Thursday
Mar292012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Me and Richard B in the Guardian
Mar 29, 2012 Climate: MetOffice Climate: Sceptics Leo Hickman has written an article about the Met Office's outreach to sceptics, covering my visit to Exeter in some detail.
Last June, I wrote a blog post in which I proposed that a "meeting of moderate minds" within the climate debate might be a productive way forward, even if it's just to see if any common ground could be identified. The idea wasn't exactly warmly received - not least by Montford's readers! - but I still hold firm that there is some sense to this idea. It is, therefore, refreshing to hear that the Met Office is now holding such "conversations" with its critics. The testimony of both Montford and Betts show that such efforts can produce positive, if tentative, steps forward.
Reader Comments (145)
Hilary: have to agree with a lot of that.
'Back radiation' has developed into a major fraud. Manabe and Wetherald made the assumption in their modelling and all subsequent Fortran models have apparently developed from that initial beginning. So, the foundations were wrong and in order to change these, there has to be such an admission.
That is next to impossible because the politicians and 'the team' defined the science as settled in 1993. The economic plans of the EU [and supposedly the US] were then defined in terms of carbon as a new commodity with which the banks were to maintain and enhance their hegemony.
The use of the Marxists/Fabians as cover was brilliant because that politics took on a life of its own, However, it has a long pedigree with Sagan a Vietnam war activist and Hansen a communist. Underneath it all we had Schneider as an opportunist who jumped from predicting the new ice age to global warming as a career move.
Imagine this as a rerun of phlogiston. That took 130 years to overcome. We are currently into 190 years since Fourier! Phlogiston was also a religious cult in order that Priestely could get the support of the rich donors who because they has a classical education had to be persuaded that phlogiston was a 5th Greek Humour.
Camoron is in thrall to his eco-fascist wife who is intending to get rich by shafting the masses with high power costs and preaching that it's good for the elite to rule this way. The only solution is political revolution and Galloway put that in motion last night! The counterpart to this is honest scientists undermining the foundations of this new religion so that it collapses on itself. Spencer has turned and Curry is turning because people like me have systematically corrected their scientific misunderstanding, the result of scientific fraud by the likes of Hansen and Schneider.
"Did you know you get an honourable mention in Skeptical Science’s Tree Hut Papers?"
Thanks Geoff I was also quoted by Judith Curry, but I'll not let it go to my head, I am a married man after all!
I have seen warmists posts removed before, so don't detect any sea change. I once had a post with over 600 recommends removed, which was a bit of a pisser because it's by far the largest number of recommends I've had.
I can't see anyone from the Grauniad's staff changing sides, CAGW is an intrinsic part of the metro- elite worldview.
Off to SS to cheer myself up now.
Reference?
Let's assume some sort of civilized accomodation is possible. From the viewpoints of my own objectives will it:
Allow access to DDT to fight Malaria in the developing world? No. (1.5m a year dead)
Allow access to Golden Rice? No. (0.5m a year dead)
Allow funding for building of coal-fired electricity generation plants? No. (Bodycount pa, Lord only knows)
Stop the growing of bio-fuel, crops at the expense of staples? No. (Another one for the deity)
I could go on but I won't. Nothing but the end of eco-extremism will stop the killing, because that's what it is.
Pointman
Richard Drake: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/global-warming-as-cargo-cult-science/
'I am on a mailing list of a career MD/JD who claims much of what passes as policy-relevant science these days (global warming, air pollution epidemiological studies) is what physicist Richard Feynman in 1974 called “cargo cult science“.'
Read the article: he argues, as I do, that there is absolutely no experimental proof that CO2-AGW has caused modern warming. I go further in pointing out that the models are broken [four basic physics' errors] and the 'back radiation' battle is now over.
As for the polluted cloud cooling supposed to hide the imaginary high warming, that is also a scientific mistake - by Sagan who failed to incorporate a second optical process in his analysis. Spencer is informed of this effect as well and the realisation is spreading fast in the US that the 2nd AIE is the real warming process...., not CO2-AGW.
