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« New Yorkers want to secede to ensure their homes are destroyed by earthquakes and their drinking water poisoned | Main | Countdown to alarm - Josh 317 »
Tuesday
Mar032015

Climate Change by Numbers

I almost gave up on Climate Change by Numbers last night. By ten o'clock I was flagging fast and not really getting a lot from it which is a pity because it could have been brilliant.

The presentation was really well done. I thought the decision to have three different presenters paid off in spades and the producers did well to come up with three such engaging people - Norman Fenton, Hannah Fry and David Spiegelhalter - to front the show. I liked the style of having them completely separate and avoiding the cheesy infills that TV people seem to like so much. The decision to get just a little bit closer to the maths was a good one and the radical step of showing equations on screen seemed like a bit of a breakthrough.

But at the end of the day it was not the programme I'd hoped for and not the programme that the climate debate needs. There are two types of people who are interested in science - those who get excited by what science can do and those who get excited by what it is merely trying to do. Climate Change by Numbers seemed to me to be firmly in the first camp, with many familiar lines from the mainstream case for climate alarm set out in an accessible fashion alongside unusually technical explications of techniques such as kriging and homegenisation. For those of us who are interested in unanswered questions and scientific controversies there was nothing. This was, at the end of the day, a recitation of the global warming catechism with added geekiness.

Only occasionally did we get hints that there might be some interesting questions to examine. For example, just as almost every other climate programme has done, the presenters invited us to be impressed by the match between greenhouse-fuelled climate models and observations. But, and also just like every climate show before them, the presenters skipped past the tuning and the fudging and the impact of the pause. Norman Fenton's allusion to the extreme complexity of GCMs did suggest that there might be something interesting going on but there, unfortunately, the show moved swiftly on. Fenton's blog post on the show hints that he too found this frustrating, listing a whole series of interesting areas that he would liked to have examined and on which I think his statistician's brain could have shed a great deal of light. I guess none of us are fully in control of our own destiny.

In similar fashion, we were invited to be impressed by Hansen's Pinatubo predictions, a case that I have always seen as rather deceptive since it relates largely to the base greenhouse effect (which almost everyone agrees on) and not the long-term feedbacks (which they don't). This could have sparked an interesting exploration of the areas that climate scientists are just beginning to scratch the surface of, but this too was an opportunity spurned.

Clearly this was not a programme directed at me. But I'm not sure who the producers were directing it at either. I don't think it really cuts the mustard as a propaganda piece. Recitation of all these familiar arguments is not going to persuade anyone. And to misquote JS Mill, you really need to have a public clash of ideas to demonstrate the validity of your case and persuade people. Perhaps it was just a geek piece; something that climatologists can coo over and say "isn't the stuff we do cool". If so that's all well and good, but I hope my climatologist friends can understand that this is not for me: I'm from the "what we don't know" school of science.

And no matter how nice the presenters and how whizzy the graphics, I'm going to find the recitation of the climate litany rather dull. Even if they show me some equations.

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Reader Comments (262)

Daimon Walker:
It's hard to decide which part of your vague allusions and 'testifying' to rebut first.

One thing is clear, you have not been reviewing detailed research. So, I'll start with that wonderful rosy 'precautionary principle' of yours.

"...What is the worst that can happen by believing it? Put to one side the facts or non facts, what is the very worst that can happen if we believe there is a climate change issue and a run away greenhouse effect might make this planet uninhabitable by humans? The very worst that can happen by believing it is we stop something that might or might not happen. We mitigate the risk. Now, what if we choose to ignore this climate change? What then? What is the worst that can happen? What if it is true? Well, we end up with a planet that is uninhabitable by humans..."

What's the worst? Depends on what you think is 'worst'. Read all those 'revelations' and hype of the alarmists and understand two main facts:

A) They are convinced mankind has put too many atoms of CO2 into the atmosphere. Many of them establish 1950 as a beginning of the CO2 regime.
- a) Add in the minor fact that the plans are for the 'advanced primarily Western' civilizations to reduce/eliminate their CO2 emissions while countries like India and China plan on increasing CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions that are greater than most Western countries.

B) When they say 'reduce', if you read their future prognostications, they mean eliminate. Nada, zero, zilch; in fact those evil Western civilizations must recover CO2 according to the purveyors of salvation from the dreaded Climate Change.
- a) A requirement that eliminates most if not all of 'civilizations modern refinements'. No heat, no A/C, no plastics, no cement, no bricks, no mortar, no computers, no electronics, ... There is a very long list of modern conveniences dependent on fossil fuel emissions.

