Incredible simply means that somebody is not persuaded that they should vest belief in something. In this case the something rejected is apparently not a hypothesis or the predictions made by a hypothesis, but rather the underlying data. Rejecting data is always stupid and when done on the grounds that it conflicts with your beliefs, a logical fallacy, cherry picking.
CO2 (and other atmospheric component) source tracing has become a very accurate science due to our development of the ability to identify the precise source of release of most gasses irrespective of where they are found. We are also in possession of very high resolution satellite based computer assisted plant species analysis allowing very narrow identification (20m quadrants) of global anthropogenic changes in land use and this has been used very effectively in measuring human contributions to CO2 due to land clearing and concrete use. This has allowed us to determine that e.g. clearing swamps and jungle in Asia to plant coconut to produce biodiesel for Europe releases between 300 and 400 years worth of potential CO2 savings through fossil fuel substitution in one year. As this matches predictions and is a highly subsidized activity which has occurred on a vast scale in the past two decades, I find the measured rise in anthropogenic CO2 data highly persuasive.
The UK is a major beneficiary of the gulf stream - meaning that the local weather is highly dependent on ocean current conditions. This is not dependent on global temperatures, which are driven by greenhouse gases and fundamental physics.
Given that we have satellites which monitor re-radiation into space and so determine the balance of the equations at http://www.atmos.washington.edu/2001Q4 previously discussed, which show, without a scintilla of space for confusion, why any arguments against CO2 forcing are a bizarre denial of fundamental physics. As previously shown*, satellite data shows that the planet continues to reduce radiation in the spectra which prove CO2 forcing at a rate greater than can be explained by the reduction in solar radiation (ie the Earth is still unambiguously warming despite the sun's unambiguous cooling or any local perturbation).
As always ground stations monitor local temperatures which are influenced by a vast number of complex factors and temperatures rise and fall in ways we are becoming better but far from perfect at predicting and local temperature measurements remain a complex science. Confusing local perturbation for global trends might be common but it remains incorrect.
This figure compares the global average surface temperature record, as compiled by Jones and Moberg (2003; data set TaveGL2v with 2009 updates), to the microwave sounder (MSU) satellite data of lower atmospheric temperatures determined by Christy et al. (UAH 2003; data set tltglhmam version 5.2 with 2009 updates) and Schabel et al. (RSS 2002; data set tlt_land_and_ocean with 2009 updates). These two satellite records reflect two different ways of interpreting the same set of microwave sounder measurements and are not independent records. Each record is plotted as the monthly average and straight lines are fit through each data set from January 1982 to December 2009. The slope of these lines are 0.187°C/decade, 0.163°C/decade, and 0.239°C/decade for the surface, UAH, and RSS respectively.
It is important to know that the 5.2 version of Christy et al.'s satellite temperature record contains a significant correction over previous versions. In summer 2005, Mears and Wentz (2005) discovered that the UAH processing algorithms were incorrectly adjusting for diurnal variations, especially at low latitude. This correction raised the trend line 0.035°C/decade, and in so doing brought it into much better agreement with the ground based records and with independent satellite based analysis (e.g. Fu et al. 2004). The discovery of this error also explains why their satellite based temperature trends had disagreed most prominently in the tropics.
Within measurement error, all of these records paint a similar picture of temperature change and global warming. However, climate models predict carbon dioxide based greenhouse warming should result in lower atmosphere warming roughly 1.3 times higher than the surface warming. This prediction is consistent with the RSS vs. surface comparison, though by contrast the UAH vs. surface comparison suggests a troposphere warming by slightly less than the surface of the Earth.
Note: In the above figure, there is still a significant discrepancy between the very earliest satellite measurements and the ground based measurements at that time. For this reason only the interval 1982-2005 was used in calculating each trend. Including the earliest years leads to a wider dispersion , with trends of 0.170°C/decade, 0.116°C/decade, and 0.192°C/decade for the surface, UAH, and RSS data respectively. The origin of this discrepancy is unclear.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Keeping in mind the hypothesis that an increase in CO2 drives and increase in temperature. (a) 40% increase in co2 since 1990, yet (b) a levelling off of temperature since 1998. Now, I am not asserting that the hypothesis is wrong, only that the associated scare-mongering is not justified. But, human nature and all that, we do love our stories of the apocalypse.
And to clarify, when the head of the Met Office refered to a "levelling off of observed temperature" he was talking global, and not regional as Hermits post insinuates.
With that last fact in place, perhaps someone should forward the graph Hermit used to the head of the Met Office.
Lastly, FYI, the Met Office and CRU no longer reference the Jones & Moberg 2003 paper in their datasets (refer: Temp Data).
I have no idea what people are saying unless I can see a quote in context (link) allowing me to attempt to evaluate source cherrypicking or they say it here. In this case my response was to the assertion: Quote:
thing is, over here on the 6th Jan 2010 the head of the Met Office stated on Daily Politics that they predicted the levelling off of warming observed after 1998 due to natural effect of El Nino and La Nina*.
which is a central and eastern tropical pacific effect having reasonably well understood effects on weather in various regions, but not necessarily (and certainly not measurably) on the Earth-Space heat exchange.
As for the underlying assertion that the world is cooling that you keep repeating, your data appears to be coming from an alternative Universe. Not only is it not apparently supported by the source you prefer to cite, but it contradicts various other sources too. Refer below. Global Surface Temperature Was Second Warmest For September
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the second warmest September on record, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Based on records going back to 1880, the monthly National Climatic Data Center analysis is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides.
NCDC scientists also reported that the average land surface temperature for September was the second warmest on record, behind 2005. Additionally, the global ocean surface temperature was tied for the fifth warmest on record for September.
Global Temperature Highlights
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 1.12 degrees F above the 20th century average of 59.0 degrees F. Separately the global land surface temperature was 1.75 degrees F above the 20th century average of 53.6 degrees F.
