Bishop Hill Phil Jones in the Sundays
Feb 13, 2010 Climate: CRU Climate: Jones There's sure to be some analysis of Phil Jones' comments to Roger Harrabin in the Sunday papers, and I'll post links up as I get them. Thanks to Steve2 in the comments for the first of these:
MAIL ON SUNDAY: Untold billions of pounds have been spent on turning the world green and also on financing the dubious trade in carbon credits...You might have thought that all this was based upon well-founded, highly competent research and that those involved had good reason for their blazing, hot-eyed certainty and their fierce intolerance of dissent. But, thanks to the row over leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit, we now learn that this body’s director, Phil Jones, works in a disorganised fashion amid chaos and mess.
Not Phil Jones, but very funny all the same.
Jonathan Leake is going to turn himself into even more of a hate figure for the green fraternity, reporting today on an interesting paper by Terry Mills that suggests that recent warming is just as likely to be a statistical artefact as a real change in the climate.
Gordon Brown is launching a new climate panel and denounces us all as "deniers" in the process. I guess he didn't get the memo either.
Reader Comments (117)
Even after these chancers are toppled from their towers, and hopefully some sent to prison, we'll have to cope with folk who have been converted by their lies and refuse to smell the coffee. That'll be a job and a half.
one of the reasons that Phil Jones says he is disorganised is that their is only one secretary for th 13 staff at CRU, who also has to act as a part-time receptionist. CRU is funded by resarch grants so the money is not available for such luxuries.
I'm not a climate sceptic and suggest you read the brilliant article in today's EDP24 by Prof Peter Liss (acting director of CRU) I quote - "Climate sceptics are playing Russian Roulette with the planet, by continuing to throw doubt on the scienc without solid evidence to back it up"
[BH adds: Annie, you don't need to be a sceptic to comment here and your contribution is welcome. It's been noted on many occasions that maintenance of a dataset like CRUTEM is not a suitable job for a research scientist to do in his spare time. If he really can't afford a secretary then this applies doubly.]
What an extraordinary claim, Annie. When the results of that research is used to justify spending in the trilions, "he's doing his best" just doesn't cut it.
And as his results are questionable at best, he has now been forced to admit, it turns out the money *wasn't* better spent elsewhere now, was it?
I trust a single response will suffice?
Annie:
You said it three times but I am not really sure I get it. Are you excusing his and others' behaviors? Grant money is essentially fungible and could be used to optimize the efficient running of the centre simply by paying for graduate assistants and the like to do the more routine research activities - such as creating and maintaining the database for which the funds were originally given. Many of us have been there. No, it simply will not wash. When the job gets too much for one, one should simply step aside to maintain one's integrity. If CRU needs an organizational wizard to clean up these databases and make sure that they are archived the way they should be, then I know just the person. ;)
Climate sceptics are more interested in the economy than the environment, if the so called trillions that Sean mentions aren't spent, then then won't be much of an economy to worry about.
Another quote for you - "The basic science of the greenhouse effect is sound ie more anthropogenic CO2 means more warming" Guess who said that? Answer - DR BENNY PEISER the leading climate sceptic and director of Lord Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Annie
I think most scientists on the skeptical side of the argument would agree that CO2 is a GHG but that its influence on temperature is much less than the propaganda machine has been telling the public. And in any case, since when has a slightly warmer planet been a bad thing? And please don't tell us that it must be bad because the Stern report said it is.
Annie, your quote that "The basic science of the greenhouse effect is sound ie more anthropogenic CO2 means more warming" is true, but please understand that this is only part of the story.
IPCC reports explain that doubling CO2 levels will raise world temperatures by less than 2C if only infra-red absorption is considered (i.e. a level that would cause no real concern). However, in order to raise them by more than 4C (i.e. to levels that cause real concern), climate models must assume the existence of positive feedbacks within the climate system. Unfortunately, there is as yet no real-world evidence for this so-called 'enhanced greenhouse effect' (Cf. IPCC TAR Sect. 1.3.1) but it is, nevertheless, assumed to exist because it is the only way that the models can 'simulate' past climate records and thereby provide a scientific basis of the current AGW narrative.
