Steven, Hasbeen,

I'm not yet 30, so I should still be around in 2050. I'll hold a seance to let you know how things are going. Unless, of course, the 5th Horseman of the Apocalypse has starved me to death in a drought-induced famine, burnt me to death in an immense firestorm, killed me with some dreaded tropical plague or drowned me as our once fair nation sinks, Atlantis like, 'neath the rising seas.

This seems unlikely.

A little more, Steven, about the “hot spot” which escaped your memory, might assist our consideration of the AGW fiasco.

There is a site called Skeptical Science, a name designed to support a pretence that it is not for the purpose of backing the IPCC, which it does by attempting to mislead us on the science. Strangely it contains the following statement:

“The hot spot is not a unique greenhouse signature and finding the hot spot doesn't prove that humans are causing global warming.”

So the IPCC, if its lackey is correct, had no basis whatsoever for its statement that it is “very likely”, that human emissions cause global warming. He says the opposite to what the IPCC said, when it released its baseless statement.

The governing bodies of the prestigious scientific entities, not the scientists comprising the membership, many of whom have voiced their concern at these statements issued without basis, have relied on the statement by the IPCC

Our hero at Skeptical Science goes on to say:

“You first need to understand what's causing the hot spot. "Changes in the lapse rate" is not as sexy or intuitive as a greenhouse signature but that's the physical reality.”

On this basis, the IPCC purporting to predict a “proof” of AGW was completely misleading.

We might reach a starting point Steven, by agreeing that, notwithstanding baseless representations by many in support of the tenuous assertion of AGW, there is no scientific basis for any assertion that human emissions have any measurable effect on climate. .

Of course, if, unlike the IPCC, you are able to refer us to any science which backs the proposition that human emissions have any detectable effect on climate then please do so.

You will be the first, if you do, since I have seen this invitation issued many times without response. There is no such science.

Do not ask again why the top scientific bodies issue statements supporting AGW when there is no scientific basis. We need a Royal Commission to ascertain that.

Thank TAR, I'll keep my ghostly ear pricked for your call.

Meanwhile, Steven have you read the Australian article of the leaked IPCC draft report? Even the BBC, normally about as much use as the ABC if truthful reporting is desired, has reported it.

Apparently at the IPCC they are getting their running shoes oiled & greased, ready to run like hell from their previous garbage.

Perhaps you should get your mates into a new line of study. I've got a strong feeling that Climate Science is not going to be the golden goose for much longer.

nice one stevelmeyer, like all AGW proponents, you are a cherry picker

Now, show me where I said science journals do not print contrary papers on climate science. It's not what I said, it's probably, with a dose of confirmation bias, what you expect me to say.

I suggest you read what I said, not make up things you think I said

Dear me, I follow several climate scientists and they get published, (e.g. Judith Curry) what I disagree with is the proprietary nature of many who suppress papers, willingly, to limit dissent .. that's not science .. or is that what you mean, that you think non believers, skeptical papers should be suppressed .. do tell?

Have you actually read the climate gate emails, not read the various fluff about it .. actually READ them?

I'll bet you didn't .. and if you did, and still support that all climate science papers are honest, you could be easily mistaken by some people, to be a fool.

The hotspot is significant not because it is unique to CO2 amplification, but because it is a test of the models. Most of us are happy with a relatively simple mathematical model of the effect of CO2 on temperature which shows a much lower level of warming than the IPCC scenarios because it doesn't assume any other forcings.

This mathematical model has been around for somewhere close to 100 years and has been developed into current climate models, which is where the problems start.

The climate models being used today generally project warming higher than the simple model by assuming various forcings of which water vapour is the dominant one. The tropospheric hotspot is supposed to be caused by the adibiatic lapse rate, which refers to the water cycle.

That no-one can find the hotspot means that the models are not dealing with the water cycle properly. And as it is the water cycle where most of the real dispute lies, not the relationship between CO2 and infra-red radiation, it is a serious problem.

What the complicated models do is "parameterise" forcings, which in effect means assigning them a number which can be plugged into a model on the basis of the best guess of the programmer. They then fiddle around with these "parameters" normalising results against temperature records from the past. When their guesses sum out to being pretty close to what happened, they then declare victory.

You don't need to know a lot of statistics to know that this is nonsense, and until they have some proper hypotheses that are predictive of these forcings, particularly of the water cycle, the only model that should be given any credence is the original simple mathematical one.

Bugsy

“So, in the interest of moving forward…”

Thank you for the intellectual honesty of conceding what cannot rationally be defended. Steven, take note – that’s how it’s done.

With that, we have already moved as far forward as this discussion can go, namely, to resolving that Steven’s argument is fallacious and that climate science provides no rational justification for policy action on alleged catastrophic man-made global warming – and all that without any need for skeptics to place reliance on any of the many legitimate and illegitimate problems with the actual climate science.

The entire debate over what the climate science is telling us, is based on a complete furphy, namely *If* the temperature may be rising, *therefore* government needs to tax and control anything and everything.

* * *

However to move *backward* to what is now redundant, see this article by Dessler 2010 – ftp://ftp.ingv.it/pub/pietropaolo.bertagnolio/climate/dessler10-cloudFeedbacks.pdf .

As you can see, the data pattern – Fig. 2A - looks like it could have been put there with a shotgun.

You don’t have to be a professional scientist to realize that drawing a line through that cloud of data is statistically meaningless.

Dessler himself says “Obviously, the correlation … is weak (r2= 2%)…”
but later *concludes* “My analysis suggests that the short-term cloud feedback is likely positive and that climate
models as a group are doing a reasonable job of simulating this feedback, providing some indication that models successfully simulate the response of clouds to climate variations.”

If a kid in an undergraduate statistics course had tried that, he would have been failed. Yet Dessler is a professor of atmospheric science and this is published in one of the world’s most reputable journals.

This is the kind of “science” that is being used as the basis for decisions that the world is to be taxed, whole industries destroyed, vast rivers of capital diverted into corrupt boondoggles, and agriculture restricted while many people are going hungry.

Steven’s approach is one of invincible credulity.