Warmer-than-average temperatures engulfed most of the world’s land areas during the month. The greatest warmth occurred across Canada and the northern and western contiguous United States. Warmer-than-normal conditions also prevailed across Europe, most of Asia and Australia.
The worldwide ocean temperature tied with 2004 as the fifth warmest September on record, 0.90 degree F above the 20th century average of 61.1 degrees F. The near-Antarctic southern ocean and the Gulf of Alaska featured notable cooler-than-average temperatures.
Other Highlights
Arctic sea ice covered an average 2.1 million square miles in September - the third lowest for any September since records began in 1979. The coverage was 23.8 percent below the 1979-2000 average, and the 13th consecutive September with below-average Arctic sea ice extent.
Antarctic sea ice extent in September was 2.2 percent above the 1979-2000 average. This was the third largest September extent on record, behind 2006 and 2007.
Typhoon Ketsana became 2009’s second-deadliest tropical cyclone so far, claiming nearly 500 lives across the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. The storm struck the Philippines on September 26, leaving 80 percent of Manila submerged. 2008 Global Temperature Ties As Eighth Warmest On Record
ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2009) — The year 2008 tied with 2001 as the eighth warmest year on record for the Earth, based on the combined average of worldwide land and ocean surface temperatures through December, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. For December alone, the month also ranked as the eighth warmest globally, for the combined land and ocean surface temperature. The assessment is based on records dating back to 1880.
The analyses in NCDC’s global reports are based on preliminary data, which are subject to revision. Additional quality control is applied to the data when late reports are received several weeks after the end of the month and as increased scientific methods improve NCDC’s processing algorithms.
NCDC’s ranking of 2008 as the eighth warmest year compares to a ranking of ninth warmest based on an analysis by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The NOAA and NASA analyses differ slightly in methodology, but both use data from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center – the federal government's official source for climate data.
Global Temperature Highlights – 2008
* The combined global land and ocean surface temperature from January-December was 0.88 degree F (0.49 degree C) above the 20th Century average of 57.0 degrees F (13.9 degrees C). Since 1880, the annual combined global land and ocean surface temperature has increased at a rate of 0.09 degree F (0.05 degree C) per decade. This rate has increased to 0.29 degree F (0.16 degree C) per decade over the past 30 years. * Separately, the global land surface temperature for 2008, through December, was sixth warmest, with an average temperature 1.46 degrees F (0.81 degree C) above the 20th Century average of 47.3 degrees F (8.5 degrees C). * Also separately, the global ocean surface temperature for 2008, through December, was 0.67 degree F (0.37 degree C) above the 20th Century average of 60.9 degrees F (16.1 degrees C) and ranked tenth warmest.
Global Temperature Highlights – December 2008
* The December combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.86 degree F (0.48 degree C) above the 20th Century average of 54.0 degrees F (12.2 degrees C). * Separately, the December 2008 global land surface temperature was 1.22 degrees F (0.68 degree C) above the 20th Century average of 38.7 degrees F (3.7 degrees C) and ranked 14th warmest. * For December, the global ocean surface temperature was 0.74 degree F (0.41 degree C) above the 20th Century average of 60.4 degrees F (15.7 degrees C) and tied with December 2001 and December 2005 as sixth warmest.
Other Global Highlights for 2008
* The United States recorded a preliminary total of 1,690 tornadoes during 2008, which is well above the 10-year average of 1,270 and ranks as the second highest annual total since reliable records began in 1953. The high number of tornado-related fatalities during the first half of the year made 2008 the 10th deadliest with a 2008 total of 125 deaths. * Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent in December was 16.95 million square miles (43.91 million square kilometers). This was 0.17 million square miles (0.43 million square kilometers) above the 1966-2008 December average. Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent was below average for most of 2008. * Arctic sea ice extent in 2008 reached its second lowest melt season extent on record in September. The minimum of 1.80 million square miles (4.67 million square kilometers) was 0.80 million square miles (2.09 million square kilometers) below the 1979-2000 average minimum extent.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #273 on: 2010-01-31 09:30:43 »
Dr Murari Lal has admitted that the IPCC's claim that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 was not only known to be unverified but that it was nevertheless included "purely to put political pressure on world leaders."
It appears from another report that the EU set up a project to research the 'rapid retreat' of glaciers in the Himalayas based on the bogus IPCC report. Interestingly, EU taxpayers' money that was put into this project has gone to TERI, which is run by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri.
The Telegraph also reports that "the scientist from whom this claim [the 2035 meltdown] originated, Dr Syed Hasnain, has for the past two years been working as a senior employee of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI):
I can report a further dramatic twist to what has inevitably been dubbed "Glaciergate" – the international row surrounding the revelation that the latest report on global warming by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contained a wildly alarmist, unfounded claim about the melting of Himalayan glaciers. Last week, the IPCC, led by its increasingly controversial chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was forced to issue an unprecedented admission: the statement in its 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 had no scientific basis, and its inclusion in the report reflected a "poor application" of IPCC procedures.
What has now come to light, however, is that the scientist from whom this claim originated, Dr Syed Hasnain, has for the past two years been working as a senior employee of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Delhi-based company of which Dr Pachauri is director-general. Furthermore, the claim – now disowned by Dr Pachauri as chairman of the IPCC – has helped TERI to win a substantial share of a $500,000 grant from one of America's leading charities, along with a share in a three million euro research study funded by the EU.
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Climate e-mails row university 'breached data laws'
A university unit involved in a row over stolen e-mails on climate research breached rules by withholding data, the Information Commissioner's Office says.
Officials said messages hacked in November showed that requests under the Freedom of Information Act were "not dealt with as they should have been".
But too much time has passed for action against the University of East Anglia.
The UEA says part of a probe into the case will consider the way requests by climate change sceptics were handled.
