"In fact, the Garnaut review relied on the Australian climate science community to make its scientific case. "
This worries me. Australian climate science is in a very sad state. Not much in the way critical thinking going on here. Lots of group think and ideology.

"Furthermore, projected emissions over the next few decades as well as the risks of severe impacts are higher than previously thought."
Hope the projections are bit more accurate than Hansen's 1998 emission predictions.

"My view is that anyone with a higher degree in science who maintains that the Earth stopped warming in 1998 should hand their degree back."
Thankfully nazis like Roger do not posess this type of power or we'd all be goose stepping down the climate change yellow brick road. Most people arguing about 1998 are pointing to the fact that model's temperature projections and reality started diverging at this point and continue to. Should we pause and reevaluate the models before continuing with radical changes? The answer is an obvious yes. My view is that anyone with a higher degree in science who maintains that the Earth continued warming after 1998 should hand their degree back.

"Ten-year trends range from virtually no change to +0.35C a decade, averaging about 0.2C a decade over the whole sequence."
Wasn't he just bagging scientists about using ten year trends??

"Second, arguments that climate models are fatally flawed means jettisoning the science that underpins the models, which in turn means having to jettison our understanding of environmental and earth science."
Not jettison but definitely reevaluate. Seems to be a little resistent to this idea. He sounds like the Captain of the Titanic. Full speed ahead! Our models are unsinkable!

"Those who wish to discount this scientific effort are driven by their own ideologically dominated models, which are unreviewed, unaccountable and unverifiable."
Is he talking about the IPCC here? A little harsh but if the shoe fits.

"They should be disregarded."
He is talking about the IPCC. Advice taken!

I'm no scientist but I can generally tell when one side has the backing of facts in an argument.

The side with the facts to back them up "plays the ball" and the side without "plays the man".

Every pro climate change rebuttal I've seen consistently "plays the man", this one is no exception.

Hadz” Every pro climate change rebuttal I've seen consistently "plays the man", this one is no exception.”

Agree totally with your statement.

I am sure Lenin has a quote which fits with the aspirations of the AGW zealots.

He had quotes for most things, like

“tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”

To the final words of the text

“Those who wish to discount this scientific effort are driven by their own ideologically dominated models, which are unreviewed, unaccountable and unverifiable. They should be disregarded.”

Disregard those who dare dissent?

The heretics, the infidels, the great unwashed.

When the result of all this quasi science and dubious modeling is going to effect the hip pocket of every man woman and family in Australia

I think of that famous American maxim “no taxation without representation”

The ordinary Australians, beyond the pro-AGW/CSIRO scientific elite, have an absolute right to express their skepticism and be heard as a voice of reason and concern.

Rather than being shut out and used merely as a tax cow, to be milked by ‘governmental servants’ through their offices and institutions such as CSIRO.

Maybe there should be a public enquiry into the political moral and social balance which drives such organizations as CSIRO and the real worth of the work they actually do.

Roger's logic was a bit hard to follow. His claims as to temperature records seem radically different than what I've been reading. I don't trust what he's telling us. Not at all.

Daisym

The article plays the man? Where. There is a arther long appraisal of what consitutes scientific method and the conclusion that we should disregard those who don't use said method.

I don't see any 'nazis like Roger' or commnets about the CSIRO milking tax cows.

Who exactly does the author insult?

The only real sin the author commits is a distinct lack of referencing. But actually insulting anybody per se--don't think so.

We are told the ocean level will rise 1 metre, correct? Where will all the water come from to cover 72% of this planet's ocean surface? Who has that specific data? Who has measured the mass of rock hidden beneath arctic and antarctic snow and ice? Who has measured ice underwater versus eleven parts ice makes ten parts water? How much did the ocean rise last year?

Why does media show steam coming out of cone shaped water cooling towers while news dialogue refers to carbon emission?

A good artcle...where did it play the man? Sounds like the deniers are a bit desperate again. The first thing they do, as usual, is pick individual statements out of an article rather than addressing the message as a whole. Why? Because it doesn't require signficant work and takes things out of context.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a skeptic, people are entitled to beleive what they wish. But, to deny the science and denigrate scientists without addressing what they are saying in any meaningful way, is a sure sign of insecurity and a lack of knowledge of what they are talking about. The only people who are playing the man so far are alzo, hadz, col rouge and DaisyM.

As for where the water comes from JF - it comes from melting ice that lies over land (Greenland ice-cap for instance)and also from the expansion of water as it warms up.

Roger - There are quite a few "facts" I would like to counter in your article but I'll pick on only the rather curious temperature figures you quote. My guess is the three records you cite are NOAA, GISS and Hadley. No-one seems to use NOAA despite what you say, although it seems to agree with GISS which is widely cited by greenhousers. The other three used are Hadley - argually the most authorative of the instrument sites - and the two satellite sites RSS and UAH. Hadley, RSS and UAH agree that the Earth has been cooling in the last few years, abeit marginally, and disagree strongly with GISS and NOAA on that trend - a point that is beginning to cause some comment, as the satellite sites are reguarded as the last word.
But let us leave all that aside. A per decade warming for the past three decades may be 0.1 degrees or less for the most recent decade (going negative on some sites), 0.2 for the one before that and 0.3 before that, despite carbon dioxide increasing all the time.
Scientists have hastily cited climate cycles to explain this trend but there are signs of desperation in those explanations. Questions are also being asked about the results of the Goddard site, which is under the control of Prof Hansen.. leave it with you.

alzo, hadz, col rouge and DaisyM do not watch Four Corners tonight!
do not read http://www.theage.com.au/environment/our-melting-planet-ominous-warning-signs-in-the-arctic-20080803-3pc9.html

These are articles and programs about the Artic ice melt but a business consultant like Col_Rouge knows far more than a person with university level statistics or any body who works in atmospheric or climate research.

