Bishop Hill Bob misrepresents the science again
Nov 27, 2014 Climate: WG2 Climate: Ward Bob Ward's interview with Conor Gearty is fun, with the film-noir style making Bob look even stranger than normal. His views are amusing too, having only the loosest connections with the science. Take this bit on the 2-degree target.
This is straight from the science...we've seen from the evidence that if we go above global warming of more than 2 degrees we will be facing very severe risks that the world has not seen for millions of years...
As an actual climatologist explained at BH once:
Most climate scientists* do not subscribe to the 2 degrees "Dangerous Climate Change" meme.
And then there's this on the impact of climate change here in the UK:
We can already start to see the impacts of climate change in the UK...more flooding, more droughts, more heatwaves. They are things that are going to get worse. We are already starting to increase.
The trends in drought in the UK is downwards. Any increase in flooding is due to increased exposure rather than flood. I'm not aware of any studies on UK heatwaves.
Bit of an embarrassment really.
Reader Comments (157)
Ward is the sock puppet for a guy who is planning to make more billions off of the climate obsession. Ward is a diligent worker,not bothered by anything that might make a reasonable person consider that the facts do not support his boss's claims.
Anyone heard of Randall Carlson? He is worth listening to, probably in segments, as his presentation is nearly 3 hours duration. He is very entertaining in his dismissal of global warming addicts & he points out that were humans to become extinct, nearly all traces of our presence would be gone in 10,000 years. The Earth would then continue to spin on its axis in its orbit around the Sun for another five thousand million years. Why do we think we are alone & unique in this current universe?
Ignore the commercials & start at 6 mins 21 secs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R31SXuFeX0A
EM,
Where is the disaster you and Ward keep going on about?
It ain't happening, and you are too dishonedst to admit it.
At least Ward is a well paid fibber selling his scruples out for a good wage. You are just a committed climate loon, tossing out your scruples for free.
I see Entropic Man is it again!
Dye3 ice core d18O analysis showed that the local mean annual temperature rose by at least 7ºC in less than 50 years - a period so short that there can not have been any measurable change in atmospheric CO2 as a cause
Ice cores also concur in showing that during the warmer part of the Eemian temperature was about 5ºC warmer than the present day.
The thermal maximum of the Upton Warren Interstadial ( 40- 43,000 C14ya) average July temperatures in central England were about 18ºC. Eemian Coleoptera remains from southern England indicate mean July temperatures about 4ºC higher than today and that Liquidamber pollen near Toronto of similar age shows temperatures were 2-3 ºC higher than those now experienced in that area.
The dO18 proxy data from Holocene portion of the NORTHGRIP ice core show that temperatures have been falling for at least 4000 years in that locality and that at the nadir of the LIA temperatures were lower that at any time since the 8.2ky event.
These radically higher and lower temperatures cannot have been in anyway influenced by anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and indeed the upwards and downward variations occurred even though there was no measurable change in CO2 concentration as deduced from ice core inclusions.
All these ( and many other) data show that the (postulated catastrophic ) consequences of a 2ºC temperature rise ( or fall!) could be encountered whether or not CO2 concentrations continue to increase as they have done since 1959 - the start of Mauna Loa records before which atmospheric CO2 data is controversial.
In addition there little, if any geological and or archeological evidence has been cited to demonstrate that Holocene Optimum and Eemian peak temperature some 2-5ºÇ higher than the present day gave rise to any "catastrophic" adverse effects on the flora and fauna of the northern hemisphere continental land masses.
Could Entropic Man produce some evidence to demonstrate why we should fear a 2ºC increase in GAT - without citing the collapse of the Greenland Ice Cap (which has survived for at least 1 my) and/or Al Gore type predictions of 7 metre sea level rise.
perry
"Why do we think we are alone & unique in this current universe?"
Good question, but (astonishingly) Brian Cox thinks we are, although I gather he's now claiming he only meant for our galaxy, which is still a pretty big place.
I have an interesting book on future evolution by Dougal Dixon, called 'After Man'. It seems to carry on pretty well without us...
the BBC environment analyst
these sorts of phrases show the extent of brainwashing allready
one should write: the Bolshevik Brainwashing Circus their parasite in charge for matters regarding environment obfuscation and propaganda..
The start of the Holocene is defined as the end of the Younger Dryas when temperatures reached those similar to today. However 8000 years ago sea levels were still 10m below where they are today and people were living in Doggerland. The mean rise in sea level over the last 8000 years has therefore been ~1.25mm/year. However this rate would have varied together with any small changes in climate (MWP & LIA) due to the expansion and contraction of water.
Current rate of sea level rise is ~3mm/year
How scary is that ?
'This is straight from the science .. '
Worthy of Jennifer Aniston!
Barbara
It's sexist to compare a great Thespian like Jennifer Aniston with an airhead bimbo like Bobsy Ward.
Clive - data from many gauges suggest sea level rise is still about 1.5mm/yr, e.g. Honalulu - http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=1612340 - (and I don't think Honalulu is prone to any isostatic rebound). Paul Homewood's analysis of UK gauges comes to much the same conclusion (about the rate). http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/sea-level-rise-slowing-down-around-the-uks-coast/
Incidentally, this is why not to trust satellite sea-level data: http://www.john-daly.com/altimetry/topex.htm
Envisat Sea level data adjustment blink graph - http://oi41.tinypic.com/2en2e6f.jpg
Historic sea-levels, even just around the British Isles are more difficult to be so sure about though -
“On the paraglacial coast of Northern Ireland the late Holocene sea level history involves a rise from a lowstand at 13ka to cross the present level by around 7kaBP reaching a few metres above present by 5ka BP and a subsequent fall to present sea level. `Raised’ or `stranded’ beaches associated with the late Holocene highstand are distributed widely around the Northern Ireland Coast” - http://eprints.ulster.ac.uk/1464/
See also: http://www.sis-group.org.uk/files/docs/2005-when-the-sea-flooded-britain.pdf
So 7kya ago sea levels were the same as today in Ireland, but were 15m lower in N. East Scotland (page6 of http://www.sis-group.org.uk/files/docs/2005-when-the-sea-flooded-britain.pdf) and 15m lower in Fens and South Wales? (and from raised beaches and driftwood studies, 3-5m higher in N. Greenland - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14408930). Tony Brown also notes that there was a rapid rise in sea level around 400AD - http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/12/historic-variations-in-sea-levels-part-1-from-the-holocene-to-romans/ .
My take on all this is that tectonic plates appear to up and down (as Prof Hapgood suggested?) much more than we like to think, which make the concept of a measurable global sea level rather dubious.
You know, Entropic man, you kind of surprise me. One would expect that if your motivations are honest, you would be trying to talk people over, reason with them so that they begin to understand what you think is correct.
The surprise comes when you mix reasonable comments with evidently misleading comments. This behavior makes me doubt the honesty of your intentions and goals here. All together, it seems that you are more interested in socializing your anger and frustration than in convincing anyone of anything.
It's OK, of course. Your life and all that. But it's just uninteresting for people like me to bother reading the account of how you deal with, by all appearances, personal issues. Just saying. Good luck, though. I wish you well.
When " Bob misrepresents the science again" is followed to a link to Richard Betts , one is mildly surprised by the disconnect from,a href="http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2014/11/springtime-for-godwin.html"> this nearly simultaneous and far more enteraining collision.
Here's the hopefully fixed link :
http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2014/11/springtime-for-godwin.html
And what exactly is your point, Herr Seitz?
The point , my good Jackson, is that geese marching backwards in close formation soon end up in the sauce.
Who pays Bob Ward?. Just wondering.
Russell has to gloat over a silly opinion piece because if he had to deal with substance he would have nothing to say at all.
Radical Rodent,
The current Universe is 13.8 billion years & counting. Our Sun formed about 4.56 billion years & our Earth formed about 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years. Within its first billion years, life appeared in its oceans and began to affect its atmosphere and surface, promoting the proliferation of aerobic as well as anaerobic organisms and causing the formation of the atmosphere's ozone layer. This layer and the geomagnetic field block the most life-threatening parts of the Sun's radiation, so life was able to flourish on land as well as in water.
Following the Cambrian explosion, about 535 mya, there have been five major mass extinctions.The most recent such event was 66 mya, when an asteroid impact triggered the extinction of the (non-avian) dinosaurs and other large reptiles, but spared some small animals such as mammals, which then resembled shrews. Over the past 66 myr, mammalian life has diversified, and several million years ago an African ape-like animal such as Orrorin tugenensis gained the ability to stand upright. This enabled tool use and encouraged communication that provided the nutrition and stimulation needed for a larger brain, which allowed the evolution of the human race.
My question is this. Isn't it feasible that life started in other galaxies in the 9.24 billion years before our Sun was formed & that it has passed the way of all flesh, which will naturally happen to life on Earth when the Sun becomes a red giant with a diameter of 250 million miles in 5 billion years in the future.
To paraphrase Isaac Asimov. THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
@lapogus
Yes I agree that a single global sea level does not really make any sense. A couple of days ago I was on Saunton Sands which has the largest expanse of sand dunes in the UK - Braunton Burrows. This must be the old beach left stranded from the Eemian interglacial. It is about 6 meters higher than the current beach. You can even see the old sea level cliff erosion towards Downend Point. I suspect the same is true of other large sand dunes in Cornwall like that at Perranporth.
Of course it could also be that the eastern side of the UK is sinking and the Western side is rising .
However, I also remember seeing clear evidence of sea levels being 6 meters higher than now in a cave system in Malaysia.
Perry: you certainly present a good hypothesis. I wonder which of the two is correct? I wonder if we will ever find out? Certainly, the one I mooted would be more easily proven wrong than yours. Either way, that subject is merely cerebral musings; what is interesting is that Asimov’s paraphrased quote is certainly apposite for the whole climate scam, too. Why, after the limited information of just a few decades of intense study of such a massive, chaotic system, are we being told that the answer is to destroy western civilisation? It has never been about the science; it has only ever been about the politics.
Another interesting point is that we are constantly told about entropy: how it ensures that all things will degrade to chaos. What seems to be overlooked is that, from the chaos of the Big Bang (another valid hypothesis; though not the only one extant, it is the most widely accepted) order formed, in the shape of the stars and planets – and life. Why? If all order decays to chaos – and, we are assured, it is a one-way process – how can order have formed from the initial chaos in the first place?
What is this Climate Justice crap?
So are the Lawyers looking in on cashing in on Climate Change crap too.
Obviously the investors who built the 3 Airports in the Maldives don't think its going to sink.
Got it in one, Jamspid – "Climate Justice" – crap; utter, utter crap.
Jamspid
Have you just discovered the "Climate Justice" thing?
It is another UN sponsored jamboree to cash in on the UN sponsored IPCC jamboree and provide well remunerated high profile opportunities for UN note worthies to travel around the world preaching their message. In this case the message is that the poor countries ( the vast majority of the members of the UN General Assembly) should receive large sums of money from the much smaller number of wealthier countries to compensate them for the costs imposed on them by Climate Change caused by the CO2 emissions of those countries which were early to industrialise.
Look at the the link below and you will see they are the "usual suspects" with the usual message.
http://www.mrfcj.org
PS Mary Robinson was at one stage President of the Republic of Ireland but she abandoned the office before the end of her term to take up a position as a UN Commissioner - tells you all you need to know about HER motivations!
Before fantasizing further as to my opinions on climate policy, Hunter might surprise himself by reading them.
He will find my published opinion pieces in ,inter alia, The Wall Street Journal, The National Interest and National Review , and the scientific work on which they are based in Nature, Eos, Naturwissenschaften and Climatic Change.
If merely he wants to sketch a "Bob misrepresents the science again" piece of his own, this should get him started :
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2014/11/court-filing-tim-ball-not-authority-on.html
SteveW
Brute wanted a yes or no, I gave him one. For more detail read ARS WG1 .
Radical Rodent
On a universal level the trend is to increased entropy. Locally and temporarily you can reverse the trend.
Life is very good at this; your body is an island of lower entropy maintained by increasing the rate of entropy increase in your environment. The overall trend is still downhill.
How did you get here? There is some entropy jitter. Temporary islands of greater complexity can form randomly. Once started, natural selection favours complexity up to a point, but it is very expensive to maintain.
Only a few living organisms have gone down this route. It is not a coincidence that whether you measure it as numbers or biomass, the vast majority of the life on Earth are bacteria and other prokaryotes.