It's a beautiful world these singers of salvation depict, roughly early stone age.

Forget wind turbines, wind turbines themselves are deeply dependent on massive fossil fuel emissions; from windmill components and structure to their manufacture, transportation, installation and maintenance.

Forget solar energy and battery storage as both technologies are just as dependent on fossil fuels.

Forget those thorium reactors or do you plan to harvest and refine your own reactor materials?

Worst of all, add up all of the still current salvation schemes for exactly how much CO2 they'll eliminate. Don't be too shocked when you find that $1.6 trillion dollars netted only a few percentage points of CO2 offset. The real plan is for carbon taxation plans to fund the green dream; not genuine achievement.

The 'world' the false prophets of CAGW alarmism plan on achieving is one where the 'elite' rule while the serfs (basically everyone else) work without modern conveniences to support the elites.

What you should really do for your own personal satisfaction and edification is to deconstruct your above preaching paragraphs into single statements of fact; then research those facts in detail. Folks here can discuss the facts when you return.

Mar 3, 2015 at 2:37 PM | Unregistered CommenterATheoK

I am fascinated that anyone finds the case for newsworthy AGW to be persuasive. For sure, it hit the zeitgeist around the turn of the Millennium but, still?

The world warmed since 1850 - so what?
Climate scientists had a punt on what caused the warming and wrote their guess out in computer coded approximations of the climate - the climate models.
The models assumed that CO2 was the main driver.
The models predicted that warming would continue - they were wrong.

So why would anyone think the assumptions were correct?
It's not logical. It's not rational. It's not even honest enough to admit it's a new (false) religion.

And then there's the scientific method.
Constantly attacking the man and refusing to debate - corrupting peer review (we've read the emails) and forever claiming 95% confidence levels about unknown natural factors that affect the climate... silly. Very, very silly.

Why would anyone support this mockery of science?

Mar 3, 2015 at 2:47 PM | Unregistered CommenterMCourtney

HI Daimon,

An excellent and balanced document to read on some of the issues such as warming up to 1940's not reproduced in models, hot spot etc is the transcript of the APS policy on climate change workshop.

You can read the PDF at:

http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/upload/climate-seminar-transcript.pdf

Its a long document but well reading in its entirety. The comments about the pause are quite revealing. None more surprised than the climate scientists, it would appear.

Mar 3, 2015 at 2:50 PM | Registered Commenterthinkingscientist

Golf,


ATTP will your faith in Mann be altered by the outcome of a court case, or is your faith in hs work solid?

I don't think a court case has any bearing - one way or the other - on Michael Mann's scientific work.

Mar 3, 2015 at 2:50 PM | Unregistered Commenter...and Then There's Physics

Daimon Walker:

"...However the rate at which the temperature change has occurred, or rather IS occurring, is a worry..."

The litany continues huh?

Where did that worry come from? Some prognosticator in the major media who when questioned on their 'facts' slippery slid into the dreaded 'worry' statement; the 'rate of change'.

0.6 to 0.8 degrees C since the mid 19th century, is that the frightening rate of change? Why?
How many degrees difference from your morning lows to your daily highs? Why is two thirds of a degree scary!?
How much difference are your winter temperatures from summer temperatures? Again, why is two thirds of a degree worrying?

Future temperature predictions are based on faulty climate models; untested, unverified, without certification, (yes, models should be certified and tested!). 0.6 to 0.8 degrees C differences in temperature are based on observations! Even after extensive data torturing the climate regime still is unable to artificially raise the temperatures more.

Mar 3, 2015 at 2:51 PM | Unregistered CommenterATheoK

Damien, which figures persuaded you that there were going to be disasters? The IPCC has a set of scenarios from 1.5C - no problem - to 4.5 C possibly problems. I have never met anyone who believed this guff if they set out with an open mind and I have met plenty of people who believed until they looked into it.

As for the precautionary principle - forget the cost do something - it's been explained to you that the costs are prohibitively high, so high in fact that it looks like there will be 40,000 winter deaths this year because of cold. And even if we succeeded in the bonkers solutions and went to zero emissions the drop in temperatures would be infintissimal. Should these made up scenarios come to fruition they won't happen in a day, a year or even a century so we have plenty of time to adapt, and we'll adapt much quicker and safer if we use the money currently pouring into supporting renewable energy to expand our industrial base and make the whole world wealthy.

