environmental issues in
Washington, put it, "When does a story rise to three-alarm coverage?"..
I read all the messages involving Revkin, and I did not see anything to keep
him off the story. If anything, there was an indication that the scientists
whom some readers accused Revkin of being too cozy with were wary of his
independence..
So far, I think The Times has handled Climategate appropriately - a story,
not a three-alarm story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06pubed.html?_r=2&ref=opinion
FT: Backlash by sceptics gains ground after 'Climategate'
"I don't think that the farmers or the ranchers necessarily buy the argument that it's all going to be offset," Mr Nelson told CNBC last month. "And I don't know why we want to create a system that sustains Wall Street once again."..
The run-up to Copenhagen frenzy has stirred the return of sceptical voices. They have been most audible in the European parliament, an institution usually regarded as an environmentalists' stronghold.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/56d06136-e13e-11de-af7a-00144feab49a.html
BBC: The arguments made by climate change sceptics
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8376286.stm
AP: SETH BORENSTEIN: Global warming may require higher dams, stilts
As for helping plants and animals, British climate scientist Martin Parry
said the world will have to create a triage system to figure out which
living things can be saved, which can't and are effectively goners, and
which don't need immediate help.
"It's a brutal way to go about things," Parry said...
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hfS3PCKHhVj8ZKGA2nHRL8y7ko1gD9CCJM100
UK Independent: Blair is paid thousands of pounds to 'endorse' a fossil-fuel
power plant
Experts dismiss the former prime minister's claim that Azerbaijan methanol
factory is 'the way forward' for green energy. Jane Merrick reports
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/blair-is-paid-thousands-of-pounds-to-endorse-a-fossilfuel-power-plant-1835042.html
EPA Poised to Declare CO2 a Public Danger
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will early next week, possibly as
soon as Monday, officially declare carbon dioxide a public danger, a trigger
that could mean regulation for emitters across the economy, according to
several people close to the matter.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126003232518778287.html
Media complicity in Climategate
The global-cooling cover-up is not considered newsworthy
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/07/media-complicity-in-climategate/
Climate: CO2 unleashes more warming than thought: study
In a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, British scientists
said a tool commonly used in climate modelling may have badly underlooked
the sensitivity of key natural processes to the warming caused by CO2. ..
The study was coincidentally published on the eve of a 12-day UN conference
in Copenhagen aimed at providing a durable solution to the greenhouse-gas
problem. ..
"We don't want to be overly alarmist here," said lead author Dan Lunt of
Britain's University of Bristol.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.afe85e1b14d6994fd32df9326ec7175a.d21&show_article=1&catnum=0
Nature Geoscience is a scientific journal published by Nature Publishing
Group, publisher of the flagship journal Nature
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_Geoscience
lunt's publishing connection to tim lenton UEA
T. M. Lenton1School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia,
Norwich, UK
D. J. Lunt5 - School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol,
Bristol, UK
http://www.springerlink.com/content/y458p335v1658234/
and we wonder why the media is not covering climategate!
More than 50 papers join in front-page leader article on climate change
Opinion piece to be published in 56 papers across 46 countries – including the Guardian, Le Monde and two Chinese papers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/06/50-papers-leader-climate-change
How the climate change global editorial project came about
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/06/climate-change-leader-editorial
The papers that will carry the Cophenagen editorial
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/06/papers-copenhagen-leader
at least The Age states they didn't sign up for this, but let's us know about the 'consensus' anyway:
History is made: papers' single call
The Age was invited to take part in the global editorial but declined. Editor-in-chief Paul Ramadge said yesterday: ''We applaud The Guardian's global initiative. At The Age we decided it was important to put our own views - to be consistent and partly because of the nuances of the debate in Australia.''
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/history-is-made-papers-single-call-20091206-kcwb.html
"The “small group of scientists” up to their necks in Climategate include 12 of the 26 esteemed scientists who wrote the Copenhagen Diagnosis. Who would have ever guessed that forty-six percent of the authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis belong to the Climategate gang? Small world, isn’t it?"