The problem here is two fold. Firstly, it assumes that the models include all possible mechanisms, even though the IPCC reports openly admit that there are serious unknowns, like the effect of clouds. Secondly, it skips entirely one of the key steps of the Scientific Method, which is to make a prediction that can be tested in the real-world by experiment or observation and so verify or falsify the hypothesis/model.
So, the science may well be sound with respect to the basic mechanism by which CO2 causes warming (i.e. infra-red absorption) but it is very far from settled with respect to the dominance of positive feedbacks.
Annie,
can't say about British ways of doing things, but our department in Prague had always only one secretary (for 15-20 scientists) and archiving our data isn't and has never been her duty. It was solely our own responsibility.
They still can't hear you.
The Oz Sunday Sun-Herald today (14 February 2010) reports that Ban-Ki Moon has set up a panel, to be led by Gordon Brown. to mobilise more than US$ 112billion [of our money] to help developing nations battle climate change.
.
Phil Jones! Michael Mann! Keith Briffa! Rajendra Pachauri! Gordon Brown!
Your boys took a hell of a beating!
Your boys took a hell of a beating!
(Nice to have norwegians on your team, no?)
Annie:
1. It is not necessary to repeat yourself 3 times if you have anything worthwhile to say.
2. Prof Peter Liss (acting director of CRU) I quote - "Climate sceptics are playing Russian Roulette with the planet, by continuing to throw doubt on the scienc (sic) without solid evidence to back it up"
Climate sceptics are throwing doubt on the mysterious "science" being alluded to by Peter Liss, (and other believers such as yourself and Frankly incredulous O'Dwyer), by exposing it as not based on any solid evidence or logic and being subject to a good deal of manipulation, deceit and fraud.
If you knew anything about science you would know, that is how science works. By exposing the weaknesses of a hypothesis.
And the "untold billions of pounds that have been and are being spent on turning the world green and financing the dubious trade in carbon credits" is playing "Russian Roulette" with the future of the people of our planet, with 6 bullets in the chamber.
We deserve better than that.
How is it that Microsoft can find $billions by the EU for not sharing source code and abusing its monopolistic position, and yet the Climate Change Industry seems completely unaccountable?
Reading through the blogs and books on Climategate, this seems to be a recurring theme.
Poor data, poor code, poor business practice, and complete lack of transparency to the general public
If I was in charge of an organisation responsible for influencing $trilliions of public money, I would expect, (and hope) that my data and code would be scrutinised and challenged at every point. I would expect multiple redundent datacentres where I could pull off reproducible experiments at the click of a mouse. Heck, what about Google Climate?
Sorry team, need to sharpen up the act.
Annie, in science - any true science - "throwing doubt" is a good thing, and "certainty" is a very bad thing. It's in religion that's the other way around.
And it's not up to those who throw doubts about theories to provide evidence, as Peter Liss claims - it's up to those who promote theories to provide proof - solid proof - that their theories are correct. Climate science has no proof - that's why they have to use the utterly non-scientific argument of "consensus". It does not matter, scientifically, what 99.99% of climate scientifics "believe". That is not *proof* of anything.
There is no proof that increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has caused the observed temperature increases since 1979 (I refer only to the period when satellite measurements were available). There simply isn't. What you may have is a *correlation* (and even that is questionable) between measured temperatures and CO2 concentrations - but a correlation isn't *proof* of anything. It is, at most, an indication of a possible cause-and-effect relationship. And you do have a plausible explanation based on physics as to why that might be the case. Any graduate student jumping to the conclusion that an observed correlation is proof of anything is going to have problems getting their PhD dissertation approved (well, probably not in climate science - try that with hard sciences like physics or chemistry, though).
Now, if someone then asks, ok then, what is your explanation for the warming, if not CO2? I don't have any. I don't have to have one. Just because I don't have an explanation for something doesn't mean that I have to accept someone else's *without proof*. That doesn't mean that I think that the theory is necessarily wrong - it may well be. But in the absence of proof, I reserve judgement until real proof is available. That is the only scientific approach to take.
