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The Forum > Article Comments > Global warming hots up but not the weather > Comments

Global warming hots up but not the weather : Comments

By John McLean, published 4/3/2005

John McLean argues that the predictions of global warming could be quite wrong.

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It is anguishing to everyone that respects scientific understands of climate change to see the relentless flak put up by ‘ideological’ climate change deniers.

It does take an expert climatologist to establish a proof that climate change is real. Thousands of the world's leading climatologists have taken the time to do it and world leaders, including those in Australia and the USA, have deemed it appropriate to spend significant public funds on the issue.

You can disagree with world consensus but you’ll have a hard time convincing others of your view by stringing together ad hoc records.

McIntyre and McKitrick’s contribution to science is certainly genuine. Readers should point their web browser to the following link to review the scientific dialogue that has ensued. The authors of the famous and accepted “hockey stick” graph clearly refute McIntyre and McKitrick’s criticisms and conclusions.

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/MannEtAl2004.pdf

The Gummersbach conference was held by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, a German free market think tank. An examination of the paper by Professor Bray will reveal a different story than the one presented by the climate skeptics press release you quote.

You claim that “CSIRO models appear to be unable to accurately reproduce the temperature and rainfall in the last 40 years.” What is the name of a CSIRO scientist who agrees with you? Are they all liars?

Lord David Taverne: he has the rare distinction of having been reprimanded in the House of Lords for calling for Prince Charles to be “made to relinquish the throne if he made any more statements critical of GM crops”. His Lordship’s views on climate change aren’t worth much.

Mr. McLean, if you have a scientific contribution to make, then write it up and send it to a real journal. If your convictions have substance, and have the policy ramifications you think they do, they’ll surely publish it. I trust peer reviewed work because it’s where I’ll find genuine contribution.

cheers,

martin

p.s. see Melanie Phillips’ Blog(25th, and also the 18th) as it appears she has lifted much of your article.

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/
Posted by martin callinan, Friday, 4 March 2005 2:43:01 PM
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Good work John, an excellent article.

I urge you to keep up your efforts to bring some reason and grounded science back into this debate. We all care about our environment but we need our researchers to base their conclusions on real science, not consenus or computer models. The pro-CO2 warmers are the first to shout that this is the most important issue facing us today.(It's not, but that's beside the point), If that's the case then it's been nothing short of criminal to have denied the deniers a voice for so long. The media and pro-warmers have for too long been howling down dissenters with crys of "oil lobby", "coal lobby", "not a climatologist" etcetera. They wouldn't have to rely on this sort of slander if they could easily rebuff dissenters with science.

Imagine what could be achieved if the time, money and effort that is put into global warming went into combating aids in Africa, world hunger, or saving our oceans, wildlife habitats, and research on how to effectively manage wilderness areas.

Debate today would probably be centred around imminent environmental problems if a few slimy politicians around the world (read Europe) hadn't smelt votes in the rising environmental awareness. Once politics gets hold of something then you're sure it's going to be corrupted and manipulated to produce some clearly intended outcomes.

We need more people like John McLean to put forward the other side, to combat the brainwashing, and to help restore this important debate to a position of uncovering the truth.
Posted by bozzie, Friday, 4 March 2005 7:56:32 PM
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There are points in Martin Callinan's criticism which are worthy of further consideration. First, the invoking of "thousands of the world's leading climatologists ... and world leaders, including those in Australia and the USA" implies that advancement of scientific understanding is a matter of voting. It is not so.

Second, the invoking of "CSIRO scientists" is a worry. CSIRO appears to have succeeded in freezing time! I am not making this up, I promise. When CSIRO did regional projections of future climate, it slavishly adopted IPCC's 1990-based projections as its base - it didn't revised and up-date its analyses of world economic growth, and consequent consumption of carbon-based fuels.

Hence, when CSIRO said the average number of "Dec-Feb days above 35C now is 1, and will be 42 +/- 37 in 2070" in Darwin (my birthplace), it followed the trajectory of IPCC's projections of atmospheric CO2 concentration. Look at the high-end (42+37=79 days) - this is a direct use of IPCC's 1990-based high-end A1F1 scenario.