I have no idea what you think is going to happen, or how, or what grasp you have of the science and policies surrounding this thing, but you sound very vulnerable to me, you should take a long look at this stuff and you will see that if the scientist could get a computer with the power to run their algorithms, they simply don't know enough about the climate to provide the right information.

Now exactly what is it do you think is going to happen if we continue with business as usual.

Finally, I don't believe anyone here would have a problem with nuclear power, but the people keeping this scare going will, they're not trying to save the world for future generations they're aiming to take us back to some mythical pastoral existence where we are at one with mother earth and living to the ripe old age of 40 as we did in past pastoral idylls.

Mar 3, 2015 at 2:57 PM | Unregistered Commentergeronimo

"Damion,
I think the problem is that you're trying to have a serious discussion on a site that, mainly, specialises in infantial taunts. If you could bring yourself to criticise Michael Mann a little, mock the IPCC, confuse "almost certainly more than 50%" with "certainly no more than 50%", interpret "all models are wrong" as "all models are completely wrong", and claim that any form of data analysis is fraud and hence completely unacceptable, you may have an easier time here. On the other hand, you might have standards.
Mar 3, 2015 at 1:58 PM | Unregistered Commenter...and Then There's Physics"

"I think the problem is that you're trying to have a serious discussion on a site that, mainly, specialises in infantial taunts..."

You mean like the puerile infant taunts you just laid out?

Odd that you are here, today ATTP; showing up to console poor Daimon with more falsehoods and fabrications. Or is Daimon one of your followers and you are here to support his foray amongst skeptics? Is this just a put-up to try and distract the thread as your other visits have been?

Which reminds me:
Thank you everyone who suffered through the numbers chapter of the CAGW bible! You saved me and prevented excessive stress and high blood pressure! Time to tie some emergers and flies.

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:03 PM | Unregistered CommenterATheoK

ATTP So if a court is no place to judge Mann's science, were the IPCC wrong not to give the Hockey Stick such prominence in its most recent reports?

It was reviewed by his peers after all, without criticism, presumably, at the time?

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:15 PM | Unregistered CommenterGolf Charlie

Daimon: your post at 12:48 indicates that you agree with Paul about the iniquity of destroying wilderness areas and condemning the world's poorest people to continuing poverty (etc.) and about the absurdity of wasting billions on current "solutions". And your most recent post indicates that you think the way forward is to stop all this and instead to invest "heavily" in seeking other mitigation means. Well, that might be an admirable idea. But the trouble is that identifying, developing, evaluating and establishing new methods of energy generation is likely to take a very long time - on past experience, many decades. But humanity faces huge problems now: e.g. about two billion people lack even basic access to energy (a lack causing disease, death and misery) and the global population is likely to increase by another two billion by mid-century.

All that enables me to answer your question - "why are governments not supporting cleaner energy?" (Your post at 12:16.) The governments that have rejected proposals to reduce CO2 emissions are essentially those of the so-called developing economies - responsible for over 65% of global GHG emissions and where of course most of the world's poorest people live. It was their intransigence that caused the failure of the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009. And recent negotiations indicate that they may well frustrate Western ambitions for the "make or break" conference in Paris later this year. Why are they doing this? Well, a major reason is their ambition for economic growth. And associated with that is a determination to improve the condition of their very poor, especially when, according to recent research, ‘increases in carbon emissions and economic development [are] widely recognized as a pathway to improving human well-being.’ Their exemplar is China: because of affordable, reliable electric power derived from inexpensive fossil fuels, mainly coal, it has lifted about 600 million people out of poverty in the last 30 years. Here for example are some extracts from a report on an interview with India's Environment Minister:

Prakash Javadekar … said India would not be forced into accepting any measures that did not protect the country's interests. Energy-starved India is heavily dependant on coal-fired power plants and millions suffer regular power cuts.

… India has said it will not compromise on its goal of eradicating poverty.

India has long maintained the burden of reducing the amount of carbon emitted lies with industrialised countries, and has opposed any move to shift the burden to developing nations.

