A speech delivered to an obscure audience, then recycled as text, by a professor who perhaps cannot tell the difference between weather and climate, comes to its clunky end with a citation of a legal disclaimer. But perhaps it is subtle satire.

From now on, I shall be anticipating a written legal disclaimer at the end of every weather report on every TV channel.

Something along the lines of "It is not our fault if it rains on your parade" will do well enough for me.

The good news is that esteemed and learned author of this clever piece cannot possibly be suffering from presenile dementia.

Smoking doesn't cause cancer either does it?

I became a global warming sceptic quite some time ago so I find this article reassuring. However I can listen to other scientists who support AGW and also find their arguments compelling. What I really need are "debates" where groups of opposing scientists square off in public debates.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. The earth is cooling. Climate deniers refuse to face reality

He says (quote)
NASA also reported in 2011 "Global sea level this summer is a quarter inch lower (~6mm) than last summer"

A half-competent scientist would know to cite his sources, or at least cite a version of his paper which gives sources. A half-honest scientist would give rather more of the story than Ollier does.

In fact http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/multimedia/SeaLevelChange3.html seems to be the place to go for the truth of this matter, according to NASA.

I've learnt that the less nuanced the statement the higher should be the analytical 'DEFCON' setting (the defence readiness condition not the computer convention).

So I was disappointed to see the assertion, "Warming has ceased! In a press release of April 2, 2012, it was announced that: New UK Met Office global temperature data show that there has been no global warming in the past 15 years…"

Certainly not – despite the implication – in any UK Met office press release I could find.

I did find, 'Hemispheric and large-scale land surface air temperature variations: An extensive revision and an update to 2010' from 23rd of Mar 2012:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/crutem4/CRUTEM4_accepted.pdf
and
'An updated analysis of global and hemispheric temperature changes: new measurement data' from 11th of May 2012:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/HadCRUT4_accepted.pdf

But I couldn't find anything that confirmed the assertion. Maybe I misunderstood the first 25~50 pages before we got to the graphs in either document?

Then there was, "Satellite data show global temperature is essentially unchanged in 30 years."

No satellite data I could find showed this – but I suppose it depends upon the scientific exactitude of Prof Ollier's use of the word 'essentially'.

We'll all be in a better position to know over the next 30 years – but in the meantime I'll keep reading…

Regarding the section of the article which starts

(quote)

In a press release of April 2, 2012, it was announced that:

New UK Met Office ...
(end quote)

which is presented as though it is a quote from some source (and obviously Ollier is hoping the reader will assume it is from some respectable and reliable source)

So far as I can see it probably comes from an outfit called the Global Warming Policy Foundation
(for why I say so, see, eg,
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/45695
http://beforeitsnews.com/environment/2012/04/no-global-warming-for-15-years-1969859.html
http://able2know.org/topic/187532-1 )

For the GWPF see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation and/or the sources cited there.

It's not a predominantly scientific organisation. Recall that the best it could get for its 2011 "Annual Lecture" was Australia's own Cardinal George Pell!

http://www.sydneycatholic.org/people/archbishop/addresses/2011/20111026_1463.shtml

Good article that adds to growing doubt about the whole AGW industry. The IPCC is corrupt and the loudest shills for action are anti-capitalist.

This article is certainly not amongst OLO's finest.

There's nothing new here.

Other comments indicate that each of the feeble arguments presented to support this retired ex-professor's notions have been dredged up from old garbage and have long been debunked.

Supporters from both sides of this phony war will maintain their entrenched positions. The climate scientists (real ones, not the retired geologists such as this author and that fellow Monkton) will shrug their shoulders and keep on toiling.

Readers interested in more about the author's credentials could refer to http://www.desmogblog.com/cliff-ollier

Those interested in seeing real evidence of sea level rising and increasing acidification of oceans and increasing temperature of oceans will find the following reference valuable. It is an easy and informative read. http://www.skepticalscience.com/David-Evans-All-at-Sea-about-Ocean-Warming-and-Sea-Level-Rise.html

Like some others, I was bemused by the press release. The way it is written made it sound like a press release from the UK Met Office. But it in fact is not. It comes from an article written by Benny Peiser a member of Nigel Lawson anti-global warming think tank. However, that is not the only error in the article.

As for the claim that the HADCRUT4 data set shows no warming since 1997. That one is easy to test. The data set is available (although it only goes to the end of 2010) and a plot of temperature against time shows a slope of 0.84 degrees per century from the beginning of 1997 to the end of the data set. And the slope is significant. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/data/download.html

Satellite data for temperature do show warming over the past 30 years. http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html#msu_decadal_trends

Land-based measurements do not show 1936 was the warmest year http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/Fig.A4L.txt

Sea ice has retreated over 30 years http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Ollier is clearly wrong. So many statements he has made are wrong that I consider it is likely he was attempting to mislead when he wrote this article.

Sir Vivor, Kenny, shal, WmTrevor, JohnBennetts and Agronomist

Now fellas, come along its time to update yourself about what your own side is saying. This business about there being no warming since 1998 is well known and acknowledged by all sides, and never mind what it says in the Met Office press release. James Hanson himself has had two goes at explaining it, both concerning aerosols. the latest effort is ...

http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/13421/2011/acp-11-13421-2011.pdf

Before that the official line was to blame the temperature pause on Chinese industrial emissions. Didn't have time to find a reference to the first paper, but if you hack around you'll find it.. its open source..

