Saturday
Aug182012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill McIntyre in London
Aug 18, 2012 Climate: McIntyre GWPF Andrew Orlowski has published a report on Steve McIntyre's recent talk at GWPF. It's good, strong and clear stuff:
The entire rationale of policy in US and Europe has been to ignore what's happening in China and India and hope that petty acts of virtuous behaviour in both countries will cure the problem," he said. "Even if you install windmills you're not going to change the trend of overall CO2 emissions."
Reader Comments (41)
It's okay for Steve to say: " "Even if you install windmills you're not going to change the trend of overall CO2 emissions."" but it still leaves me wondering if CO2 emmissions directly attributal to humans, as distinct from a rise in CO2 from natural causes, is seriously enough to change the climate of the world.
But this is jumping the gun, anyway. My reading indicates there are still which came first questions. CO2 or warming?
Answer that first, then:
Assuming the rise in the CO2 content of the atmosphere is warming the world, as opposed to happening because the world is warming, is the human caused part of this rise significant?
If the foundation of global warming is still not set, then why try and build a mighty edifice on it?
A nice report. On the China/India issue I have to agree. This is something I have always thought as being the elephant in the room which seems to be missed by all sides. Whether you dispute the level of CO2 effect, or believe it as a direct thermostat, these nations will be overriding anything the west will directly influence in the coming decades so we are *definitely* going to know sensitivity in the next coupe of decades ;)
I think we have to remember that the rise in climate politicking and its burgeoning influence on global policy had a onset of timing that coincided with a background of the economic rise of the developing nations - late 80s early 90s- and this rise never seems to have been fully factored in and remains to this day strangely ignored by all the thinkers on the subject when the main points are made.
This leaves us in a strange limbo where we can't argue against the developing nations deserving their fair share of development but assume some "action" by the west will somehow be palatable to our local populace so long as we lie to them about the global effect of our policies whilst trying to forgot the "global" reality.
Myles Allen was a great example of this delusion - constantly hinting that UK or European democracy may need to be curtailed to correct our local disappointing public behaviour whilst seemingly willfully ignoring what anyone can see is really happening in the world.
It's a strange kind of reverse western imperialism where we delude ourselves our sacrifice will be so admirable that it we mean something to the world, ensuring the western population has no real say in this course, whereas I think it will only just end up being a useful lesson to the developing nations in what not to do ;)
The Leopard In The Basement : "... whereas I think it will only just end up being a useful lesson to the developing nations in what not to do ;)"
What will be, Leopard? What lesson?
Climatologists in Russia and China have decided, as with most other professional scientists in the West who care to study in depth what has been claimed, that the IPCC 'consensus' is so flawed as to be worthless and that changes in climate are mostly solar in origin. Their attitude is typified by this response to Blair's CSO, David King: http://www.rightsidenews.com/200807241524/life-and-science/energy-and-environment/results-of-the-climate-change-and-kyoto-protocol-seminar-in-moscow.html:
The Indian response has been based on their detailed knowledge of Pachauri's flakiness and on their derision at the failure to understand that Monsoons not glaciers provide much Asian water supply.
Aug 18, 2012 at 8:09 AM | Unregistered CommenterRoger Carr
Ooh! Putting me on the spot! ;)
Well let’s see - India just had the largest power outage the world has ever seen – as a side issue the lesson I take from that is that India is developing and these are growing pains rather than this shows the effects of climate change ;) -. There are many reasons why it happened but predominately it seems they have a half arsed system that has been allowed to grow with no real thought about the level of graft, privatisation/public balance and arbitrary subsidies to favoured political bases. It seems they need some role models to base their further future development on. Now where are these models?
I don’t think that our policies of fast and vast movement to wind in the UK, or moving away from Nuclear in Japan and Germany, displays sophisticated lessons in a positive manner. I think these examples will educate by their eventual negative effects – outages and increased CO2 emissions.
I think the speed and lack of democracy in these changes being implemented in our energy sector will allow our brethren in the developing world to see this and therefore help inform their decisions.
As for any other lessons I admit to be waiting as an observer too. I don’t claim to predict inevitabilities here, I am just projecting my lack of confidence in the kind of thinking and governance we see in energy/climate in the west.