The thing that disturbs me most about the global warming protagonists is their insistence that global warming is a moral question.

Science has nothing to do with morality.

For some reason the guilt merchants seem obsessed with the idea that because most of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere was put there by us, we must allow the third world to continue its policy of massive population expansion and emission increase, while we do all the cutting back.

The only effective policy is to look to the future. China already emits more CO2 than the US, and its emission is increasing very rapidly. This is what has to stop.

The other thing that worries me is the attempts to silence anyone who disagrees with the currently fashionable theory of global warming. This is crazy. Science is built on scepticism. All scientific theories are just that, theories, and all good scientists should be constantly trying to disprove them. A theory can never be proved, but it can be disproved. When I remember the forecasts made over the past decades warning of new ice ages etc., I remain very dubious about the current theory. Not that the climate is changing, it always does, but that human activity is the principal cause. The other cause for doubt is that when the weather bureau has trouble forecasting the weather in a month's time, what hope do they have forecasting 50 years ahead?

"Who has measured the mass of rock hidden beneath arctic and antarctic snow and ice?"
Rock under the arctic, what a notion! And here I thought that the arctic was an ice-sheet over water. Well I must be wrong and I'll have to change my mind. Bugger the science, we'll just make it up as we go. Just like those who oppose the theory of global warming, make sure you have a scientific backing, alas, there's very,very,very little evidence to support any alternate theory. Oh! you could give Fred Singer or David Evans another run or even reruns of "GGWS", but then we're gone far past that sort of Neanderthal thinking, I think!

Ball of Wax - Part 1

You know, I reckon we have the brains between us to understand a lot of climate fundamentals - to free ourselves from the tyranny of the ad-men, no matter on WHOSE side they pop up on.

- because I don't think this particular ball of wax will be unravelled by the Gruen Transfer, reds under the bed, or the magic of the free market, so let's make it our goal to get along without them before we all go blind.

We need to memorise a few rules of nature in order to fashion a basic analytical tool kit. JF Aus points out that 11 parts of ice yields 10 parts of water (by volume). That's a very good fact. Here's my contribution:

Temperature is a measurement of energy INTENSITY - something like voltage. The old measurement for a QUANTITY of heat energy is the CALORIE - which is roughly similar to amperes.

It takes 1 calorie of heat energy to warm 1 gram of water by 1 degree (celsius).

It takes 1 calorie of heat energy to warm 1 gram of ice by 1 degree (celsius).

But to turn 1 gram of ice into 1 gram of water takes 80 calories of heat energy. This huge demand is due to the LATENT HEAT of water. Google it.

Ball of Wax - Part 2

Where does all that heat energy go, if it barely tickles a thermometer?

It goes into the water molecules themselves when the ice becomes liquid. You can't "see" all that energy with a thermometer from a satellite, but it's there just the same.

Now you know why the melting of massive amounts of polar ice must make a little "S" curve or a plateau in the mean annual temperature of the planet. Melting ice draws in a tremendous quantity of heat energy from it's surroundings, including the atmosphere. This is exactly how an Esky works. When sufficient ice has melted, the temperature must start rising again if more calories are entering the system than are leaving it.

With every season's melting and freezing, this "hidden" heat flow takes place, because the water-ice interface is a massive heat bank. Unless we can measure the scale of this, references to someone's neat little temperature graphs is a waste of time (are you reading this Andrew Bolt?).

*

OK - are there any more contributions for the toolkit out there?

I can accept that global warming is occurring but what I am not convinced about is that human induced CO2 is a significant portion of the problem and secondly that any increase in CO2 will have
significant effect on global temperature.

http://brneurosci.org/co2.html

This graph
http://brneurosci.org/temperatures6.png

Would indicate that doubling the CO2 will have no noticeable effect
on global warming.

Now I cannot vouch for the science in the article but it does seem to
agree with previous information I have read that states that the
effect of CO2 is non-linear.

It seems to me that this part of the global warming problem gets zero
attention and I would think it should be right in the centre of the
discussion. If it is true then all this carry on about CO2 is just
a hideous outrageous beat up that should send some people to gaol.

Whether the climate is changing at all is controversial even among scientists working in the field. Whether the earth surface is heating up en toto is also controversial, and whether we are doing it, have done it, or can indeed do anything about it, is the essential question(s) that sit atop all the controversy and hype. Then comes the fact that even if all these permutations give an unequivocal answer of 'yes' - ie the climate is heating up and we (collectively) are doing it and we can and need to stop it happening - our Australian contribution to the problem is equivalent to the effect of a flea on an elephant, and our puny attempts to alter things by eg changing to more efficient home lighting, home solar panels etc is itself equivalent to a flea on a flea on an elephant. I believe that our efforts should be directed towards coping with changing conditions rather than trying to control the universe.
Examples of coping strategies include water conservation, development of renewable energy sources, efficient food production techniques, education of children as to the problems, waste management techniques, and many more. The carbon trading scheme is a knee-jerk reaction that seems to me to be doomed from the start as present European reaction to Kyoto etc clearly indicates - a virtual guarantee of reduced economic circumstances for most of the population. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater - save the baby and the bathwater.

One criticism of the IPCC which has some objectivity is future emissions scenarios. Several analysts conclude that claimed reserves of oil, coal and gas will prove difficult to extract. Even China is hinting that tight coal supplies may slow their economic boom. Contrary to IPCC predictions by around 2030 there won't be that much left to burn, at least not easily dug up. Today's kindergarten aged kids won't be driving petrol cars or using much coal fired electricity as adults. However by that time thawing swamps and rock where snow used to be could have taken over from manmade emissions.