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-obamas-science-adviser-confirms-the-scandal-%E2%80%94-unintentionally/
More commentary on this at http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2009/12/25-not-2500.html
Good piece by Michael Jennings about how scientific papers have been and are published on the internet, and how peer review fits in with it all, here:
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2009/12/peer_review.html
Labrador, if you are checking back, I may be able to help.
Christopher Monckton is a Viscount, an inherited title normally. Nigel Lawson is a Baron; in his case he was ennobled at the end of a political career.
In Mediaeval times (I think a viscountsy is a later invention following the French Viscompte), these sorts of title came with a grant of land and obligations to military service. Brenchley and Bratby will be places, though I don't know them. The former may be a family seat.
On second thoughts, it is probably "viscountcy". It is a couple of lifetimes since I last had reason to know these things.
If you have nothing better to do, listen to this NPR ‘Climategate’ and Public Opinion program. Mann starts at around 15:00. (Pielke Jr was initially invited as a speaker, but he was dropped). Mann's opening statement was funny, not because he does not answer the question, but because it is in sharp contrast to a recent RC post
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/unsettled-science/
"We have sorta' to look at the context in which this is occurring. We have reached a point in the scientific community where scientists around the world have come to a consensus that climatae change, human caused climate change is indeed a reality, and it's something we need to contend with"
Sorry this is not 100% verbatim (well anyway, then he goes on in his usual (IMO) paranoid manner),
http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/12/climategate-and-public-opinion
First Met Office Data released
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091208a.html
Hi Bishop.
Listened to Radio 4 yesterday afternoon (first time in months I've been in range to get it).
The Material World had a guy talking about "Geo-engineering" and quarrying 9G tonnes / year of limestone, burning it for lime pumping the CO2 down a well and dumping the lime in the sea.
OMG!
I'd need to look up the fuel requirements for burning a tonne of lime in an efficeint kiln and what fuel the kilns will accept. IIRC Mearse kilns (the most thermally efficient) run on gas, rotary kilns - much less thermally efficeint and much harder to catch the gasses from will burn virtually anything.
In the bits of work I've done for lime and cement companies - one thing keeps coming out - fuel is their major cost, I've met guys who's job it was to source alternative fuels including waste rubber tyres, coconut shell and the coffee grounds from instant coffee manufacture (that last stock pile smells gorgeous!).
Just trying to visualise the operation.
In the UK, big lime burning quarries were around 2 Mt/a production, the biggest, Tunstead was running at about 5Mt/a
In normal aggregate quarrying, blast holes are around 110mm diameter, and for a 15m high bench you are looking at hole charge of around 120 to 150 kg of explosive, the explosive needed to break around 1 tonne of limestone is around 0.7kg (I'd need to look up the energy required to make the ammonium nitrate which forms around 95% to 97% of the explosive mix).
I'd also need to check the production rate for the blast hole rig - small ones consume around 1000 litres of diesel / shift
Now to find a suitable set of deposits of limestone of suitable purity (chert or quartz sand greatly increases crusher wear and forms glass in the kiln, limestone is often anoo
malously enriched in lead, fluoride, uranium etc), close enough to the sea, let's assume that the EIA / EIS comes out ok or can be dispensed with (it's supposed to be saving the world, so presumably groundwater, cave environments, archaeology, terestrial and aquatic ecology, human beings, cultural heritage etc can all go f*** themselves?)
Now let's assume that there is suitable deep geology for disposing of the CO2 from burning the lime and the power plant needed to run conveyors, crushers, drilling rigs, trolley assists on dumpers etc etc (actually quite unlikely - thick pure limestones tend to form on stable blocks which don't tend to have the thick mudrocks you'd need to seal the gas disposal aquifer).
What have we so far?
An enourmous and very energy intensive quarry.
Massive amounts of fuel being burned for no benefit to anyone (and removing that fuel from the world market)
Working five 20m faces, the area extracted each year is around 100 square kilometers! so massive destruction, no roads or schools or hospitals built with what is dug - throw it in the sea!