The leaked files include documents, detailed data and private e-mails exchanged between leading climate scientists.
But academics deny claims the material showed science had been manipulated.
Professor Phil Jones, who has stood down as director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) while the review takes place, has said he stands by his data and insisted that the emails had been taken "completely out of context".
In a statement, Deputy Information Commissioner Graham Smith said it was an offence under section 77 of the Freedom of Information act "to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information".
He said the requests were made by a climate change sceptic in the 2007-2008 period and as the case was more than six months old "the opportunity to consider a prosecution was long gone" under existing legislation.
'Legal obligations'
Mr Smith said the ICO was "gathering evidence from this and other time-barred cases to support the case for a change in the law".
He added: "We will be advising the university about the importance of effective records management and their legal obligations in respect of future requests for information."
In a statement, Professor Edward Acton, vice-chancellor of UEA commented: "We have not received any further information from the ICO although we are urgently trying to contact them.
"The ICO's opinion that we had breached the terms of Section 77 is a source of grave concern to the university as we would always seek to comply with the terms of the Act.
"During this case we have sought the advice of the ICO and responded fully to any requests for information."
Norfolk Police have launched an inquiry into the emails case.
Meanwhile, former civil servant Sir Muir Russell is heading an independent review to examine whether there is evidence that data was manipulated or suppressed in a way which was "at odds with acceptable scientific practice".
The former chancellor Lord Lawson has called for the CRU inquiry to be conducted in public wherever possible.
Lord Lawson, who is chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation think tank, also said the terms of reference needed to be broadened to cover the external impact of the e-mails.
In a letter to Sir Muir, he referred to e-mails that are alleged to show scientists from UEA conspiring against other researchers.
"As well as taking evidence from those in CRU who wish to clear their names, you should go outside CRU and take evidence from those who feel they or their work have been improperly treated," Lord Lawson wrote.
He added: "The damage to the public interest can be just as much from what was suppressed as from what was incorrectly published."
The UEA said the inquiry would also explore how freedom of information requests had been acted on.
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Scientists in stolen e-mail scandal hid climate data Ben Webster, Environment Editor, and Jonathan Leake
The university at the centre of the climate change row over stolen e-mails broke the law by refusing to hand over its raw data for public scrutiny.
The University of East Anglia breached the Freedom of Information Act by refusing to comply with requests for data concerning claims by its scientists that man-made emissions were causing global warming.
The Information Commissioner’s Office decided that UEA failed in its duties under the Act but said that it could not prosecute those involved because the complaint was made too late, The Times has learnt. The ICO is now seeking to change the law to allow prosecutions if a complaint is made more than six months after a breach.
The stolen e-mails , revealed on the eve of the Copenhagen summit, showed how the university’s Climatic Research Unit attempted to thwart requests for scientific data and other information, and suggest that senior figures at the university were involved in decisions to refuse the requests. It is not known who stole the e-mails.
Professor Phil Jones, the unit’s director, stood down while an inquiry took place. The ICO’s decision could make it difficult for him to resume his post.
Details of the breach emerged the day after John Beddington, the Chief Scientific Adviser, warned that there was an urgent need for more honesty about the uncertainty of some predictions. His intervention followed admissions from scientists that the rate of glacial melt in the Himalayas had been grossly exaggerated.
In one e-mail, Professor Jones asked a colleague to delete e-mails relating to the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
He also told a colleague that he had persuaded the university authorities to ignore information requests under the act from people linked to a website run by climate sceptics.
A spokesman for the ICO said: “The legislation prevents us from taking any action but from looking at the emails it’s clear to us a breach has occurred.” Breaches of the act are punishable by an unlimited fine.
The complaint to the ICO was made by David Holland, a retired engineer from Northampton. He had been seeking information to support his theory that the unit broke the IPCC’s rules to discredit sceptic scientists.
In a statement, Graham Smith, Deputy Commissioner at the ICO, said: “The e-mails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information.”
He added: “The ICO is gathering evidence from this and other time-barred cases to support the case for a change in the law. We will be advising the university about the importance of effective records management and their legal obligations in respect of future requests for information.”
Mr Holland said: “There is an apparent Catch-22 here. The prosecution has to be initiated within six months but you have to exhaust the university’s complaints procedure before the commission will look at your complaint. That process can take longer than six months.”
The university said: “The way freedom of information requests have been handled is one of the main areas being explored by Sir Muir Russell’s independent review. The findings will be made public and we will act as appropriate on its recommendations.”
========
UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters Jonathan Leake, Science and Environment Editor
THE United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.
It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.
The claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters, has since become embedded in political and public debate. It was central to discussions at last month's Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion (£62 billion) from the rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions.
Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change minister, has suggested British and overseas floods — such as those in Bangladesh in 2007 — could be linked to global warming. Barack Obama, the US president, said last autumn: "More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent."
Last month Gordon Brown, the prime minister, told the Commons that the financial agreement at Copenhagen "must address the great injustice that . . . those hit first and hardest by climate change are those that have done least harm".
The latest criticism of the IPCC comes a week after reports in The Sunday Times forced it to retract claims in its benchmark 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers would be largely melted by 2035. It turned out that the bogus claim had been lifted from a news report published in 1999 by New Scientist magazine.
The new controversy also goes back to the IPCC's 2007 report in which a separate section warned that the world had "suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s".
It suggested a part of this increase was due to global warming and cited the unpublished report, saying: "One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend."
The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.
When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."
Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored.
The claim will now be re-examined and could be withdrawn. Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, who is vice-chair of the IPCC, said: "We are reassessing the evidence and will publish a report on natural disasters and extreme weather with the latest findings. Despite recent events the IPCC process is still very rigorous and scientific."
The academic paper at the centre of the latest questions was written in 2006 by Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a London consultancy, who later became a contributing author to the section of the IPCC's 2007 report dealing with climate change impacts. He is widely respected as an expert on disaster impacts.