Either way, we will see.
Hell, I admit I may be wrong ;)
The Leopard In The Basement: "Hell, I admit I may be wrong ;)"
I don't thing you are wrong. I did find your statement confusing, but can readily accept your response which makes your "useful lesson" statement much clearer to me -- and it is particularly pleasing to see you distance the chaos of their systems from the dreaded climate change.
"...whereas I think it will only just end up being a useful lesson to the developing nations in what not to do"
I don't think they need the lesson, they already know what not to do.
Steve Mc has always taken the view that the policy makers have little alternative than to follow the advice of the IPCC. The problem is that the advice is impractical, they, the NGOs that run the IPCC, are full of inexperienced idealogues who, along with the scientists who've selected themselves to define policy, demand a reduction in CO2, which isn't going to happen.
The only places it's likely to happen are all in the industrialised western societies, where the NGOs flourish because of the excess of wealth of those societies, and of course science is well funded for the same reason.
If these idiots have their way our societies will, without doubt, revert to the 1950s economically, which will end the spare money to have people making no useful contribution, so the NGOs, and the scientists will find themselve sans funding and their joint clamour to destroy western lifestyles will be muted.
Hopefully the bastards will disappear as the money dries up, including the activist scientists that infest the climate science community and we can salvage what's left of what was once the greatest society known to human beings in the history of the planet, the western industrialised societies.
A society that has reduced infant mortality to a minimum, that has increased life spans by 30 years, where health care is abundant, where the major problem for the poor is obesity, where travel and adventure are readily available for the mass of the people , where money is poured into scientific research, where an abundance of technology makes life both interesing and easier, where, albeit slowly, there is a spreading equality between peoples and sexes, where tolerance of the views of others is a requirement, where we can help handicapped people with new technology, where medical advances are taken for granted. I could go on and on, (maybe I already have!), but as I've said before such a society was unimaginable just 60 years ago, and now we have a bunch of bien pensant greenies, aided and abetted by climate scientists trying to bring it to its knees and restore an imagined pastoral heaven that never existed, and never will.
One of McIntyre's most admirable attributes is his ability to provide a reality check to both sides of the debate. Even if some of what he says may be contentious to a skeptic, particularly his endorsement of reliance on the IPPC for policymaking, he has an uncanny knack of making people think about their views, if they aren't totally set in concrete. I believe that the majority of skeptics would be prepared to modify their position on AGW if (a big if admittedly) reliable evidence for it is forthcoming.
It is good to see that Richard Betts attended the lecture. Maybe there is some hope for the next IPCC report, particularly if Western governments make it clear to the UNFCCC that they are sick of the unseemly NGO influence and spin, and just want an honest analysis of the facts. This of course does not excuse the current illogical and economically harmful mitigation policies, which need to be scrapped even if AGW is real. More considered preparation, much less panic and wasteful, pointless spending is the way to go. As the temperature plateau over the last 15 years has shown, we have plenty of time.
"It is good to see that Richard Betts attended the lecture."
Richard isn't our friend anymore, according to BBD, he, Richard, is bored with us. Probably rightly so, but it's a little disappointing to be told your boring, isn't it? I always regarded myself as a little bit of a swashbuckler, but I guess we should see ourselves as others see us. Boring!
@geronimo
For somebody who is 'bored with us' it is surprising that Richard Betts took the time to travel up to London, listen attentively to McSteve's remarks, ask a perceptive (and brave *) question, engage in civilised and seemingly amusing conversation with Jonathan Jones and his wife, then adjourn to the pub for further good-natured, lively and wide-ranging discussion with all and sundry. My feeling is that after some understandable initial apprehension he was having a good time.
I was very pleased to be able to share a few words with him. and I'm sure he will correct me if I am wrong in my reading of his demeanour.
*Not perhaps the forum where you would expect that expressing your credentials as a 2xIPCC author would be warmly received.
Latimer it's what Richard tweeted nonetheless. For my part I've always found him a decent cove, but BBD reproduced the tweet on the discussion thread, and that's what it said, he was "bored" with the BH blog. I'm not making it up.