The next foray is into the IR physics. Nahle has shown that if you have the CO2 in a Mylar balloon, you measure no warming so the thermalisation is at the heterogeneous interfaces, not direct. So, there is GHG-AGW but it's mainly at cloud droplets. This if true will finally bring this subject under the control of rational science rather than the CO2 religion.
pointman
I make the same remark as I have already to Shub. Leo Hickman is not personally responsible for all the evils in the world, or even for all the stupidities of the green movement. He may use the angry responses of many here to argue that sceptics are opposed to dialogue and decide to continue the “street fight”, or he may try to open up the debate. Who knows? Either way, he has the opportunity to raise his journalistic profile and do his career some good.
If he does the former, he’ll get a lot of praise from his fans, and we’ll carry on feeling good about attacking him. If he does the latter, he may get a seat at the table at the peace negotiations and a massive ego boost. And we footbloggers in the climate wars, like old IRA men who’ve been persuaded unwillingly to surrender their arms, will be able to take comfort in our songs and our memories. That’s not so bad, is it?
(thanks to Richard Drake for the Brendan Duddy story)
Pointman: absolutely agreed (except I don't know the Golden Rice story). What is needed is for such eco-extremism to become as culturally unacceptable as the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" - another big idea dressed up in nice-sounding euphemisms. But ecologists (many of whom have rightly turned against biofuels and a few of whom have also shown openness to indoor spraying of DDT) have in CAGW become joined at the hip with accredited science. Take all the relevant ecologists and scientists, then, and there is much scope for joint action (on biofuels, against the EU 'Entrepreneur', for example) as well as much principled disagreement. Hence the ongoing need for nuance.
@Richard.
The Golden Rice story. http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/the-big-green-killing-machine-what-is-vad/
@Geoff.
"That’s not so bad, is it?" - As long as the answer remains "No" to any of the questions I raised above, it is bad. These are all preventable deaths, caused by the application of a first world feel-good philosophy to a desperately poor developing world. If taking out eco-extremism means cutting through eco-moderates to get at them, I'm okay with that.
Pointman
Richard Drake 10.24AM
I am inclined to agree and in various threads I have asked that he elaborate. He says he has papers in preparation and in that basis I am happy to give him the benefit of the doubt — pro tempore only, mydog!
MDGNN 10.32AM
I don't disagree with anything you say, but look at it from my point of view (and Richard's)
We are forever criticising the warmists for handwaving and assertions and avoiding anything that smacks of evidence. We're not doing ourselves any favours by in essence doing the same thing.
Continuously repeating that the science is bust needs some evidence when even the sceptics disagree with you, no?
As for the argument about back radiation being over, well, it obviously isn't if Tamsin refuses to allow you to make the case on her blog!
Remember, I'm not a scientist which puts me on a par with most politicians and most civil servants (and most greenies, come to that!). If your version of the science is not getting through to me I'm not sure how it's ever going to get through to them.
@hilary ostrov
'But isn't it interesting to note when the gates to "discussion" are opened on Hickman's posts (viz his current post and his call for peace talks) - and when they are not (viz his Tallbloke and Gleick posts)?!'
They are permanently closed to me since I was banned a couple of years back - for whatever crime I do not know - from CiF forever. I imagine that I may have annoyed Monbiot beyond his short tolerance. Maybe I asked him to prove something or to show the data once too often. Or maybe they just didn't like what I said. In those days the CiF bully boys really did rule the roost and had merely to push the 'report' button for the 'transgressor' to be eliminated. And I know that many here had the same fate as me.
Maybe they'll change this policy one day. When they do, I'll take their olive branch seriously. Until then I still think it is Hickman digging his tunnel.
Pointman: I think you took Geoff's "That’s not so bad, is it?" out of context. But the points you then make are extremely important.
I think my attitude there would depend a lot what is meant by 'cutting through' eco-moderates :)
But you're right that even the so-called moderates have been party to humanitarian outrages yet because they are so seldom called on this many go around with what seems a smug sense of moral superiority over deniers such as ourselves, rather than wearing the 21st equivalent of sackcloth and ashes - to remember exactly what their unintended consequences have consigned the poorest to.
Mike Jackson: I have written the paper on the 2nd optical effect. It'll take some time to publish because it also explains why ice ages and modern Arctic warming is nothing to do with CO2. One journal took just 48 hours to reject it arguing that it was too specialised.