Muir-Wood wanted to find out if the 8% year-on-year increase in global losses caused by weather-related disasters since the 1960s was larger than could be explained by the impact of social changes like growth in population and infrastructure.
Such an increase, coinciding with rising temperatures, might suggest that global warming was to blame. If proven this would be highly significant, both politically and scientifically, because it would confirm the many predictions that global warming will increase the frequency and severity of natural hazards.
In the research Muir-Wood looked at a wide range of hazards, including tropical cyclones, thunder and hail storms, and wildfires as well as floods and hurricanes.
He found from 1950 to 2005 there was no increase in the impact of disasters once growth was accounted for. For 1970-2005, however, he found a 2% annual increase which "corresponded with a period of rising global temperatures,"
Muir-Wood was, however, careful to point out that almost all this increase could be accounted for by the exceptionally strong hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005. There were also other more technical factors that could cause bias, such as exchange rates which meant that disasters hitting the US would appear to cost proportionately more in insurance payouts.
Despite such caveats, the IPCC report used the study in its section on disasters and hazards, but cited only the 1970-2005 results.
The IPCC report said: "Once the data were normalised, a small statistically significant trend was found for an increase in annual catastrophe loss since 1970 of 2% a year." It added: "Once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend."
Muir-Wood's paper was originally commissioned by Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, also an expert on disaster impacts, for a workshop on disaster losses in 2006. The researchers who attended that workshop published a statement agreeing that so far there was no evidence to link global warming with any increase in the severity or frequency of disasters. Pielke has also told the IPCC that citing one section of Muir-Wood's paper in preference to the rest of his work, and all the other peer-reviewed literature, was wrong.
He said: "All the literature published before and since the IPCC report shows that rising disaster losses can be explained entirely by social change. People have looked hard for evidence that global warming plays a part but can't find it. Muir-Wood's study actually confirmed that."
Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at the Tyndall Centre, which advises the UK government on global warming, said there was no real evidence that natural disasters were already being made worse by climate change. He said: “A proper analysis shows that these claims are usually superficial”
Such warnings may prove uncomfortable for Miliband whose recent speeches have often linked climate change with disasters such as the floods that recently hit Bangladesh and Cumbria. Last month he said: “We must not let the sceptics pass off political opinion as scientific fact. Events in Cumbria give a foretaste of the kind of weather runaway climate change could bring. Abroad, the melting of the Himalayan glaciers that feed the great rivers of South Asia could put hundreds of millions of people at risk of drought. Our security is at stake.”
Muir-Wood himself is more cautious. He said: "The idea that catastrophes are rising in cost partly because of climate change is completely misleading. "We could not tell if it was just an association or cause and effect. Also, our study included 2004 and 2005 which was when there were some major hurricanes. If you took those years away then the significance of climate change vanished."
Some researchers have argued that it is unfair to attack the IPCC too strongly, pointing out that some errors are inevitable in a report as long and technical as the IPCC's round-up of climate science. "Part of the problem could simply be that expectations are too high," said one researcher. "We have been seen as a scientific gold standard and that's hard to live up to."
Professor Christopher Field,director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution in California, who is the new co-chairman of the IPCC working group overseeing the climate impacts report, said the 2007 report had been broadly accurate at the time it was written.
He said: “The 2007 study should be seen as “a snapshot of what was known then. Science is progressive. If something turns out to be wrong we can fix it next time around.” However he confirmed he would be introducing rigorous new review procedures for future reports to ensure errors were kept to a minimum.
Professor Phil Jones, who was director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and a professor of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Photograph: University of East Anglia
Phil Jones, the beleaguered British climate scientist at the centre of the leaked emails controversy, is facing fresh claims that he sought to hide problems in key temperature data on which some of his work was based.
A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.
Jones and a collaborator have been accused by a climate change sceptic and researcher of scientific fraud for attempting to suppress data that could cast doubt on a key 1990 study on the effect of cities on warming – a hotly contested issue.
Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information requested under freedom of information laws. Subsequently a senior colleague told him he feared that Jones's collaborator, Wei-Chyung Wang of the University at Albany, had "screwed up".
The revelations on the inadequacies of the 1990 paper do not undermine the case that humans are causing climate change, and other studies have produced similar findings. But they do call into question the probity of some climate change science.
The apparent attempts to cover up problems with temperature data from the Chinese weather stations provide the first link between the email scandal and the UN's embattled climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a paper based on the measurements was used to bolster IPCC statements about rapid global warming in recent decades.
Wang was cleared of scientific fraud by his university, but new information brought to light today indicates at least one senior colleague had serious concerns about the affair.
It also emerges that documents which Wang claimed would exonerate him and Jones did not exist.
The revelations come at a torrid time for climate science, with the IPPC suffering heavy criticism for its use of information that had not been rigorously checked – in particular a false claim that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 – and UEA having been criticised last week by the deputy information commissioner for refusing valid requests for data under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Guardian has learned that of 105 freedom of information requests to the university concerning the climatic research unit (CRU), which Jones headed up to the end of December, only 10 had been released in full.
The temperature data from the Chinese weather stations measured the warming there over the past half century and appeared in a 1990 paper in the prestigious journal Nature, which was cited by the IPCC's latest report in 2007.
Climate change sceptics asked the UEA, via FOI requests, for location data for the 84 weather stations in eastern China, half of which were urban and half rural.
The history of where the weather stations were sited was crucial to Jones and Wang's 1990 study, as it concluded the rising temperatures recorded in China were the result of global climate changes rather the warming effects of expanding cities.
The IPCC's 2007 report used the study to justify the claim that "any urban-related trend" in global temperatures was small. Jones was one of two "coordinating lead authors" for the relevant chapter.