Richard is bored with all the antagonism he gets here. Commenters are too aggressive towards him. That said, he has not ruled out coming back from time to time.
Aug 18, 2012 at 8:46 AM | Unregistered CommenterRoger Carr
I was waxing a bit general there ;) I think you made me think a bit more which was rewarding for me.
I often get so annoyed with the effete dilettante’s whimsically frittering away the capacity and resilience of our historical system that I end up generalising my despair. The rhetoric about climate is that it requires long term thinking which our political systems can’t allow, yet we see applauded the promises to shut off whole avenues of low carbon power at the drop of a hat for the most infantile reasoning. The west on climate and energy seems to have a collective psychosis that is hard to believe and specify sometimes, one wonders how it must appear to outsiders who have pressing real development on their agenda.
The Indians and other developing nations are coming up from a less resilient base and will want real tangible systems that will give benefits today rather than warm feelings offset for another political system to handle. I think we will learn something from them. The west however seems to be heading in the opposite direction :(
Thanks, Leopard. Will you now take a shot at answering, or even considering, my question or quandry expressed in my comment at the head of this thread?
Well I don't think you would learn much from my opinion really. My shot for what its worth would be to answer that I am content to accept that humans are adding to the atmospheric CO2 content and that CO2 is rising beyond any possible mere warming cause alone - i.e. ocean out-gassing. I am open to be amazed by alternative cogent evidence though ;)
The thing is I am quite open to adopt a lot of ideas on this subject without getting too wedded to them - at the bottom I am not an alarmist who see us going to hell in a handcart in the next 100 months ;) - I believe in human resilience.
So sometimes I think it is fun to accept the worst case that CO2 is Armageddon personified in a gas, and that we are emitting it all, and then ask some climate campaigning anti-nuclear nitwit, why then do they object to nuclear power? Watching the manic sophistry that ensues should be enough to dismiss whole swathes of opinion formers on environmentalism and expose the background pathology of current western thought. But it seems however this Swiftian idiocy is accepted as normal :(
Geronimo - 8.46 am
[Emphasis mine]Can I draw you attention to a post I made on Unthreaded two days ago in reply to matthu?
It's also relevant to an extent to the situation vis-a-vis Richard Betts.
I think most honest observers at least understand the view that policy makers have little alternative than to follow the advice of the IPCC. The argument is that the IPCC, and the science, has been effectively subverted by the activists as Donna Laframboise showed.
Bernie Lewin has also given a very detailed report on how this was accomplished at Madrid in 1995 (post here on Bishop Hill on Aug 7) and Singer and Avery go into it in some detail in their book Unstoppable Global Warming - every 1500 years , from which I take the following quote:
Mount was later rewarded with the plum appointment of Ambassador to Iceland and Singer draws the conclusion that
I made the point in the post I refer to above (partly as a comment on Betts' tweet: 'it is increasingly annoying that some media cover climate as a debate between NGOs and sceptics, with no actual scientists') that the majority of sceptics — certainly the ones that it is possible to engage with — are on the side of the scientists, or at least on the side of the science and that the battle is with the activists, mostly NGOs but also, regrettably, some scientists who appear to have lost their scientific instincts and have become little more than spokesmen for alarmism.
I think your suggestion that our societies will revert to the 1950s understates the scale of the danger. A near-total embargo on the use of fossil fuels would have such an immediate effect on agriculture and health care that the 1850s might be nearer the mark.
The rest of your comment I could have written myself.
I'll repeat my final remark from the comment I refer to because I think it is important for scientists to give this some thought as well as the rest of us:
"The NGOs with their useful idiots within and without their organisations have got us all dancing to their tune, scientists included."
Mike Jackson writes above: "A near-total embargo on the use of fossil fuels would have such an immediate effect on agriculture and health care that the 1850s might be nearer the mark."
Taking that sentence as a benchmark, Mike, can you make an estimate or guess as to what the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere would then be relative to what it is with fossil fuel use today?
SM
... imposition of involuntary costly ineffective acts of virtuous behaviour?
maybe I have too many words.
Roger Carr,
I am more than a little concerned about the questions you raise, specifically that the majority of the CO2 rise is not anthropogenic but driven by a warming planet and it's oceans.