I have no doubt that, if a new source of reliable, affordable carbon-free energy ("bucket loads of it") had been developed, these countries would be rapidly adopting it. But it hasn't - nor is there any indication that it will be in the medium term. So mitigation now is not feasible and greenhouse gas emissions are likely to continue to grow for a long time. Our best hope therefore must be that the sceptics are right. And, yes, the West should stop current investment in pointless and damaging "renewables" and invest in research into the feasibility of other carbon-free solutions - they may be helpful one day.

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:17 PM | Registered CommenterRobin Guenier

Nope, Daimon, 'rate of change of temperature' is not a worry. You've possibly been seduced by the shaft of Michael 'Piltdown' Mann's Crook't Stick. Clue, bud, that is a very deceitful icon. It's a shame to be frightened by it.

Just to have a laugh, what is the rate of change for the last decade and a half?
===================

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:24 PM | Unregistered Commenterkim

Daimon Walker, you asked us what was the worst that could happen by believing CAGW. The cost is one of the most accessible reasons. If you also accept that money spent in one place can cause real hardships in others then you have an inkling of the problem. Every vanity project is a lost opportunity to do something that does work. It’s lost time but more importantly it’s lost public patience and trust.

CAGW policy is driven by people who say ‘we don’t have time to ask questions, act now, it doesn’t matter what.’ They pressure governments to do things that neither solve AGW nor save money for solutions that might work. They don’t even allow time to determine how fast or how high the warming might be. It matters, because what we do for modest warming would be very different for severe warming. Nobody should be eager to do things that we know don't work, no matter how real the problem might be.

The public and most politicians have made it clear that the science is not good enough to act on in any significant fashion. The science is unconvincing and instead of improving its credibility they resort to more and more spin. The public drift away. How can we have trust in people who don’t realise that their current horse is dead and no amount of flogging will make it more appealing to the potential buyers?

So the biggest reason to fight the CAGW bandwagon is because it’s destroying any chance of the public being swayed into appropriate actions whenever we determine what those actions should be.

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:25 PM | Unregistered CommenterTinyCO2

@lapogus - "Globally the cost of reducing CO2 emissions to reduce warming by 1C will be about 3.2quadrillion dollars" is what you are told. It does not cost that.

Tell me why this is not on the front page of every paper - http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Thorium/ Why would we not go down this route? I tell you why, it doesn't pay and it would mean the energy levi's placed on all of us would be near void. Green or not green, which ever camp you are in, this only makes sense to keep this from being developed so that a tighter strangle hold can be had over your access to energy.The fact you say "What the f*ck is the problem with 1C of warming?" tells me you have seen what you want to see. There is a bigger picture than that of 1 degree celcius when addressing the climate change issue.

This entire argument of degrees of temperature rise and fall would be wiped out in a heartbeat if these suckers were online everywhere. Pollution would diminish to extremely low levels.

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:26 PM | Unregistered CommenterDaimon Walker

I watched this straight though with no appreciable affect on my blood pressure, I have a monitor to measure any deviation from my current healthy hiatus in anycase. As a piece of TV it was accessible, a difficult task for getting across what is an incredibly difficult subject, and importantly it explicitly acknowledged that there IS a debate. I didn't think it was unduly alarmist, afterall it did attempt to quantify "uncertainty" and how we "infill" unknowns from databases which are limited in coverage. Huge questions were left out, afterall an increase in extreme weather events IS a testable hypothesis, we have shed loads of meteorological re-analysis data at our disposal.
That said, it was a small step in the right direction to having a "grown up conversation". Maybe that is what Tamsin had in mind?

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:29 PM | Unregistered Commenterfernfreak

Lost opportunity costs compound. We've already significantly impoverished our descendants by this descent into the madness of the herd which is the extraordinary popular delusion of catastrophe.

We've gained mightily by the last two degrees of warming. We'll gain mightily by the next two degrees of warming. A warmer world sustains greater total life and greater diversity of life.

And I haven't yet mentioned the vast, universal, benefit of the greening of our earth from AnthroCO2.

It seems all we have to fear is fear itself. That applies to some other long forgotten far off thing. A battle long ago.
=======================

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:31 PM | Unregistered Commenterkim

"This entire argument of degrees of temperature rise and fall would be wiped out in a heartbeat if these suckers were online everywhere."

How so? Would the natural processes that have been behind historical climate changes stop in wonder?

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:32 PM | Unregistered Commenternot banned yet

OK, Daimon, thanks for the frank conversation, but please no more labeling as 'pollution' the vast benefice to the whole earth that is AnthroCO2.