Thus we simultaneously have a cheap energy crisis and a climate alarm. Therefore it seems prudent to 'decarbonise' fairly quickly whether you believe in AGW or not. Note that the oil companies didn't see such high fuel prices coming so I suggest they are not the people to solve the problem. Swift carbon reductions are an each way bet that may or may not solve the climate problem. They will at least prepare us for other economic hurdles that lie ahead.

refer http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2323407.htm to read how meterologists regard the global warming skeptics arguements

Its apparent that many climate scientists think that the artic ice cap melt is irreversible, and we will be farming in Antarctica and Greenland whilst the equatorial areas get hotter and drier. The world's population is expected to peak at 9 billion before reducing to 1 billion within 100 years.

We all have to adapt pretty quickly to a world where petrol is more expensive, food is more expensive and electricity is more expensive.

It was not long ago that the man made hole in the ozone layer was going to kill us or. Then it was the Y2K bug and now it is global warming. When are these foolish men going to stop inventing 'science' to scare people into their inept conclusions. I suppose many of the proponents believe in 'evolutionary science' which is totally flawed. It is no wonder they continue to have to change the story now with the gw crap. Man's arrogance would be very amusing if it was not so sad. They practice a blind faith and deny their very Maker. The earth will heat up one day you can be sure. It it sure won't be through this gw crap. Read your bibles. It has never been wrong before.

Ironically by the logic of the opening of his article Jones seriously puts in a coma his own argument. When he says that the critics of Garnaut accuse him of using the “discredited science of IPCC” and answering this that “in fact the Garnaut review relied on the Australian climate science community to make its scientific case,” he does not realize that the deduction from his own answer is that the IPCC report is based on “discredited science”, since he ‘replaces’ the latter with the presumably better scientific credentials of Aussie science. And the relentless vengeance of his own logic leads him to administer the coup de grace to his own argument when he further states, “the science community stands by its science, particularly RESEARCH FOLLOWING on from the IPCC’s fourth assessment report.” Hence the Australian climate community science is itself based on the rotten cornerstone of the IPCC’s discredited science.

One would have expected from an objective scientist that with the dark cloud of contradictions and antinomies that is hovering over the debate of climate change to have had at least a modicum of doubt about his position instead of being a preacher of the Gospel of truth.

http://kotzabasis.vox.com

PHIL M,

When I went to school 10 parts of water made 11 parts of ice, but now you say:-

"As for where the water comes from JF - it comes from melting ice that lies over land (Greenland ice-cap for instance)and also from the expansion of water as it warms up.
Posted by Phil Matimein, Monday, 4 August 2008 12:00:53 PM".

Surely melting Arctic ice should reduce in area once thawed as most of an ice berg is underwater. Melted ice is not going to boil so precisely what contraction or expansion is proposed to occur over the surface of the whole world ocean at the same time, and where is relevant data?

God help Australian science if Roger Jones is a typical example. I prefer to take note of internationally acclaimed scientists re global warming. People such as Freeman Dyson, Richard Lindzen, Chris Landsea, William Gray and even people closer to home e.g. Bob Carter and Ian Plimer.

This is the well developed scientific discipline that has to engage in fraud and deception to get its views across.

Never mind the fact that they way they elected to represent temperature as an anomaly off a carefully determined base period eg 1961-1990 when temperatures were falling, which has the effect of exagerating the shape of the curve, to make it look hotter.

If one removes the bias created by using this approach,and use instead changes in annual temps,and plots these, the warming all but disappears. Funny about that.

http://i26.tinypic.com/2hmpw6r.jpg

But that is not all. This is the organisation, CSIRO, that was required to generate 25% of its income by selling its services. So what did they do but hawked their wares to all the Labour controlled State Governments, producing alarmist reports, which eagerly became political agendas and election issues. And the rest is history.

We have all been suckered big time.

Ten year trends?

Try a thousand year trend. Around FIFTY thousand years ago the Australian continent was much wetter than it is now.

So Australia has been drying out for around FIFTY that is FIFTY thousand years.

Sea levels have risen and fallen by a hundred metres.

Civilisations have fallen as a result of climate change. Climate change that is part of the cycle of this planet.

I should like to add this link to my previous comment
D K Johnston article in Spiked, Tuesday,29th July 2008 titled-"What are the odds that we're baking the planet?"
www.spiked-online.com

Here we have one Roger Jones, a CSIRO principal research scientist putting up his holier than thou, pseudo-science arguments against what he calls "the denial community". Cripes, the CSIRO's reputation was once highly respected in the Australian community for many decades but that is certainly not the case anymore as all i see are these red flags.

Jones here just argues about his short term temperatures and these pious unseen models that cannot be challenged. At no stage has he proved beyond doubt that our human CO2 emissions are the culprit for a gentle natural warming in the Northern Hemisphere. In fact he has not even mentioned this all important basis of evidence. Is this just climateering using suggestion and innuendo? i.e. Take some limited knowledge, mix it with the prevailing thought matrix of the end is near, and voila! you have another scientist jumping to a conclusion that the facts are quite dispensable.

The will to look at broader, alternative views and do proper science is always going to be missing with likes of this Jones boy because in many ways, his livelihood and their organization’s budget depend on the hype. We all wondered where this naive, Federal Minister, Penny Wong, repeatedly came to say that 12 of the last 13 years are the hottest in history. Well let's just say history in these tiny holy minds would in fact be only 13 years at best. lol

Good piece Roger Jones, it's sad to see OLO become a cesspool for right wingers, What's next anti-Aids and anti-evolution. By then it will be a short hop to racist and sexism. It’s always the same with conservative websites, the nutters always take over. Believe what you want to believe the rest of us will get on with it, what the saying reality has a leftwing bias.