It's because I have had to develop new physics to explain the 2nd optical effect which gives much higher cloud albedo than predicted by Sagan's physics. There is experimental proof of this by the top US cloud physicist but he is apparently being blocked from publication too and like me is retired.
I hope you now appreciate the problem. There are ~10,000 peer reviewed papers associated with the IPCC consensus, a scientific blitzkrieg funded by the politicians and the carbon traders to justify the swinging new taxes.
But many of these papers are wrong because the science was wrong from the very start. The IPCC justifies itself on the basis that the underlying science is settled therefore immutable, and politicians have to believe someone.
Hansen last year published major works which claim that we presently have no warming because Chinese aerosol emissions are making clouds still more reflective yet the physics predicting this is wrong . He and Trenberth are claiming extra heat is being stored in the oceans as well but we can't measure it. This in my view an attempt to maintain control by people who have essentially used science as the backing for a personality cult.
So, it's 10s of 1000s of careers vs lone scientists burrowing away at the foundations.
"I don't know from nothing about either but it does seem to me that if we don't come out of our trenches and put our minds to solving these problems then — as usual — the string-pullers sitting in their comfortable bunkers miles from the front line (in this case the eco-activists and politicians for whom climate is only a means to an end) will be the only winners."
Mike,
There are string pullers on both sides.
mydog: the reference you supply doesn't support 'Spencer has turned' in its original context. But nothing surprises me about the physics genius who cannot use his own name yet interrupts all threads on all subjects with the mighty revelation that he knows better than Lindzen and all. Oh and "Camoron is in thrall to his eco-fascist wife". Really? Proof? For the eco-fascist, the thrall and the moron, please. You are a great name-caller for all those in public life who have had the guts to stand up and be counted (however misguided we may judge their current policies) but you the great critic prefer the comfort of the shadows. Boring but harmful.
There’s a follow-up article to Leo’s at
and were then found to have “evaluated the same information in a very different way”.http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/30/belief-climate-change-scepticism
in which Adam Corner (a research associate at Cardiff University with an interest in the psychology of communicating climate change) describes an experment to identify the determinants of climate belief which quite literally brought tears to my eyes.
He starts off by describing how
So far, so good. Then he says: You see, we’re all liable to biassed interpretation, but only one side is wrong. Q.E.D.
Hello,
I do try rather hard not to stifle debate on my blog. All comments go through if the email address is approved once. I did snip one comment, and it was from mydog, but I left the beginning, and end, and URL to find more information *and* explained how it had broken my comments policy by being (a) off-topic and (b) repeating a previous comment.
Tamsin
Off-topic, repetitious, or needlessly offensive are all good reasons to snip, and should be invoked more often imho, on this blog as others. It's not stifling free speech to require that someone reins in their adjectives, and if it's repetition just put 'see ibid'. Zero tolerance creates space for civil society to flourish!
Richard Drake; Go back to Spencer's discussions on 'back radiation' and you'll see how he has turned. CG1 brought in people like me who hitherto had assumed climate science was correct but anyone with a hard physics or process engineering background immediately realised that they had made an elementary mistake.
Proving it to climate scientists has been difficult because for 30 years they have been busily measuring 'back radiation'. The problem is they come from soft science so didn't have to intellectual tools to work out why radiometers measure temperature convolved with emissivity not 'back radiation' in equilibrium with the Earth's surface which is what they had assumed.
Thus the whole basis of the positive feedback claim has been shown to be wrong. The subject is developing new gatekeepers. For the moment they have a low profile but if you look carefully at what the politicians are doing, you can see the system swinging away from the path to disaster.
It's the same story everywhere as the true scientists make themselves heard.
mydogsgotatinear: after Tamsin and Roddy, that's all you've got to say? You're the worst thread disrupter here by far. Go wash 'em out.
I wish I knew how to remove email alerts telling me of new comments. My Blackberry keeps making me jump. It's a bit like a dog with a (wet) nose shoving it somewhere you don't want it.
Here's a new game - write about whatever you want in the comments section, try and smuggle in the word 'Leo', and we all have to find it! It's like 'Where's Wally', only better.
