Sir John Houghton on global warming

I'm going to try to get myself along to this.

"Global Warming - is it real and what should we do?"

Prof. Sir John Houghton

5.15 pm Thursday, 19 February 2009
followed by a Reception until 7.00pm

Younger Hall, North Street, St Andrews

I don't know if there is going to be an opportunity to ask questions at the end, but if there is, what do you think I should ask him? I've got a few ideas of my own, but any suggestions would be welcome.

Comments

[TDK]

I'd suggest asking about the "accelerating" meme that seems to be doing the rounds

http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2009/02/global-warming-accelerating-3.html

[Barry Foster]

Ask him if (two years on) he still thinks that his agreement with the then Government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, that climate change posed a greater threat than terrorism, is still valid. If so, ask him if he would have thought then that 2007 and 2008 (and almost certainly 2009) would show the temperature anomaly actually falling.

Ask him why warming still shows no sign of accelerating - despite the increase in CO2 emissions.

Ask him why the last peak in global temperatures was eleven years ago.

Ask him for how much longer the religion of climate change should be believed if the 1998 global peak in temperature is not surpassed? Five years? Ten years?

[mikef]

I think the most obvious point recently is Josh Willis' letter in which he 'explains' errors in the argo's global 'cooling' record...but fails to explain why they show no warming. Go to Pielke Senoirs website for details. The fact that the oceans show no warming at all, yet GISS etc show warming (if greatly reduced from what they said it would be) is a rather logical block to the idea of CO2 induced warming - and of course questions the validity of GISS/Hadcrut etc.
If you ask him about the oceans failing to warm, as shown by Willis (who is one of their own) how can he say the world is warming. As far as I understand it the oceans are not susceptible to 'freak weather anomalies' that one can sweep under the carpet?

[PeterMG]

There is only one question. Please explain the physical process whereby a trace gas at only 380 ppm can cause warming way beyond its actual physical ability to absorb that much heat, and please point to the study that has observed this actually phenomena happening in our atmosphere. So if you can not tell me how it works, how do you know its happening, and just perhaps the observations that ice is increasing and temperatures are dropping mean that some other phenomenon is occurring.

Maybe more than one question there but how CO2 warms the atmosphere is the key. And nearly 3 years of searching tells me there is no study that he will be able to call upon.

[Frank Smith]

1. Please name any climate measurement which has displayed, say in the last 100 years, any behaviour which is outside the plausible range to be expected given what we know of climate history?
2. Would he be willing to take part in a public debate on the strengths and weaknesses of climate modelling as a source of guidance for major decisions by governments and others?
3. Is he concerned that so few of the IPCC panel have backgrounds in climate science, and that there is evidence (http://www.amazon.com/Deniers-Renowned-Scientists-Political-Persecution/dp/0980076315/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_k2a_2_txt?pf_rd_p=304485601&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-2&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1596985380&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0P6EXRZVH73TEYQV348B) that AGW sceptics have more impressive and relevant scientific credentials than those directly associated with the IPCC?

[TonyN]

Definitely not to be missed.

I once attended a meeting in a village hall near my home which Sir John chaired. He made a very deep impression on me, but not at all of the kind that he would have wished.

So far as questions are concerned, there might be something here, if you don't mind being thrown out of the hall before the reception starts.

http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/houghton_service.mp3

Its the BBC Radio4 Sunday Service on the theme of climate change that Sir John conducted just after IPCC AR4 SPM was launched in February 2007. I joke not!

[Peter Whale]

We keep being told what weather denotes global warming, please ask him what weather pattern would denote no global warming, as this must surely exist or there can be nothing to gauge warming by.

[Steve2]

“Global Warming - is it real and what should we do”
Feeling a bit cynical I would guess that the whole point of the exercise is merely to quickly assert the former and then spend the rest of the time jolly well telling us all what we should do.

I am beginning to feel that the modern environmentalist has a lovely one way street of pious holier than thou posturing that brooks no analysis or takes any consequences, melting back into dismissive sophistry whenever real world costs look like bringing attention on their inadequacy. Hell, even George Bush could manage a passive “Mistakes were made”. But with the Enviros the buck never seems to hit any of the moving targets while they keep moving around in their whistle stop lecture tours.

If Houghton does start telling people what to do, I would love someone to ask “Yes great! Say we took up your recommendations, just one thing. Will you take any responsibility if you are wrong and there turn out to be detrimental consequences of your recommendations?”

[TDK]

Off topic.