Well, there’s a thing: it turns out that life, the universe and everything are just the result of an “entropy jitter”!
/facepalm
Radical Rodent
Did you expect more?
Hunter
Civilisation is doing the equivalent of living high on its credit card. Fine while it lasts, but not when the bill comes in.
Our misfortune is that the processes which will lead to severe problems are going on now but the consequences will be coming later. As it is, we have spent the money and the short term thinkers like yourself are still telling each other that the bill will not arrive.
EM,
The climate hustlers tell us the cliamte crisis is *now*. That hundreds of thousands are dying from "cliamte change" right now. That the seas are rising at dangerous new rates now. That the storms, droughts, floods, cold, hot, calm, ice, heat are all changing dangerously now. But that was never the case and now the climate crisis junkies have to come up with new arguments.
Like you with your "just wait for later" crap. We are told "dangerous climate change is happening now" daily by the rent seekers and sycophants of the climate obsession. Only of course there isn't anything close to a crisis happening now, even though it was predicted to be in the next few years for something over thirty years now.
You are merely falling back on that line of putting it off to the future because you are too cowardly to admit that you have been wrong.
And your argument is merely rephrasing the tripe of failed apocalypse junkies from time immemorial. And using religious imagery like apocalyptic punishment from God/gaia is just annoying tripe. Especially when covered in a sciencey veneer.
Entropic Mann: from you – yes. But what you have already told us is too much.
The cause is now but the consequences will only occur much later. How convenient for both climate charlatans and politicians alike. The 'much later' being well after they have all retired; even more convenient.
Aren't we lucky that this looming disaster can be completely averted by giving large amounts of money to rent seeking hucksters in the renewables 'industry'.
Hunter (and so many others) has it right. When I was at school, we were told that the oil would run out in thirty years; now, over forty years later, we are being told that we will run out of oil in fifty years. As it happens, it seems that this “peak oil” meme has been on the cards since the 1860s; when will the likes of Entropic Mann take the hint – that call is a busted flush? Or do they hope that, if they continue to say it for long enough, it will eventually come true? For that is the only way that will win; should you want to, every day, you could tell someone that they will surely die tomorrow. Eventually, within the next 90 years or so, your “prediction” will come true; but, does that make you a genuine soothsayer, let alone a scientist?
"Civilisation is doing the equivalent of living high on its credit card. Fine while it lasts, but not when the bill comes in."
You wish. We were told coal would run out in 60 years by our teachers in infant school. Since then we've had nuclear, booms in oil and natural gas, and I honestly don't have a clue what catastrophist are going to say when we can all power our own homes with a cold fusion box the size of a small washing machine.
Giving humanity cheap abundant energy being compared to giving a five-year-old a Kalashnikov, that sort of thing.
Actually the basic thesis that civilisation is not a perpetual motion goes back a lot further than Erlich.
Hat tip to George Speyer for pointing me to "Cartesian Economics". This was published by the Nobel. price winner Frederick Soddy in 1922.
He pointed out that thermodynamically a civilisation is a heat engine. You put in energy and get out useful " work"; which is fine until the energy supply runs out. Then The Machine Stops .
Mike Jackson: “Me either”? I had long thought you to be British; now, you come out with one of many phrases that irritated me when I heard them from my American classmates in All Saints, and that was a primary school! Are you deliberately being provocative? Mayhaps you will further irritate me with a few “gottens”! Have you no shame?
What I might excuse as humour aside, surely no-one can hold any credence with what Ehrlich says? He and his ilk have been making doomsday predictions now for over forty years, and not one of them has come even close to being true. Or are people so desperate for the end that they will believe anyone who offers it to them?
Roll on the in-house fusion boiler! (Shades of Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Now, who could be The Mule?)
Geronimo, mike jackson
Have you considered the practicalities of your fantasy cold fusion reactor.
At a rough estimate each would need 10kg of palladium and 10 litres of heavy water per year.
For the expected 12 billion population you would need 3 billion of them.
Where do you expect to find the necessary 30 million tons of palladium? Total world reserves are on the order of 40,000 tons.