I was astonished to read attempts to refute this basic point. You guys really need to read up more on this stuff..

As for the rest, you do realise Ollier's speciality is ice??.. the reason the IPCC had to dump the wild-eyed nonsense of the Greeland and Antartic ice sheets melting away and 6 metre increase in sea heights was precisely the points he outlined, that ice sheets simply don't disappear that quickly. Again, now widely acknowledged, albeit it seems that that the greenhouse foot soldiers have yet to catch up.

Ollier is a reputable scientist; and as Curmudgeon says, an expert in ice formation.

But he is a sceptic so will get the slings from the entrenched 'official' position and from its supporters, some of whom have popped up here in their usual flea like fashion.

Amongst them Agronomist has the most links; let's look at them.

1 He uses HadCrut 4; I don't know why; as he admits it ends in 2010. HadCrut 3 is variance adjusted to get rid of discrepancies in the data and makes a useful comparison with RSS satellite data:

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997/trend/plot/rss/from:1997/trend

The satellites show cooling from 1997 and the statistcially insignificant warming on the land is UHI.

2 The satellites do show warming over the last 30 years, in fact since they started in 1979:

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1979/trend/plot/rss/from:1979/trend

But that is due to the +ve ENSO, El Nino domination from 1976 to 1998. When ENSO turned -ve in 1998 the temperature dropped; this is entirely natural.

3 1936 was not the warmest year. It was in the US:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/14/newly-found-weather-records-show-1930s-as-being-far-worse-than-the-present-for-extreme-weather/#more-67475

And the Arctic:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/arctictemps.jpg

4 Sea ice has retreated over the last 30 years; in fact it has slightly reduced over the 20thC; but the variation is clearly not a product of AGW:

http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view&current=arcticice.gif

Yet another OLO fray into anti-global warming.

One could think some geologists (retired or otherwise) protest too much.

On the other hand ... MSM, shock-jocks and op-eds like this are to be expected in the lead up to the IPCC's AR5

Hi bonmot,

It's getting hot in here (must be the volcanic "skepticism")...think I'll sit this thread out.

: )

Having dealt for many years with Creationist in-laws I have come to accept the fact that science often has such little impact against entrenched views one might be forgiven for wondering why we bother. Global warming deniers are really little different, the same style of arguing, the same ability to dismiss strong scientific evidence, the same determination not to give an inch.

The editor of the Australian Creationist magazine, which my father-in-law so thoughtfully renews my subscription for each year, worked as a geologist for the oil industry in his earlier life where the dating of rocks was a vital part of his job.

The fact that he was able to compartmentalise this from his entrench 'young earth' religious views can be a complete mystery to those who have never had to make that disconnect.

What Creationists and Global Warming Deniers (GWDs) have in common is the ability to disregard the science and its implications. It is not a coincidence that often the 'poster boys' of the denier cohort have deeply held creationist views.

It is a skill that is in some ways to be admired and we all have a measure of it. I am currently enjoying a podcast series on the History of Rome and Julius Caesar ability to disregard the odds when taking on 14 legions with a single one of his own during the civil war was pivotal. He often won the day because of daring, seemingly irrational actions, and the ability to constantly press forward to secure victory.

These qualities are fine even admirable in a General but there is a reason why modern, sophisticated, democratic nations have kept military rule away from the reins of power.

Cont...

Cont...

What the rational world see as scientific truths hurled at the wall of the denialst camp they treat as little more as annoying mosquitoes, giving them little attention or contemplation and swatting them down with contemptuous disdain. We see the giant holes left in their breeched defences and wonder how they can keep going, they see undamaged ramparts.

We see climbing temperature and sea level graphs and they see downward trends, we see scientific paper after paper confirming AGW and they see a giant conspiracy, we see Arctic ice coverage continuing to decline year after year and they see normal variation.

Whether it be denying climate change, or evolution, or a round earth, or a moon landing the form is strikingly similar and should be accepted as part of the broad span of human nature. However what makes the AGW denialist industry so markedly different is the huge power and wealth of the vested interests at play. We should not be surprised that it flourishes so strongly in places like Australia and the US who sit at the top of the per capita emitting heap.

About the only course of action for the ordinary rational citizen is of course to keep illustrating the absurdity of the denialist's position because it is important to do so. The chance of changing entrenched views is extremely slim but helping others from falling under their spell is a worthwhile pursuit. But I would also recommend having a little fun along the way. Enjoy the way they are forced into convoluted reasoning to skirt physical truths. Revel in the way they use the very science they deem irrevocably tainted to support their own positions. And laugh out loud when those so far out of the relevant field of climate science declare AGW to be a 'giant hoax'.

But perhaps also have a little sympathy, after all they are just being human.

It has been point out time and time again that the exaggerated tails of doom and gloom related by the global warming adherents are but the prediction of junk science. Now I do not doubt the integrity of many working in the field of climate science. However, there are some workers in the field that have switched from being scientist to becoming advocates for left wing causes.

Nobody can surely claim that organisations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, World wide Fund and so on are objective seekers after truth. Further I expect that most of the critics of Professor Ollier on this blog are not themselves scientists in any field.