Richard Drake; in 40 post PhD years international research I've seen enough poseurs, fellow travellers on the make and politicians to know within an inch where the mistakes in any scientific discipline are hidden.
Climate science was no different, just that more money has been spent. Please excuse me being an iconoclast but it's in my nature!
.
Mar 30, 2012 at 12:45 PM | Richard Drake
As it happens I like, and find interesting/thought provoking the postings of mydogsgotnonose. For instance the thought why is there no commercial application for back-radiation which we've known about and intensively researched for 30+ years, surely someone somewhere wants to make money out of it by selling something real?
Sandy S
mdgnn
I do appreciate your problems. Honest!
It's just that after a while the repetition of your position and hypotheses without any further elaboration might lead some to accuse you of the sin of which I spoke (handwaving+assertion). I'm still keeping faith!
shub
Agreed. It's just that my string-pulling (assuming I was able to pull any) is not going to cost several trillion dollars to solve a problem which may or may not exist and if it does exist may or may not be solvable.
Tamsin
Apologies if there was a misunderstanding on my part.
And back-radiation and all other ways of looking at the greenhouse effect is on topic for this thread, is it Sandy? It's certainly on topic on some very long threads on Climate Etc. But the dog with the tin ear doesn't make his mark there, where some of the real experts are, but woofs the one thing he knows in every thread of Bishop Hill, however inappropriate. As Roddy says in support of Tamsin it's not stifling free speech to have some rules about repetition and relevance and to enforce them.
Mar 30, 2012 at 1:42 PM | Richard Drake
Richard,
all I said was that I found the posts interesting and thought provoking, which I do, giving an example of the thoughts.
Since when did any thread stay on topic, and why is it so much of a heinous crime to post a reply, if off topic to one of your postings. Don't answer if you think I am diverting the discussion, as a reader with limited time available and occasional poster I don't intend to divert discussion.
Sandy S
Mar 30, 2012 at 1:42 PM | Richard Drake
If you are proposing that part or all of a posting are removed for repetition, deviation or hesitation then I'd like that noted in the snip so I can go and have a look at the original in a different browser tab.
Sandy S
I'm not proposing or expecting snips in this thread. I was appalled when the canine in question interjected the same old stuff (plus some fresh insults for the Camerons) in a thread dealing with such important matters. But once it's there it's Hobson's choice: challenge some of the more extreme statements and take the thread more off topic or leave it alone as if it's irrefutable. This dog has no nose, no self-control and no self-awareness worthy of the name.
Or he's a deep troll. I think that's more likely. But I won't get into my emerging terminology. What's important is that if they are they wanted to disrupt this thread. I take the view that the Barry Woods approach to climate conciliation is of immense importance and this thread dipped its toe back in that water. Others are very determined that such an approach should not prevail. Read about the loyalist paramilitaries who would have murdered Brendan Duddy in a flash if they'd known what he was up to.
Richard Drake (Mar 30, 2012 at 2:47 PM)
No thanks. It’s difficult enough remaining calm while all about you are losing it, without that.
But of course I agree about the conciliatory approach.
Geoff, I've been using Duddy as analogy and inspiration here. It's an important fact in all this talk of the price of using one's real name on climate blogs that no dissenters that I know of have lost their lives for their pains. But as Pointman makes clear we stand in the place of millions with no name who weren't so lucky.
Richard, I hope you don't take this in the wrong way but your irritation with mdgnn is becoming obsessive, while I agree his pseudonym would probably be more realistic if it was "mysongsgotonenote", but until we read the paper we won't know.
As for your war on pseudonyms I agree, so you'll be pleased to know "Geronimo" is my real name, or very close to it anyway!
geronimo [and richard]: sorry if I have gone on a bit but if you check the Spencer reference, I am not alone in being astonished at the basic mistakes in climate science.
To inject something new, in the January edition of Scientific American is an article on the second optical effect in clouds. The claimed quantum mechanical tunnelling explanation is wrong; it's far more prosaic.
The 'Glory' phenomenon is experimental evidence of direct backscattering and only appears for clouds with large droplets. Inhibit droplet coarsening and pollution cause warming, the reverse of that claimed by the aerosol optical physics in the climate models.
