Bishop Hill More evidence of global warming collapse
Feb 25, 2009 Climate I was taken to task the other day for suggesting that the global warming consensus is collapsing. Here's more evidence though:
Japanese scientists have made a dramatic break with the UN and Western-backed hypothesis of climate change in a new report from its Energy Commission.
Three of the five researchers disagree with the UN's IPCC view that recent warming is primarily the consequence of man-made industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. Remarkably, the subtle and nuanced language typical in such reports has been set aside.
One of the five contributors compares computer climate modelling to ancient astrology. Others castigate the paucity of the US ground temperature data set used to support the hypothesis, and declare that the unambiguous warming trend from the mid-part of the 20th Century has ceased.
Reader Comments (18)
As someone commented, the Japanese may well be declaring a more "pro-Asian" stance in response to what many see as aggressive bullying from sanctimonious western greenies over whaling.
More cracks in the AGW "consensus" nonsense.
This may set you straight. Of course it's only from a working climate scientist who is actually cited by the documents on JSER which hosts the report mentioned, and knows the people involved, so probably means nothing. Still I'm surprised that no 'sceptic' uncovered it.
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2009/02/much-ado-about-nothing.html
Although considering that the ‘rebuttal’ came from someone who is a climate scientist it is astonishingly ad hominem and empty of content.
When I clicked on the link I expected to see some direct point by point critique of the Japanese paper but it turns out to be a cheap exercise in fire fighting any cognitive dissonance that threatened to unsettle the uncritical faithful .
As I see it, the bottom line of the whole thing is that the critical contributors to the paper who happened not to be Annans friend (who was a co-author – go figure was he wrestled to the ground?), have a history of scepticism and therefore the whole thing is a ‘farce’.
Job done. I’m sure Frank joins Annan in feeling :
“…relieved to find that it's all a fuss about nothing”
I love that 'relieved' -So I guess if the paper had somehow succeeded in persuading Annan that model catastrophe predictions were flawed, he would have been disappointed?
Says it all really. Thanks again.
Try clicking on the links within that article. There you will find it's all been done before.
Naturally as a 'sceptic' you wouldn't just believe they knew anything about it simply because they said so, right? I know you have much higher standards than that.
This relentless arguing from authority does get tedious. "They're not climate scientists" doesn't disqualify them from making a critique - just as being completely incapable of performing proper statistical analysis doesn't prevent Mann, Bradley, Hughes, Steig et al from having a crack at doing so. The difference is when they do publish their drivel, proper statisticians like McIntyre & McKitrick criticise the actual work; they don't shout "they're not statisticians!" slam shut the door of the echo chamber, stick their fingers in their & start shouting la-la-la. Which is why I find their critiques of this pseudo science credible & I tend to distrust climate scientists, who rely on inadequate computer models & not physical evidence to support their theories.
They're essentially astrologers with a good line in PR.
For example on the page linked above he says about a colleague:
“Kusano, the one puffed by The Register as "Program Director" here (well, next door in the Earth Simulator Centre) has indeed been (over)promoted to that status but in scientific terms appears to be a bit of a nobody and will certainly not be known to many climate scientists.”
The personal contempt shown for this fellow pretty much sums what he seems to think about most of the people he disagrees with.
I am not personally wedded to this Japanese paper as an example of startling new thinking in any direction, the fact that models have problems have been said many times, and I am sure Annan is correct in informing us that it was more of a debate piece.
However I think the point of the original Register article was that it was the relative prominence of this debate in a non-western country which is interesting, which is kind of grudgingly confirmed by Annan himself here:
“Fundamentally it's just a bit of random non-scientific quackery from the local sceptics, who seem to have grown in prominence recently here. As usual, Japan is decades behind the rest of the world in socio-political development :-)”
What “socio-political development” has to do with scientific thinking isn’t specified by him, but following the links on that page I can see that he is very dismissive of every sceptic that comes his way, with what validity I cannot accurately judge. Maybe his blog is just for likeminded scientists who need no extra info, I ‘m not sure I could glean much in the way of science from that blog, and I certainly not interested in his prose otherwise, I don’t think I will be hurrying to revisit it.
""They're not climate scientists" doesn't disqualify them from making a critique"
It doesn't help.
And talking crap, as they do(*), does disqualify them from being taken seriously except by a few folks in these parts who seemingly take anything seriously except the evidence against their case.
(*) To take a trivial example, attributing a theory to the IPCC, instead of the authors of the many scientific papers they reference. The IPCC doesn't do research. Still I suppose it's a step up from the usual 'sceptic' claim that it is a theory of Al Gore's.
O/T slightly, but perhaps one of these days Dr. Mann will answer the substantive criticisms of the hockey stick rather than pretending the Wegman Report supported him. Personally I think Mann's credibility is shot forever, but that doesn't seem to stop Greenpeace liking him. Anyone would think Greens had a agenda which Dr. Mann's hockey stick was supporting. Why do these people want a catastophic theory to be true? An interesting subject for psychological study I think.
"Anyone would think Greens had a agenda which Dr. Mann's hockey stick was supporting"
McIntyre doesn't think that. You do understand that even McIntyre conceded that the hockey stick, right or wrong, has no relevance to the question of whether AGW is true? Indeed that this is agreed by people on both sides of the aisle.
The Hockey Stick is an artifact of poor mathematics, but as a piece of advocacy it is of paramount importance. Famously supporters of the AGW need to get rid of the mediaeval warm period, because its existence throws doubt on the thesis they present. If natural cycles centuries before the industrial revolution could make the earth hotter than today, why should we believe in the existence of massive positive feedbacks creating warming?
If the Hockey Stick were a decent piece of work, Greens would be able to say "there was no mediaeval warm period" (of course they still do, even though it is garbage). That in turn allows them to say "this is the hottest the world has ever been, and it is all down to us! Aaargh!!!!" I suspect that is why Mann et al came up with it. If it truly had no relevance there wouldn't have been such a furore over it. After all, that's why Real Climate was set up - and I'm very grateful to them since that picqued my interest & caused me to read all the papers I could get my hands on relating to this topic.
I ask out of curiosity: do you accept the hockey stick is flawed?
The Hockey Stick was a key promotional tool for the AGW movement, but the affair surrounding McIntyre's audit of it tells us something important about the quality of the IPCC's due diligence.