The fact is that adherents of the global warming catastrophic theory have the characteristics of religious zealots. To deny their core beliefs is blasphemy and should be most severely punished.

Lastly; I draw attention to this statement in the Ollier paper: “the greenhouse effect is real but trivial.

I would like to see the author publish his article on the web site http://www.skepticalscience.com/
But then he would not, as this article would not stand up to serious scrutiny, it is so full of holes, myths and misuse of information.

csteele
in fact it is the global warmers that are the biblical fundamentalists. Not only does the global warming story have to be true, but all parts of it must be true. Thus you will find scientists bitterly defending the hocky stick years after Mann himself has altered it (see the IPCC 2007 report) to remove its main point, when their case would be stronger if they simply dropped the whole issue. The global warming story is also clearly on the decline. So maybe you could do with that subscription after all?

PeterA
no, there are no holes and myths. Its a talk so it doesn't have the references, but nothing in it is a suprise to anyone who has followed the debate. If you like pick a point which you think is a myth and I'll show you why it isn't..

cssteele,

had you had read Graham Young's Ambit Gambit 'Fish rot from the head Part 1' and 'Fish rot from the head Part 2: what is a conspiracy?' I don't think you'd have made the generalised assertions indicative of a belief in vast manipulative conspiracies... similar to the assertions of Professor Stephan Lewandowsky.

You've adopted positions similar to Lewandowsky and Graham shows them to be absurd and unsupported by Lewandowsky's own data.

But I bet you won't read it and I'd reckon even if you did you'd say Lewandowsky didn't have the same beliefs as you or that Graham is wrong or unscientific.

Wether the planet is warming dangerously or not is irrelevant, surely we want to decrease air pollution, if only for our health and that of the 'biosphere'? Reducing the poisons dumped into seas, waterways, on land and into the air should be a no-brainer.

ybgirp

Oh sure.. the problem is that the CO2 that the argument is about isn't a polutant as such - we generate it by the act of breathing - and there is no direct harm to plants, animals and the ecosystem if more of it happens to be in the atmosphere, up to a point(leaving aside the lunatic arguments on acid oceans). In any case reducing our generation of it in industry is proving to be inordinently expensive.

The pollutants you're thinking about - sulfur emissions, particulate matter, fertiliser in soil run off etc - are not really part of this debate. If that seems crazy to you, that's because it is.

Dear Curmudgeon,

Denying the physics of a doubling of the second most important green house gas is exactly like denying that light travelling from distant galaxies has taken billions rather than less than 10 thousand years to get here. Denying a record low Arctic ice coverage is exactly like denying the stratified fossil record. Denying the extent to which humans are contributing to CO2 levels in the atmosphere is exactly like denying that humans and apes have a common ancestor.

Now I'm more than happy to acknowledge my dear Curmudgeon that you are a little more 'Catholic' than 'born-again evangelist' without a firm commitment to a 'young earth', but you are certainly not about to deny the virgin birth.

All require a suspension of belief in the reality of physics. You will protest mightily but it is an inescapable divorce from the what the science tells us and just as the religious faithful see a devilish conspiracy and a fallen world you lot see a giant scientific and political conspiracy in a world where the scientists have solid the truth and their souls.

Same old same old.

Now that is not to say you guys are not doing very well in the debate. When you say “The global warming story is also clearly on the decline.” that is exactly what happened to the evolution story. In 1999 over 47% of Americans believed God created humans in their current form. It was the highest percentage for 30 years. The figures have yet to drop below 40% though and every one of them will reach for science to justify their position with things like 'flood geology' or Carbon dating limitations etc. Meanwhile evolution keeps on being factual, measurable, and the best answer for what we observe in the world today.

Tell me the difference between you and them.

Dear imajulianutter,

Happy for you to make the case and I will address it.

As to Prof (retired) Ollier Skeptical Science does a good job here of answering his rather dated and incorrect assertions.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Cliff-Ollier-Swimming-In-A-Sea-of-Misinformation.html

LOL Curmudgeon the paper you posted just shows you're ignorance. Learn the science man and you might understand what you posted. I will help you out in saying it doesn't say what you think it does, maybe you'll have to get another right wing website for your information the one you're using now is filling full of misinformation.

cohenite, I think you would have done better to have read the article and my response before commenting on what I wrote.

1. I used HADCRUT4 precisely because the cited piece in the article was from an analysis by Benny Peiser of HADCRUT4 http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/45695 . And no the quote wasn’t from a UK Met Office press release.

I would have used HADCRUT 3v or better still GISS. All the data sets show a statistically significant warming since 1997. So score 1 for Agronomist and 0 for Ollier.

2. The satellites show warming over the past 30 years. Why at this stage doesn’t matter because Ollier stated “Satellite data show global temperature is essentially unchanged in 30 years.” Score 2 for Agronomist and 0 for Ollier. The fact that you think the warming in the satellite data is not caused by AGW, but by something else, doesn’t make Ollier’s statement any less wrong.

3. 1936 was the warmest year in the US and the Arctic. Well apart from being wrong (US date here http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html , 1998 and 2006 were warmer, Arctic data here http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/zonalT.pdf) it is irrelevant. Ollier’s claim was “Land based data are somewhat unreliable, but the hottest recent year was 1998. 1936 was the warmest year of the twentieth century.” Score 3 for Agronomist and 0 for Ollier.