G and M: the reference to 'millions with no name who weren't so lucky' was a signal that I've got no more to say outside what I consider core for this thread.
mdgnn: I understand your position and personally don't have a major problem with your persistence but can see why others would. In fact I believe your persistence is damaging your case, at least in my view.
Richard, I use a pseudonym and to me that brings responsibilities, one of which is not to insult, or sneer at others. If anyone wants to know who I am, or to email me if they wish, I have no objection to the Bish providing my email address to anyone who wants them. I'm just a little shy.
On the general topic of the Met Office, readers might be interested in this US perspective being discussed at Judith's.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/03/30/u-s-weather-prediction-falling-behind/
Richard Betts and his team come out pretty well on their short term predictive abilities compared with other countries.
But it seems that the US has almost entirely neglected weather forecasting skills in favour of climatological prediction. Which I am sure is a great consolation to the US taxpayers who pay the bills.
No doubt they will feel that it is far more important to know how much the NYC sealevel will rise (or not) by 2112 than it is to know whether to take off the snow chains in Denver, Colorado (elevation 5,280 ft)
HuhneToTheSlammer -
should have looked for the Royal Navy guy before posting. did have a sneaking suspicion it would be Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, who is currently the United Kingdom's Climate and Energy Security Envoy, and was sent to Australia by your govt in 2010, and here he is:
Michigan Legislature:
27 March 2012: Agenda Presentation by Vice Admiral Lee Gunn (Ret.) and Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti regarding U.S. Energy Policy and National Security .
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(sz4ueeq3opt243554ieqy0m1))/mileg.aspx?page=committeemeeting&objectname=2012-SCS-41bb2913-297e-4009-b94c-762012152c0b&chamber=Senate
morisetti has a wikipedia page.
Right I'm back off hols. I do get sick and tired of this very false concept of talks between sceptics and the concensuratti. Remember, there is only one way, the way of true science. Not the crap spouted by the Met Offices, and that includes all of their members, and not the crap spouted at the UN.
There are some truely great comments above which sum it up better than I but all Betts et al have done for months is dance around the truth and the science. None of them has the courage or the savvy to say exactly what is known. I don't mean by the models either, they are just a complete pile of merde.
I getting a bit tired 'of the dance' as well... amongst all of establishment climate science, that is
Barry Woods and all,
That comment by Hengist at the Guardian is so utterly dishonest and despicable. I only follow any of the blogs sporadically, but I was on that thread just before he earned his well-deserved ban pointing out to Hengist in particular that he never tries to engage in thoughtful discussions here with facts and reasoning; he merely throws out passing ad Homs and sneers. I suggested to Hengist that he try some reasoned arguments and that he would have plenty of interested discuss ants here.
Instead he continued to escalate his dishonest smears against the host.
Now he is going around presenting his Orwellian re-invention of what actually transpired. Hengist is a man without honor or honesty.
Re: anonymity on blogs,
No one posting in anonymity has any credibility beyond the quality of words, data, and reasoning in our posts. Still, we have every right to make our points where permitted. I have my own excellent (to me anyway) reasons for preferring anonymity, at least for the time being.
Any of us posting behind screen names should make extra efforts to sustain civility on the web, I believe, since anonymity does tend to fuel flame wars and *may* sometimes (not always of course) degrade the quality of discourse. However, distinctions must also be made when referring to the gross malfeasance of someone like Hengist, since anyone can confirm his blatant lies about the host and about this blog simply by reviewing his misbehavior on many threads. His banning had nothing to do with a differing point of view, especially since he hardly ever presented even a bad imitation of having a "view" -- as anyone can confirm by reviewing his posts, his modes operandus was insult without even a presence of reasoning from evidence. Then he continued lying about specific matters regarding our host and.... Good riddance.
Off-topic, repetitious, or needlessly offensive are all good reasons to snip, and should be invoked more often imho, on this blog as others.
That describes pretty much every post by our canine friend!
Some blogs have an "ignore" function for commentors you don't like. I have never used one, but I have to say that I would for our Nobel Laureate in waiting, about to confound all those silly scientists on both sides of this debate.
Still I have learned that as soon as I see the word "back radiation" in a post at the Bishop's I skip to the next comment. It saves much wasted time.
