Dung,

> However the Bishop Hill regulars include highly qualified
> Chemists, Engineers, Physicists, and Mathematicians (and
> probably some I have forgotten!). As a group they are
> highly intelligent people who have read a great deal and
> have a good grasp of the whole subject.

Your claim for authority on behalf of your Chemists, Engineers, Physicists, and Mathematicians misses the fact that each of those fields is so wide that even your supposed authorities are unlikely to know very much in detail about climate science. Ask an actuary to judge different methods of data homogenisation and he's likely as not got nothing expert to offer. Ask an electrical transmission engineer to judge the quality of a high speed digital or sensitive analogue circuit and he'll probably give you nothing but generalities. Your authorities may or may not have been expert in their narrow fields at some time but that doesn't mean they hold the keys to climate science and more than it makes a sushi chef an expert at flipping burgers. You are relying on the authority of non-authorities.

> Where do you fit in Chandra?

Like I said, maybe before you joined, I don't claim expert knowledge.

Martin A,

> And any fule kno that, to home on the hot tailpipe of a
> jet engine, you don't need measurements (still less
> 'calculations') of gaseous emission spectra.

I read that missiles home in on more than just tailpipe emissions and use knowledge of emission spectra to counter contermeasures. So I'd expect engineers trying to track infrared from a target 50km distant would want to have a detailed knowledge of how the air between them and the target was going to transmit and distort the IR and the nature of the emissions from the target from all angles.

But I'm not an expert engineer like you, so how should I know?

OK Chandra

I've never responded directly to you in these threads before but I will try with this one.

I can accept that you have a stance based on your belief of AGW and that is just fine, really it is, the world I hope will never become monochrome!. As with many things there will be an ideological foundation to the belief (me too before you fire that one back at me). You will have read my comments many times before and will know my position (by the way, I am also motivated to comment to you by the new chap maestra as I wish him/her to see how interactions differ between the two camps given his/her equivocal stance). The purpose of a debate is actually to influence those observing..People often miss that one...

Like you I am not, in any way whatsoever, in a climate-science related field (my area is medical) so (like you) I cannot offer an authoritative opinion, just one based on a "feel" (if you like). But I do have a very good grasp of whether a scientific argument is consistent or not. Also as to whether an argument is scientific to begin with. So now I'm contradicting myself because I state that I have a belief which has little place in scientific analysis. That's ok though.

I most certainly am not in the practice of the ad-hominem at all (in fact, I view the different and opposing view as one requiring education not a form of abuse..please note, a form only). If the opposing argument makes more sense I will very rapidly shift and not cling to an old paradigm. This is as it should be.

A question I suppose after all this pontificating.

Chandra.

Is there ANY aspect of the entire climate issue over the years that has made you go " Hmm, that's not right at all, I'll check other sources including those going against my current viewpoint"?.

Anything at all? If so, would you mind telling me what that changed view was about? I will not attempt to make any political capital out of such change of view. I will promise that (not that any promise on a forum like this means much of course...but it is offered sincerely...but then how can you know?.....ah well...)

Would you subscribe to the notion that a dissenting view should be suppressed?

I'm trying to engender a flexibility of thought here.

You will note that I don't say that what I think is immutably correct for all time. I may actually be very wrong indeed.

I just don't believe so.

I haven't got into the whole providing citations thing you notice, that's been done all far too often between unqualified people who usually won't understand the physics and statistics anyway.

I'm getting at the broader philosophy of faith/belief and the like.

Anyway Chandra, I suspect you are a perfectly reasonable human being just trying to get along and I certainly don't harbour any ill-will towards you. I'm just chatting with you. It's fair that you challenge. Please cut out the snide remarks (even if others are snide to you......it's a good skill to possess, honest).

I do not think of you as a warmist.....can you return that respect please?

I've prattled enough.

Cheers mate (er....are you a bloke?)........sorry, not sure.

Andy

Chandra

Most of the time when you argue on this blog, (I am all in favour of polite and rational argument) but you very rarely provide relevant references to your position.

As it happens I am a qualified meteorologist, worked for the UKMO for many years, was a senior forecaster for a private weather company and have a related private weather impact research business and was elected a fellow of RMetS many years ago. Does that qualify my comments?