It seems to me that the whole debate has been hijacked by semantics, word games and ‘my scientist is hairier than yours.”

Start with the known symptoms
- melting artic,
-melting glaciers
-whole forests dying in Europe because of vehicle fumes,
-fauna ranges changing and the highest species dying out.
-Ocean acidification
-whole river systems collapsing
et sec.
How many more bell weather event do you want before you agree something bad is happening?
Given that
-Business is about PROFIT not social security, environment or world peace.
-tax doesn't work (eg tobacco, booze)
-Government are about people not business profits
-Business needs direction and clear guidelines
-No scientific theory or proposed long-term prognostication is without critics eg evolution has its unscientific critics 'intelligent design'.

Now chest beating aside, global climate Change sceptics....What is your alternative scientific explanation for these associated fact? Then what do you see is the LOGICAL OUTCOME of these factors? What is your scientifically peer reviewed facts backing your explanation? So far the latter is non existent, unscientific or not peer reviewed.
"She'll be right" isn't logically sustainable. At least we need action now, long term planning and Harm Minimumization strategies.
Tell everyone what DO YOU PROPOSE we DO? What if YOU'RE wrong?
One rule. No attacks just facts.

This is the saddest set of comments I've yet seen on OLO. It seems that the AGW debate has now descended into a series of set positions and proponents of one or the other position now hurl insults at each other. I'm not a scientist - History and English Literature are my majors and History is my real passion. So when I look at this debate, I'm inclined to these very tentative conclusions:
the outliers - either aggressive global warming or a new Ice Age are unlikely to be realised;some moderate warming or cooling is likely to occur;in either case, precipitate action which increases taxes - directly or in some disguise called an Emissions Trading Scheme - is unlikely to do anything constructive and will increase the size of government. We are 'nannied' enough without being panicked into giving government more reasons to intervene in our lives.

If you want to see what active climate scientist are saying, go and read the free abstracts in a peer-reviewed climate science journal such as "Climatic Change":

http://www.springerlink.com/content/100247/?Content+Status=Accepted

They have all (that I can see) accepted that climate change is happening, and that it is human-caused.

Now if you don't believe in the scientific method, that's your prerogative, but most people would have to agree that its has been very effective knowledge tool so far. There is no sign that I have seen that science is general falling into disrepair. Quite the contrary - the rate of scientific discover and validation is increasing at an astounding rate.

While it is true to say that science never "proves" (in the formal logic sense) anything, because everything is a theory, at this point it is almost as misleading to use that as a reason to stall action on climate change as it is to stop launching satellites because science can't "prove" that the earth isn't flat.

Another nice tool of science is Occam's razor - should you just believe what the vast majority of climate scientists are saying, or should you believe some elaborate theories about CSIRO and almost every member of the global climate scientist collective are colluding on an elaborate scam to screw governments out of money (because we all know being a scientist is the road to being a millionaire :-) ).

At this point, the deniers generally pull of one or more names of the handful of climate scientists who are sceptics. Or they mention a bunch of other "scientists" who turn out to be TV weathermen, computer programmers, or retired coal chemists. Or they point to blogs and website with deceptive names that pretend to be science organisations or big "institutions".

Don't be fooled: if you want a representative sample of authentic, relevant and well-informed scientific opinion, see for yourself in the peer-reviewed climate science journals.

A peer reviewed scientist stands with the weight of the scientific community, and makes considered statements using the available scientific evidence.

In response, a legion of unqualified commentators, lobbyists and irate cranks espouse their anti-global warming view.

Granted, a rare handful in the scientific community stand by them. I'd agree their voices are valid.

Though, the vast majority of the scientific establishment support global warming, and are willing to submit to the onerous process of getting peer-reviewed papers out there.

No doubt those opposing it would accuse this proper peer reviewing process as some kind of conspiratorial method to block their cause, when in actuality it's designed to weed out shoddy science.

Though that same conspiratorial mentality is required for all kinds of things, ranging from 9-11 conspiracy theorists right through to the Roswell loopiness.

I ain't a scientist, though I like to do a little of my own research and evaluation - and it's more along the lines of assessing who is credible and who isn't.

In this case, it's easy.

Nice article in todays Australian

Climate hysterics v heretics in an age of unreason
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24122117-7583,00.html

Runner,
God gave a man a bag that contained the seeds of life. The man realized it was important so he decided decided to defend it against all commers. Many doubter said it was just a bag of seeds. So the man used the bag to beat a few into sumission even killed some others.
Eventually as an old man, he opened to find it contained dried and shrivelled seeds... the seeds of life. He died disallusioned.
Moral 1: it's what YOU do with the seeds that determines their value.
moral 2: Best you look at and learn what God meant and not what you think he meant. God is about love/tollerance not beating people over the head with mistaken beliefs/prejudices.

BTW Do you really believe that the "Australian's" journalist without training in the science are any more qualified to talk about Climate Change than any other wanna be entertainer?
Newspapers sell advertising. To do this they entertain to get readers. visa vie their existance depends on those who benefit most from Status Quo.
My Granny used to say: Believe 1/3 of what you hear, 1/2 you see and none of what you read in a news paper.
Why don't you take up my challenge and put forward your hypothesis and give the scientific evidence to prove it. (Peer reviewed) my evidence is widely published.