(For the record I am anonymous because I'm a school teacher, and I have no need to get into acrimonious debates with sanctimonious sixth formers about saving the world.)
Thanks, again, for your support.
mydog said: "Proving it to climate scientists has been difficult because for 30 years they have been busily measuring 'back radiation'. The problem is they come from soft science so didn't have to intellectual tools to work out why radiometers measure temperature convolved with emissivity not 'back radiation' in equilibrium with the Earth's surface which is what they had assumed."
On the contrary, the vast majority of climate modellers are physicists and mathematicians, very often with PhDs and later research experience in other fields (often computational fields like astrophysics and particle physics). I only have anecdotal evidence for this from asking my colleagues, but have been meaning to take a poll in my own department.
Tamsin, mdgnn aka my songs got one note, isn't representative of the views on climate scientist and their qualifications. He may or may not, have something to say on back radiation, but denigrating climate science as a whole in terms of the brainpower isn't within his remit, or capabilities. Now if he'd said you were a bunch of " greenies" with an agenda there is enough empirical evidence in the emai literature, and the behavior and comments emanating from the management.at the Met Office, to give that some credence. Even I doubt that all 27million climate scientists on the planet are 90-100% certain that CO2 is a major cause of the late 20 th century warming. That's what Julia is pushing as evidence of AGW, and along with Dr Pope is telling us warming is clear evidence of AGW. Mdgnn might be forgive for thinking sloppy science emanates from the "soft" scientist on the basis if the outpourings of Julia and Vicky, who quite clearly believe that what they feed to politicians as science will be acceptable to others trained in Science and Engineering. As for those of you not involved in activism, I have said it to Richard and I 'll repeat it for you, WG1 is a scientific tour de force, notwithstanding the gate keeping by the Team. It doesn't deserve the SPM but the major part of, the science, is the output of real hard scientists telling us what they know and don't know.
Mdgnn apologies are due to Tamsin and the others ploughing their furrows modeling the ecosphere. Although you might want to temper your apology by explaining that models are made up of a bu nch of interacting parameters and the beliefs of the modellers will strongly affect the output of the model. Honestly Tamsin.
O/T
geronimo : re your name
when i was a kid jumping from trees in Scotland we shouted "geronimo"
we thought US paratroops used it (i think?) but make of this as you please -
Code Name "Geronimo"Main article: Code name Geronimo controversy
The United States military used the code name "Geronimo" for the raid that killed the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in 2011; but its use upset some native Americans.[34] "Operation Geronimo" was subsequently reported to be named or renamed "Operation Neptune['s] Spear".[35][36]
Harlyn Geronimo, Geronimo's great-grandson, said to the Senate Commission on Indian Affairs[37] , "(use of 'Geronimo' in the raid that killed Bin Laden) either was an outrageous insult (or) mistake. And it is clear from the military records released that the name Geronimo was used at times by military personnel involved for both the military operation and for Osama Bin Laden himself."
I won a prize for history and was allowed a book from, for the Scousers, Philip, Son and Nephew. I chose a book by Paul I. Wellman which was a history of the Apaches which I received in a ceremony in the Philarmonic Hall, and was re dived of it by Brother John as I left the stage on the grounds that he was only halfway through. Later on I had an assignment for umpteen thousands words for the general studies course that was part of the Electrical engineering course to make sure we techies were rounded individuals. I chose to write a history of the Apaches, which, not my version I hasten to say, is fascinating. Around 1881 they were forcibly removed from their homelands in the US Southwest to Oklahoma, were Geronimo was visited by his adversary General Crook.
"Geronimo" wasI believe the word used by US paratroopers when they jumped.
Or, many years ago I phoned my cousin's office and asked to speak to him. The guy who answered asked who was calling and I said Gerry Morrow, and the guy called out, "Frank there's a feller called Geronimo wants to speak to you."
Thoroughly recommend Paul I Wellman's book, and John C. Cremony's "My Life Among the Apaches". Ceremony had an unsentimental attachment for the Apaches, but whilst at a Washington dinner party a young woman attempted to forgive their undoubted cruelty by saying they didn't know right from wrong he came out with, what I consider to be an immortal line, he responded with, "if you don't believe the Apaches know right from wrong Ma'm go do them some wrong."
Are we O/T?