Monday
Nov162015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Changing climate open thread
Nov 16, 2015 BBC I have to go out shortly, so no time to write anything about Roger Harrabin's climate change programme.
Feel free to add your comments below.
Reader Comments (51)
Well done Matt Ridley, sorry Richard Tol you're fired, grudging respect for Harrabin giving so much air-time to Matt, but a slap on the wrist for the cheap shot at the creationist US sceptic. Tamsin spoke well, maybe a future beckons in the media?
Gave it my full attention:-)
Half time
Republic of Ireland 1 : 0 Bosnia-Herzegovina
Ireland 2 Bosnia-Herzegovina 0 - Mark Walters again!
Well I lasted 20 minutes. Should have watched the footie by the sounds of it.
Tamsin misrepresent sceptics again as having moved towards a what to do position (and a lukewarmer position)
just because scientist have noticed 'lukewarmers' - doesn't mean they are moving to the scientists position..they were always there (Lindzen for example)
Paul Matthews (and others) complained about this (mis)representation before.
https://ipccreport.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/tamsins-topsy-turvy-ted-talk/
For years, scientist, just thought that climate deniers, don't believe in CO2 is a ghg, or that the earth has warmed only recently, has this representation become untenable and the wiser (including Tamsin) have realized this is not correct.
Most sceptics have always accepted the basic (lab) physics, of a doubling of CO2, would give rise to a degree c of warming and the earth has warmed since little ice age. Feedbacks are and always have been the issue.
How much, and how fast, and what (if anything) to do about it
Lindzen, Ridley have always been lukewarmers.. let alone John Daly
In fact, as the program mentioned the lower end of the IPCC range had dropped to 1.5C, which now embraced these sceptics... clearly, the science has moved!
The individual in the program that said the IPCC science is more sure, should have been challenged.
Why not point out in AR5 there is now no longer a consensus value for climate sensitivity, previously 3C, and the rather infamous new footnote that no agreement could be had on this!
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/nobest-estimate-sensitivity1.jpg?w=640&h=103
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/27/97-consensus-apparently-doesnt-exist-at-the-ipcc/
Newcastle won university challenge though the other team had a really smart guy from Latvia or somewhere.
And Nigella was hilariously fake as usual.
nice to see that most of our Bishop Hillers had their priorities in shape and watched/listened to Ireland versus the Bosnians - who btw boohed the minutes silence for the Paris victims of the religion of peace. I wonder why?
Most scientists, it seems previously had a cliched view of sceptics, passively picked up 'climate denier' rhetoric by the activists (and som escientist - Mann?) and just and just believed it.. Now that they have noticed sceptics/lukewarmers, believe in CO2 is a GHG, earth has warmed,etc, etc, claiming the sceptics have moved theri position is just irritating.. (especially because)
Four years ago: (extract)
"I am an example of a consensusist who has stopped using denier directly because of Barry, Bish and this forum.
Name calling is ever so counterproductive. Today I was defending you lot to (particle physics) friends, yesterday to climate/stats friends, saying that denier offends and there is a spectrum of opinions anyway.
Scientists usually end up saying denier because they only really hear about those denying CO2 is a GHG and that the earth is warming, and they don't like skeptic (because they are themselves skeptical) and other terms haven't stuck. Some soften it with "denialist". They really don't intend it to echo Holocaust denier I don't think. They think of it more as equivalent to creationism.
But this is only because of an important reason...
Most. Scientists. Don't. Know. You. Exist.
Really! They are not aware that a significant part of people trying to prod science for weak spots actually are fine with AGW but not sure of magnitude/timing/impacts/policy. When I explain this they say "oh, that sounds perfectably reasonable!". After all we argue about the first two or three in conferences and the literature ourselves! They agree Mann analysis was wrong, and would agree on lots of other things like "All models are wrong" ("but some are useful" :) )
So give them a chance. Barry has won me over to you with respect, goodwill, and true listening. Please follow his example if you want to engage with climate scientists. Bish's too." - Tamsin Edwards - 2011
full comment (page three here)
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/9/28/dellers-on-reason.html?currentPage=3#comments
People like the BBC are being dragged kicking and screaming behind by the biggest sceptic of all: Mother Nature.
What's more we sceptics are winning despite the BBC - so what does it matter what they think? And yes the Footie would have been better (although I was otherwise engaged).
I suppose that thanks to Matt Ridley the problem of sensitivity was at least mentioned - even if its significance was severely downplayed.