At least 30 million tons of heavy water a year is less of a problem. There is plenty in the ocean, if you are prepared to build and power the extraction plants. Of course, that will need even more palladium. :-)
Entropic Mann: meh… Those dire warnings of up to a century ago have yet to come to pass. History is littered with “prophets” who warned that we were as advanced as we could ever be, and it will soon be all downhill. Anyway, why bother with such old-hat stuff, Entropic Mann? What about Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock (1970)? (Still wrong, though.)
As for your ideas of cold fusion reactors – have you ever considered the possibility that you might not know everything that there is to know, and that some other technologies have yet to be discovered?
Rhetorical question, I suppose.
Radical Rodent
I am not omniscient, but I can analyse.
Geronimo and Mike Jackson propose a mythical machine to save their civilisation. I analysed the implications, something they had not bothered to do themselves.
I may seem to pour cold water on their optimistic dream, but cold water naturally results when a lot of hot air gets on thin ice.
Yeah, well… Ehrlich has been “analysing” for decades, now. Has he ever “analysed” correctly?
Analysis of his work shows that he does not have the imagination to comprehend the ingenuity that humans can have. Yes, civilisation will eventually crumble, and it may even occur sooner and faster than we are expecting, but that does not mean that we need to aid it on its way.
@entropic man
<He pointed out that thermodynamically a civilisation is a heat engine. You put in energy and get out useful " work"; which is fine until the energy supply runs out. Then The Machine Stops .
the earth's atmosphere is a heat engine driven by the incident energy of the sun. All life feeds off that energy to locally reduce entropy. Take a look sometime at Limestone rocks. On the large scale of things civilisation is still just a blip on the earth's long term climate control. Lovelock was right.
civilisation will eventually crumble, and it may even occur sooner and faster than we are expecting, but that does not mean that we need to aid it on its way.
Nov 29, 2014 at 9:21 PM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent
Then why are you so keen to continue with "Business as Usual", when that only brings the end closer?
bit late with a comment as usual but -
if thats a grilling you can see why some folks (Bob) can't get the rest of us to be worried we will cook/fry anytime soon.
also fun to read from - http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/conor-gearty-to-grill-his-lse-colleagues-on-camera/2013315.article
"Scholars at the London School of Economics have agreed to submit to “grillings” by a colleague in a new series of short, sharp video debates.
The idea arose, said Conor Gearty, professor of human rights law and director of the LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs, in discussions with Claire Sanders, head of communications and public affairs, about creating “opportunities for academics to communicate their research interests more effectively and widely, and in a fashion that is naturally accessible”.
“Since my name begins with G and we wanted to capture a sense, not necessarily of the adversarial, but at least of some tension”, said Professor Gearty, they hit on The Gearty Grillings as a series name."
some tension ? really works then Prof G
Lovelock was right.
Nov 29, 2014 at 9:27 PM | Unregistered CommenterClive Best
I hope not. Have you read "The Vanishing Face of Gaia"? Lovelock makes ME sound optimistic.
…oh dear, Entropic Mann…
You really should get humans and the planet into proportion. We are just a flea-bite on the surface of the world; the planet, if it had a consciousness (Gaia?), may well be unaware of us, intent as it is on its own self-flagellation. One hundred years ago, there were folk with your dire outlook on our future – they have been proven wrong; why are you so convinced you are right?
BTW, even Lovelock has admitted he was wrong.
Entropic Man
Could you please produce evidence to demonstrate that a 2ºC increase in GAT will have catastrophic consequences an/or that GAT more than 2ºC had catastrophic consequences earlier in the Pleistocene and Holocene- including during the Bolling and Allerod interstadials. - (without citing the collapse of the Greenland Ice Cap which has survived for at least 1 my) , Al Gore, Greenpeace, the WWF or the SPM's of IPCC assessment reports.
I would not consider the Stern report as evidence - it is merely speculation.
dfhunter:
How long? How bloody long will it take before it dawns on people that the catastrophists like Ward are merely playing the part of the magician: it's all deflection. They want us to argue with them about climate (anything - weird weather, anything). It keeps people away from the deception, the cards in the sleeve, the false bottom in the trunk. By arguing 'the science' they keep people away from the real objective where Ecoligarchs like Grantham just want more and more control.
If the 'science is settled' (by their lights) then let's find what will rattle their foundations. I figure the politics is not settled: Go for that. If you want an example of that, look at what's happening in OPEC.