Jedimaster, Sorry to be slow responding to several polite posts, though critical of your initial approach to Ridd’s discussion, - an "advisor" to the AEF”.. whose..”website is..a catalog of denialist literature”.

Not looking for a CV but physicists are rare and wished to know more. May I say your credentials are impressive. So yeah, I wanted to know because I look for informed people wishing to debate the issues. Two such, one ex-prof. physics sought me for that purpose - we have incisive, constructive and interesting exchangs. Another a computer scientist. More stimulating than discussions with people of similar view. My interest is in spectroscopy and energy exchange(CO2) warming air and high level radiation contributing to cooling.

On pen name, like Don Aitkin, I use my name to identify myself with what I say. No objection if others keep their identity private - many reasons for this.

Skeptical, I maintain respect changing/warming climate emerging from LIA. It warmed in step with CO2 increases 1979-95 (17 yrs - positive correlation) - not debated nor surprising. 15 yrs stasis 1995-2010 Does not prove causality any more than do models. Same rise 1860-80.

Agree with “.. maintain system will break if scientists live double lives, ...pursue evidence, zealously advocate.” It seems CSIRO, Uof M, UNSW , ANU.. do that. An hour ago one on TV, sheeted home Queensland floods, directly to global warming, as you predicted “..likely.. pro-AGW-ers will point to the present Queensland floods as evidence ..”.

If that were true, models should have provided warning months ago rather than projecting drought. BOM, responsible for flood modelling, could have had models of river flows to show where the water would go. An hour ago - unable obtain projection for suburbs near here - have to keep feeding models new data! “Sorry” it says, “no data for area”. Why - they had plenty of time to tell us about a drought that wasn’t and that 2050 will be a scorcher?. Farmers on the Darling Downs could have done with reliable information. John Nicol

Michael Rowan,
I agree with you, that CO2 should form the bases for arguments on Global Warming. However, Ridd addresses the real world of “climate” where it is hard to find direct reference to carbon dioxide, just “climate change”, “melting ice” and “events” - bushfires, floods and snowfalls - claimed to demonstrate Warming. Ridd’s statements thus necessarily represent comments on the narrow arguments by climate authors. CO2 is infrequently mentioned, because no evidence from measurements or theory shows carbon dioxide can do what Arrhenius postulated in 1895. Based on the understanding of gases at the time, (quantum theory developed post 1913), Arrhenius’ ideas are pure speculation and do not stand up to modern spectroscopic measurement or theory. Yet recent, demonstrably correct, analysis is conveniently ignored by climate modellers, along with solar effects, referring only to Arrhenius.

Carbon dioxide contributes a very small fraction to warming the atmosphere, most heat coming from water vapour over sea and contact with land. If this were not so, seas would be much hotter. Over land at midday, tropical temperature would rise to about 100 C. It does not! Because of similar air cooling to the cooling of a Harley Davidson! Over 25 years of measurements in upper tropical atmosphere, has not found the model’s “signature” of the greenhouse effect ,in the form of greatly enhanced warming. Its absence is now very well established from measurements using radio sondes, high flying aircraft and satellites. No signature - No enhanced greenhouse effect!

The warming “demonstrated” by the models only appears because there is an input of “assumed” heating by carbon dioxide and the GCMs are run to determine how the atmosphere and oceans will deal with that heat. Radiation used by models from CO2 cannot occur physically, spectroscopically. It is wrong. There is no clear connection between this assumed heating and reality. A glance at the output from models, after forty years, demonstrates that they do not match what are now known to be actual temperatures over the past many years. This is no surprise.
John Nicol

Yes, Trevor, I accept that I may have misinterpreted your use of “adversarial” and in general agree with the comments you have just made. However, I believe that even before publication, there was much more open discussion between scientists in different institutions than is allowed today, but would concede that your experiences would at least parallel mine and probably you have an even wider appreciation of what changes there have been. Not so long ago, and well into my retirement, I offered some advice to a past research student of mine who had asked me some questions by letter regarding a matter within a project she was working on as a post doc. I was quite amazed to receive a letter from her supervisor warning me off as if I had been about to poach their data – a quite bazarre experience which was revisited in my mind when I read of the “hiding” and FOI refusals in the CRU emails. As I said in replying, this was something I had never experienced in the whole of my former working life. I may have lived in a sheltered world, but critical analysis was generally done very openly with colleagues and competitors alike. It is this current lack of openness and sharing of the analysis process which I interpret Ridd’s essay as questioning, rather than considering the critical analysis done by a single person or group, “in the minds of scientists”, in a secretive way. OK. These may not have been general attributes throughout the scientific community of the past, but they are consistent with my reading of historical accounts of breakthroughs in Physics in the distant past and with my own very limited experience in the areas of my own research fields. John Nicol

The blame game has started.

Despicable, reprehensible ... steeping to 'sophisticated' gutter tactics for a conceived agenda ... yep, blame BOM.

No one can pin this event on GW, but extreme weather events are expected.

bonmot, extreme weather events are not new, there have always been extreme weather events, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and other world events which translate as disasters.

The attempt by the AGW believer community to try to claim all current extreme events as the result of additional global warming is disingenuous and adds to the credibility gap that the hysterical types are currently enjoying.

No one really believes that all of a sudden you can point to extreme events and blame AGW .. I was in Brisbane in 1974 for the floods .. not one was hysterically casting around for a scapegoat .. that's new and recent, and seems to be a bandwagon of the AGW tribe.

This is akin to astrology and people see it, that now the AGW believers attempt to claim wet, dry drought, storm everything "fits" into the AGW predictions. So there are now, no events that do not fit .. AGW cannot be disporved .. ha, that's no longer science.

Like astrology, it's all done after the event .. ahha the recent cold spell in Europe was "predicted", evidently secretly by the MET .. what utter rubbish, their original forcast is still up on their site.

AGW is suffering more and more a credibility problem, once people stop believing, as they did after climategate, they don't "start believing" again when more BS is added.

Oh and if the MET gets faster computers like they insist they need, they'll just get the wrong answer faster .. their bias is obvious.

Leo, lets look at the depths the opponents of climate science stoop to -
Phil Jones was asked about 'Statistically-significant' warming for a short, cherry picked period; statistical significance is a technical term requiring a technically correct answer (with 95% confidence that the warming the data shows - yes it shows warming - is a trend rather than noise) the specified period was too short. Those who make use of this particular question and answer either know that the general public will equate ‘no statistically significant global warming’ with no real warming and are dishonest - or are so misguided that they don't care. Phil Jones answered it honestly. Turning that honesty against him and deliberately misinterpreting what was said as 'no warming' - as well as deliberately ignoring the rest of his answer is a clear example of the depth of intellectual dishonesty climate science opponents will stoop to. The willingness of you and others to repeat the edited bite but not the full answer just proves my point; it's not mainstream science being dishonest here. BTW, because of the time that's passed since, it now is a long enough period to say, with 95% confidence that there's a statistically-significant warming trend since 1995.

Like the 'no cooling since 1998' argument that uses an exceptionally hot year as cherry picked start point and baseline for all future temperature changes as well as deliberately failing to give consideration to a strong known natural variation – ENSO, (which if corrected for shows lots of warming since 1998) – as basis for arguing that climate change is all natural variation, it just demonstrates a lack of scientific integrity of those using it. Take known natural variation into account and an already false argument falls apart completely. Peter Ridd maintains that low standard by suggesting but failing to show any genuine evidence that mainstream climate science is broken.