Wait'll you run across the people who believe the whole CAGW thing was thought up by the pro-Nuke forces.
==================

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:35 PM | Unregistered Commenterkim

It has obviously been agreed, that something very important must be decided in Paris. Opposition must be neutralised in advance, like a military assault.

Does anybody know what it is yet?

Or do computer models indicate an unexpected declining belief in the science, amongst world leaders?

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:38 PM | Unregistered CommenterGolf Charlie

I agree with most here. The various other magic numbers like the 2 deg C temperature rise and the 95% certainty were just asserted - as they have to be because there is no science behind them.

My main takeaway was the mention of Daniel Krige, just after the 19:10 time point, whom it described as a mining engineer who used some spatial statistics.

This mining engineer's statistics are, it seems, quite useful to climate scientists. I did wonder if anything like that could ever happen again?

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:39 PM | Unregistered Commentergraphicconception

Also, your 3:26 'It does not cost that'. That assertion depends entirely upon the climate sensitivity to CO2, which despite a half century of research, is not even close to being nailed down.

The higher the sensitivity of climate to CO2 the colder we would now be without man's effort. You'd better hope that the recovery from the coldest depths of the Holocene is predominantly from natural causes, 'cuz if man is doing the heavy lifting of warming, we can't keep it up much longer.

The higher the sensitivity, the lower the cost of mitigation. The lower the sensitivity, the higher the cost of mitigation.

Do you see where you are going?
===============

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:45 PM | Unregistered Commenterkim

Daimon (3:26 PM)-
"Why would we not go down this [LFTR] route?"
I would be very happy to see this become the path of future energy generation. I understand, though, that is has not yet been demonstrated at industrial scale, and there remain technical hurdles to be overcome. While development continues, it can't be considered yet as a replacement. So those who feel that we must take immediate action are left with unreasonably expensive alternatives.

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:46 PM | Registered CommenterHaroldW

Tiny CO2 @ 3:25 remembers that a wolf did come, the village flock was devastated, because of a false alarm.
=============

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:51 PM | Unregistered Commenterkim

I thought the programme was rather sloppy.

It goes without saying that a sceptic statistician was never going to get on BBC but even so I expected at least an attempt to deal with the several large elephants filling the room.

For example historical evidence has always shown CO2 lagging temperature rise and fall; not causing it.

The programme started with a statistician saying the temperature in the wooden bucket was 15.129 C which she rounded off to 15.1C........ fine!

Then in the canvas bucket the thermometer showed temperature rising to 15.054C and possibly beyond.
Well rounded off that is still 15.1C.......what kind of statistician does not know how to round off to three significant figures?

The rest of the programme continued on, plugging the usual doom and gloom.

At 11.30am today in my car on Radio 4 the BBC continued in the same theme.

This time it was the presenter explaining why sea defences were pointless in view of climate change and added that as a bonus birds would thrive in the new salt marshes created out of doomed agricultural land


Expect much more of the same in the lead up to the crucial Paris conference!

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:55 PM | Unregistered CommenterBryan

fernfreak, the programme did not talk about uncertainty.
None of the numbers was the uncertainty in the anticipated warming or the climate sensitivity.

Indeed, it claimed that better computers will reduce uncertainty by adding smaller grid cells. Yet the uncertainty in the climate sensitivity hasn't changed in thirty years - computers have got better though.

It can't be "fair" and "disingenuous".
And it wasn't "fair".

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:56 PM | Unregistered CommenterMCourtney

OK, Daimon, I really ought to give you more than 15 minutes to see where you are going, because the landscape is befogged and I haven't illuminated it much. But I have to say this before I lose my own way. Odds are, and this is math without numbers, that where you are going is to spend tons and tons of money on trying to stop the only thing between us and glaciation.

Guides, I know good guides at the next stop.
=======================

Mar 3, 2015 at 4:00 PM | Unregistered Commenterkim

Favorite Episode of Discovery Channel Mybusters was where they reenacted the final scene from Jaws and built a 25 foot latex shark and put a full scuba tank in its mouth and remotely fired Roy Scnielder,s actual original bolt action rifle from the film at its base to see if the actual scuba tank would explode.Unfortunately it didn't, it shot out and flew around like a balloon inside the re,enforced steel container until it ran out of oxygen.