The temperature discussion made no mention (far less attempt to explain) why the ground station data and the satellite data are diverging or why problematical ground station data should be preferred and the satellite data ignored.
The ice section was also wholly alarmist. The East Antarctica increase in ice was e.g. barely mentioned and as a triviality, even though at 100,000 cubic kilometers per annum consistently for decades its gain dwarfs any ice loss elsewhere.
The sea ice Antarctic gains also dwarf the much discussed Arctic sea ice decline but went unmentioned.
The putative reduced oceanic alkalinity we were told is called "acidification" by the all knowing " mainstream" climate scientists and it was posited would be disastrous for corals - despite the evidence that corals particularly thrive in the less alkaline areas of the ocean.
The use of a creationist to present the skeptic position was of course as Mikky says a cheap shot, but then this is the BBC - who would really expect anything balanced?
Well, I should steel myself and listen to a bit more as I only lasted to the 8 minute mark. But I'll wait a bit as I have just had breakfast.
Dining in Paris, lunching? at the Savoy, all on expenses I bet. You can't say that the bloke with hooves isn't keeping his side of the agreement with Roger.
Re the claim that wines are changing. Yes, the French in particular have lost sales to the Australians & Californians, and the Chileans etc. Most of these producers are in warmer places and get riper fruit, and the French may well have taken advantage of recent warming to change styles. But I would point out that in the 19TH century the australian wine trade wanted delicate wines. In the early 20TH century they switched to huge wines (16-17% alcohol in Rutherglen reds). In the seventies the average red wine was around 12-12.5% alcohol. It is now more likely 13.5 to 14.5% but there has been NO change in temperature especially in Rutherglen. It is a matter of meeting the markets expectations. I would add that spanish wines have changed markedly since Spain joined the EU and not because Spain has cooled.
Tasmania is a "recent addition" to the wine growing areas of Australia - the first wine was made in 1848 but modern production only started in the 1950's. The big boost came from mainland producers who were looking for cooler climates (as in Margaret River and Great Southern in WA, the Adelaide Hills, Canberra district etc. Hilltops in NSW and the restart in the Yarra Valley and Geelong district in Vic.) because of the success of Coonawarra wines in particular. Yes they make very good sparkling wine and reds from pinot noir in Tasmania. Other grapes to do well there are riesling and chardonnay. On the other hand getting shiraz, cabernet or merlot to ripen is a bit of a gamble, but advances in viticulture and wine making have helped lessen the risk.
So all Harrabin's wine expert from Sweden has proved is that you need some warmth to grow grapes. SBW! In the Medieval warm period grapes were grown much further north than southern England or middle Germany, and the varieties were those requiring more heat and longer ripening times. As I have pointed out before, the Bishop of Durham annoyed the importers of french wines by getting 3 times the price they got AND getting exemption from tax. Why would purchasers be paying so much for wine made when the CO2 level was (supposedly) only 280ppm.
I'd rather watch Scotland play and I haven't done that for about 30 years.
Mikky
Tamsin is a pal of Brian Cox, so getting into the media seems to be the plan. Don't blame her for that. As long as we understand what she's up to.
"I found Brian Cox, my PhD supervisor, quite inspiring: his enthusiasm, his passion for engagement, and his big-picture, ambitious view of scientific problems."
http://highheelsinthelab.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/real-deal-tamsin-edwards-climate_17.html#sthash.rk1in1Uk.dpuf
CO2 sensitivity 1.5C-4.5C. Translation: they don't know.
Feedbacks - given zero 'runaway' warming...must be negative or neutral.
Observations were difficult - turn to models!
No atmospheric warming - pretend it's in the ocean!
Models wrong v observations - speculate!
More sea ice in WA ice sheet - climate change!
Less Arctic sea ice - climate change!
Warmer...'more bad than good' - so you'd prefer cooling OR the pre-industrial temps were somehow 'just right'?
Ocean 'acidification' - this is undoubtedly total bollocks designed to cover the lack of temperature increases.
Perma-ice - it hasn't melted yet yet they claim it will lead to catastrophe. (Not without positive feedbacks it won't)
Notice how almost ALL their theories have not materialised or have outright failed. Yet where normal people would say a failure of predictions / projections would represent a serious challenge to the theory they seamlessly move onto alternative theories to prop up their BS. Confirmation bias writ large throughout and the biggest fra ud of all time.
