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Bishop Hill
Copyright © 2006-2013, Bishop Hill All rights reserved.
Reader Comments (22)
Anybody have details of the Royal Institute debate last night?
[BH adds: I'm hoping to get a guest post later today. There's audio available at the RI site]
The Guardian still does not get it:
"Indeed, the settled core of our knowledge on climate – the fact of increasing atmospheric carbon, the rising temperature trend, and the heat-trapping mechanism linking the two – has acquired the terrific authority it now possesses precisely because it has been forced to withstand so many challenges in the past."
Executive summary: "Let us be magnanimous in defeat"
They still (quite deliberately I'm sure) use the word "denier" without qualification - they don't want to upset the status quo too much!
However, the MSM's new-found balance is remarkable. It even extended to the BBC's Mock the Week last night - a programme I can't stand, but I was waiting for Newsnight... - which allowed trendy young comedians to 'mock' AGW-ists. Never thought I would see that.
In the same vein, I think Hislop made some AGW-defensive noises on a programme (HIGNFY or QT?) just after 'Climategate' broke. It will be interesting to see if he changes his opinion at all.
And some of the comments below the article are excellent.
The RI debate was good, Pielke can across very well, Ward perhaps less so. Apologies for not introducing myself to the flock but unfortunately minor domestic emergency meant I had to leave after the event. The debate was videoed, so that should be available at some point. I overheard the RI organiser mentioning they're working on an 'RI TV' service to show lectures. The Guardian's James Randerson also mentioned they're launching a special website on Climate/Climategate with some interactivity, which could prove interesting if they adopt their usual moderation policy, or let Connolly near it.
Will save rest for the RI post when it appears.
It appears the Guardian readership get it at last. The overwhelming response in the very high volume of comments is to congratulate the Guardian for at last beginning to think about the issue.
Two weeks ago, there would have been a 10-to-1 ratio of attacks on the few "denier" commentes brave enough to take the insults and ridicule. How times change!
Agree David
"The blatant foul play of the deniers..."
- such as demanding to see data and code, or what?
I'll wait to see if the guest post mentioned by BH will appear to comment in more detail there, Ti sum up, Roger Pielke was excellent, Muir-Woods was ok, and Bob Ward was essentially the IPCC's mouthpiece even if there was no specific disagreement with what the other two were saying. Interestingly, Piers Corbyn was in the audience (and seemed mostly interested to promote himself), as was - I think - George Monbiot, who however kept busy taking notes.
A lot of recent Grauniad pieces have been "Guardian-centric".
"The Guardian has discovered this..."
"...first reported in the Guardian ..."
Are they trying to kid themselves that they are fearlessly hunting and reporting the facts - instead of just being a conveyor-belt for peopaganda ?
Or is it just the narcissistic solipsism beloved by liberals?
While we are "deniers" they are "denialers". They are in clinical denial. Just ask any psychologist who has studied clinical psychology, as I did.
(Yes, I have had a very complex background, having had a dozen or so careers. I rather enjoy me present one of being an irascible curmudgeon -- I worked hard for it and I will enjoy it!)
@Jack Hughes
You and Bill O'Reilly should get together and swap vocabularies. :) For those who don't know who Bill O'Reilly is, look here:
http://www.billoreilly.com/
I listened to the debate as well and enjoyed it. The two scientists were excellent but Bob Ward was dreadful. Considering that the man is supposed to be a professional communicator of science, compared to the two professional scientists he was stumbling, defensive, combative and evasive.
And considering the calmly reasoned positions of the two scientists -- and many members of the audience -- I was staggered to hear Bob Ward repeat the famous catastrophic warming meme: 'and we expect up to 5 or 6° of warming over the next century'. This in light of the previous conversation which had all been about backing up claims with evidence, and his own defence of the work of the IPCC being evidence-based, offered absolutely no evidence that this ludicrous claim.
This 'end of the world' trope is going to take a long time to die.
Ward's summing up also had the stock appeal to emotion with the 'regardless of science, what about the children and grandchildren' meme. Must admit when he arrived, given his look and macintosh, I wondered whether the NDET had come along to keep an eye on us extremists.
James D - off topic but gives you and the book a great plug.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100025264/dear-geoffrey-lean-let-me-explain-why-were-so-cross/
Perhaps the writers at the Guardian should read The Times. They would discover An Inconvenient Truth
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6975867.ece
Have a read of it, Frank, and explain why? I would love to hear your spin.
Don Pablo. Whatever you do, don't stop being an irascible curmudgeon. You should take up UK citizenship and offer yourself as PM.
Edward Lorenz in 1964 originated Chaos Theory, showing that "complex dynamic systems" such as Earth's atmosphere exhibit "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" (the Butterfly Effect) immune to linear extrapolation, non-random but indeterminate due to "strange attractors" related to Benoit Mandelbrot's Fractal Geometry (1974).
Just recently, Gerlich and Tscheuschner of Germany's Institut fur Mathematische Physik published a 125-page paper asserting that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) resulting from a "greenhouse effect" of cumulative atmospheric CO2 violates Ludwig Boltzman's fundamental Second Law of Thermodynamics. As "heat engines", closed or open atmospheric systems must all exhibit Bolzman's "entropy", the necessary inefficiency that ensures all physical "work" entails net energy deficits. Denying this effectively advocates Perpetual Motion.
In combination, Chaos Theory plus Boltzman's Second Law make Climate Cultists' AGW hypothesis mathematically and physically impossible. Most certainly, there is no way to extrapolate linear trends from historical data, especially that presented in bad faith under false pretenses from the start.
Cyclical phenomena drawn from Fourier analysis, analogous to sine waves, are useful indicators if properly applied. On this basis, well-defined Pleistocene Era glaciations averaging 102,000 years with median 12,250-year remissions have lasted 1.8 million years to date, and probably have another 12 - 14+ million years to run.
Adjusting for the 1,500-year Younger Dryas "cold shock" which ended c. BC 7300, we find that Earth's current Holocene Interglacial Epoch was due to end about AD 2000 + (12,250 - 12,300) = AD 1950. Now as a Cycle 24 "dead sun" bids fair to enter a 70-year Maunder Minimum --the last occurred in 1645 - 1715, the height of Earth's 500-year Little Age Age-- humanity had better prepare for a resurgent Ice Time. As it stands, AGW's nihilistic Luddite sociopaths would welcome mega-deaths.
The Guardian's new found tolerance is, I regret to say, a new age example of a scapegoat
Quoting Leviticus 16
I think the conversation at the Grauniad went somewhat like this:
Editor: These emails look pretty bad. What can we do about it?
Fred "fit man" Pearce: We're in a tight spot!
Editor: If we support CRU we'll look foolish, especially now the Information Commissioner has steeped in. Time for some pre-emptive action.
Fred "fit man" Pearce: We're in a really tight spot!
Editor: And that Pachauri chap. He's becoming a major liability as well
Fred "fit man" Pearce: We're in a really really tight spot!
Editor: I know! lets cut CRU and Pachauri to pieces, hang them up to dry, cast them off, disown them, repudiate them, and then carry on as if nothing had happened, shielded by our new found moral fibre
Fred "fit man" Pearce: Sounds like a plan boss
,Don Pablo. Whatever you do, don't stop being an irascible curmudgeon. You should take up UK citizenship and offer yourself as PM. Phillip Bratby
Because of an oddity in Irish law, I am "legally" an citizen of NI, so I am told. That is because I am a citizen of ROI and have been for some time. Perhaps I should move to NI and run for MP in some Sinn Fein district. I have a number of friends in Donegal, and my family is all over Cavan, with a large number in Monaghan. I am an Ulsterman and I have an southern Ulster accent when I fall into me "Irish". Not as strong as Belfast, but I get funny comments at the pubs in Co Kerry. I do have a second cousin who ran for MEP. Now that is worth the having! Better than free money, 'tis. Ye don't pay no taxes, ye don't! -- Unless yer a MP. But that is changing, 'tis."
At least that is what I am told. :)
In combination, Chaos Theory plus Boltzman's Second Law make Climate Cultists' AGW hypothesis mathematically and physically impossible. Most certainly, there is no way to extrapolate linear trends from historical data, especially that presented in bad faith under false pretenses from the start.
Absolutely correct! NOTHING IS LINEAR! Just look at water going from -1° C to 101°C. Everybody thinks that the amount of heat needed to warm water (1 Calorie per gram) is a linear function forgets the heat of required to melt ice and boil water.
When I was a statistician, it was clear to me all of life is a ogive. While sorta, kinda linear in the middle, you get into deep do-do on the ends with linear models (which most statistics assume). Your point about Chaos theory is absolutely right on. Divergence is a wing beat away, but it can be cyclic. To me Chaos theory is a cop out because it was simply giving a name to something we don't understand and still don't even today.
Now as a Cycle 24 "dead sun" bids fair to enter a 70-year Maunder Minimum --the last occurred in 1645 - 1715, the height of Earth's 500-year Little Age Age-- humanity had better prepare for a resurgent Ice Time. As it stands, AGW's nihilistic Luddite sociopaths would welcome mega-deaths.
Now I know why I am getting so much exercise shoveling snow here in "Sunny" California this winter. Thanks -- Frank still hasn't taken up my suggestion that he come over to help. At least I can explain it to my cats who don't like walking on the stuff. :)
By the way, do you remember the mini Ice Age of the 1970's? I do. They wanted to spread carbon dust on the surface of the world to warm us up. Really they did. There was some comments about it in an earlier thread which got me reconnected to the Science Magazine online.
@ Tilde Guillemet
The Guardian's new found tolerance is, I regret to say, a new age example of a scapegoat
Quoting Leviticus 16
[21] And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness:
[22] And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.
Don't forget that the man who leads the scapegoat to the wilderness becomes ritually unclean himself:
Leviticus 16:26 And he that let go the goat for the scapegoat shall wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in water, and afterward come into the camp.
Don't let these guys back into the camp without purifying themselves!