4. Sea ice has retreated over the past 30 years. Why at this stage does not matter because Ollier stated “Sea ice shows no change in 30 years”. The fact that you think this has nothing to do with AGW does not make Ollier’s statement any less wrong. Score 4 for Agronomist and 0 for Ollier.

Csteele
I'm afraid I have to agree with curmudgeon regarding the attribution of creationism to the pro-AGW group. any creationism argument I do find intensely frustrating and simply do not understand it. would you have a link to the Julius Cesar podcast you refer to? I would be most interested.

ydgirp
could not agree more about the need to reduce/eliminate pollution. Just so long as you do not include co2 in your list of pollutants.

"All the data sets show a statistically significant warming since 1997. So score 1 for Agronomist and 0 for Ollier."

Wrong.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997/trend/plot/rss/from:1997/trend/plot/uah/from:1997/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1997/trend

cornonacob
No go back and read the paper. Its difficult I know but you'll see that Hansen is defending the problems with the temperature record not following the script, although I admit he does not specificlaly say this. Note the talk about energy imbalance.. He blames the shortfall on aerosols, although on closer reading he also blames solar activity.. He leaves himself a way out, by saying we don't know enough about aerosols, so he doesn't give a forecast. However, he implies that the warming will overcome the aerosol cooling and then our "faustian bargain" (a phrase he uses a couple of times)with industrial growth will be revealed. You should make an effort to read the paper, and his earlier one where the bargain is made more explicit.

csteele
Nope. As I've pointed out a couple of times, the hard science part of global warming has never been in dispute. The direct action of CO2 in the atmosphere is well known and in an earlier exchange you even linked a paper which gave the temperature response. The argument, as least as far as the climate models are concerned, is about the feedback effect, concerning the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere that results from the warming. Ther is nothing solid and settled about that. Now this point has been made a couple of times and its not in dispute, but you aren't taking it in. Being unable to alter your arguements in response to what are undoubted facts, is the hallmark of a creationist mind-set.

"THE REALITY OF PHYSICS"

Perhaps csteele could enighten us further about "the reality of (climate change) physics"?

Are there, for example, any established and empirically verifiable LAWS - not hypotheses, projections, assertions, etc - relating global temperature to the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide?

If not, how is it possible to predict future - global and/or regional - climate states?

Can he provide examples of empirical verification of such predictions?

Perhaps he would like to comment on this statement:

‘In climate research and modelling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible “ (IPCC 3rd Assessment Report; Section 14.2.2.2, p. 774).

Alice

Dear Curmudgeon,

That is exactly why I have referred to you as 'Catholic' in your views. However there are others within your faith who are far more 'hardline creationist'. Cohenite basically rejects the notion of a green house effect and Leo Lane is our 'runner'.

I'm not saying that 'broad church' doesn't exist on the other side of the debate. Some of my greener friends can be embarrassing to say the least with almost as much divorcing from the science as from your side. It is like when evolution is misused to build paradigms within the social sciences. Ultimately however misuse is not equivalent to denial.

Your accepting that CO2 has an impact means you are not a climate 'creationist' but the denying a warmer global temperature causing more of the primary GHG water vapour in the atmosphere will not lead to higher temperatures still leaves you in the 'intelligent design' clique.

Dear cohenite,

The way you guys change your argument to suit the data is breath-taking in its audacity. For years your side banged on about how the climate record is too short to be making definitive assertions about trends, but now you seem to have little shame in picking out a decade and loudly proclaiming the planet has finished warming and it is all a hoax.

Good link by the way.

Lets plug in 1988 instead of 1997 for Hadcrut3.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1988/trend/plot/rss/from:1997/trend/plot/uah/from:1997/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1997/trend

Damn! Would you look at that! Look at that sucker go!

Dear prompete,

Here are the links to Mike Duncan's podcast series. Started in 2007/08 his weekly offerings have been a treasure. I have the complete series on my iphone and am 3/4rds the way through. A gentle and slightly larconic speaker Mike brings this remarkable chapter of the world's history to us in easily digestible chunks. What make it so compelling for me is that as a citizen of the current premier republic he is well aware of the similarities between the two as were the founders of the American republic.

My advice, take it from the beginning. Enjoy.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/the-history-of-rome/id261654474

http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/

This is a great article.

No political correctness, skirting around the truth to show undue respect for the fraud backers.

The AGW assertion has a failed basis, trivially true but of no significance.

The effect of human emissions on climate is trivial and not measurable.

All the fraud backers have weighed today in with denigration of the author, in their outrage at him telling the truth about AGW.

Not one of them has put up a basis for acceptance of the AGW hypothesis, because there is no such basis.

Every one of them has a criticism, of no significance to the false assertion that that human activity has a measurable effect on global climate.

Even the disgraced bonmot has weighed in again with pointless and derogatory remarks.

By the way csteele, you seem to have missed the fact that the trend for the last 2000 years is a cooling trend.

J. Esper et al., Orbital forcing of tree-ring data, Nature Climate Change, 8 July 2012
doi:10.1038/NCLIMATE158

csteele
this sentence "but the denying a warmer global temperature causing more of the primary GHG water vapour in the atmosphere will not lead to higher temperatures still leaves you in the 'intelligent design' clique".