We are told that more CO2 in the atmosphere means more warming - this is referred to as "uncontroversial physics". Can anybody guide me to any research rebutting the findings of the 1971 paper by NASA-funded scientists, Rasool and Schneider, that the RATE (my emphasis) of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
Publication Abstracts
Rasool and Schneider 1971
Rasool, S.I., and S.H. Schneider, 1971: Atmospheric carbon dioxide and aerosols: Effects of large increases on global climate. Science, 173, 138-141, doi:10.1126/science.173.3992.138.
Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. Because of the exponential dependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5°K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.
Go to journal webpage
CheshireRed
It's spelled 'fraud' and anyone who mentions climate sensitivity is a fraud denier.
I too was otherwise engaged, but from comments above, it does seem that the 97% consensus is not quite as sure about the scale of the bad consequences that they had previously foreseen, with such confidence.
All they have to do now, is work out how to penalise Mother Nature, for non-compliance.
I've been wondering if we skeptics just kept quiet, is it possible the academic mice might just move out of their defensive holes and start looking at the world around them a bit more.
The putative reduced oceanic alkalinity we were told is called "acidification" by the all knowing " mainstream" climate scientists and it was posited would be disastrous for corals - despite the evidence that corals particularly thrive in the less alkaline areas of the ocean.
I would have imagined that a higher level of dissolved CO2 in ocean water would have been beneficial to all those organisms, including corals, that abstract it from the water to make shells of calcium carbonate. Surely it is unlikely that more CO2 in the water would be harmful to them? Is there any experimental or observational evidence on this?
No worries, Bish. I have recently said that I also will no longer watch, or listen to, BBC pontifications on glottal-warming if I am forewarned or it is not reliably recommended. It's getting very hard to even read the web pages.
I am now convinced that absence of audience is one of only two things that will actually make a difference to the BBC.
The other one will be absence of money.
The two are closely related, of course. Which is why the BBC is sailing ever and ever closer to the wind.
Does Tol make any more sense in Bosniam or Erse?
@Barry Williams, brings up some points against Tamsin
There is something going on which is cultlike or like a mental disorder/syndrome among Group 1 : vociferous alarmists.
There maybe Group2 alarmists who act rationally, but the first group is more noticeable and I'm not sure if Tamsin really sits outside them.
They exhibit these deceitful characteristics :
- Obsessive anger against critics
- Continually MISREPRESENT their critics position
- Throw around derogatory names like "denier"
- Seek to close down debate and exclude people.
- Fail to call out their own side.
- Show certainty beyond the evidence.
(Yep I did warn against namecalling, but Lewandowsky does seem to diagnose skeptics as crazy while exhibiting the above symptoms himself.)
Paul Matthews article does expose some points like that Tamsin seems to say "oh, the pause we predicted that all along, yes it was in our scenarios". No sorry when you let other people shout about amazing rapid warming coming and then when it doesn't you say "yep in page 93 in the appendix that was one of our scenarios", that is not acting like a non-partisan.
And on Tamsin's original blogpost strong partisan comment has slipped thru despite her claimed policy
In the Nov/Dec issue of Skeptical Inquirer James Lawrence Powell will be again pushing his mad survey that alleges that it's 100% consensus not just 97%
"Dr James Powell's latest (2015) analysis shows that 69,402 out of 69,406 climate change researchers accept human activity is the cause of global warming:"
Yes he does this by misrepresenting skeptics with a strawman argument and being amazingly twisted on definitions \\"You have to actually “clearly and explicitly state that the theory of global warming is false " for your paper to counted in the against camp.//
To me he's clearly Group 1 he's been debunked many times by skeptics* ..Yet his own side will not call him out.
*March 2014 - simply explains
April 2013 - "Meaningless" say PopTech and simply lists the flaws
July 2014 - WattsUpWith That simply points out how Powell stacked the deck : Basically "You have to actually “clearly and explicitly state that the theory of global warming is false " for your paper to counted in the against camp.
March 2014 : Anti-green repeat their previous debunk
July 2015 Jo Nova did an extensive debunk of Powell's work
Brandon Shollenberge is calling out skeptics and Tol over on the other thread as he has for some time on his own blog.
Seeming to say ..I paraphrase :
' Tol made mistakes in his early calculations showing AGW would be beneficial economically, Tol later corrected this in a quiet way,
but #1 everyone keeps quoting the old version
#2 Skeptics are not calling out Tol for the quiet way the report was updated
#3 There are questions about the weight Tol gave to his own report in the IPCC paper' ..and no one calls him out on that either.