The problem here is that a substantial part of what needs to be done is not 'science' - it's engineering, it's statistics, it's database design and administration.
My limited exposure to scientists - as a participant in most of the above-named fields - is that they're generally pretty damned bad at all of the above. They want the whole sandbox in which to build their own castles.
We need a global temperature data warehouse, designed around what's really needed for global temperature studies. We need an effort to then take the numbers that exist and fit them into that structure, without arbitrary and undisclosed 'adjustments', but with a data-quality 'confidence window' assigned to each value and carried forward through any calculations or models in which that value is used.
Then we can get back to 'climate science' with numbers we can trust.
I'm reading online, from Canada. As it is unsigned, am I correct in concluding that this is an "editorial" - a stating of the official position of The Mail?
Annie, the facts are settled. Cap and trade does not reduce CO2 emissions. Proven year after year in Europe. So since the gun is against our head, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO TERMINATE CAP AND TRADE? ACT NOW. SAVE THE PLANET.
"World may not be warming, say scientists"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026317.ece
Has anyone had a good look at this yet?
http://www.nobel-cause.de/book
Chapters by several of the usual suspects. I've only read the first half of Dr P's. Africagate lives. And how about this:
'While industrialized countries bear the greatest responsibility for the changing
climate, developing countries are already bearing the major burden of its effects.
Between 1990 and 2005, nearly 3.5 billion people were affected by natural disasters,
of which approximately 90 % live in developing countries (LaFleur et al., 2008). As if this inequality were not enough ...'
Non-sequitur or what? (And the LaFleur reference is, of course, a cul-de-sac. You'll find the same numbers there but they are unreferenced.)
I'm looking forward to reading Stern's chapter.
.
The need for a quality management system is not a "luxury". It is a necesity. The cancellation of one of the frequent trips by CRU staff to exotic locations such as Tahiti would have paid to set up a decent system. Once set up, such a system needs very little maintenance.
Philip, you are incredibly uninformed about the trips that CRU make, many of them are to conferences, one in Siberia springs to mind at temperatures of -30 degrees, hardly the lap of luxury and the one being held in June is in Lapland and they always take the most inexpensive flights.
As to the science, most of you don't understand climate modelling as it is incredibly complicated and seem prepared to believe all these statements put out by unqualified people,
Steve Mcintyre for example, who is a mathematician not a climate scientist. His attacks on them are now being found to be false eg the response by Prof Briffa in September to his accusations about Yamal stands up to very good scrutiny.
RE GB's comments
Can somebody who knows how to do it please launch a petition on the Downing Street website and ask the Prime Minister to moderate his language from 'climate change deniers' to 'climate change critics'?.
I think it would get a lot of signatures, and would concentrate both his mind and the more open-minded press on the topic.
I have just read the article in the Sunday Mail. A few comments - Prof Jones is an honest man and full of integrity, unfortunately he's spent all his life in science and is not good at PR.
CRU have received hundreds of FOI requests from Climate Sceptics in a deliberate attempt to disrupt their work. There are only 13 staff at CRU and FOI requests take 18 hours of processing, also many of the requests are for data which they do not own, but belong to met offices and research centres around the world, so it's not their's to give
Annie:
You say that Steve McIntyre is a mathematician and not a climate scientist. But would you not agree that mathematics (and, in particular, his speciality statistics) is an essential component of climate science? And, if so, doesn't that make him a climate scientist? After all, climatology is an extremely complex field and no one can be a master of all aspects of it. For example, in his interview with Roger Harrabin, Phil Jones said that the contribution of natural influences to global warming (a key area of climate science) was outside his area of expertise. So, essentially, he's simply a collector, processor and publisher of temperature data - unquestionably another essential component of climate science. But does it mean that, in your view, he's not a climate scientist either?
Annie
I am beginning to wonder if you are indeed the part-time receptionist who works at CRU - or somebody giving a very good impression of her. Welcome...good to have an insider's viewpoint on 'this blog of many talents'.
But your comment that Steve McIntyre is a mathematician (and therefore somehow unqualified to comment) really shows either your prejudices or your ignorance.
There is no such science as 'climate science'. At its best it should be a synthesis of many disciplines among them: Maths, physics, chemistry, statisitics, Information technology, geology, geochemistry, astronomy .........(apologies to any whose spehre i have ommitted..my ignorance...no slight intended) etc. It pays to have the best minds from each discipline working together on the problem - and to use the best available tools and techniques from each. And all science somewhere has the need for good mathematical skills...climate science more than most.
In the case of CRU - from what we can gather through the prism of the Climategate leaks, they chose to use few of these. At the very least in their role as custodian of the CRU dataset they should have employed some semi-competent data administrators to look after the data..and to answer FOI requests. Lack of money is no defence...AGW-theory money has been sloshing around for a decade or more, and no reasonable body would refuse to pay a few hundred grand to look after some of the most important data in the history of humankind.
Instead they chose to add to their list of disciplines a fair dose of wishful thinking, a lot of head in the sand and a fierce determination to massage the data until it gave the 'right' answer. And then to throw away the unmassaged stuff so that nobody could ever try their 'trick' again.
And yes - I do understand a little bit about computer modelling. I wrote such models in high atmosphere reaction kinetics when gaining my MSc. And spent 30 years as a professional in IT - sometimes 'rescuing' failed IT departments. And Harry_Read_Me is as appalling an indictment of a failed IT department as I have seen.
Annie said: "....one in Siberia springs to mind at temperatures of -30 degrees."
Somewhat ironic!
@Donna Laframboise
Yes that is the editorial that appears in the print version (I made a rare purchase of the actual paper today).
It refers back to another article in the print version which I notice is also online now
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html
Just a mention on the new climate panel
Gorgon Brown and his sisters have obviously recognised that they have absolutely no chance of winning the next election. Collectively they seem to be doing everything they can now to totally bankrupt this country before the Labour Party becomes one of the also rans. This government seems to calculate that it can squander multimillions of tax payers pounds on climate change supposedly saving the planet for my grandchildrens children. While the very same government wants to cut funds by hundreds of millions of pounds to universities who are educating our children of today. What are you doing to this country Mr Brown, saving the planet or just lining up your next job?
I am not a member of CRU and have no connections with them, but I have been following their work for a number of years and believe they are dedicated team of scientists. Try reading the BBC article instead of the Mail, because as usual it has taken a lot out of context
In WUWT Phil Jones - U turn.
Phil Jones I forgive you, if you truly repent
I really must try to control my anger now.
Also my contempt for idiot politicians who know not of what they rant about (still little change there).
Gordon Brown, a trumped up. absolutely FUBAR f*** wit is now once again telling me that the science of AGW is TRUE and there is no room for dissent.
May the good Lord above give me strength.
Let it be known that when and it will not happen - because we do not change the planet atmospherically (unless by small scale heat island effects) I am shown real proof of GW that is MAN Made, then I shall recant.
BUT!
In science, there is nothing settled, we know that the tide is coming in and the sun will rise in the morn.............but for how long?
Gordon. like Anthony (Bliar) before him knows more than I do.
He has a grasp of ..............PHYSICS?............ and of climatology? and of what exactly, ............come to think of it what did he do.............oh yes ........er a degree in .........science? er noooo................History (important but not in climatology of AGW).
Which qualifies him to call me a denier and a flat earther, contempt is not a strong enough term for what I reciprocally think of him, his party and of his 'son of a manse' Philosphy.
I am also a proud Brit...........but what is left of my country now he and his appalling scum...........enough.
Jones is merely an apologist for the political class's AGW lunacy and hence a nobody, a lick-spittle.
It appears to me that as "climate science" relys heavily on simulating temperature/weather conditions over the next 100 + years it must be therefore relying heavily on MATHEMATICAL modelling techniques/software.
The mathematical modelling requires a huge input of statistical data collected from a large number of resources and also relys (to be accurate) on a COMPLETE AND COMPREHENSIVE package of data.