So the BBC had a stab at trying to prove Climate Change statistically, amazing what you can hide with averaging.

So let the Beeb prove Climate Change experimentally ,hold a ton of CO2 in a self contained vessel and fire a laser at it and see how much heat it traps.Finally prove the Thermal Properties of CO2.
Then do the maths.

PS To get the actual Scuba tank to explode and kill Jaws Adam and Jamie had to detonate it with half a pound of C4.

Climate Change started as an Urban Myth,don't muck around with the figures (unreliable or (un)intentionally corrupted) either prove it or bust it.

Mar 3, 2015 at 4:06 PM | Unregistered Commenterjamspid

Now the mysts are deep. Neither the south Asian subcontinent nor the middle kingdom glaciate, but it seems the wall between them does. That augers for peace.
===============

Mar 3, 2015 at 4:15 PM | Unregistered Commenterkim

"Odd that you are here, today ATTP; showing up to console poor Daimon with more falsehoods and fabrications."

Poor old Ken is trying to attract the attention of SkS who seem oblivious to his blandishments. It's a shame.

Am I the only one who thinks Damien hasn't really studied this thing?

Mar 3, 2015 at 4:32 PM | Registered Commentergeronimo

At least the bbc allowed them to say climate science was 'controversial'. Normally any hint that the science is not settled is banned by the biased bbc.

Mar 3, 2015 at 4:34 PM | Unregistered CommenterPolytropic

Geronimo, That thought never occurred to me.

If you believe AGW is the problem it is made out to be then it's the end of the world. Surely you would study it, in that case.

I can't see how anyone can be disinterested in this and yet passionate enough to engage with a blog.

Mar 3, 2015 at 4:40 PM | Unregistered CommenterMCourtney

geronimo, using a ventriloquists dummy known as Dana, proved logistically difficult for Mann given the different time zones. People whose working lives revolve around a university lfestyle, zone their time differently, but still think it is Nobel science worthy work.

Mar 3, 2015 at 4:50 PM | Unregistered CommenterGolf Charlie

That nonsense at the beginning about adjustments of hundredths of a degree for old canvas buckets versus old wooden buckets was a laugh. How accurate were these ancient thermometers anyway? What depth did they drop their buckets? Why should ships' cooling water intakes be a higher temp than an old bucket? Talk about fiddling the data to give the desired outcome.

Mar 3, 2015 at 4:51 PM | Unregistered CommenterPolytropic

@Robin - If they invested in this as an example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power

@Kim - You are suggesting that we have gained and will gain from continued Global Warming. I'm intrigued as to why we don't all live on Venus if that is the case. I cannot take the blog or comments seriously any longer. I fear my efforts are wasted.
Yet it has been enlightening. Thank you all.

Mar 3, 2015 at 5:20 PM | Unregistered CommenterDaimon Walker

Hey, Daimon, stop tweeting pictures of polar bears cuddling on an ice floe if you want to be taken seriously.

Mar 3, 2015 at 5:30 PM | Unregistered CommenterBilly Liar

Geronimo: "Am I the only one who thinks Damien hasn't really studied this thing?"

Oh he has, Geronimo, he has. What he has also studied is how to deflect a blog post; how to send it off topic. The guy is now being groomed by ATTP, ffs. It's probably Dana in drag.

I always feel a little edgy when commenters come on a blog claiming not to know too much and wanting the rest of us to 'teach them'. The guy's a Doofus.

Mar 3, 2015 at 5:30 PM | Unregistered CommenterHarry Passfield

@ Daimon - Bye, and enjoy the Holocene while it lasts.

http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/vostok.png.

Mar 3, 2015 at 5:32 PM | Registered Commenterlapogus

It has obviously been agreed, that something very important must be decided in Paris. Opposition must be neutralised in advance, like a military assault.

Does anybody know what it is yet?

Mar 3, 2015 at 3:38 PM | Golf Charlie

***************************************************

They will undoubtedly have some serious objectives in mind, but surely number 1 is simply to secure what can at least be presented as a 'meaningful' agreement? After Copenhagen they cannot fail this time around, even though they're already effectively doomed by India and China's refusal to play ball.

They will not hesitate to cheat and lie to secure whatever advantages they can. We can look forward Climate Propaganda Central from now until Paris.

Mar 3, 2015 at 5:37 PM | Unregistered Commentercheshirered

Daimon Walker ‏@daiwalker Good premise #zombieapocolypse world could do with a good plague.