Again, sorry but the point I'm making has slipped by you mostly because, I strongly suspect, you don't understand the basis of your own side's arguemnts. The warming due to CO2 is one thing but the extra warming forecast is due to a feedback effect involving additional water vapour in the atmosphere (note the additional) that remains entirely unproven.

So you understand.. initial warming plus feedback warming equals total forecast warming. I'm not denying that water vapour warms the atmosphere. In fact its far more important than CO2, which is why they get such a large feedback warming from the CO2 effect. I won't go into all the details of this, but can you point to any evidence that water vapour in the atmosphere is trending the way the models say that it should? If you can find that information then you're adding value.

Thanks Leo,

But if you need a few more pointers on how you can more comprehensively reject climate science (although I see you're on the right track : ) - check out John Cook's guide below.

http://theconversation.edu.au/how-do-people-reject-climate-science-9065

Dear Curmudgeon,

You asked;

“can you point to any evidence that water vapour in the atmosphere is trending the way the models say that it should?”

Sure. I will even explain how easy it is.

First you go to google and type in the words; “total atmospheric moisture”.

There you will find many scholarly articles on the subject. Pick any one that has at least 50 citations for safety sake. I chose the second cab off the rank. It was 'Identification of human-induced changes in atmospheric moisture content' by Santer et al 2007.

Here is the abstract;

“Data from the satellite-based Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) show that the total atmospheric moisture content over oceans has increased by 0.41 kg/m2 per decade since 1988. Results from current climate models indicate that water vapor increases of this magnitude cannot be explained by climate noise alone. In a formal detection and attribution analysis using the pooled results from 22 different climate models, the simulated “fingerprint” pattern of anthropogenically caused changes in water vapor is identifiable with high statistical confidence in the SSM/I data. Experiments in which forcing factors are varied individually suggest that this fingerprint “match” is primarily due to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases and not to solar forcing or recovery from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. Our findings provide preliminary evidence of an emerging anthropogenic signal in the moisture content of earth's atmosphere.”

Can I help with anything else?

Dear Alice,

Hansen like Sagan cut his teeth on planetary atmospheres, particularly of Venus. Although early calculations of the planet by Wildt showed that GH physics would have the temperature above the boiling point of water a figure of 600K derived from preliminary observations seemed impossible. Sagan made his name as a doctoral student by solving the problem in an "embarrassingly crude" fashion by utilising steam boiler engineering calculations. The empirical verifications of his projections were later completed by Russian probes.

The basic physics is sound and I am more than happy to listen to reasons why projections may be impacted but only if supported by the same rigour.

Is Leo Lane one of Cheryl's pseudonyms? I venture to ask because of the similarity in style - gratuitously insulting everyone in sight while offering precious little in the way of argument or evidence.

Thanks for the interesting link Poirot - glad you rejoined the fray to drop it in.

On the CO2 front, I'd have to agree it isn't a pollutant, but messing with the amount of atmospheric CO2 messes with the world as we know it. More CO2 may result in more biomass but it is different biomass - such as higher grain production but with lower protein content, which is no help in feeding more people.

csteele, you are not an honest broker; you say:

"Cohenite basically rejects the notion of a green house effect"

That's a lie.

I selected 1997 because that is the year agronomist picked; climatically 1997 is a 'special' year for reasons discussed here:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/0907.1650v3.pdf

Relying on a linear trend to depict climate varibles which are at best cyclical but primarily both chaotic and complex is statistically ambitious.

In the spirit of your patronage though I will forgive your egregious 'verballing' of my position and leave you to discuss the validity of describing climate by the presence of 'breaks' in a superficially oscillatory but basically stochastic climate system.

The giveaway, csteele, is in this extract:

“22 different climate models, the simulated “fingerprint” pattern of anthropogenically caused changes in water vapor is identifiable with high statistical confidence in the SSM/I data. Experiments in which forcing factors are varied individually suggest that this fingerprint “match” is primarily due to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases”

This is the spurious nonsense on which you rely to put the case for AGW.

Freeman Dyson, one of the world’s leading scientists, considers that observation is the basis of science.

A review of his recent book gives some of his insights:

“The fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated, writes Dyson in his new book Many Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe, published on Wednesday.

He pours scorn on "the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models".

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/14/freeman_dyson_climate_heresies/

Before the disingenuous IPCC put forward the bizarre notion, no scientist would have made a laughing stock of himself by suggesting that models could be used to make predictions, or replace real world observations.

Climate follows natural cycles. It has not been shown that human activity has anything but a trivial, insignificant effect.

Your nonsense paper refers to playing with models as an “experiment”; a new meaning for a previously well established word.

Disgraceful

Leo's link to Dyson's recent book review, published Wednesday, is only 5 yrs old.

We're heading for an ice age - in 1,000's and 1,000's of years time.

hoodathunked

csteele

congratulations! Now you're beginning to get it! The arguement all along has been about the feedback effect and you can now see for youself one of the efforts to justify the use of water vapour in the models. As you can see its not a denial of physics by either side but is, or should be, a matter of checking available evidence against model forecasts.

As for the actual paper note this sentence (as already pointed out by another blogger).. "Our findings provide preliminary evidence of an emerging anthropogenic signal in the moisture content of earth's atmosphere." Very tentative but about all you can really expect at this stage. I'm indifferrnt to whether its wrong or right but its an indication, nothing more. This is not the solid, hard evidence required to justify trillions of dollars worth of spending to reduce emissions..