As AGW propenents appear to have dismissed or ignored many possible factors (possibly because they are unknown or too difficult to quantify) then the data will be flawed.
Garbage in .. garbage out as the saying goes.
I understand that McIntyre is a Mathematician and as such (I imagine) is highly placed to comprehend the data set (numbers) and the software being used (a company called mathworks comes to mind.. also having an office in Cambridge) and how the dataset will be used.
@annie
Thanks. I had, of course, read the BBC interview and commentary as well as the Mail before making my remarks. Indeed, I have followed the whole 'Climategate' story pretty closely as it has unfolded.
As a 'lapsed' scientist, I set myself the taskk about 6 months ago to understand exactly what was meant by 'The Science is Settled'. And in the course of that I read a lot of blogs and papers and commentaries. And watched some videos and all the things that you might expect.
And it very quickly became apparent that the whole edifice of AGW-theory is built on sand. There is undoubtedly an increase in CO2 concentration. It is likely (though Prof. Jones inabilities to keep proper records casts some doubt on this) that the global temperature has been increasing. It may be that the earth is now warmer than it has been for some hundreds of years.
But all that might show is a correlation. It does not show cause - however many hand-waving arguments are advanced. It is absolutely no scientifc use to say that if I program my computer models to assume AGW (incluing a plucked from the air forcing factor) then I can make the models agree with observation.
So the more I have read, the less convinced I am that AGW-theory is anything more than a piece of wishful thinking. And the dodgier the behaviour of the key players (Prof. Jones, Mann etc) the more my nasty supsicious mind thinks that they really do have something to hide.....even if it is hidden away in one of Jones' now notorious untidy piles of paper.
Annie - "Steve Mcintyre for example, who is a mathematician not a climate scientist".
McIntyre & McCitrick along with Prof Wegman made no scientific claims, however they did undeniably prove that the Hockey Stick and many other pro-MMGW studies used inappropriate, flawed and invalid statistical techniques and methodologies, and most mind-bogglingly even infilled missing data-values in their databases with assumed values.
Assumed values that, when processed through their invalid statistical methodologies by Mann, Bradley, Hughes and their devout followers produced the results they were actively looking for. Now, if you believe that is science then ............................
The latest Jones/Harrabin argument -- that Annie here is dutifully trotting out -- is that the mess Prof Jones et al have gotten into it simply a matter of there not being enough money to organise their office.
Are you serious?
The most conservative estimates are that billions of dollars have been spent on climate research in the last 15 years; a fact Warmists often use to reinforce the settled and serious nature of the science.
Did no one think of spending a few thousand pounds archiving material? No one thought to save the crown jewels? I wonder why.
The story about Jones's office being a mess and the original temperature data being lost because it was on paper is also a complete joke. At some point it was entered into computers -- otherwise it would have been impossible to run the fiddled algorithms that produce hockey sticks from red noise.
So, we're back to the old excuse of 'we threw away all the old un-adjusted data because we needed the memory space -- memory space being really expensive back in the 80s'. Because, let's face it, temperature records take up SO much space.
Yeah, right.
Oh, and as for the 'it takes 18 hours to process a Freedom of information request'.
No it doesn't. Not if the information being requested is something that according to the rules of science should have been posted in the public domain the instant the paper was accepted for publication.
The vast majority of freedom of information requests were for information that should already have been made free.
Peter B
"a correlation isn't *proof* of anything. It is, at most, an indication of a possible cause-and-effect relationship. And you do have a plausible explanation based on physics as to why that might be the case. "
So a correlation AND a physical explanation? Golly gee, what a weak case.
I suppose the observations of CO2 infrared absorption from space, stratospheric cooling, and the paleo evidence that climate sensitivity to CO2 is 3C just weakens it further.
"Jonathan Leake is going to turn himself into even more of a hate figure for the green fraternity"
Why's that, is he making stuff up again, like the mail?
Just finished reading the Hockey Stick Illusion and it is every bit as good as I thought it would be. Clear lucid prose. Well done.