2:10 pm - 15 Feb 2015

https://twitter.com/daiwalker/status/567083581777117185

Mar 3, 2015 at 5:38 PM | Unregistered CommenterBilly Liar

Daimon - "the rate at which the temperature change has occurred, or rather IS occurring, is a worry."

I hadn't noticed. When was that?

Mar 3, 2015 at 5:39 PM | Registered Commenterdennisa

Polytropic, in Climate Science, you have to understand that the sophistication of modern thermometers allows correct temperatures to be read in the past, more accurately than those thermometers used at the time.

If you do not believe this, it is because you have no faith in climate science.

NASA/GODDARD have yet to register a patent for their thermometer carrying time machine, but with the Space Shuttle abandoned, it is good to know they have found something useful to do, rather than sit around, reorganising their (temperature) record collection.

Mar 3, 2015 at 5:43 PM | Unregistered CommenterGolf Charlie

Daimon Walker, so you'll be forming the 50% club? No need to wait for us, we'll catch up later eh? Or like every other believer, you'll find a million and one reasons why you can't start until the sceptics stop being silly?

Mar 3, 2015 at 5:48 PM | Unregistered CommenterTinyCO2

Come on ATTP et al, tell me why you can't start without us?

Mar 3, 2015 at 5:58 PM | Unregistered CommenterTinyCO2

cheshirered, the cuisine in Paris has a good reputation. I can appreciate the menu choice was complicated, by having a vegetarian Chair of the IPCC, and I am not sure if that issue will change in the light of recent developments.

There is such a lot of activity, at the Beeb, in the media, even on this site. The alarmists are preparing for a major push. What is it?

The climate has not deigned to meet any of its predetermined targets, so public opinion must change instead?

Mar 3, 2015 at 6:01 PM | Unregistered CommenterGolf Charlie

Polytropic

I put up a discussion thread about this a while ago. John Kennedy of the Met Office was kind enough to point me to some papers. After sitting through them and tracing back to experiments it seems that the adjustment only used cursory characterisation. They didn't exhaustively test out the process.

As a scientific paper there's nothing wrong with it. As a basis for a verified and policy data set it's nowhere near good enough. And therein lies the rub. Climate scientists are being asked to provide policy ready data (or data that can be used safely) but they don't have the experience to provide this. And they haven't appeared to have grasped the ethical considerations of their endeavours.

Mar 3, 2015 at 6:03 PM | Unregistered CommenterMicky H Corbett

dennisa, perhaps Daimon is being confused by the rapid changing of historic temperature records. I know I am, but I am not a Climate Scientist. It must make sense to them.

Mar 3, 2015 at 6:10 PM | Unregistered CommenterGolf Charlie

I didn't watch it, but it seems bucket temperatures were mentioned: Call in oceanographer Dr Stevenson, (who unfortunately died in 2002)

"Yes, the Ocean Has Warmed; No, It's Not "Global Warming" by Dr. Robert E. Stevenson
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/ocean.html

Sources of 20th Century Ocean Temperatures
"I learned to deploy Nansen water bottles and reversing thermometers for deep-sea sampling in 1949. I spent the rest of the subsequent decade seagoing, for the most. I can't remember how many bottle casts I made, or how many bathythermographs I deployed. There had to be thousands in the waters off coastal California. Other students and post-docs were doing the same farther offshore in the eastern Pacific, from the E.W. Scripps. In the westernmost Atlantic, a similar cadre worked from the Atlantis.

Surface water samples were taken routinely, however, with buckets from the deck and the ship's engine-water intake valve. Most of the thermometers were calibrated into 1/4-degrees Fahrenheit. They came from the U.S. Navy. Galvanized iron buckets were preferred, mainly because they lasted longer than the wood and canvas. But, they had the disadvantage of cooling quickly in the winds, so that the temperature readings needed to be taken quickly. I would guess that any bucket-temperature measurement that was closer to the actual temperature by better than 0.5° was an accident, or a good guess. But then, no one ever knew whether or not it was good or bad.

Everyone always considered whatever reading was made to be precise, and they still do today. The archived data used by Levitus, and a plethora of other oceanographers, were taken by me, and a whole cadre of students, post-docs, and seagoing technicians around the world. Those of us who obtained the data, are not going to be snowed by the claims of the great precision of historical data found stored in some musty archives."