This link is interesting and seems to have slipped well under the radar in our media. Apparently "31,000 scientists" petitioning against AGW - AND its more fence-sitting cousing - anthropogenic climate change.

http://www.oism.org/pproject/

mil-observer wrote: "Apparently '31,000 scientists'" ...

This I am sure you would know is old news and has been dismantled on many previous occasions. The list began in '98 when over half of the signatures of self-described scientists or engineers or "equivalents" were collected. Many may have changed their minds by now, but will still be listed. It consists of slips of paper, and later, internet submissions, sent in by people promising that they hold various qualifications, in an unscrutinised process. The list of signatories has been shown to contain people who are not scientists/engineers, people who are dead, duplications, company names, and fictional characters, such as "BJ Honeycutt" from MASH. The vast majority of the other signatories are from unrelated disciplines. Only a fraction of the legitimate scientists on the list hold PhDs. None of the petition editors have climate science qualifications. The senior editor is also on record as saying "the dangers from nuclear weapons have been distorted and exaggerated" into "demoralizing myths."

More can be read on SourceWatch:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine

Now for some new news:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/global-warming/the-climate-change-smokescreen/2008/08/01/1217097533885.html

... "Exxon Mobil acknowledged it had been doing something similar. It said it would cease funding nine groups that had fuelled a global campaign to deny climate change. Exxon's decision came after a shareholder revolt by members of the Rockefeller family and big superannuation funds to get the company to take climate change more seriously. "

... "Brad Miller, chairman of the US House of Representatives oversight committee on science and technology, last year said Exxon's support for sceptics "appears to be an effort to distort public discussion". The funding of an array of think tanks and institutes which house climate sceptics and deniers also worried Britain's premier scientific body, the Royal Society. It found that in 2005, Exxon distributed nearly $3 million to 39 groups which "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence that greenhouse gases are driving climate change". Its protests helped force Exxon's recent retreat."

You'd think Roger Jones would tackle the most important fact that since 2003 the ice core data reveal that CO2 levels follow warming by 800 yrs.Prior this it was accepted that the reverse was true.How does he exlain this?It is suggested that heating causes the release of CO2 from the oceans.Co2 is a minor GW gas.The Jurassic period had CO2 levels tens times that of the present and life thrived.We have increased CO2 levels by only one third.The antartic ice remains unchanged in surface area.The Artic Sea Ice appears to be growing back.The world has moved into a much cooler period even with the growth of China and India accelerating Co2 emitions.No tell tale hot spots have been found 10,000 m above the equator.

Bob Carter has photographic proof showing lots of official US Govt temp recording stations being re-located near air conditioning units,on bitumen,near buildings etc.The general urban heat island effect also has an impact as cities grow.Could this be distorting their data?

Politics ,money power and reputations have now stolen the debate.$50 billion has now being given to the scientific community since 1990 for climate research.They had to find something or lose their funding.The models the IPCC bases all its arguments on,are totally inadaquate.The IPCC is an arm of the UN which they are using to expand their power base.They want to be the epicentre of the Penny Wong's "new world order."


No scientfic model can possibly replicate the complexities of climate and the case for AGW is far from proven.To be honest,I smell a rat.

Thanks Sams: I thought it seemed a bit easy to marshal that many scientists! The polling method seemed too fast and furious too.

I was concerned to see some the "conspiractist" assaults via the sourcewatch link though. It starts to look very much like hyperbole from the other (AGW) direction.

There are two levels of criticism of the "report"

The first questions the science which is foolish, because while the magnitude and effects of future climate change has still some unknowns, there is clear evidence that it is happenning.

The second questions the recommendations. I firmly believe that the recommendations if implemented without the buy in of the major polluters (china and india) will lead Australia into a major recession whilst having almost no effect whatsoever on climate change.

I am a firm believer in the Pareto priciple or that 80% of the gains can be achieved with 20% of the effort.

As electricity generation accounts for about 70% of CO2 generation in Aus, and brown coal generates nearly twice as much per kWhr than black coal, replacing this with gas cogen would reduce C02 emissions by 25% in one stroke and cost a heap less than wind or solar.

Replacing all the brown coal with nuclear in Victoria would reach the 30% reduction by 2030, reuse the transmission infrastructure and maintain employment in the letrobe valley, but that is completely unpalatable to the Left.

I am wildly over simplifying the issue and expect to be roundly criticised for my generalisations, but have sound science behind my proposals.

Kenny, if you cannot read advocacy into this Jones boy's article then don't assume my comment has anything to do with politics .... left, right, or left right out. This is nonsense stuff and you need to know it because it is the politicisation of science that i've been for ever concerned with as the main issue. I simply want good honest science getting the available tax payer funding not some bogus alarmism rorting the system and destroying the careers of especially young promising people entering the profession. We need to focus on hard science projects.

Jones here and now Sams with his link to springerlink's collection are evidence of an Al-AGW pseudo-scientific establishment floating on a rising tide of fear and propaganda. Four Corners on the ABC last night provided ample evidence of how their standards have slipped alarmingly because in effect this program should have been preceded by a disclaimer that it is propaganda, not a documentary nor an example of investigative journalism. This propaganda creates through intellectual dishonesty the absurd belief that climate is not allowed to modulate changes.

Remember these Al-AGW advocates are pushing their agenda through emotion, ridicule, propaganda and rhetoric. They have NO scientific proof which certainly explains their refusal to debate the issue.

JF Aus: "We are told the ocean level will rise 1 metre, correct? Where will all the water come from to cover 72% of this planet's ocean surface?"