The leaked emails from the CRU reveal that the former director of the unit, Tom Wigley, harboured grave doubts about the cover-up of the shortcomings in Jones and Wang's work. Wigley was in charge of CRU when the original paper was published. "Were you taking W-CW [Wang] on trust?" he asked Jones. He continued: "Why, why, why did you and W-CW not simply say this right at the start?"
Jones said he was not able to comment on the story.
Wang said: "I have been exonerated by my university on all the charges. When we started on the paper we had all the station location details in order to identify our network, but we cannot find them any more.
"Some of the location changes were probably only a few metres, and where they were more we corrected for them."
In an interview with the Observer on Sunday Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, warned of the danger of a public backlash against mainstream climate science over claims that scientists manipulated data. He declared a "battle" against the "siren voices" who denied global warming was real or caused by humans. "It's right that there's rigour applied to all the reports about climate change, but I think it would be wrong that when a mistake is made it's somehow used to undermine the overwhelming picture that's there," he said.
Last week the Information Commissioner's Office – the body that administers the Freedom of Information Act – said the University of East Anglia had flouted the rules in its handling of an FOI request in May 2008.
Days after receiving the request for information from the British climate change sceptic David Holland, Jones asked Prof Mike Mann of Pennsylvania State University in the United States: "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4? Keith will do likewise.
"Can you also email Gene [Eugene Wahl, a paleoclimatologist in Boulder, Colorado] and get him to do the same ... We will be getting Caspar [Ammann, also from Boulder] to do the same."
The University of East Anglia says that no emails were deleted following this exchange.
================
Climate change study was `misused' Jonathan Leake
SOURCE: The Sunday Times January 31, 2010
LORD STERN'S report on climate change, which underpins government policy, has come under fire from a disaster analyst who says the research he contributed was misused.
Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a US-based consultancy, said the Stern report misquoted his work to suggest a firm link between global warming and the frequency and severity of disasters such as floods and hurricanes.
The Stern report, citing Muir-Wood, said: "New analysis based on insurance industry data has shown that weather-related catastrophe losses have increased by 2% each year since the 1970s over and above changes in wealth, inflation and population growth/movement.
"If this trend continued or intensified with rising global temperatures, losses from extreme weather could reach 0.5%-1% of world GDP by the middle of the century."
Muir-Wood said his research showed no such thing and accused Stern of "going far beyond what was an acceptable extrapolation of the evidence".
The criticism is among the strongest made of the Stern report, which, since its publication in 2006, has influenced policy, including green taxes.
Muir-Wood's study did show an association between global warming and the impact and frequency of disasters. But he said this was caused by exceptionally strong hurricanes in the final two years of his study.
A spokesman for Stern said: "Muir-Wood may have been deceived by his own observations."
Professor Phil Jones, who was director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and a professor of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Photograph: University of East Anglia
Phil Jones, the beleaguered British climate scientist at the centre of the leaked emails controversy, is facing fresh claims that he sought to hide problems in key temperature data on which some of his work was based.
A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.
Jones and a collaborator have been accused by a climate change sceptic and researcher of scientific fraud for attempting to suppress data that could cast doubt on a key 1990 study on the effect of cities on warming – a hotly contested issue.
Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information requested under freedom of information laws. Subsequently a senior colleague told him he feared that Jones's collaborator, Wei-Chyung Wang of the University at Albany, had "screwed up".
The revelations on the inadequacies of the 1990 paper do not undermine the case that humans are causing climate change, and other studies have produced similar findings. But they do call into question the probity of some climate change science.
The apparent attempts to cover up problems with temperature data from the Chinese weather stations provide the first link between the email scandal and the UN's embattled climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a paper based on the measurements was used to bolster IPCC statements about rapid global warming in recent decades.
Wang was cleared of scientific fraud by his university, but new information brought to light today indicates at least one senior colleague had serious concerns about the affair.
It also emerges that documents which Wang claimed would exonerate him and Jones did not exist.
The revelations come at a torrid time for climate science, with the IPPC suffering heavy criticism for its use of information that had not been rigorously checked – in particular a false claim that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 – and UEA having been criticised last week by the deputy information commissioner for refusing valid requests for data under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Guardian has learned that of 105 freedom of information requests to the university concerning the climatic research unit (CRU), which Jones headed up to the end of December, only 10 had been released in full.
The temperature data from the Chinese weather stations measured the warming there over the past half century and appeared in a 1990 paper in the prestigious journal Nature, which was cited by the IPCC's latest report in 2007.
Climate change sceptics asked the UEA, via FOI requests, for location data for the 84 weather stations in eastern China, half of which were urban and half rural.
The history of where the weather stations were sited was crucial to Jones and Wang's 1990 study, as it concluded the rising temperatures recorded in China were the result of global climate changes rather the warming effects of expanding cities.
The IPCC's 2007 report used the study to justify the claim that "any urban-related trend" in global temperatures was small. Jones was one of two "coordinating lead authors" for the relevant chapter.
The leaked emails from the CRU reveal that the former director of the unit, Tom Wigley, harboured grave doubts about the cover-up of the shortcomings in Jones and Wang's work. Wigley was in charge of CRU when the original paper was published. "Were you taking W-CW [Wang] on trust?" he asked Jones. He continued: "Why, why, why did you and W-CW not simply say this right at the start?"
Jones said he was not able to comment on the story.
Wang said: "I have been exonerated by my university on all the charges. When we started on the paper we had all the station location details in order to identify our network, but we cannot find them any more.
"Some of the location changes were probably only a few metres, and where they were more we corrected for them."
In an interview with the Observer on Sunday Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, warned of the danger of a public backlash against mainstream climate science over claims that scientists manipulated data. He declared a "battle" against the "siren voices" who denied global warming was real or caused by humans. "It's right that there's rigour applied to all the reports about climate change, but I think it would be wrong that when a mistake is made it's somehow used to undermine the overwhelming picture that's there," he said.