One of the best discussions I have seen is at the quite long WUWT post:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/24/bob-carters-essay-in-fp-policymakers-have-quietly-given-up-trying-to-cut-%C2%ADcarbon-dioxide-emissions/
The exchanges between Bart, rgbatduke [Robert Brown] and RichardSCourtney are the main ones to focus on.
As for the isotope record, until somebody shows me a proper accounting for the role of the ubiquitous carbonic-anhydrase in the carbon-isotope cycle, [Specifically, the mass-adjusted ratio of the relative kinetic isotope rates and turnover numbers of the relevant photosystems, as compared to that of carbonic anhydrase], I cannot attach credibility to the consensus. Such data may exist, but I haven't seen it referred to yet.
Remember, this is the same carbon cycle where they cannot account for half of the budget every year. It makes the EU accounts look very rosy by comparison.
"Steve Mc has always taken the view that the policy makers have little alternative than to follow the advice of the IPCC."
Even as a matter of realpolitick, this is not a safe step to make.
No one asked the IPCC to come together. It has no political mandate. No one asked the UNFCCC to look for, and quantify the 'human influence on the climate system', when an understanding of the climate system that would allow *anyone* to be able to answer such a question is lacking.
To ignore the hotbed of environmental activism from which sprang the IPCC and make as though it were set up to "advise governments" is to be ignorant of history. If we make that mistake, it'll come back to bite us.
I understand that a lot of lukewarmers like the comfort that belonging in a debate brings, and even sceptics might want to concede position and authority, on occasion, to the IPCC simply to avoid painting themselves into a isolated corner.
Take the IPCC SRREN, for example, which McIntyre talked about. If you recall, one of Ottmar Edenhofer's defense of the IPCC was that Greenpeace's scenario was just one in 160 scenarios considered and it just happened that it was one of the 4 highlighted.
Examine the SRREN draft report: There are *only 2* scenarios analysed. Not 160. One of the two is the Greenpeace Teske scenarios. Teske et al 2010 was not even published in a peer-reviewed journal at that time. It's forerunner appeared in the first issue of the first volume of an alternative energy trade magazine.
It was always the intention of the authors who were in real control of the chapter to centre all discussion of renewable energy sources around Greenpeace. The evidence is in the open - anyone can access it. Therefore, it would be wrong to take such a report seriously, and then criticize it.
Writing an engineering grade report on the climate is like writing an engineering grade report on the entire history of the earth. I might actually be a good idea because it likely would drive activist scientists mad.
Roger Carr,
The long sentence in parentheses in my last entry should probably have been written as "number-adjusted" not "mass-adjusted".
In other words it needs to account for the very large number of carbonic-anhydrase molecules in the biosphere as compared to the much smaller number of much slower photosynthetic enzymes. I cannot see why biogenic carbon isotope ratio calculations appear to fixate on photosynthesis per-se, yet ignore the elephant in the room which is carbonic anhydrase, an enzyme which increases the rate of interconversion of: carbon dioxide + water = carbonic acid by a factor of about 10 million as compared to the rate that normally occurs in water without life.
Our host:
I've become very bored of the same thing - the antagonism to anything that is different in any way. I blame the culture of pseudonymity, at least I partly blame it. But in making this clear - something I have believed about internet fora since 1999 but only gradually revealed on Bishop Hill - I too was perceived to be different and experienced the antagonism. (Culture of pseudonymity is different from a limited tolerance of pseudonymity as a necessary evil. Please bear this in mind before renewing the antagonism.)
I had limited time on Thursday to meet so many people that I would have loved to get to know face to face for the first time. But I feel confident that Latimer's description is a reliable one to go by. Richard Betts is one of my favourite people ever to set foot on BH. It doesn't surprise me that he's taking a break. We can become wiser in the meantime, if we really want to.
Adding to what Richard Drake says, I certainly found that what I write is more cautious when posting under my real name. Anthony Watts regularly challenges antagonistic posters who do not, and Richard Betts is to be commended for doing so.
[I have posted under a pseudonym at the BBC since 2006. I am quite willing to change that when the BBC allows comments on all "climate science" articles posted by anonymous authors.]
1 Correction to my post above: '1955' should, of course, read '1995'
2. Richard Carr
No. Why should I want to and why would you consider it relevant?The general consensus appears to be that we are all doomed anyway. As Matt Ridley reminds us Pachauri told us five years ago that we only had five years to do something and that five years is just about up. (Always five years away, isn't? Unless you're Prince Charles, in which case it's '100 months'. Sounds impressive, no?) Since I don't believe that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is a matter of any importance within the range likely to be experienced in the foreseeable future I am more concerned with the adverse effects which geronimo lists in the post I was replying to, especially the lack of cheap reliable energy — electric power especially — and the fact that most modern medicines rely on oil-based chemicals as does modern agriculture."Commenters are too aggressive towards him."
Which one of you bad boys (or girl maybe) knocked over his ice cream cone? ;)
Andrew
Uncle Steve and the Bishop are two of a kind, basically agnostic on CAGW, they are both focussed on facts, truth and principle and they are both unfailingly polite. I can only claim to share the second of those positions.
I find it impossible to remain unfailingly polite to people who unfailingly lie to me, cheat me and rob me. I get angry.
Many of us on this website are (as they say) not getting any younger and the clock is ticking. My lifestyle is already affected by policies in place to move us to a low carbon economy and I would like to see the back of them before I pop my clogs.
There is no way that being unfailingly polite to Tim Yeo, Rajendra Pachauri, Michael Mann, Phil Jones, David Cameron, Chris Hughne, Ed Miliband and many others of their ilk is going to get us anywhere.
There are so many conspiracies working to cheat us all at the moment that to me it does feel more like a war than a time for polite discussion.
The UN Agenda 21 has been signed by our government and by our County Councils and that means all the NGOs have the right to be consulted on policy and to be involved in implementing policy.
There is evidence that the government has taken on board sustainability when they refuse to build new reservoirs and instead tell us to use less water.
While we politely discuss whether or not CO2 really is warming the planet and agree that there is no real evidence, the government is covering our landscape with windmills and many ministers are getting rich off the back of it.
The people we elect at General Elections do not govern our country, unelected politicians in Brussells do that.
These things are not minor irritations, they are indications that we are no longer free people.
Dung makes an excellent point.
While under Agenda 21 all sorts of people have all sorts of rights to be consulted on the making (and implementation) of all sorts of policies there is one person who has no right whatsoever in these areas and that is me.
And by 'me' I actually mean at least 95% of the ordinary people of virtually every country in the "western" (in its broadest sense) world. We are being led by the nose by green activists because the politicians and the media have been persuaded (or conned, if you prefer) that anything with letters "eco" in it is a good thing. Forgive me if I start repeating myself.
Whether Delingpole's description of them as "watermelons" is strictly accurate is hard to say though it is certainly true that a large number of homeless communists have slipped quietly into the enviro-movement. But the green on the outside certainly masks something a lot more unpleasant on the inside and whatever name they give it and whatever meme they use to pursue it it is certainly not something that is in the interests of ordinary people.
While it's nice to see Steve making the point about India and China (and Brazil, Mexico and South Africa), surely we have all known that fromt the very beginning. You have to ask yourself why a country whose total output of C02 represents 3.5 weeks of the total output of China, let alone India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and the USA would tie itself to reducing its output to 6 days of China's output by 2050, or whenever, by which time we'll probably if we'd have kept our current output steady represent around 4msecs of China's output. Why would anyone embark on a plan of action, likely to ruing the country, for such a gain? I'm left with only two answers to that question, but would welcome more insight from others, they are either:
(a) Deliberately trying to destroy our western industrial societies, which they clearly hate:
(b) They are incredibly stupid and believe we've achieved the highest levels of human comfort and health in history without the use of abundant cheap energy.
It's probably a combination of the two, but they're more dangerous for our grandchildren than any number of coal trains. They also don't care, they are still lobbying for the banning of DDT when 2000 children a day die of malaria on the grounds that DDT is bad for the birds. Again thickos, please note, DDT eradicated malaria in Europe and the USA, we've still got the birds.
My question to Mike Jackson was: "Taking that sentence as a benchmark, Mike, can you make an estimate or guess as to what the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere would then be relative to what it is with fossil fuel use today?"
Mike's response is: "No. Why should I want to and why would you consider it relevant?The general consensus appears to be that we are all doomed anyway."
I consider it relevant because I believe that the amount of CO2 humans add to the atmosphere is essentially insignificant. If that is correct and the amount can be quantified and subtracted from the total rise in CO2 levels in recent times, then the amount of warming (using the upper figures of the extreme alarmists) can be shown as a proportion.
If that proportion shows humans causing a rise in temperature as small as I expect it to, then those of us endeavouring to restore sanity will have a very simple core statement to promote.
We can safely ignore whether or not CO2 is a cause of warming. That becomes irrelevant if human induced global warming, based on the alarmists worst case pronouncements, is as insignificant as I suspect it to be.
Allow the sages to debate and pontificate; give me something simple which will fit into the minutia of my life with least disruption.
Michael Hart
You note, to me: "I am more than a little concerned about the questions you raise, specifically that the majority of the CO2 rise is not anthropogenic but driven by a warming planet and it's oceans."
You then mention Bob Carter’s essay in FP: "Policymakers have quietly given up trying to cut carbon dioxide emissions" from WUWT?
Reading through this and the comments indicates I am not going to get an answer to my simple -- in fact beginning to look simplistic -- question to Mike Jackson.
Thanks to you, Michael, I am beginning to realise no one can answer it with unchallengeable authority, so I must retire from saving the world with a simple statement and return to being just an angry and frustrated observer...
" I consider it relevant because I believe that the amount of CO2 humans add to the atmosphere is essentially insignificant."
Roger human emissions are generally held to be around 3-4% of the total carbon emissions. Burning fossil fuels results in the reduction of the c13/12 ratio, as has happened since around the mid 19th century. As ever with CAGW it's not that straightforward and Chiefio has an interesting post on it here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/the-trouble-with-c12-c13-ratios/
Basically in his words it looks to him that the human contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere amounts ot "a fart in a hurricane."
In short. like most things in the great CAGW scare, we don't know because the C13/12 ratio was dreamt up by activist scientists trying to prove that humans were causing warming like the IPCC reports. It is to me flawed science if scientists are trying to prove something is right, it should be the reverse.
@geronimo
You ask whether our leaders are stupid or malign or both.
There is a third, even more worrying possibility, that they are on some sort of moral crusade and are convinced that they are 'setting an example' and 'doing the right thing'.
These are the most difficult beliefs to change since they involve not only an intellectual argument
- is this policy objectively bonkers?
but also the emotional
- by changing this am I destroying my own self-image as the honest toiler after all that is good and right and noble?
And you have to win both the intellectual and emotional arguments. (*)
We need to recognise that however good the intellectual case for caution and prudence and sound science and wise judgement..so excellently put by McSteve, the pollies are rarely purely intellect-driven beings. And, for them, the second part of the proposition is equally important as the first
Scepticism cannot prevail by intellect alone....the debating chamber that matters is not the intellectual equivalent of All Souls College, but the much less rarified but more robust arena of public discourse with all its whirling forces of emotion and power and ego and journalism and TV and pictures of polar bears and all that stuff. We seem to be a bit light on the emotional side......
(*) Just for fun I tried to find recent examples of the appeal of this idea as part of practical politics.
Tony Blair and the invasion of Iraq,
Gordon Brown (son of the Manse) in just about everything he did.
CND supporters
The Green Party
No doubt other bloggers can identify more.
Also interesting to note that the real creator of the energy policy mess we are in - Ed Milliband - comes from a strong CND background. According to wikipedia, his mother was an early and strong supporter.
"There is a third, even more worrying possibility, that they are on some sort of moral crusade and are convinced that they are 'setting an example' and 'doing the right thing'. "
I fear you're right Latimer, I have noticed this in politics, where in the BBC it is considered virtuous to be a "progressive" and evil if you're not. My own politics, I guess like most people, are a melange of left and right. On one thing you're right, they're on a mission, a moral crusade, and C.S. Lewis encapsulates what to expect from them nicely:
"“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” CS Lewis
Roger Carr
That was actually my point. Sorry if it didn't come across right. Subsequent comments seem to agree to a large extent. I'm coming round to the view that not only is the anthropogenic input of CO2 irrelevant (land use changes and other human activity being a bigger factor) but that CO2 itself is largely an irrelevancy.Having finally discovered that warming precedes CO2 increase the desperate attempts to claim that it also causes warming and creates a sizeable positive feedback look more feeble by the day. If that science was correct surely the earth would long since have become uninhabitable.
geronimo
"The Trouble With C12 C13 Ratios" by Chiefio (2009) you advised tends to make those who pontificate on "global warming" and CO2 production look both very ignorant and very foolish indeed -- and Chiefo does not help their self esteem any with his wry humour.
Very nice! Thank you.
Aug 18, 2012 at 9:56 AM | Latimer Alder
Hi Latimer
You're right, I did have a very good afternoon and evening on Thursday. It was extremely interesting to hear Steve's talk and great to meet him, yourself and other BH readers (Josh, Rhoda, Spence_UK, Andrew Orlowski, David Holland and several others) afterwards at the meeting venue and in the pub. Great to catch up with Jonathan Jones too. Richard Drake, sorry we didn't manage to meet, it would have been great to talk to you - maybe next time! I myself had to dash off at 7 to catch the train back to Devon, which was a real shame as I'd have genuinely loved to stay and talk to Steve and the others longer.
Geronimo, the Bish is right that it's the antagonism I sometimes feel I receive that led me to tweet about being "bored with BH". But the main reason I've been quiet lately is simply that I've been away with the family, first at the Olympics having great fun cheering for TeamGB, and then on holiday in a caravan in Wales. I will continue to stick around, although my contributions will probably be sporadic in coming weeks as I have another intense burst of IPCC writing activity just starting.
And yes, I have taken Steve's forthright criticisms of IPCC on board - I don't speak for the whole organisation but personally I aim to avoid my own contributions being "drivel"! From the wider context of his talk, I think he was referring to the more woolly statements often found in the WG2 side of things. He made some remark about some of the WG2 stuff making him wish back for "the good old days of WG1", or something like that! (Not that I imagine he thinks WG1 can rest on its laurels either).
I came away feeling that the extreme polarisation of the climate debate in the last 10-15 years could have been avoided if only everyone had just gone down the pub together in 1998!
Cheers
Richard
"Geronimo, the Bish is right that it's the antagonism I sometimes feel I receive that led me to tweet about being "bored with BH"."
I apologise, I was led to believe it was the blog you found boring by BBD. Even that's all right, if you come from position (a) in and argument and find yourself debating with people from position (b) and both sides are entrenched then it gets repetitive.
BTW did they know what it looked like to win in the science communication forum you went to?
I followed the link to Richard's statement and if I remember rightly then as well as bored he used the phrase "too many slaps in the face".
The Bish created a "safe zone" for Richard and his colleagues which was heavily moderated. I find it hard to believe that there was anything other than serious debate going on in there and so it is sad that Richard felt bored or felt that he had been slapped in the face.
The English pub is a great institution and in general people go there to socialise and have fun, I think that at the extreme margin, I might even be able to enjoy a pint with Michael Mann ^.^
However BH is a debating/discussion forum mostly inhabited by sceptics.We have two regular, impossible to get rid of, warmists on the blog. They constantly argue their case, I always disagree with them but they always come back for more. They frustrate the hell out of me but I think BBD and BitBucket are a part of Bishop Hill, they ran the gauntlet and never gave up.
There's a tendency to take out our frustration with climate scientists on Richard. He is not here to be a scapegoat for the sins of others. Having met him in a social atmosphere I will find that harder to do in future.
Unfortunately the number present at the pub and the brownian motion of the participants meant it wasn't possible to have a prolonged discussion. We have to do it again. We don't really need a major guest speaker, or to do it in London. I intend to contact Jonathan Jones about an Oxford pub meeting sometime soon. Who can make that, in principle?
@rhoda
This is an excellent idea. Count me in.
For enough people, we could probably find a pub with a meeting room that they'll give us for nothing.
Happy to join in with Oxford pub meetings, events permitting.