Massive fleets of bulk carriers sailing the oceans- not carrying anything of use to humans- just throwing their cargo (pH12) over the back.
Oh Brave New World!
Keith
More ramblings on the "Geo-engineering" fairy land / limestone quarry:
I'm not sure how many wells tapping how many vertical metres of acquifer are needed to dispose of 4.6G tonnes of CO2 each year from the limestone alone (pure calcium carbonate is around 54% CaO by weight), that is before emissions from the kiln, processing plant etc's fuel are added in.
Those wells drilled, cased and developed without producing potable drinking water, oil, gas, or useful minerals like salt, potash or sulphur...
I'm not sure what pressure would be needed to achieve sufficeint flow rates for the disposal, but assuming just pumping against 3km of hydrostatic head (as injection proceeds, this will probably approach lithostatic pressure), there will need to be enormous compressors, and there will be enormous ammounts of energy lost in the heat generated by compressing the gas ...
I'm also not sure what degree of investigation would be deemed acceptable for injection sites, particularly in terms of identifying faults and other potential leakage paths (remember the volcanic crater lake in Camaroon which de-gassed and the slug of CO2 flowing down the valley from that , gassing villages as it went). I have seen the pictures of blow outs of compressed air from civil engineering tunnels at a few PSI above atmospheric, and a few metres below surface, they are horrendous enough, and their sites were easy, cheap and small enough to investigate.
Remembering from my Geology undergrad days, Wasn't the Cretaceous atmosphere supposed to be unusually rich in CO2?
Yet the Cretaceous seas deposited Chalk, several kilometers thickness of the stuff under Denmark, but now research is going into how "Anthropogenic Ocean Acidification" can be countered.
None of the "geo Engineering" makes sense to me (with batchelor's in geology and masters in mining eng) but Perhaps I'm just too stooooopid to be able to see the Emporers new clothes?
Keith
Article by Michael Mann in today's Washington Post, responding to Climategate alegations:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/17/AR2009121703682.html
Global Sea Level Decrease over last 6 Years
Using the Pacific Marine Atlas program to plot data from the ARGO global network of 3222 free drifting ocean floats with GPS (data first became available from this program in 2004-see float locations below) shows a slight downtrend in Sea Height over the past six years ( Jan 2004 - November 2009) using data from the entire network:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2009/12/sea-level-decrease-over-last-6-years.html
There seems to be three cases of spam from the same source among the recent comments.
Thanks Dagfinn. Fixed now.
From the Antipodes. May amuse.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/climate-change/news/article.cfm?c_id=26&objectid=10627038
MolesUnlimited: Thanks for the link to that wonderful piece in the NZ Herald by Jim Hopkins. He used a Shakespearian quote to convey his anger at the Great Gore Scam.
With the same intention, I would offer a Lennonian quote:
No short-haired yellow-bellied son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope
I wonder if the fathers of Gore, Mann, Jones, Briffa and Hansen are all named Richard?
I wonder if I could get research funding to check out this admittedly tentative hypothesis.
Anyone having problems accessing WUWT and JeffId's blogs right now? Both giving me blank pages, not sure if it's the Firefox update or not.
No, I can't get them either.
Haven't tried Jeff's, but I can't get WUWT or Climate Audit. Wordpress got a problem?
something bad seems to have happened to wordpress.com.... WUWT, CA, tAV and Tamino all seem to be inaccessible.
same for me; Watts, Jeff and CA all down. Lucia OK.
Any news on wordpress people...? Just a thought would it be helpful to have a time stamp next to the date on our posts
Yer Grace
Same happening for me in Australia.
Perspicacious timing to use the Unthreaded Link>
Looks like a dynial of service attack to me.
Yer Grace
Wordpress is down and is using this twitter link to advise progress
http://twitter.com/wordpressdotcom
Same here regarding access to other blogs. There was a small plane that crashed into some power lines in Palo Alto, maybe wordpress is affected by that? I checked wikipedia but found nothing useful, no surprise there then ;)
Bish (if I may presume to call you that). I finished your book a couple of weeks ago now. Excellent work!
Two minor gripes. One does not start a sentence with "For sure" unless "one" is a Formula 1 motorist type chappy! And, you will have to prise my Fortran compiler from my cold, dead hands - for what I do, it's the only tool for the job.
Great book, hopefully it will re-inspire me to re-engage with my MP on this delusional pseudo-science that seems to want to steal everything I've worked for.
Dave
wordpressgate
WUWT and CA were both down for me too, here in NZ, but back up again.
For a minute I was wondering...... The ... Thought ... P... nonono
Thanks for the link to Jim Hopkins in the NZHerald. Hopkins is a very smart and eloquent chap, so we should get some mileage over this here in NZ
read this where England is going China will follow note the comments regarding energy tax, we havent nessasarily reached all the areas but remember when people said we were 10 years behind the usa, it appears we are trialing the polices for them !!http://www.sussex.ac.uk/sussexenergygroup/1-2-11-2.html
Dave Boulton
I'm much more relaxed about things like this than many. It's like split infinitives. I real life people use them. The object is to communicate clearly, not to obey rules that are frankly rather contrived.
This recent excellent piece by Brendan O'Neill very much resonates with my own experience: that people keep saying `the real issue is population'. it deserves wider exposure.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/debates/copenhagen_article/8196
In case any of you missed it, a rather good talk Richard Lindzen gave to a Fermilab audience of physicists on Feb 10th, entitled The Peculiar Issue of Global Warming, in which he touches on the practice of post-normal science, and why despite mounting empirical, theoretical and logical evidence refuting the AGW hypothesis, none of this is likely to influence mainstream views and policy direction. Its about an hour long. If the first link below doesn't work, try the second. real player required.
http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/
100210Lindzen/index.htm#
http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/
100210Lindzen/f.htm
Could you change settings for this Unthreaded item to 'show last comment first'?
Anyone picked up on this yet? The cracks are spreading.....
UN climate chief Yvo de Boer quits
Published: 19 February 2010 09:43 | Changed: 19 February 2010 17:19
A climate agreement looks remote following the chaos of the Copenhagen summit and now United Nations climate chief Yvo de Boer has thrown in the towel. UN chief Ban Ki-moon is on the lookout for a suitable successor - someone who won't be daunted by the mammoth task ahead.
By Christoph Seidler for Spiegel Online
Yvo de Boer.
Photo Reuters
Profile - Climate czar Yvo De Boer is no 'crying Dutchman'
First things first: Yvo de Boer's resignation as head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat has nothing to do with the scandal over climate scientists' stolen e-mails or errors in the IPCC's final report. The Dutchman is leaving because the climate change summit in Copenhagen did not live up to his expectations, even if he won't say so directly. Future arduous negotiations will now be dealt with by someone else. In theory this could be an opportunity but, in reality, it may well be a problem.
"Copenhagen wasn't what I had hoped it would be," said De Boer, immediately after announcing his resignation on Thursday. He then added, in typical diplomatic fashion, that December's summit had produced a "pretty solid foundation for the global response that many are looking for."
In reality, the 55-year-old was only able to play a minor role at the high-profile meeting in the Danish capital. The global leaders who arrived en masse for the summit made little use of his negotiating skills. It was up to the world's most powerful players to hammer out a deal. Though, in the end, they opted to more or less maintain the status quo.
Made his mark on the office
In the wake of the failed summit, the UN has to ask itself whether it is an effective forum for global climate protection. And that awkward question can't have been to the taste of De Boer, who had spent months campaigning for a comprehensive climate deal in countless one-to-one talks, discussions and press conferences. "He had regarded Copenhagen as the crowning moment of his career," Christoph Bals of the environmental lobby group German Watch told Spiegel Online.