..end of paraphrasing
Where were the carols?
Seriously though, what a good effort Roger your edification in the halls of the climate saints will be secured with programs like this.
Unfortunately the only ones who will continue to follow your lead will be the faithful, those already imbued with the cool-aid. There was absolutely nothing new in your argument and I too, after giving it my best effort, resumed other duties leaving you to pontificate to the end without absorption. Sorry, I made the effort but ya know.... same ol' same ol'....! Don't think I will be bothering with the next two lectures.
Guess this is all that can be expected of Cop21 then, if you have your finger on the pulse of climate science we are not going to get any revelations this time.
Standard Harrabin presentation of the debate: introduce sceptic & his character flaws, best buds with evil Murdoch (i.e .Times columnist), coal mine owner (not true), "right wing", kills puppies for fun... Give about 10 seconds to sceptic/lukewarmer to express his view. Then introduce scientist, sitting under halo, to debunk sceptical claims. Offer no space for rebuttal.
It's the same format as Harrabin's article last year, in which he called the GWPF the 'fossil fuel industry lobby group'. He cannot help himself. He's not interested in the debate, just in managing it.
Wussell,
Tol does far better in his second language (he's Dutch) than anything I've seen from you in what I presume (guardedly) is your first. #selfawareness?
I know that this is ‘off topic’ but couldn’t resist poking a little gentle fun at our resident troll Kenny. But since Ken can turn up at any point maybe it is ‘on topic’ after all. A little bit of light relief won't go astray in view of recent events. Anyway,it is here on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/xW1L00Cc7Mw
With Hazzabin, unless you are a "mainstream" "climate scientist" your voice counts for nothing. Is he not aware that historically all the best science has come from outside the mainstream? But when you are an English graduate and the main Greenblob voice of the Biased Bullsh1t Corporation, hard science carried out by real scientists counts for nothing.
nice to see that most of our Bishop Hillers had their priorities in shape and watched/listened to Ireland versus the Bosnians - who btw boohed the minutes silence for the Paris victims of the religion of peace. I wonder why?
There's not much love for the ropers in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Ireland have some visitors from the North attending Dublin games - they don't like them much either.
Athelstan.
Perhaps you could explain that reference for me? On Unthreaded?
Let's not be so harsh on Roger "Have a look in 10 minutes and tell me you are happier" Harrabin (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/08/bbc_blog_bully/). I imagine he's flush with pride at his journalistic flexiibility.
Some more detail of the Harrabin gloom-fest programme here
http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2015/11/16/harrabins-horror-story/
To be fairer to Harrabin, during the election debates when Davey lied that some models had predicted the pause, Harrabin corrected him by saying that the pause had not been expected.
But did Tamsin really say the pause was expected? I've just seen the excuse that the pause is not unusual because nature does these kind of things. Well quite! And that is exactly why the models with the input assumption that natural variation is in decline are wrong. It isn't skeptics now agreeing with mainstream scientists......it is them finally agreeing with us that natural variation has been neglected far too much thus far!
Funny though that folk who pretend the pause is imaginary or unimportant are in this 'consensus' while skeptics who were proved correct all this time about mother nature are excluded. It is clearly a club for catastrophists rather than scientists.
I'm bored of scenes of a setting sun & clouds viewed through a sepia filter to make it look like dirty pollution. Try another picky Roger, please!
Congratulations to Harrabin for deploying every alarmist technique in the IPCC manual:
- Asking a creationist senator with a poor grip on the facts to introduce the realist case.
- Introducing Matt Ridley as a right-wing coal-mine-owning Northern-Rock-director while not giving any background info on the funding or politiics of the alarmists.
- Allowing an alarmist to rebut every realist claim presented, while offering no opportunity for realists to respond to any of the catalog of wildly alarmist claims presented.
Harrabin also made good use of the soundtrack to reinforce the alarmist message: Whenever Matt Ridley spoke, distracting, mournful piano music played in the background, conjuring an image of Harrabin listening while slowly shaking his head in pity at Ridley's delusions. By contrast the alarmist interviews were generally presented with a silent background or with suitably scary sounds of bad weather or crashing ice.
And how about that line from Tasmin at the end claiming it would be in her interest to find there was no threat from man made climate change?? A sceptical interviewer might have enquired how much funding she and her department had received from promoting the scare over the years.
