Bishop Hill Ted Nield gets it wrong
Nov 19, 2013 BBC Climate: IPCC 
I think the big talking point this morning is going to be Ted Nield's article in the Telegraph. Nield is the editor of Geoscientist magazine and is very green, so it's no surprise to see that his article this morning, bemoaning Bob Carter's appearance on the BBC a few weeks ago and trying to dissociate the geological profession from this upstart dissenter, gets pretty much everything wrong.
We learn for example that the ice caps are melting (both of them?) and that the IPCC is 95% certain that the science is right (what, all of it?). We are told that the BBC couldn't find a British scientist to challenge the IPCC's conclusions, when of course we know that the actual criterion the BBC applied was "actively publishing climatologist working in the UK university sector". So a statistician saying that the studies cited by the IPCC are statistical junk (which in places they are) would not have been considered acceptable. We know for a fact that they spurned the chance to talk to Nic Lewis, who has published in the key area of climate sensitivity and who had expressed a willingness to explain his concerns to the BBC. So Nield's statement is not true.
Nield then descends into name-calling (deniers!) and smears (tobacco!), before an extended riff about how geology is right behind the IPCC.
Readers will no doubt draw their own conclusions.
Reader Comments (58)
When his words and compare them against reality , you can understand why 'the cause ' is the right name for what they are pushing . Faith and belief are far more important than fact , or the former can always be made to support you , while the later is as likely to work against you.
I know geologists who are both pro-and against CAGW, but the majority are against. The reason I believe is their training and the fact that they commonly deal with evidence that is not conclusive. After all, the scientific method of multiple working hypotheses was developed and is employed by geologists. Pity its not applied more widely.
Guys...as TBBT tells us..............Geology is not a real science......
Tiny CO2
Those who develop and use geological proxies always include the margins of error for their techniques. When multiple proxies can be used to deduce temperatures or CO2 contents for the same environment their results agree within those margins.
Once again you wind up and set walking the uncertainty straw man. If you wish to claim that the margins of error for proxies are so large as to invalidate them, proper scientific evidence would be nice. Without the evidence, I can only assume that you are following the Heartland Institute manual for lobbyists. This includes the tactic designed to induce uncertainty in the audience by making unsubstantiated remarks about uncertainty in the science.
Its worth remember when you hear about all these scientific organisation that have come out in support of 'the cause' that like Geoscientist none of them actual asked there members what they thought and none of them even asked if their members if there happy to go along with the organisations words .
In reality is the boards of such organisation are often full of those much happier to play politics than do science, their 'motived ' to score political points for their organisation partly as this often leads to funds and status , and often the personnel becomes the political.
@ PeteB
Here's an extract from the abstract of your link:
Taking account of the measurement errors I calculate that it is possible the Antarctic is gaining mass at the rate of 12 gigatonnes per year.
One can only say that the Antarctic might be melting: it might be gaining ice even with their figures which are almost certainly spun for maximum grant-pulling effect.
Neild's article is another example of the all-too-frequent circular reasoning seen in this debate. He is confident that he knows exactly what is happening today, so he knows exactly what happened 55 million years ago when the continents, oceans, currents and winds were in different places, and the biosphere cannot possibly have been the same as today. This is then used to create his gallery of fossil fuel disaster scenarios awaiting us tomorrow.
By returning to the age of the dinosaurs [resisting the obvious joke here], his imagination can run riot with smaller chances of direct contradiction by facts, because there are so few of them. Picking any speculative argument he pleases from the shelf, he is free to paint in the details as he pleases. People get slapped down by the likes of Gavin Schmidt for playing fast and loose with the methane-hydrate catastrophe meme, but he doesn't need to worry about that when writing in a newspaper: 'It's the carbon wot dunnit'.
To talk about uncertainties in geophysical measurements is meaningless in the context of his article.
Satellite data shows that Antarctica is bigger than ever recorded and that the Arctic is recovering.....but we are told that they are melting....what the are they on about?
The criticism of Professor Carter is a sign they are well and truly beaten.....his message is the most powerful of all. It's called Empirical Data and they cannot deal with that, so they attack Bob personally.
The temps since the Climatic Optimum of 10,000 years ago quite clearly show we have been much warmer than today and that is just this Holocene.
The AGW mob aided and abetted by a dumb media and at times even sceptical websites fail to grasp that the period 1979 to the present day is irrelevant because it lacks balance and context. It is a snapshot that's all. A trend has to be over a much longer period of time...starting with 100 years and moving through the Holocene and beyond until we get to millions of years.