Again congratulations.. but as you can see global warming theory is far from being the settled field that it is advertised to be. Leave it with you..

cohenite, is reading comprehension not your strong point? I used 1997, because that was the claim made by Ollier in his article. The claim was based on HADCRUT4, so I used that as well. It doesn’t matter, the trend for GISS and HADCRUT3 is also up over that time period.

I can’t believe you linked to that unpublished manuscript by Stockwell and Cox. It is a complete load of rubbish. I notice that it hasn’t been published in any journal. Presumably they rightly rejected it for being the junk it is. Just have a look at that figure on Page 10. Have you ever seen anything so silly? Stockwell is an ecological modeller, so at least should have some expertise in the area – what made him put his name to this bilge is anyone’s guess. Cox is not even a scientist of any sort, but a lawyer. It is clear from his writing on the web that he understands nothing of statistical techniques and precious little about science. That doesn’t stop him from parading his moronic witterings on the subject for all to see. Sheesh. At least you could find something that made sense, written by people who know something of the subject.

Straight lines are perfectly adequate for asking questions about trends. However, if you want to model a chaotic system to ask where it might be going, you need to understand the underlying drivers and model those. Trying to model based on a series of straight lines like Stockwell and Cox did is just nonsensical. The lines are meaningless with respect to the underlying mechanisms, so any predictions will only be correct by chance. It would be like me predicting temperature will continue to increase by 0.8 C per century on the basis of that is what it has done recently. It would be a meaningless prediction. However, what the underlying mechanisms tell us is that there will still be some more warming due to the CO2 we have already put into the atmosphere and if we keep putting more up there it will continue to warm.

Agronomist,

Just to let you know - cohenite is Anthony Cox.

Dear Curmudgeon,

Now that was pretty crude mate, more appropriate for the lesser members of the flock.

I give you a paper as you requested and because it shows due scientific reticience about declaring absolutes you claim “global warming theory is far from being the settled field that it is advertised to be”. You further declare “its not a denial of physics” when that is exactly what it is.

You can not state you accept the planet is experiencing surface warming and not accept there will be an increase in atmospheric moisture without breaking or dismissing a physical law. If you were making the argument for a local area I would listen as drying soils through elevated temperatures may mean there being less moisture to evaporate over land forms but if you take the average global evaporation rate the physics of higher temperatures mean greater levels of atmospheric moisture. Full stop! Unless you are including some form of divine intervention.

I have conceded you are of a more moderate denomination of the denier cohort but even if you don't subscribe to Creationism the basic raising of Christ from the dead still lies outside the realms of physical possibilities.

If you want to persist in taking a faith based approach to addressing the physics of a doubling of CO2 by all means do so but recognise it is not empirical science.

Dear cohenite,

I hardly call it verballing you when you say you accept the GH effect but that it is immeasurable. This can be easily resolved though. Can you tell the assembled audience how much of the 33K the science says the world is warmer than it otherwise would be are you prepared to attribute to the green house gases?

Dear Leo Lane,

The author claims “Furthermore the deep ice cores show a succession of annual layers of snow accumulation back to 760,000 years. In all that time there has been no melting at the surface, despite times when the temperature was higher than that of today.” How do you and he reconcile this?
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/greenland-melt.html

@ Agronomist,

>> Just to let you know - cohenite is Anthony Cox. <<

Pure gold!

Agronomist says this:

"The lines are meaningless with respect to the underlying mechanisms, so any predictions will only be correct by chance."

You are obviously clueless and do not understand the paper which links the statistical model to well established physical processes and events such as the Great Pacific Climate Shift and variations in ocean upwellings. Did you miss those agronomist just like you missed the fact that not all the temperature indices show a statistically significant increase since 1997. I guess that is about what you would expect from a statistical illiterate.

And this gibberish from you:

"It would be like me predicting temperature will continue to increase by 0.8 C per century on the basis of that is what it has done recently. It would be a meaningless prediction."

That is exactly what AGW theory pretends to do!

Papers about breaks in climate process are well established; see, for example:

https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/kswanson/www/publications/2008GL037022_all.pdf

Swanson and Tsonis find a break in 2002 compared with 1997-1998 in the Stockwell and Cox paper but use different combinations of physical factors.

Knox and Douglass select 2000 for the down break after the up break about 1976:

http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/Douglass_Knox_pla373aug31.pdf

While statisticians Breusch and Vahid isolate a unit root in the recent temperature data and no down break in the 1990's:

http://cbe.anu.edu.au/research/papers/pdf/wp495.pdf

A unit root in a data stream means the data stream cannot be modelled with a linear analysis which is why a Chow test was used in the Stockwell and Cox paper; it also means that agronomist's remark that "Straight lines are perfectly adequate for asking questions about trends." is meaningless.

I am continually astounded by the hubris of the pro-AGW believers here and elsewhere. I guess it is a defence mechanism to the paucity of both evidence to support their belief structure and their inability to accept that paucity.

But carry on; it's a distraction.

- - - puke

cohenite, despite your protestations the lines on the graph are essentially meaningless with respect to underlying mechanisms. The explanations given for the mechanisms in Stockwell and Cox are post hoc ergo propter hoc. As soon as anyone starts a trend line with 1998, I know they are confounded by the noise in the signal. That means the paper by Stockwell and Cox remains junk.