We have accurately (that's relative) recorded weather for a very very short period of time of the Earth's existence. Analysis using proxy data (ice-core, paleo etc), whilst useful, shouldn't be seen as exact. There is doubt in temperature assimilation using these methods whether it is carbon decay in ice cores or accuracy of tree-ring growth. Measuring temperature history which involves photosynthesising organisms is never going to be totally accurate as there are many other factors, such as CO2/water vapour balance, wet/dry balance, high/low photon balance and nutrients which affect growth. It isn't just temperature, a high temperature with no/low photon count equals no growth!

I have doubt about temperature accuracy in respect to UHI and other adjustments made to raw data. I am very sceptical of global gridded temperature anomalies and the accuracy thereof.

I don't understand why all climate models are bias to the effect of CO2. Yet for 17 years they all run much warmer than observations. Over the last 17-21 years the relationship between CO2 and temperature rise has become statistically insignificant - so there must be other more important factors which caused the warming. Since records began (1659 CET) we have been recovering from the LIA, so not surprising temperature has been rising, also not surprising that recent (since 2000) temperatures have been the warmest on record. On that record by the way the temperature has only risen 0.80 Deg C in 354 years.

I don't understand why CO2 is regarded as BAD, it is vital for life and only dangerous to humans and most other flora and fauna in excess of >5000ppm a long way from the 0.04% of GHG we have today

When I hear about the wettest/driest, hottest/coldest on record it is quite meaningless in terms of climate because of our poor knowledge of the past and our record being so small.

I am concerned about the peer review and funding processes, statistical analysis and quality of research nowadays, relating to climate change. I have read quite a few papers recently about the effect of climate on birds, butterflies, and seals connecting the changes in their habits (mostly declines in populations) due to global warming and changing climate. Considering these papers are covering periods of research within the last 20 years, the problem is, in the UK where the research covers, the temperature trend has been downward for 21 years. They really do not understand the effect of weather, but get published having been peer reviewed.

I have many other concerns about the political decisions being made on the basis of what is not a settled science (it has a very long way to go to gain a very good understanding), and with no consensus (there is plenty doubt).

Rambled enough, but you get the idea, as a scientist I am sceptical.

Jones,

> Is there ANY aspect of the entire climate issue over the
years that has made you go " Hmm, that's not right at all,
I'll check other sources including those going against my
current viewpoint"?.

I have only become interested in climate relatively recently, but yes my interest was piqued when I read something that contradicted some basic climate science. So I read various websites that shared that view and various that didn't. And as with many other things I have looked at since, it all turned out to be 100 times more complicated than what I had ever read or imagined.

> Would you subscribe to the notion that a dissenting view
should be suppressed?

No, why should I?

NeilC,

> ...Does that qualify my comments?

Qualify in the sense of making them more authoritative? Various people here promote their own or the site's apparent authority, quoting experience in varied fields none of which is directly climate-science related. Your claim to authority maybe comes closer than some, but I'm not aware of expertise in weather forecasting necessarily implying expertise in climate science, as opposed tojust in weather forecasting.

Attempts at argument from authority on this site are ironic. There are many scientists who have real authority in climate science, James Hansen, Gavin Schmidt, Richard Betts to name just three familiar names from a field of thousands. Yet people here dismiss what they say for their preferred authorities, people like Montford and Delingpole.

As I said earlier, people pretend they are making up their own minds about climate science when all they are really doing is choosing a preferred set of (false) authorities.

> Analysis using proxy data (ice-core, paleo etc), whilst
useful, shouldn't be seen as exact.

Where has anyone who knows about these things claimed exactitude?

> I have doubt about temperature accuracy in respect to UHI
and other adjustments made to raw data. I am very
sceptical of global gridded temperature anomalies and the
accuracy thereof.

Well, yes, I imagine everyone is, that is why people try to improve them (eg C&W13 improving HadCRUT4). Currently they are the best we have. What would you prefer, nothing at all?

> Over the last 17-21 years the relationship between CO2 and
temperature rise has become statistically insignificant -
so there must be other more important factors which caused
the warming.

Non-sequitur.

> Since records began (1659 CET) we have been recovering
from the LIA, ...

You're quite sure of that? You are "very sceptical of global gridded temperature anomalies", despite its base in modern technology, but you're quite sure that the LIA was a global phenomenon. That is the thing about so many skeptics - their skepticism only applies to things that disagree with their biases - on anything else they are credulous.

> When I hear about the wettest/driest, hottest/coldest on
record it is quite meaningless in terms of climate because
of our poor knowledge of the past and our record being so
small.

Meaningless, really? What would be a meaningful event in your mind?

> I am concerned about the peer review and funding
processes, statistical analysis and quality of research
nowadays, relating to climate change.

From personal experience at the Met Office or from blog gossip?