I see these sorts of questions posted here again and again, and I can't resist speculating why. If you are genuinely interested in the answer this is the wrong place to seek it. JF Aus, you must know this, surely. You are not likely to take any answer given here at face value anyway. If you are genuine, here is a good place to start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise

As a starting point it's so, well, obvious. It must be faster than typing up question, posting it here and waiting for the answer.

It seems more likely JF Aus is just stirring the pot. But if you are going to do that why start with a question that is so dammed easy to answer? Any kid seeing the someone suggest the sea level won't rise with an increase in temperature could tell you within 60 seconds it's just idiocy. Being able to instantly fact check using the internet almost a basic skill nowadays - right up there with counting money. Maybe not for some of the posters here, but kids learn it in high school. And so it should be. I just wish some of the adults would catch on.

To all those who have voiced their scepticism:

No one is denying that critical thikning is an essential part of rigorous science and a flourishing democracy. However, by your own logic it is misguided to think of climate change as a purely scientific question. Because as some of you rightly point out, scientific theories can never be proved, only disproved. And the issue of climate change is not a question of proving whether it's happening or not. It's about assessing the risks and deciding on an appropriate course of action.

The time for scientific debate has passed: what we need to decide now is whether we are willing to risk a minimal effect on our hip pockets to avoid the risk of the collapse of the Earth's ecosystems. I'm afraid it is a moral question.

Runner: "It was not long ago that the man made hole in the ozone layer was going to kill us or [sic]. "

What is it about ozone depletion you don't understand? The ozone layer was measurably thinner, and UV levels noticeably higher. As a skin cancer sufferer, there was an obvious result of higher UV levels on my person. Since the discovery of thinning ozone, efforts (in particular the Montreal Protocol of 1987) have been made to reduce or eliminate the gasses causing the thinning, and this has worked, with the ozone layer, while still thinned, is recovering. Even if you regard anthropogenic global warming as a fairy story, ozone depletion is something else again. Or are you one of the many punters who confuse the two?

There is at least one error of fact in Jones' article. Temperatures are taken at 1.1 metre above the ground, not 1.5. The bulbs of the thermometers at 1.1 metre would put the scale at about 1.2m, high enough for many weather observers. If the scale was at 1.6m (bulbs at 1.5m) most observers would need to stand on a box or ladder.

I might add that the accurate instrumental record is very short, with sparse records from mid-19th century and more widespread ones from early 20th century. The methods used confuse the issue, with the now-standard Stevenson screen only coming into widespread use early in the 20th century. I also wonder how the "normal" line on the graphs bandied about are established. If it's a 30 year instrumental record, say 1960-90, who's to say that that period is "normal"?

"Bob Carter has photographic proof showing lots of official US Govt temp recording stations being re-located near air conditioning units,on bitumen,near buildings etc.The general urban heat island effect also has an impact as cities grow.Could this be distorting their data?"

If this is the case, and I doubt it, there are statistical means by which the resulting data would be thrown out. In any case, there are "baseline" stations on remote islands which have no urban effects, which are used rather than urban stations which have a compromised record. The mere act of moving an observation area 200 metres is enough to compromise the record (and when it happens, a comparison is made between the two sites, usually over two years).

Exterminator, some of your alarmist "global warming effects" are laughable. It doesn't take global warming to wipe out species, when man is around. Just ask the Australian megafauna, or the NZ moa. As for the Murray/Darling, while its present status is not good, much of the demise of the system can be sheeted home to irrigators and the Snowy Mts Scheme for massively reducing flows.

"The time for scientific debate has passed: what we need to decide now is whether we are willing to risk a minimal effect on our hip pockets to avoid the risk of the collapse of the Earth's ecosystems."
You're so right! Until the case for the "alarmingly catastrophic collapse of the fragile, delicate ecosystems" is stronger it is definitely worth the risk. The effect to the hip pocket will be much greater than minimal.

That there is some climate change taking place is fairly clear but
whether the earth average is changing is another matter.

Viking 13 comments that wx stations have been moved.
I have seen reference to this previously and there has been considerable
discussion on heat island effects. Also a not insignificant number of
wx stations have closed and more reliance has been given to those in
rural areas. This seems to me to be no more than common sense.

However all this avoids the questions I raised;

Is the CO2 generated by man significant ?
If so, how do we know that ?
As the logarithmic rollover has occured (according to one article
seen) the effect of doubling CO2 to 900 ppm will have next to no effect. So what is the situation in that case ?

http://brneurosci.org/co2.html

As I see it this question is fundamental to the whole problem.

Update: Sunspots are still near zero per month.

SILLYFILLY writes on page 2, "Rock under the arctic, what a notion! And here I thought that the arctic was an ice-sheet over water. Well I must be wrong and I'll have to change my mind. Bugger the science, we'll just make it up as we go.

What is the science sillyfilly? Your comment seems to discount the rock of Greenland and other island mass and coast in the Arctic Ocean. These are not islands of just ice and snow. How much ice and snow is there on top of the rock or soil or whatever you confirm it is?

Further, significant melting of Arctic ice has recently shocked some scientists, so when can we expect the ocean to rise due to this significant melt?

Just some polite answers would be appreciated.

Chris Shaw makes a good point about the latent heat of fusion, by which ice absorbs 334 joules per gram upon turning to water, without any temperature change. But there is also the latent heat of vapourisation, by which a gram of water at 0 degrees Celsius absorbs 2500 joules upon vapourising.

Hey Runner, any comment on last night's 4 corners?

check http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2323805.htm if you missed it.

Good old Fester - thanks mate. I'd better make the big effort and catch up on Joules.