Swanson and Tsonis were indeed looking at the noise – or climate variability as they called it. There are several factors that contribute to variability in global temperatures with time. A big percentage of the short term noise is the result of ENSO. El Nino periods tend to increase global surface temperature above the average and La Nina periods tends to decrease global surface temperature. 1998 was one of the strongest El Nino periods on record and we have just come out of one of the more intense La Nina periods on record. When you strip away the noise, as Swanson et al. have done here http://deepeco.ucsd.edu/~george/publications/09_long-term_variability.pdf for example, what you will find is the underlying trend.

Anyone with a modicum of understanding would know that you have to deal with the climate variability to get at the underlying trend. Once an understanding of that is gained, useful predictions (anyone can make useless predictions as Stockwell and Cox have amply demonstrated) can be made about the future

"As soon as anyone starts a trend line with 1998, I know they are confounded by the noise in the signal. That means the paper by Stockwell and Cox remains junk."

You miss the point; if 1998 is a break point, as the Chow test found, then you are entitled to make a prediction on the basis of other breaks and potential patterns revealed by those breaks; it's been done many times by pro-AGW papers which argue that temporary noise masks the true AGW signal such as the Keenlyside effort and the astounding Easterling paper:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/full/nature06921.html

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/csi/images/GRL2009_ClimateWarming.pdf

"post hoc ergo propter hoc"

This is just lazy; much of the Stockwell paper provides great detail on the physical processes occuring at the time of the 1976 up-break and the 1998 down-break, and you have mentioned a dominant one, the ENSO phase switch. How is it tautalogical to say those concurrent climatic factors played a role in the temperature trend?

Which leads to Tsonis and Swanson's paper concluding that natural variability contributes very little to trend.

There are many papers which also agree with T&S including the infamous Foster et al reply to McClean et al. I am quite happy to discuss the natural variablity vs underlying AGW trend issue because it is far from settled. For instance the T&S paper relies on a modelled SST/atmosphere coupling and concludes AGW dominates trend. This paper does the same and reaches the opposite conclsion:

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00148.1?journalCode=clim

The reality seems to me that the heat has gone out of the debate and we can leave the argument to the climate scientists who as is their wont will going on arguing to the end of time.

Meanwhile the so called carbon price (aka tax) is in tatters. One could reasonably say that the tax has degenerated into “a dog’s breakfast.” With the floor price gone, the tax is now but an irritating token gesture to Green influences. No sensible Government will allow the price to rise to a level where it has an adverse effect on industrial progress and development. In Australia, with all the so called compensatory payouts, much boasted about by the Gillardits, the carbon tax will cost a bomb to administer and thus be a negative on Swanny’s budget.

It cannot be long now before an incoming Abbott Government will sweep the tax away into the dustbin of history.

Well people, here we are some eight pages later and........... whenever the subject of Global warming/climate change/climate disruption/weather weirding is posted, a raft of comments, opinion and study ensues.
The majority of comments are, in the main, erudite, passionate and replete with interesting links. I am not a scientist, I don't need to be in order to form an opinion.
My opinion? (for what it is worth)..... The science of weather/climate prediction is far far from settled (as evidenced above),
a computer is a blunt instrument for calculating and predicting the behavior of multiple chaotic systems, not to mention those other chaotic systems we are not even aware of.

The flutter of a butterfly's wings is hardly the exactitude required for trillion dollar expenditures by economies struggling.

Humans and mirriad other creatures can both survive and prosper in environments varying in temperatures from zero to over a hundred degrees.

I feel sure that an average increase of global temperatures by 3 or 4 degrees will be quite manageable. Invoking the 'precautionary' principle without an accompanying cost benefit analysis does not seem to be a logical way to go.

Csteele. great podcast link, started from the beginning and thoroughly enjoying! thanks.

Dear Prompete,

As you are offering an opinion, with the notable addition of '(for what it is worth)', I have little issue with the position you have adopted. I certainly take a different view of course, for instance I know that land temperatures increases exceed sea surface temperatures and that an average global increase of 3 to 4 degrees C will mean much higher than that for significant areas of our land masses.

That being said in this post you are not trying to rewrite the science nor denigrate the scientists involved, you are not calling into question the basic laws of physics, nor trying to use science you may have discredited to then support your case, finally you are not calling AGW a giant conspiracy or fraud.

All in all a quite substantial departure from the tone adopted by many posting here.

As to the podcasts I'm glad to hear you are enjoying them. I found the Hannibal episodes especially absorbing.

It is difficult for me to see this item you have raised as other than an attempt at distraction, csteele.

Nitpicking on matters of no significance is a favourite fraudbacker tactic. It is a shame that you have slipped into apparently using it.

The article to which you refer says that the event happens every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is on time.

The important issue is the lack of any scientific basis for the assertion that human emissions have any measurable effect on global climate. Until that is established, there is nothing to discuss.

An ice melt every 150 years, which is replaced by more ice, is a puerile point to raise.

good to see the warmist keeping their 'faith ' alive. Thankfully most have woken up to the scam despite the billions wasted. History is already showing as it did with the coolest of the 1970's that enough time, money and effort has been wasted on this fraud which only the gullible hold on to.