"If you want someone to sit in Bonn and keep his mouth shut then I'm not the right person for the job," De Boer warned the then UN chief Kofi Annan ahead of his appointment in 2006. That was not what Annan wanted - and the Dutchman was able to make his mark on the office. Observers of the climate discussions unanimously praised how he used both his powers of argument and emotions to serve his cause. Emphatically, the diplomat's son sought to represent the interests of industrialised and developing countries equally.
De Boer led the UN climate office for nearly four years. So his departure isn't entirely surprising - though its timing is. The trained social worker's contract was slated to run out in September. He could have had it extended, if he wanted to. But for some time, De Boer had hinted that he didn't want to do the job forever. In the future, he plans to work for the consultancy group KPMG and teach at several universities.
Successor from the southern hemisphere?
De Boer won wide praise Thursday for raising the profile of climate change on the international agenda. "I have always greatly appreciated Yvo de Boer; his engagement and his sharp tongue. Not always a perfect diplomat," said Connie Hedegaard, the European Union's commissioner for climate action.
Martin Kaiser of Greenpeace said: "Yvo de Boer was the helmsman of the climate process. Going forward, we also need that type of person."
Barbara Lueg of the WWF wants to see "an orderly transition -- so that the climate negotiations in 2010 can be successful." That seems like wishful thinking. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of 2010 will have enough on its plate just cleaning up the mess left by Copenhagen.
The new UN climate chief will have to "mediate between the industrialised and emerging countries," says Greenpeace's Kaiser. De Boer's successor will face an "mammoth task," he continues.
The last three holders of the job were from the northern hemisphere and now the many southern member states are pushing for one of their own to fill the position.
De Boer says that he's vacating his post early to ensure that his successor has time to learn the ropes before the Cancun summit. But who will succeed him? It will be down to UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon to make that decision. Although he once proclaimed that climate change was one of his top priorities, he has done little if anything to push forward the issue since taking office.
In the "weather is not climate category," a brief google search turned up the following, which is just from the first couple pages....and includes the opposite argument in the past from such notables as the Washington Post, NPR, and National Geographic:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/03/AR2006080301489.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4195561
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/02/03/is-there-a-link-between-adelaides-heatwave-and-global-warming/
http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-04-17/news/17242239_1_heat-waves-climate-change-warming
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060801-heat-waves.html
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1631148/australian_heat_wave_to_last_six_days_signaling_global_warming/
http://www.physorg.com/news73065312.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,206371,00.html
Most of us have seen and read with great interest the BBC “interview” with Phil Jones by Roger Harrabin, tipped by WUWT and others. Many more people likely only learned of it when the Drudge Report picked up the same story as recast by Jonathan Petre in the Mail-Online (Feb. 14, 2010).
Harrabin asked Jones: “A - Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?”
To this, Jones replied in the affirmative. Jones then provided a table of derivatives, adding also the period 1975-2009 (a fourth line), all showing the statistically same slope of about 0.16 degreesC/decade.
In his Mail recast, Petre wrote, ostensively paraphrasing Jones: "He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not."
Readers here will likely immediately recognize this as an error by the reporter, probably as a result of Jones adding that fourth line (1975-2009) to his table. Of course, the two earlier periods should have been 1860-1880 and 1910-1940, with 1975-1998 being “recent”.
I noted this error in a comment to the Mail article. Now, one feature of the Mail comments seems to be that readers can arrow them up (more green) or down (more red). Comments and evaluation of comments were running heavily anti-Jones. In my comment, I also took a swipe at Al Gore, and this apparently saved my comment from going red. After all, if you weren’t careful, it might read as though I were defending Jones. A later commenter also noticed the reporter’s error, but had failed to put in an “indicator” for the "casual" evaluator! For his trouble, he went heavily red!
This sort of careless or "me-too voting” is unattractive, appearing in the online newspapers and in online book review – that sort of thing. Perhaps sociologists have written about it.
Note that the Mail never corrected the original article. A US reader such as myself would not know if this is typical.