I also see Chris Huhne's name mentioned. As Ed Davey's predecessor at DECC, he was an initial member of Ban Ki Moon's HIGH LEVEL CLIMATE FINANCE PANEL, with Stern, Lagarde, Soros et al, aiming to garner $100billion a year by 2020 from western taxpayers via a "carbon" tax.

At that time, probably still does, he owned seven houses—five that he purchased just as investments and that he makes money on as rental properties and two in which he lives. (One in Eastleigh, his constituency, and a town house in Clapham, south London). His wealth was estimated as £3.5 million.

In 2006 he responded to WWF and Greenpeace praise for the Liberal-Democrat policies on climate, saying: “It is great to gain endorsements from the WWF and Greenpeace. The Liberal Democrats are honest enough to accept that individual behaviour must change in order to halt climate change. We are the only party campaigning for an increase in environmental tax, while allowing other taxes to fall, to bring about this change.”

In February 2008, Huhne, as an opposition spokesman, went to Brazil, to attend the GLOBE G8+5 legislator’s forum. This is the body that is affiliated to the Club of Rome and seeks to by-pass the UNFCC Conferences of the Parties and national parliaments and legislative bodies. Lord Deben is now honorary President, having previously been President.

GLOBE’s vision is to "create a critical mass of legislators within each of the parliaments of the major economies that can agree common legislative responses to the major global environmental challenges and demonstrate to leaders that there is cross-party support for more ambitious action." So much for Democracy.

In September 2008, Huhne went to Beijing to attend the second “UK-China Leadership of the Future Forum.” The visit was arranged and paid for by the UK-China Forum with sponsorship from Barclays Capital, BP and Rolls-Royce, and the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party.

After his brush with the law, it seems he is now being rehabilitated in the Public mind.

Mar 3, 2015 at 6:13 PM | Registered Commenterdennisa

For those who don't to want to watch the whole thing, there is a brief synopsis and critique here.

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/the-bbcs-climate-change-by-numbers/

Mar 3, 2015 at 6:29 PM | Unregistered CommenterPaul Homewood

I will only watch the programme if you promise me there will be Gregorian chant.

Mar 3, 2015 at 6:43 PM | Unregistered Commenterjorgekafkazar

Thank's Paul, I still haven't got beyond the opening scenes but already I could see that they were only telling selected bits of the story. After all, anyone who chooses those specific numbers has to have an agenda from the start.

The first thing that struck me was the suggestion they have masses of data. In reality they have only a tiny amount given the complexity of the issue. They've never measured a full warming and cooling cycle or even the full roll of ocean phases. Climate science is plagued by 'near enough' data.

Mar 3, 2015 at 6:45 PM | Unregistered CommenterTinyCO2

Daimon (5:20 PM): yes, there's a lot to be said for governments investing in fusion power. Especially if, as you seem to propose, they released funds for it by abandoning their support for current "renewables". But there are (at least) two problems: (1) if successful (and it may not be), it would probably take decades to come to fruition; and (2) it would be bitterly opposed by many "greens" (also bitterly opposing your plans to abandon of current "renewables") - causing yet further delays. So, if your worst fears about AGW are well founded, your solution is hardly likely to be available in time to avert disaster.

But there's a much more fundamental difficulty. It's been shown that, if atmospheric CO2 is to be stabilised to the extent necessary to avoid a possible AGW disaster, more than 90% of energy consumed by Mankind must come from carbon-free sources - and the sooner, the better. Today such sources account for only about 13% of energy (mainly hydro and nuclear). But it's been calculated that, if that 90%+ is to be achieved by 2050, we (Mankind) must deploy an average nuclear power plant (or equivalent carbon-free source - say 1,000 2.5 MW wind turbines) every day from now (i.e. not when your fusion solution is available) until 2050 - while decommissioning the fossil fuel based equivalent. Do you think that's even remotely likely?

I don't - especially when you remember that the developing economies, responsible for about 67% of global emissions, seem likely to continue to increase those emissions for many years (see my post at 3:17 PM). As I said before, our best hope must be that the sceptics are right.

Mar 3, 2015 at 6:48 PM | Registered CommenterRobin Guenier

Wow, what a lame effort by Daimon to "understand" and "engage"... Are all these precautionary principle people so uninformed?

Mar 3, 2015 at 6:54 PM | Unregistered CommenterWijnand

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