You might recall that A1F1 had coal consumption (coal is the most carbon-intensive of the fossil fuels) growing by a phenomenal 37% between 1990 and 2000. We now have the figures in for 2003 - world coal consumption in 1900-2003 grew 14%. This will render IPCC's trajectory of high-end CO2 concentration during the new century virtually meaningless.

You have an in with CSIRO, by the sound of it. If so, please tell us whether CSIRO caused time to stand still for its newly-commissioned analysis of NSW climate change over the decades ahead, or did it at last revise future CO2 concentrations in the light of evolving reality. This is much more than idle curiosity. We are not talking here about profit-oriented commercial opportunism - but about the duty of care owed by those entrusted with spending the taxpayer's money.
Posted by fosbob, Friday, 4 March 2005 8:32:22 PM
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The idea that McIntyre and McKitrick have "disproved" the global warming "hockey stick" model is simply false - these two know little to nothing about climate science (one is a mining company executive, the other an economist) and the "journals" they publish their "research" in are simply publications that are funded by US energy industry lobby groups.

Global warming is both real and is no longer the subject of any meaningful debate in the world of climate science - that debate effectively concluded over 5 years ago after decades of research - all the latest data shows is that the warnings about global warming were correct. The debate now is about how bad the effects are going to be.

For some backgound information on the "hockey stick" disinformation campaign, you might like the read the following:

Dummies Guide to the Latest “Hockey Stick” Controversy :
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=121
http://biggav.blogspot.com/2005/02/dummies-guide-to-latest-hockey-stick.html

Or for those who understand the technicalities of the model :
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=8
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=98

Tim Lambert - Hockey team vs Hacky team :
http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/2005/02#climate3

Scientific American - Interview with Michael Mann :
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=30&articleID=00007F57-9CE1-1213-9BEF83414B7F0000

It's also interesting to study the background of some of the people and organisations who devote their time and money to contributing to this disinformation campaign.

McLitrick and McIntyre:
http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/science/McKitrick

Astroturfing :
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20031119-3127.html
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.confessore.html
http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000862.html

Australian Astroturf Groups :
http://biggav.blogspot.com/2005/01/australian-astroturf-groups-having.html

And in the UK:
http://www.energybulletin.net/4156.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1399585,00.html

New Scientist - Meet The Global Warming Sceptics :
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524861.500

PR Watch - Global Warming:
http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1997Q4/warming.html

Mired In Denial :
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=2177

Mocking Our Dreams:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/02/15/mocking-our-dreams/
Posted by biggav, Saturday, 5 March 2005 7:38:37 PM
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"Global warming is both real and is no longer the subject of any meaningful debate in the world of climate science - that debate effectively concluded over 5 years ago after decades of research"

Decades of research. Really. Little more than two as a matter of fact.
During the 70s and early part of the 80s there was a real fear of a global cooling because the earth had been getting cooler for the previous three decades.

A theory of global warming didn't really arrive until late in the 80s/early in the 90s.

And was only developed properly after 1997 -after the Kyoto conference.

So much for decades of research - about 5-10 years looks like the amount of earnest research into the subject.
Posted by the usual suspect, Saturday, 5 March 2005 9:52:46 PM
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Biggav,

McIntyre and McKitrick do not claim to be climatologists; they are statisticians and Mann's "Hockey Stick" is based on statistics.

I also note that the numerous sources that you quote also contain remarkably few climatologists or meteorologists. The website cse.unsw.edu.au is a computer science and engineering faculty, and Monbiot has no background in climatology!

One site that is staffed by climatologists is realclimate.org but what a pity that you don't realise that the site exists solely to defend the IPCC's TAR, Mann's hockey stick and claims by Schmidt. They respond to readers questions but are very selective. Just some of the questions they refuse to answer are at http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?p=124.

Some interesting comments on Mann's failure to disclose his full data and method can be found at http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.archive.htm. Similar issues with Mann's recalcitrance are mentioned by Ulrich Cubasch, Professor of Meteorology at the Free University in Berlin (see http://www.heise-medien.de/presseinfo/bilder/tr/05/tr0503038.pdf)

Thank you for your clear example of what Taverne calls "eco-McCarthyism". I don't believe that it could have been explained any better.

cheers
Posted by Snowman, Saturday, 5 March 2005 11:48:02 PM
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