More here about Australia fires
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/8504

[Tony]

I suggest you confront with this fact.
Carbon dioxide - Naturally occuring 330 billion tonnes in the atmosphere
Carbon dioxide - Man-made emissions 7.5 billion metric tonnes in the atmosphere.

Ask him for the data that proves the tipping point theory.

[Ayrdale]

Please ask him if he still stands by his statement "Unless we announce disasters no one will listen"

http://www.eap-journal.com/archive/v38_i2_03_carter.pdf

Waiting with a great deal of interest for your post lecture blog !

(My feeling is there could be some backpedalling).

[Rathtyen]

Sir John Houghton, in I believe the early 1990's, prepared a thousand year temperature graph which clearly showed the Medieval Warming Period and the subsequent Little Ice Age. If memory serves me, this was used in the IPCC report around that time.

Only a few years later (1996?) the IPCC went with Michael Mann's Hockey Stick, a starkly different reconstruction. My understanding is that Sir Michael Houghton endorsed the Mann view, at the very least by not challenging it.

The question(s) I'd like to see answered are how could Sir John Houghton get his reconstruction so wrong, and given he was so far off track, why should anyone now take him seriously?

I haven’t followed these early days closely and perhaps I have misread the situation, but the impression I have is this fellow was on the right track and then basically sold his soul to stay in the IPCC game. Once the Medieval Warming Period is in there, its hard to see any problem with today’s climate, and I’d really like to know how Sir John Houghton’s inconsistent findings (from his own, to supporting Mann’s) can be reconciled.

[Alex Cull]

Here's an article by him in the Guardian, July 2003:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/jul/28/environment.greenpolitics

"...the impacts of global warming are such that I have no hesitation in describing it as a "weapon of mass destruction". "

"Like terrorism, this weapon knows no boundaries. It can strike anywhere, in any form - a heatwave in one place, a drought or a flood or a storm surge in another."

"While no one can ascribe a single weather event to climate change with any degree of scientific certainty, higher maximum temperatures are one of the most predictable impacts of accelerated global warming, and the parallels - between global climate change and global terrorism - are becoming increasingly obvious."

First, you've probably already noticed the little inconsistency between, on the one hand, talk of heat waves, droughts, floods, etc., and then the "no one can ascribe a single weather event to climate change with any degree of scientific certainty."

But aside from that, it's interesting to read the article, which was written in the summer of 2003, during the aftermath of the Iraq War and the search for WMD, and when the European heat wave was big news (and, according to the Met Office, a sign of things to come, with a 2003-style heat wave every two years.) It all seems very... 2003.

I'm wondering just how he's going to change his message for an audience in 2009, over half a decade later.

[Frank S]

Maybe, at most, 20% of IPCC had 'some dealing with the climate' in their background:
http://www.globalwarming.org/2009/02/16/christyschlesinger-debate-part-ii/

[Frank]

In the unlikely event that you can say something of your own at this event (I suspect even mere unplanted questioners will have a hard time getting heard), this posting provides some useful points:
http://lostconservative.blogspot.com/2008/06/real-truth-about-agw.html

[Harry G]

Just ask him if Al Gore's contribution is useful to the debate - that should be enough.

[Phillip Bratby]

Ask him for the scientific evidence linking CO2 concentration to actual (not adjusted) temperature.

[Phillip Bratby]

On second thought, just tell him he's talking a load of scare-mongering bo*****s.

[per]

you could ask him if he agrees with the conclusion of the NAS/NRC report that reconstructions of temperature from more than 400 years ago have unquantifiable uncertainty ? (though probably best to go for a direct quote...)

per

[Peter Melia]

In the religious broadcast he mentions "25,000" deaths a few years ago from the heatwave but doesn't mention the larger death toll every year from winter cold.
In the same broadcast he says something like "..of course we all know what happened to the polar bears..". I thought what happened was that their population increased. Excessive droughts. I thought it had been proved (?) that droughts in the USA are caused by the Nino/Nina phenomenon.
Do be careful though, in the religious broadcast he certainly comes over as being persuasive (but how much editing did it need to obtain that persuasive effect?)

[Neal Asher]

Given that historically the 'correlation' between CO2 rises and warming is that it rises on average 800 years AFTER warming, could the present rise in CO2 be due to the Medieval Warm Period, the midway point of which was 800 years ago?

[Andrew Duffin]

Well it does rather depend on what he says, does it not? The title of the lecture is not very forthcoming about it.

I would ask whether he thinks that, since we've had ten years of increasing CO2 without increasing temperatures, the AGW hypothesis is now disproved? And if not, what are his reasons for still supporting it?

But of course he may answer this in the course of his lecture.

Is the Younger Hall still as dingy as it used to be?