Last week the Information Commissioner's Office – the body that administers the Freedom of Information Act – said the University of East Anglia had flouted the rules in its handling of an FOI request in May 2008.
Days after receiving the request for information from the British climate change sceptic David Holland, Jones asked Prof Mike Mann of Pennsylvania State University in the United States: "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4? Keith will do likewise.
"Can you also email Gene [Eugene Wahl, a paleoclimatologist in Boulder, Colorado] and get him to do the same ... We will be getting Caspar [Ammann, also from Boulder] to do the same."
The University of East Anglia says that no emails were deleted following this exchange.
================
Climate change study was `misused' Jonathan Leake
SOURCE: The Sunday Times January 31, 2010
LORD STERN'S report on climate change, which underpins government policy, has come under fire from a disaster analyst who says the research he contributed was misused.
Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a US-based consultancy, said the Stern report misquoted his work to suggest a firm link between global warming and the frequency and severity of disasters such as floods and hurricanes.
The Stern report, citing Muir-Wood, said: "New analysis based on insurance industry data has shown that weather-related catastrophe losses have increased by 2% each year since the 1970s over and above changes in wealth, inflation and population growth/movement.
"If this trend continued or intensified with rising global temperatures, losses from extreme weather could reach 0.5%-1% of world GDP by the middle of the century."
Muir-Wood said his research showed no such thing and accused Stern of "going far beyond what was an acceptable extrapolation of the evidence".
The criticism is among the strongest made of the Stern report, which, since its publication in 2006, has influenced policy, including green taxes.
Muir-Wood's study did show an association between global warming and the impact and frequency of disasters. But he said this was caused by exceptionally strong hurricanes in the final two years of his study.
A spokesman for Stern said: "Muir-Wood may have been deceived by his own observations."
Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #277 on: 2010-02-03 13:09:52 »
Maybe worth highlighting in this flurry of innuendo and false inference (e.g. UK FOI regulations do not apply to people in the US, thus bypassing UK regulations by asking people outside of the UK might drive a truck through the intent of the regulation, but do not a whit to the letter of them) that the quoted source does say:
In an interview with the Observer on Sunday Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, warned of the danger of a public backlash against mainstream climate science over claims that scientists manipulated data. He declared a "battle" against the "siren voices" who denied global warming was real or caused by humans. "It's right that there's rigour applied to all the reports about climate change, but I think it would be wrong that when a mistake is made it's somehow used to undermine the overwhelming picture that's there," he said.
In other words, as the.bricoleur says, the overwhelming picture is that global warming is real and caused by humans.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Phil Jones, the professor behind the "Climategate" affair, has admitted some of his decades-old weather data was not well enough organised.
He said this contributed to his refusal to share raw data with critics - a decision he says he regretted.
But Professor Jones said he had not cheated over the data, or unfairly influenced the scientific process.
He said he stood by the view that recent climate warming was most likely predominantly man-made. [the.bricoleur - I wonder where the previous certitude has gone?]
But he agreed that two periods in recent times had experienced similar warming. And he agreed that the debate had not been settled over whether the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the current period. [the.bricoleur - BUT Phil, what does this say about the Hockey Stick?]
These statements are likely to be welcomed by people sceptical of man-made climate change who have felt insulted to be labelled by government ministers as flat-earthers and deniers.
'Bunker mentality'
Professor Jones agreed that scientists on both sides of the debate could suffer sometimes from a "bunker mentality".
He said "sceptics" who doubted his climate record should compile their own dataset from material publicly available in the US.
"The major datasets mostly agree," he said. "If some of our critics spent less time criticising us and prepared a dataset of their own, that would be much more constructive."
His colleagues said that keeping a paper trail was not one of Professor Jones' strong points. Professor Jones told BBC News: "There is some truth in that.
"We do have a trail of where the (weather) stations have come from but it's probably not as good as it should be," he admitted.
"That's similar with the American datasets. There were technical reasons for this, with changing data from different countries. There's a continual updating of the dataset. Keeping track of everything is difficult. Some countries will do lots of checking on their data then issue improved data so it can be very difficult. We have improved but we have to improve more."
His account is the most revealing so far about his decision to block repeated requests from people demanding to see raw data behind records showing an unprecedented warming in the late 20th Century.
Professor Jones said climate scientists needed to do more to communicate the reasons behind their conclusion that humans were driving recent climate change.
They also needed to be more transparent with data - although he said this process had already begun.
He strongly defended references in his emails to using a "trick" to "hide the decline" in temperatures.
These phrases had been deliberately taken out of context and "spun" by sceptics keen to derail the Copenhagen climate conference, he said.
And he denied any attempt to influence climate data: "I have no agenda," he said.
"I'm a scientist trying to measure temperature. If I registered that the climate has been cooling I'd say so. But it hasn't until recently - and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend."
He said many people had been made sceptical about climate change by the snow in the northern hemisphere - but they didn't realise that the satellite record from the University of Alabama in Huntsville showed that January had been the warmest month since records began in 1979.
Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #280 on: 2010-02-20 09:29:42 »
So the IPCC got the Nobel Prize for 'discovering climate change' ... HUH? Are they now handing out the Nobel Prize for discovering common sense? C'mon Nye, I thought you were the 'science' guy, not some sock puppet.
The other side of the Maddow/Nye coin .. the hots get hotter, the colds colder, the wets wetter, the dry drier, the extreme weather more numerous ... blame global warming cough, no, climate change. Catch all. Catch all.
Unbelievable. And, apparently, unpatriotic. This is madness.
KERRY EMANUEL'S Feb. 15 op-ed "Climate changes are proven fact'' is more advocacy than assessment. Vague terms such as "consistent with,'' "probably,'' and "potentially'' hardly change this. Certainly climate change is real; it occurs all the time [the.bricoleur - Apparently, innovative and cutting edge science to the Nobel boys]. To claim that the little we've seen is larger than any change we "have been able to discern'' for a thousand years is disingenuous. Panels of the National Academy of Sciences and Congress have concluded that the methods used to claim this cannot be used for more than 400 years, if at all [the.bricoleur - Are you listening Maddow/Nye?]. Even the head of the deservedly maligned Climatic Research Unit acknowledges that the medieval period may well have been warmer than the present. [the.bricoleur - Maddow/Nye, are you listening?]
The claim that everything other than models represents "mere opinion and speculation'' is also peculiar. Despite their faults, models show that projections of significant warming depend critically on clouds and water vapor, and the physics of these processes can be observationally tested (the normal scientific approach); at this point, the models seem to be failing.
Finally, given a generation of environmental propaganda, a presidential science adviser (John Holdren) who has promoted alarm since the 1970s, and a government that proposes funding levels for climate research about 20 times the levels in 1991, courage seems hardly the appropriate description - at least for scientists supporting such alarm.
Richard S. Lindzen Cambridge The writer is Alfred P. Sloan professor of atmospheric sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #281 on: 2010-02-20 12:54:16 »
the.bricoleur, I think you are still missing the point. The physics and the measurements showing that man made greenhouse gasses are accumulating, that the atmosphere is not radiating as much incoming solar energy in specific bands responding to those greenhouse gases, and that in consequence the earth is warming, is beyond refutation.
If you do not yet understand this then you need to go back and look at the simple grey body models I introduced previously until you do. It is not difficult physics and it is well understood physics that does not allow of wiggle room. If you don't understand that it has been measured, go back and evaluate the IRIS and TES thermal records in Post 262 and develop an alternate hypothesis explaining the measurements, bearing in mind the need to remain coherent with the measurements reflected in Posts 270 and 272.
The fact that a warmer Earth will inevitably result in more extreme climate events is simply a rational conclusion given that precipitation and wind are both driven by temperature and that, while clouds increase reflection, water vapour is a potent greenhouse gas. So the warmer the earth becomes, the greater the effects of perturbations caused by the contribution of water vapour and particulates.
The deliberate destruction of a rational response in Kyoto and Copenhagen means that we are beyond change, largely beyond determining how bad the consequences are likely to be, and all that is left is a simple question of how we are to adapt to the new planetary climate system we are creating and whether in fact we will make this transition successfully, given the vast numbers who will have to die in order to establish any kind of sustainable future.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #282 on: 2010-02-20 14:39:59 »
Hermit, with respect, I understand.
To be able to measure the difference between these two warming periods (MWP and the current trend as an example), and to have the data to verify the driver for each of these warming trends to the point of justifying catastrophic certitude (and in turn justifying likening dissenters to 'holocaust deniers' and 'flat-earthers'), requires data that you do not have ... and if you are in denial about not having this data so be it, but keep in mind that the worlds authority on the matter (and I know this type of authority is important to you) is far from certain that he has the data.
The fact is, you do not have the data to justify your dogmatic certitude and alarmism. Now, I am not saying that the data to justify your certitude and alarmism will not become available, only that at this moment in time, you are being a drama queen.
Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #283 on: 2010-02-20 18:43:31 »
the.bricoleur
We know what causes warming. The sun (a little). Greenhouse gases (a lot).
Natural greenhouse gas levels vary over time and the mechanisms are complex and difficult to predict. However, the sun, which contributes approximately 13% to thermal cycles is currently (and will be to 2028-2038) in a cooling phase while measurements show that anthropic contributions to greenhouse gas have significantly increased GWP. The natural drivers to warming are presumably still present, and there is no reason to assume that they will not contribute to further warming in the future. Particularly as it appears as if the Methyl Hydrate and Chlorate outgassing being observed in warming arctic waters may already be releasing as much Methane as anthropogenic sources.
Arguing that there is insufficient evidence to draw absolute conclusions about all of the possible mechanisms and their implications is facile, because there is no standard that will ever allow you to draw absolute conclusions until the sun is cold and dead and the Earth long vaporised. When we will be sure that the mechanisms that affected the climate are the only mechanisms that affected the climate, but by then it will be too late for Earth to use your conclusions to any helpful effort (and the same appeal as yours will prevent the use for any other planet, as they will assuredly have differences with Earth). In the meantime, sane, competent people drawn from science establishments around the world staffing the IPCC have looked at the data and drawn the conclusion that the threat is vast and imminent and worsening. Nothing you or any other denier has said or presented has affected the physics of the situation or the conclusions drawn by an iota. Au contraire. The evidence just keeps piling up. At what point do the denialists acknowledge that they were wrong? What penalty should there be for being wrong?
As we saw in the grey body simulation the Earth is 33 K degrees warmer than it would be without greenhouse gases and a relatively small change in volume or composition can result in rapid and extreme change in the Earth's thermal balance. From other articles discussing "tipping points" we can conclude that ignoring that, especially augmented by positive feedback, is very hazardous. For example, we know that the Earth had a hot methane atmosphere in its early stages. We know that reverting to that situation would not be good for existing life forms. We know that there were no anthropic greenhouse gases at those times and that anthropic greenhouse gases are making the Earth hotter. We know that there is no hypothesis that can say that such a reversion is not a reasonable possibility. So when your words suggest that we should relax and continue polluting the only Earth we have as some kind of bizzaro experiment in which, because we don't understand all the rules, we should ignore the rules we do understand; and then top this by calling those who suggest that acting prudently in the absence of certainty means we should have reduced anthropic effluent. not increased it, drama queens, then I suggest you are being irrationally complacent and this is far more hazardous to mankind than a so called "drama queen" (although I consider myself an optimist for imagining that it is still worth working on this).
Let me quote George Monbiot from Post 2 on this thread, back in 2006.
"It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must climb over a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which then disintegrates in your palm. You must ignore an entire canon of science, the statements of the world’s most eminent scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published in the foremost scientific journals. You must, if you are David Bellamy, embrace instead the claims of an eccentric former architect, which are based on what appears to be a non-existent data set. And you must do all this while calling yourself a scientist."