Here's the temperature "curve" of vaporisation, which every owner of an evaporative cooler is familiar with, but seldom wonders about. Of course it stops when the water reservoir runs out - but think, the machine becomes ever less effective as the air in the room becomes more humid - as it must. So there is an equilibrium problem which no-one ordinarily thinks about. What does that signify for us on the global scale?

Also, they say that water vapour behaves as another greenhouse gas - so is this a case of positive feedback? If so, at what degree of humidification of the atmosphere does it tend to find a new point of balance?

So much to learn - so little time - so they say.

- I'm up for it -

Im wondering if those that claim that the world is now cooling and has been since 1998 have actually looked at the data points. You can easily find them - google 'global average temperatures'.

The global avereage temperature has significant year to year variability, this noise needs to be taken into account when looking for trends. There are statistical methods to do this precisely.

A less precise way to discern a trend is just to look at a graph. It is patently obvious when you look at the data over the last 20, 50 or 100 years that the trend is upwards.

A good analogy is a set of monthly sales figures. Some months are high and others are low. If last month was a great month and this month was only slightly above average a naive interpretation would be that sales have started falling. To discern the trend you need to smooth out the spikes and look at a bigger data set.

However, a simple visual analysis is never good enough - even when the trends appear obvious. To be certain you have to do the mathematics.

No one has produced any mathematics that shows a cooling trend. If you can do this and are posting your result in here I suggest you are using the wrong forum - you should be sending your results to the science journals. If you have already published such data, or know of soemone that has, please indicate where it is.

Until the skeptics can show some real evidence to support their opinion that we are in a cooling trend they do not have a leg to stand on.

Bazz,

I'll wager no one will answer your question. The odds any who can with authority (ie a climate scientist, or someone who spent the man months required to make sense of the science) isn't going to bother as they have answered the same question several times before and have tired of playing the game. Their answers are probably on the web somewhere.

As for someone like me who is just a pleb but nonetheless thinks on the balance of probabilities you are wrong - not this time. I would actually like to know the answer myself, but to get the answer would take me hours upon hours of effort on the web, with breaks in between to absorb and ponder what I had seen. I'd probably even enjoy doing it, but I simply don't have the time.

I am left with the rather unsatisfying position to just accepting the scientific consensus on the subject. Unsatisfying perhaps, but not unreasonable - I am just putting my faith in the experts. If I see someone like you say all the experts are wrong my reaction is "remarkable claims require remarkable evidence". You of course aren't offering much in the way of evidence, so I loose interest very quickly.

Yes CO2 effect on GW is logarithmic. This is well known and obviously has been taken account of in the climate models. To make the simplistic claim they haven't is just absurd. But to give you a pointer, the to your question lies in those models. Look at them, understand them, and you will find what you are looking for. There is a list of the more popular ones on Wikipedia, as always.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_model

"Im wondering if those that claim that the world is now cooling and has been since 1998 have actually looked at the data points. You can easily find them - google 'global average temperatures'."

You can also find useful graphs here:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/

along with NASA's analysis:

"'Global warming stopped in 1998,' has become a recent mantra of those who wish to deny the reality of human-caused global warming. The continued rapid increase of the five-year running mean temperature exposes this assertion as nonsense. In reality, global temperature jumped two standard deviations above the trend line in 1998 because the "El Niño of the century" coincided with the calendar year, but there has been no lessening of the underlying warming trend.

You can't start a graph in the 1880s and pretend that it proves global warming. It's like leaving out either side of a bell curve and pointing to it as proof of...well, anything.

No human-induced GW skeptic is claiming that temperatures haven't increased since the late 1800s, it's obvious they have. The burden of proof is on the IPCC and others who are pushing the AGW barrow to prove that this rise is anything other than part of a natural cycle and in particular that it is caused by humans.

Look at the 2 graphs pictured in this article:
http://climate.blog.co.uk/2006/11/11/lying_made_easy~1318827
they are both from IPCC reports. The first one is from their 1996 report, but it was very bad at indicating any unusual warming trend, so in their 2001 report they dumped it and used the second graph pictured. It certainly goes much further in helping their cause, but it is also the product of extremely inventive 'science'. When a body fractures and obfuscates data this much in an effort to back up their conclusions it makes me seriously question their motives.

hadz wrote: "Look at the 2 graphs pictured in this article"

No, go to the real peer-reviewed climate science journals and stop reading junk science, distortions and lies.

hadz wrote: "their conclusions it makes me seriously question their motives."

Kooky blogs that deliberately misrepresent the facts makes me seriously question their motives. For example writing this: "tucking it away in a folder marked ‘censored data’" without explaining that 'censored' data has a specific meaning in statistics that has nothing to do with the grand conspiracy theories put about by the flat-Earthers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censoring_(statistics)

So sams are you saying those 2 graphs aren't from the respective IPCC reports that I was referring to?

You can't debunk my argument based on the fact that the 2 graphs are in a blog that you don't like. I linked to the blog because it had both graphs pictured in an easily linked to format. (I found that blog with a quick google search for the images actually; I was aware of the data-mangling hockey-stick chart replacing the more cyclic graph that doesn't help IPCC's cause long before I found this article/blog)

"The burden of proof is on the IPCC...to prove that this rise is anything other than part of a natural cycle".

Hadz it is documented that climatic changes of this magnitude have occurred before but never in such a timeframe, and never without a trigger event such as volcanic eruption, asteroid etc. Unless skeptics can point to something else which has caused GW the only remaining explanation is the A.

In addition to this it is anticipated the north polar ice cap will shrink to nothing within around 30 years, possibly a lot less. It would be the first time in, oh, say sixteen million years this has happened.

Dunno about others but that seems kinda significant.