> I have read quite a few papers recently about the effect
of climate on birds, butterflies, and seals connecting the
changes in their habits (mostly declines in populations)
due to global warming and changing climate. Considering
these papers are covering periods of research within the
last 20 years, the problem is, in the UK where the
research covers, the temperature trend has been downward
for 21 years. They really do not understand the effect of
weather, but get published having been peer reviewed.

Bird and butterfly distributions vary greatly with species so a country-wide temperature index might not be appropriate. Can you supply some references, it sounds interesting. But downward for 21 years? That is not obvious from HadCET, are you using another index? And seals don't live in central England, so which sea/coastal temp index are you using there?

Martin A

> You do seem to have a tendency to assume that everybody
(except for the posters on SkS) has a level of ignorance to
match or even exceed yours.

I'm well aware that you personally know more than I could ever hope to in your field. But there are many here who know no more than I, but pass thmselves off as some sort of experts using what they just found out on Wiki of wherever. I make it clear when I just learnt something, but I get the feeling you would be more comfortable if I pretended just like others.

> EM was talking about the 1st generation heat seakers
developed in the 1950's where "what you read" is as
irrelevant as it possibly could be. Those missiles did not
even have cooling for their IR detectors. They were short
range and homed onto hot solid objects.

So there was just one type of IR detector, which they wired up to some amplifiers and actuators, stuck a rocket, a bomb and a fuse in it and they had a Sidewinder. Maybe that was how it went, I'm sure things were primitive.

But I have a hard time thinking that when it didn't work so well they didn't start measuring emission spectra and sensor sensitivities and try to match the two.

Martin A,

You missed part of your own input in your potted history:

> And any fule kno that, to home on the hot tailpipe of a
> jet engine, you don't need measurements (still less
> 'calculations') of gaseous emission spectra.

I replied to this comment and as far as I am aware, what I said was not wrong, even if it has little bearing on EM's initial comment.

Emission spectra of black bodies may well have be known from Plank's law. And if the target jet engine temperature profile in flight was well known and if a jet engine in the atmosphere is a good appromimation for a "black body" (no, I don't have a detailed grasp of what that means), then I stand corrected. There was indeed no need for measurement when developing Sidewinder. My bet, all the same, is that they measured the hell out of it.

Shub, I'm pretty sure that maestra2014 (little m) was geronimo (little g) playing games. I'm also inclined to think as Maestra2014 (big M) hasn't once answered anyone's questions or given any sort of feedback on what she has been told that she is a psychological researcher or some such. How else to explain my singlular lack of success in pointing out reality?

Martin A

This is the descendant of the early IR spectrum work.

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/hitran/

To quote from the HITRAN website.

"The database is a long-running project started by the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories (AFCRL) in the late 1960's in response to the need for detailed knowledge of the infrared properties of the atmosphere. "

The first generation of missiles homed on the 4.5 micrometre radiation from hot CO2 in the jet exhaust, but were too easy to fool, so they looked at other possibilities.

Perhaps you remember this data. It is partly accessible now, but was probably classified when you worked in the field.

Shub, I'm still here. No harm, no foul!

How delightful to see that now I am being accused of not actually existing, but in being a figment of geronimo's creative writing exercise. If such were true, i wish he would have made me appear more clever and with a stronger background in engineering! I give him credit, though, in choosing to make me American and thus remembering to omit the "u" in some of the words I choose to write (color, harbor, etc.) and in my syntax.

I see now that the level of outright paranoia displayed by Chandra is undeniable. I'm a psychological researcher? Nope. Do I get to choose a pretend career for myself, rather than being assigned one? If so, I choose to be Wonder Woman. That way, I can conduct my very important psychological research from the comfort and safety of my invisible jet.

Which would you go for if you were me? (tailpipe or exhaust plume?)

Hia Chandra

Sorry for the laaate response. I (believe it or not!) have a real life to manage as well as have a bit of a chat on fora like these..

Thank you for that, very reasonable responses.

We both have our views and as with all things time will tell which of us is wrong (because it may be me as I said above). It will make the future intersesting either way I guess.

Thank you for your view that you wouldn't suppress dissenting climate views. I suspect many would however with some advocating violence to do so but that's not you Chandra, I recognise that and say so without artifice.

I genuinely would engage with you via private correspondence if you would like? But completely understand if you'd rather not. The anonymity of the internet does offer a good comfort zone and that's ok.

See you around Chandra no doubt and I'll will only ever be civil with you.

See yer.....