Not all your words, nor all your appeals has changed this reality in any significant way whatsoever.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
We know what causes warming. The sun (a little). Greenhouse gases (a lot).
I would say that the sun causes the warming and the GHGs retain a good proportion of the heat by slowing down its passage to space.
Quote:
Natural greenhouse gas levels vary over time and the mechanisms are complex and difficult to predict. However, the sun, which contributes approximately 13% to thermal cycles is currently (and will be to 2028-2038) in a cooling phase while measurements show that anthropic contributions to greenhouse gas have significantly increased GWP. The natural drivers to warming are presumably still present, and there is no reason to assume that they will not contribute to further warming in the future. Particularly as it appears as if the Methyl Hydrate and Chlorate outgassing being observed in warming arctic waters may already be releasing as much Methane as anthropogenic sources.
These are points of great uncertainty. Just how much the variations in the sun's output and the effects of the solar wind on cosmic ray fluxes affect the surface temperature is just not known. Work is proceeding though.
Quote:
Arguing that there is insufficient evidence to draw absolute conclusions about all of the possible mechanisms and their implications is facile, because there is no standard that will ever allow you to draw absolute conclusions until the sun is cold and dead and the Earth long vaporised. When we will be sure that the mechanisms that affected the climate are the only mechanisms that affected the climate, but by then it will be too late for Earth to use your conclusions to any helpful effort (and the same appeal as yours will prevent the use for any other planet, as they will assuredly have differences with Earth). In the meantime, sane, competent people drawn from science establishments around the world staffing the IPCC have looked at the data and drawn the conclusion that the threat is vast and imminent and worsening. Nothing you or any other denier has said or presented has affected the physics of the situation or the conclusions drawn by an iota. Au contraire. The evidence just keeps piling up. At what point do the denialists acknowledge that they were wrong? What penalty should there be for being wrong?
The mechanism of the GH effect is well known and is summarized by the K/T diagram. The other mechanisms, the external ones, are not in such a good state, but work continues at CERN on cosmic rays and clouds. The sun-spot connection is there, but we don't really understand it.
Quote:
As we saw in the grey body simulation the Earth is 33 K degrees warmer than it would be without greenhouse gases and a relatively small change in volume or composition can result in rapid and extreme change in the Earth's thermal balance.
It's more than a simulation, the top of atmosphere output of 235 W/m2 is well observed continually by satellite and were are fairly happy with the idea that the surface mean is around 15 C, the difference of 33-34 C is reasonable.
Quote:
From other articles discussing "tipping points" we can conclude that ignoring that, especially augmented by positive feedback, is very hazardous.
This is very dodgy stuff from the extreme predictions from the models. GCMs I remind you, that are incapable of hindcasting, let alone predicting. Yet, here you are, accepting the most extreme of the models predictions with dogmatic certitude. Perhaps I should use this opportunity to label you something more denigrating than simply dramatic?
Quote:
For example, we know that the Earth had a hot methane atmosphere in its early stages.
We know that we had maybe 20% CO2 at one stage too. The trouble with early times on Earth is that it was cooling down from being a molten ball of material and this had nothing to do with the GHGs at that stage.
Quote:
We know that reverting to that situation would not be good for existing life forms. We know that there were no anthropic greenhouse gases at those times and that anthropic greenhouse gases are making the Earth hotter. We know that there is no hypothesis that can say that such a reversion is not a reasonable possibility.
I agree. But how much hotter, that is the important question. Most rational people would be happy with 1.8 - 2.0 C rise for a doubling of CO2, much like the GCMs before they do their things with feedbacks.
Quote:
So when your words suggest that we should relax and continue polluting the only Earth we have as some kind of bizzaro experiment in which, because we don't understand all the rules, we should ignore the rules we do understand;
I did not say we should "relax" nor did I suggest we should continue to 'pollute the Earth', but, I appreciate your apparent need to slide my position into something you can frame without having to accept your own dogma.
Quote:
and then top this by calling those who suggest that acting prudently in the absence of certainty means we should have reduced anthropic effluent. not increased it, drama queens, then I suggest you are being irrationally complacent and this is far more hazardous to mankind than a so called "drama queen" (although I consider myself an optimist for imagining that it is still worth working on this).
Considering where your certitude comes from (GCMs), and to add insult to injury that you adopt the most extreme position of said GCMs, you'll have to forgive me for not congratulating you on your optimism.
Quote:
Let me quote George Monbiot from Post 2 on this thread, back in 2006.
"It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must climb over a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which then disintegrates in your palm. You must ignore an entire canon of science, the statements of the world’s most eminent scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published in the foremost scientific journals. You must, if you are David Bellamy, embrace instead the claims of an eccentric former architect, which are based on what appears to be a non-existent data set. And you must do all this while calling yourself a scientist."
Rational people do not dismiss any evidence. David made a mistake about glaciers and he is not the only one to do that as recent events have shown. He does go over the top a bit, but I agree with him that dangerous climate change is not on. At least, we might have arranged for there never to be another ice age. In any case, Monbiot is a journalist and not a scientist, all he can do is, as you do, to unquestioningly swallow everything that the IPCC puts out. And that, coupled with your inability to appreciate the limits of your knowledge, is far more dangerous to humanity than me rightly calling you a drama queen.
Quote:
Not all your words, nor all your appeals has changed this reality in any significant way whatsoever.
In light of the evidence that you gullibly accept the most extreme predictions of the GCMs, my imagination fails to even know what would change 'your' reality.
Thankfully that is not my purpose. Exposing your position as dramatic and extreme will suffice.
Author
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BUT Phil, what does this say about the Hockey Stick?]
C'mon Nye, I thought you were the 'science' guy, not some sock puppet.