I've been simply expressing this opinion for some time. I simply want good honest science getting the available tax payer funding not some bogus alarmism rorting the system and destroying the careers of especially young promising people entering the profession. We need to focus on hard science projects.

When i read Emma Pittaway's comment here that "scientific theories can never be proved, only disproved." then surely some people out there, if they are fair dinkum on anything, should be seriously concerned for it is now no longer decisions based on hard evidence. Now, despite the fact that we spend all our lives continually immersed in cause and effect situation we get exceptionalism at its best with causality being replaced what she call a "moral question". Cripes one would think the true more question was to get proof and evidence first. Her fabricating something that doesn't exist and then asking everyone disprove it is very much behaving immorally.

On the subject of these CSIRO pious unseen models that cannot be challenged our Jones boy refers to in this article, let me say that they have been challenged and found to have no credible basis for their claims in their Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report.
i.e. Go here for details and be alarmed ... re Guano
http://landshape.org/enm/

originalMT;
I have seen one graph showing the temperature from about
1990 to 2007 that had a moving average laid over it.
It certainly showed a small fall from 1998 to Jan 2007.

Of course that only relates to that period and does not mean anything
as far as global warming is concerned as it is too short a period.
There almost certainly will be moving average graphs from say 1900
somewhere.

rstuart;
quote; If I see someone like you say all the experts are wrong my
reaction is "remarkable claims require remarkable evidence".
You of course aren't offering much in the way of evidence, so I
loose interest very quickly.
unquote
I did not say all the experts were wrong. However I do have doubts.
I am not offering any evidence, I am just offering the observation
that if the graph to which I referred is correct and as you say it is
almost certain that the IPCC models will have it built in. But then
if so and that graph is correct then "CO2 global warming" should have
stopped or at least show a slowing that lock steps with the graph.

http://brneurosci.org/co2.html

If global warming continues then it would not be caused by CO2.
Methane perhaps ?
That is my reasoning of the effect of the rollover of the graph at
450 ppm.

Bennie

'Hey Runner, any comment on last night's 4 corners?'

I did not see it however the ABC would be among the biggest scaremongers when it comes to GW. No doubt they had many leading 'scientist' warning of the global freeze just 25 years ago.

Bazz,

You forced me to read the bloody thing. We agree that "Absorption of light follows a logarithmic curve". (Stuff in quotes is taken literally from the article.) No argument there.

He then says: "a linear increase in temperature requires an exponential increase in carbon dioxide". This does not follow from the earlier statement. The first statement said the _rate_ of energy capture from terrestrial radiation increases logarithmically with CO2 concentration. However temperature is not measure of a rate, ie of how fast energy is captured. It is a measure of a thing, in this case how _much_ energy has been captured.

So the question becomes: since we are increasing the rate at which the atmosphere absorbs energy, what is the final temperature reached? The method T.J.Nelson used to determine this is: "Between 1900 and 2000, atmospheric CO2 increased from 295 to 365 ppm, while temperatures increased about 0.57 degrees C ... It is simple to calculate the proportionality constant (call it 'k') between the observed increase in CO2 and the observed temperature increase". In other words, he seems to be assuming it the atmospheric temperature immediately settles to its final value once the CO2 concentration is set. Obviously it doesn't and won't for decades. Quite apart from anything else, the ocean has roughly 2000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere, and so far only the surface has been effected. He then uses this proportionality constant k to predict future rises.

The climate system isn't a toaster you feed energy into and it rapidly stabilises. Energy goes in, oceans heat up, ocean currents change, water vapour increases, ice caps melt ... one thing feeding into another for decades. This is why we need unbelievably complex models to predict the climate. Nelson is effectively saying we turned the fish heater up a notch, immediately measure the temperature without waiting for it to stabilise, we can then use the increase to predict the temperature rise if we turn the heater up to full.

The guy writes numerical modelling software. Ahhhhh! Words fail me.

It is good to see climate scientists standing up for themselves. We have to fight for this planets future. We need to reduce our pollution across the board, not just in terms of the atmosphere (eg the floating sea of rubbish in the northern Pacific).

The scientific concensus is clearly that our world is warming and we are responsible. Having followed the blog argument recently, there is a lot from skeptics but some support from science as well. Go and look for yourself at the articles, read the IPCC reports and make up your own mind.

Thanks rstuart,
I will now go and read the article again with your
commentary alongside me.

Thanks

Having read the link provided by Bazz, I would agree with runner that there are serious ommissions. While it has included legitimate dampening effects on climate change, it has ommitted the accelerating effects that have an exponential effect.

These would include the uptake of water vapour into the atmosphere as it warms, the exposure of land in Greenland and Antarctica which absorb energy etc.

Likewise the exponential curves predicted by the greens are the other extreme of using all the accelerating effects and none of the dampening effects.

Myself I would prefer to use the linear approach until I see reason to change.

hadz wrote: "So sams are you saying those 2 graphs aren't from the respective IPCC reports that I was referring to?"

I expect they are. It is interesting that they are provided without proper labelling or even the original captions, and the context is fabricated in what is clearly a deceptively written blog as I have explained already.

"You can't debunk my argument based on the fact that the 2 graphs are in a blog that you don't like."

You haven't actually presented an argument. If you have some scientific argument, then present it in one of the peer-reviewed climate science journals that I keep pointing out, and allow the climate scientists to debunk it for you, should you actually make it into publication.

You can read more about the medieval temperature issue here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

To readers save time, the gist is that no matter how you stack the models back in periods where there were less reliable measurements, the conclusion that the current regime of climate change is caused by humans is unaffected. This is perhaps most clearly explained by the 2006 US National Academy of Sciences report:

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676