Wow Dr Slop's link above - shows Harrabin is on record as changing a report due to a direct threat from alarmists in 2008
To emphasise the scale of recent warming.
The GISS global land+ocean average for October is out.
1.04C is the highest anomaly in the monthly record since it began in 1880.
It is the first monthly anomaly above 1.0C.
Second place is 0.90C in March this year.
It brings the year to date average to 0.82C, up by 0.08C from the 2014 record of 0.74C
Oops. Egg on my face. Nick Stokes pointed out the 2nd highest month is January 2007 with 0.97C.
The pause deniers are back.
Of course satellites are regarded as best for mapping ice loss, predicting the weather, checking the greening of the planet, sea-level rise, CO2 levels, and even for the UHI adjustment for Gisstemp..... plus a whole host of other things but some still think that they are no good for planetary temperatures and won't be until satellites show 1998 to be lower than today - which both datasets resolutely fail to do. Instead they prefer an outlier constructed by folk trying to verify their own climate model - surely a situation which invites confirmation bias. A scientific man would present both outliers for balance at least. An entropic man wouldn't.
James G
The pausers start it with the 0.62C of 1998. 2014 was 0.74C and 2015 is over 0.82.
GISS has 95% confidence limits of +/- 0.09C, so the probability that the pause continues is less than 5%.
GISS has 95% confidence limits of +/- 0.09C
As the Duke of Wellington said, if you believe that you will believe anything.
the bosnians booing during the minutes of silence for Paris
im sure the BBC will spend major time on that one...oh wait they were all ""outliers" right? real fabric heads NEVER would do that , acc to obamania gospel
EM
Has it never occurred to you that "anomalies" are dependent on:
a. the selected baseline;
b. the selected database.
JamesG
If you consult Dr Spencer's site he will tell you
a) that both UAH and RSS show last month as the warmest October in their record.
B) that the troposphere temperatures lag 4-5 months behind the surface temperatures.
Do not rely too much on satellite temperatures as a support for your pause, it will probably have collapsed by next spring.
EM
... and I could add:
c. What do you expect in the middle of a strong El Nino.
Mike Jackson
"Has it never occurred to you that "anomalies" are dependent on:
a. the selected baseline;
b. the selected database."
Of course, which is why one compares monthly and annual data GISS with GISS, Hadcrut4 with Hadcrut4 .and satellite with satellite, because the different datasets have different baselines and processing algorithms.
For comparison between databases one can correct to a common baseline as Nick Stokes does. On this page you will see two such common baseline comparison graphs.
Note also that the satellites are measuring troposphere temperatures, while the others measure surface temperatures. They are not completely comparable.
However, all the databases are measuring the same climate, so they would be expected to show similar trends over the long term.
Interesting that you should mention the El Nino. The most comparable year to 2015 is the buildup to the last big El Nino in 1997/1998.
In 18 years we have gone from GISS anomaly 0.48C in 1997 to 0.82C in 2015. That is a change of 0.34C in 18 years. And yes, it is a statistically significant difference.
Don't worry, EM. If you come back in five years you'll find that Gavin has adjusted GISS 2015 down again to make way for a new record that will also be laughably 'statistically significant'.
Always remember Harrabin's only qualification as an 'environment analyst' is a degree in English.
He is simply clueless about any scientific discipline.
To quote Yes Prime Minister, "... he has so much wool in his head it is child's play to pull it over his eyes."
Entropic man one thing to note about the alarmist is that the worse case for them , the failure of any 'climate doom' to turn up is the best case for everyone else. Hence why they been really gutted if the temperatures continues to fail to 'hockey stick ' in the way their faith tells them it must .
Its like people being really disappointed that the world does not come to an end after they claimed it would do because of the 'sins' of the people .
Long may they remain 'disappointed '
@KNR Nov 17, 2015 at 11:35 PM
You say “Entropic man one thing to note about the alarmist is that the worse case for them, the failure of any 'climate doom' to turn up is the best case for everyone else. ...
Its like people being really disappointed that the world does not come to an end after they claimed it would do because of the 'sins' of the people .
Long may they remain 'disappointed '”
It is just like Paul Uhrlich’s demented recent speech in Australia. He has been the prophet of doom since – well – forever. I posted this on WUWT a week or so back. The poor guy is out of his tree! Your Entropic man ain’t much different.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKabeSeFCyI>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKabeSeFCyI