Good morning Graham, just passing through. Haven’t forgotten at all - GDY is as ‘hot rocks’ as you can get. I made a bit when I sold (not all) on a high and as mentioned to rpg, I bought more at a low, before the Carbon Tax went through the Senate – you do so seem to have a problem with that.

Whether I’ve thrown perfume on a violet – who is to say? Indeed, I respond as did Chesterton;

“If we are critical of the petty things they do to glorify great things, they would find quite as much to criticise in the great things we do to glorify petty things. And if we wonder at the way in which they seem to gild the lily, they would wonder quite as much at the way we gild the weed.”

Ergo, I would wonder just as much at the way you gild the weed.

Steven (with a ‘v’) and your good self has answered the question on hotspots.

Simon,

This has been a strange experience. You are clearly very worried about anthropogenic CO2 releases causing potentially catastrophic global warming. However, you engagingly admit that you are an amateur, unable to read and assess the science yourself. Instead, you decide to rely on people that you decide you can trust.

Several sceptics here have pointed out that the case that anthropogenic CO2 is a major (and effectively only) cause of observed warming has not, and has never been made. Sceptics acknowledge the physics that show that CO2 has some warming effect - generally acknowledged to be around 1 deg C for a doubling of CO2 in atmosphere - but argue that there is no evidence for positive feedbacks which the IPCC team assume will result in much higher levels of warming. In fact, the sceptics cite credible scientists who argue for neutral or even negative feedbacks. Certainly, the issue is not resolved. The science is not settled.

Further, sceptics have pointed out that it is demonstrated that natural cycles are a signficant, and potentially major, factor in observed warming. They have also pointed out that land-use factors are an acknowledged cause of local and regional warming (US Dust Bowl of the 30s). If natural and land-use factors are significant to major, how then can anthropogenic CO2 be the dominant factor?

Clearly you trust the published temperature series and are not bothered by the considerable evidence for manipulation and "adjustments" that always result in more warming. Sceptics question this information.

Finally, you appeal to authority - the IPCC, the CSIRO, the MSM, the Scientific Societies. Apparently you are totally unaware of the revelations of Climategate and now Climategate II which show some of the political manipulation behind the scenes.

I suggest that those making the claims need to provide the proof. You have not done so. So far as I am concerned, my position remains the same.

steven .. you're a serial cherry picker, to no one's suprise

"You need to get your facts right.

Two points about Galileo.

--He was far from an amateur. He practised what we today would call science full time. "

Show me where I said anything about whether Galileo was an amateur or not .. you're now attributing what you "think" to various posters, this is typical of the AGW breathless hysteria of spraying around assertions of all manner, then accusing skeptics of doing it.

get your facts right, clearly anything anyone says is subject to verballing by yourself.

Moir – Thursday, 24 November 2011 8:55:05 AM
>> censoring science in the way the US media has done is no different to what the Catholic Church did to Galileo 400 years ago. <<

Rpg replies to moir – Thursday, 24 November 2011 1:17:04 PM
>> The Galileo comparison, you have backwards, Galileo railed against the orthodoxy of "accepted science", there was a "consensus" and he went against it .. sound familiar? <<

Moir replies to rpg - Thursday, 24 November 2011 5:00:57 PM
>> Rpg, you have it backwards … Svante Arrenhius over 100 years ago went against science orthodoxy to advance the idea that increasing GHG’s can impact world temperature. If anyone can be compared to Galileo, it would be he. Nice try at spin though. <<

Steven responds to rpg – Friday, 25 November 2011 7:47:57 AM
>> rpg, You need to get your facts right … Two points about Galileo … He was far from an amateur… <<

AMICUS ‘replies’ to Steven – Friday, 25 November 2011 10:33:22 AM
>> "You need to get your facts right … Two points about Galileo … SHOW ME WHERE I SAID (my emphasis) anything about whether Galileo was an amateur or not … <<

Minor nitpick (Graham?)

It appears Amicus and rpg are one and the same.

If not, perhaps Amicus could explain (or aplogise to Steven).

If they are, perhaps Amicus, rpg or an OLO administrator could explain.

There was not room in my post above to include a relevant extract from the resignation of Harold Lewis from the American Physical Society, of which he had been a member for 35 years. Dealing with the corruption of science, he says:

“It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.

Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.)

I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist…

The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them.”.

It is worth reading the full text here:
http://cbullitt.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/harold-lewis-scathing-resignation-letter-from-the-aps/

As to the Royal Society, I like Nigel Calder’s comment regarding the recent confirmation of Svensmark’s work showing that the sun governs warming. If only it had not been delayed 11 years by politics:

“… there would have been less time for so many eminent folk from science, politics, industry, finance, the media and the arts to be taken in by man-made climate catastrophe. (In London, for example, from the Royal Society to the National Theatre.) Sadly for them, in the past ten years they’ve crowded with their warmist badges into a Hall of Shame, like bankers before the crash.”

http://calderup.wordpress.com/

With all this, and now Climategate2, where is a warmist to hide.

CORRECTION:

I wrote:

>>The existence or non-existence of the "hotspot" is in any case not the be all and end all of global warming.>>

I meant to write:

>>The DETECTION OF THE existence or non-existence of the "hotspot" is in any case not the be all and end all of global warming.>>

I shall expand on that (was out of words yesterday)

Detecting the so called "hotspot" – it's not a spot at all – requires more than the ability to measure air temperature. It requires us to measure trends in air and surface temperature over a wide area and at different altitudes over a period of decades. These trends must then be compared against the predictions of various climate models.

Given the noisy and even, to use Plimer's word, chaotic, background I question whether the dataset that allows us to do this with any confidence exists.

As was the case with neutrinos we shall simply have to wait until our capabilities are up to the task. As our datasets improve we should be able to make a definitive finding.

In the mean time progress in physics did not stop because we were unable to detect neutrinos and progress in understanding climate will not stop because, for now, we cannot make a definitive finding on the "hotspot."

What scant evidence there is points to the existence of a "hotspot" though not necessarily one that conforms with the predictions of the most commonly used climate models.

This is how science works in the real world. It's messy and difficult whenver we're operating at the outer limits of our capabilities.