A bit off topic, but I have a question for either the Bishop or anyone else.
McIntyre's demolition of a hockey stick is complete. But the real smoking gun of the hockey stick is its statistical ineptitude.
Now we've all read the Harry README text. This made it quite clear that whatever talents Prof Jones et al possess (and we now know that a tidy office is not one of them) they seem to have extremely limited abilities when it comes to computer programming. The fact that computer programming is an enormous part of their job we will put to one side at the moment.
Reading the Hockey Stick Illusion, it seems that their understanding of statistics is also on an enthusiastic amateur level. The Hockey Team do not seem to have any comeback to McIntyre's statistical criticisms. The reason for this seems to be that they genuinely don't understand the significance of what he's talking about.
(This is me being very generous. There is obviously another way of interpreting this).
The question that occurs to me is this: why did the hockey team, with all their vast resources, not wheel out some statistical big guns to shoot McIntyre down? After all, if McIntyre is wrong he is the kind of person who would be only too happy to admit it.
Why didn't the Hockey Team do this?
I suspect that we know why, but the question is very very revealing.
@Annie
As an old-time practitioner in the arts of collecting, processing, and reporting on climate data I can appreciate your sympathy with the CRU in their difficulty in managing data, and now, dealing with demands to produce it. In reality no-one's perfect and the systems and processes can break down at times.
What I am not sympathetic with is the assumption that standards that applied in the 70s and 80s are applicable today.
From what I can see, the CRU is using technology and methodology that was frozen in the 70s and 80s. It is cringeworthy for me to see data processing and computation of a standard that I personally found problematic a very long time ago. And which I long ago abandoned in favour of rigorous statistical data capture, analysis and storage decades ago.
There is a whole host of scientific software developed during and since the 80's that allows researchers to collect and file data, and then use it to publish verifiable analysis.
So yes, the criticism is unfair of their specific data management and analysis. But no. They are ossified. They should be using the latest tools and have the flexibility to report and respond to queries. This is not happening.
Frank O'Dwyer - "the paleo evidence that climate sensitivity to CO2 is 3C"? What paleo evidence? Where do you get that from?
"the observations of CO2 infrared absorption from space" - from space??? Give up frankly incredulous - you do not have a clue about anything scientific.
Annie, you state that "Prof Jones is an honest man and full of integrity". When I read his own e-mails, I fail to find any honesty and integrity. Being a boring scientist, I have to ask you: What makes you think that Jones possesses the qualities you state?
Frank O'Dwyer - "and the paleo evidence that climate sensitivity to CO2 is 3C"
Would this be the paleo evidence that shows temperatures rising up to 800 years before CO2 rises?
Or the paleo evidence that shows temperatures falling while CO2 continues to rise?
Richard,
"What paleo evidence? Where do you get that from?"
By reading about the work that has been done on this - please forgive the novel approach. Here for example is a paper establishing a lower bound of 1.5C on climate sensitivity from paleo evidence.
Here is a paper that combines paleo and other, independent, observations to give a likely value of 3C. This blog post by one of the paper's authors is a more accessible discussion of it.
""the observations of CO2 infrared absorption from space" - from space??? "
Yes Richard, from space.
Annie you say
"Philip, you are incredibly uninformed about the trips that CRU make, many of them are to conferences, one in Siberia springs to mind at temperatures of -30 degrees, hardly the lap of luxury and the one being held in June is in Lapland and they always take the most inexpensive flights.
As to the science, most of you don't understand climate modelling as it is incredibly complicated and seem prepared to believe all these statements put out by unqualified people".
Let me guess. You are young and inexperienced.
Many of us here have many years of scientific experience. For instance, I was working with complex computer models back in the 70s and 80s. I know how difficult computer models can be and what there limitations are. I understand the need for expert staisticians to be called in to do the staistical analysis and for software experts to be called in to handle computer model development. Since the 70s, data archiving has been a cheap and simple task. So has the application of quality management tools.
What I see at CRU and similar institutions is so-called scientists doing work which they are not trained to do and not competent at doing. In my line of science/engineering these guys would not have been allowed to do they complex statistical and computer analysis they were doing. We call it SQEP (suitably qualified and experience people) - it goes with a good quality management system. No wonder these guys at CRU have covered up their activities for years. They were afraid to reveal their ineptitude and incompetence; and now Jones is finally having it dragged out of him bit by bit.
I suggest you don't bother coming back here and trying to lecture to us about something you are also not SQEP to discuss.
That's a bit harsh Philip
Annie may need to read alternative views before she can reconsider her position. That's one of the problems with this debacle. That people only read what they want to read. Being involved in dialogue gives a broader view so that whatever view you hold, at least you had a broader amount of data to assimilate
Annie - please continue posting. Although I don't agree with most of what you post, it makes the debate much more interesting. Bon courage.
Best
Martin
"the observations of CO2 infrared absorption from space" - from space??? "
"Yes Richard, from space."
Frankly incredulous, where on earth does that link say the CO2 absorption takes place from space. Greenhouse gasses trap OUTGOING radiation. (Bounced off the Earth)
And if indeed that letter to Nature claims to establish "a lower bound of 1.5C on climate sensitivity FROM PALEO EVIDENCE", (it certainly doesnt say so in the abstarct), I go by the much more reliable and direct evidence of the ice-core records. This gives a the direct correlation of temperatures with CO2, over time. With those, CO2 lags temperature, rise and fall, which gives the lie to CO2 being the driver of global temperatures.
The same goes with your other reference. Suspect any paper that is fabricated to perpetuate the Global warming gravy train swindle.
If the paper comes out with a likely value of 3C for climate sensitivity, the chances of that being correct, going by the current temperature trends, is very slim indeed. So the paper is disproved by the evidence.
Now run along. Maintain an absolute silence for 5 years and then you can come back and eat humble pie, if you have a shred remorse in you for supporting this gigantic swindle.
TerryS,
"Would this be the paleo evidence that shows temperatures rising up to 800 years before CO2 rises?"
I believe it is more like a few centuries, but yes. Why do you think that is a problem? CO2 both lags initial temperature rise, and causes additional temperature rise. Similarly credit card interest both results from initial debt, and results in additional debt.
Notice also that this lag was actually predicted before it was observed, by those useless climate scientists.
"Or the paleo evidence that shows temperatures falling while CO2 continues to rise?"
What does this refer to?
Annie, you say “As to the science, most of you don't understand climate modelling as it is incredibly complicated and seem prepared to believe all these statements put out by unqualified people”. However, the basic uncertainties in catastrophic AGW theory, which I described in my previous post, are taken from IPCC documents and so cannot be classed as “statements put out by unqualified people”. Also, just because climate modelling is “incredibly complicated” does not mean it is correct. Remember that the astronomical theory of ‘epicycles’ was far more complex than the theories of Kepler and Newton but turned out to be wrong.
Frank O’Dwyer, your references are interesting but are hardly the last word on the subject. Take, for example, this recent Nature letter…
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08769.html
…which suggests that there is 80% less potential amplification of CO2 and has recently been discussed over at RealClimate.
The simple fact is that there is currently no practical way to falsify the current theory of catastrophic AGW** and so no way of testing it against real-world observations. All that has been done to date is simple checks on probability distributions, based upon multiple runs of the models using various ‘best estimates’ of weighting factors (Cf. AR4WG1, Chapter 10, Box 10.2, p.798), which seem to me like circular logic unless you believe that the models account for all of the key mechanisms involved in determining climate.
** Some say it has already been falsified because the predicted “hot spot” 10km above the equator seems to be missing.
I'm interested in the reference to work by Terry Mills, a top class econometrician. I have looked at some of his recent papers and he seems to have done a fair bit on climate, most of it supportive of a CO2 link. But this reference suggests something a bit new. Anybody got any more details?
"Gordon Brown is launching a new climate panel and denounces us all as "deniers" in the process. I guess he didn't get the memo either."
Which is actually good news, as everything he touches turns rapidly to sh*t.