Listen up, folks...runner the climate scientist offers his wisdom - again.

Ah what a treat, the fundamentalist twins posting one after the other.

Well Leo Lane, I had kind of given up writing you replies of any length as they were sure to fall on deaf ears, but in honour of this auspicious occasion I feel it is the least I can do.

You referred to the piece written by our retired geologist as “a great article”.

I repeat what he said when referring specifically to the Greenland and Antarctica icesheets;

“the deep ice cores show a succession of annual layers of snow accumulation back to 760,000 years. In all that time there has been no melting at the surface, despite times when the temperature was higher than that of today.”

So we have two options here, the first is to take him at his word as a scientist and therefore conclude this year's melting of 97% of the Greenland icecap was something that had not occurred for the past 760,000 years and if that isn't enough to be a scary proposition i'm not sure what is. Or alternatively we can take the word of Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist who says "Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time,".

Simple, either the surface melts sometimes or it never does.

Unfortunately if we take Ms Koeing's word then we have to conclude of Professor doesn't really know what he is talking about. Which is okay as he is a retired soil scientist. Ms Koening on the other hand works for the same department of NASA as James Hansen and is an award winning glaciologist.

I would always prefer going where the science is. Which one are you going to back Leo?

I'm actually quite taken with the irony of this. The Prof's article becomes an 'alarmist' tract because of the Greenland melting. All good stuff.

cohenite, I fear you have little understanding of statistics. Let me break this to you gently, just because a statistical analysis of a set of numbers divorced from their underlying drivers suggests something happened in the past, it doesn’t entitle you to make any sensible predictions about the future. There is a lovely old saying of statisticians (more recently picked up by computer modellers) that goes “Garbage in, garbage out”. I think it sums up the approach of Stockwell and Cox perfectly. Their poor understanding of climate science is only matched by the uselessness of their modelling. Perhaps I would be permitted to point to Figure 3 in the unpublished paper again. There are three straight lines on the graph, but only two are used to make any predictions. I have always wondered what was going through the minds of Stockwell and Cox when the third line was totally ignored.

I don’t think you have understood anything about Easterling and Wehner’s paper. They were asking an entirely different question: what is the probability that any decadal trend would have negative, zero or positive slope with or without global warming models. There analysis concluded there was a probability for decadal trends to be negative or zero even with global warming as modelled; however, such probabilities were much lower than in the absence of global warming. They then looked at the recent historical temperature data and showed the probability distribution was more similar to models including global warming. Nothing about break points. This is all about the climate variability being greater then the global warming signal over short periods.

Then you go on to link to a paper showing that climate variability is greater than the global warming signal over short periods! Well of course it is. But you can’t compare short periods with the century-long analysis of Swanson and Tsonis and draw any sort of meaningless conclusion.

Agronomist you say this:

"just because a statistical analysis of a set of numbers divorced from their underlying drivers suggests something happened in the past, it doesn’t entitle you to make any sensible predictions about the future."

How is that not what AGW presumes to do; make predictions on the basis of what has happened in the past, or is happening now? AGW, of course, is doubly fallacious, because it is based on fabrications of past and current data; so AGW predictions are based on current lies; the AGW predictions are therefore lies upon lies.

Anyway, you say this about Easterling:

"There analysis concluded there was a probability for decadal trends to be negative or zero even with global warming as modelled;"

Easterling uses a simple least squares model within decadal periods and assumes a symmetrical oscillation around a neutral mean with any overall trend above that attributable to AGW; if a decadal trend is negative, cooling, they assume a temporary superior contrary trend produced by natural variation within the decade.

That is nonsense for a number of reasons. Firstly it is well known that ENSO is asymmetrical:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2702/4503452885_79b5c09c4f_o.jpg

This produces a non-stationary element to ENSO which accumulates the conditions of the dominant ENSO phase:

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/MonahanDai_JC04.pdf

http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~sun/doc/Sun_Yu_JCL_2009.pdf

In otherwords, ENSO, natural variability, produces trend.

Secondly, Easterling makes the same mistake that people who talk about 100 year floods make. Such predictions assume a constant probability of a flood over the 100 year period. We know that big floods are more likely during the -ve phase of ENSO, the -ve PDO, when La Nina dominates, and less likley during the +ve phase when El Nino dominates. If there are more +ve phases of ENSO, as there were during the 20thC, and they were asymmetrically bigger then of course trends would be greater as the 20thC progressed, simply due to that asymmetry in the natural variation.

Again this shows you do not understand the Stockwell paper which statistical test captures that asymmetry whereas Easterling does not.

cohenite, unlike the silly model of Stockwell and Cox, climate models use the known physical impacts of a variety of climate forces to drive the models. I can’t see how you can fail to see the difference, given how blindingly obvious it is. The predictions made from the model are based on known cyclical behaviours of the sun, known circulation of water and air, and known (and predicted) concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere – among other factors.

I also see you have either failed to read Easterling and Wehner or failed to understand it. What the paper did was to take running 10 year periods through the recent climate record and through the predictions of several climate models and ask the question: what is the trend for that decade in degrees per year. From this they simply built a frequency distribution. You should read the legend to Figure 3.

No assumption of symmetric oscillation was made. This was a result of their analysis of the global models without greenhouse forcing. You do know the difference between an assumption and a result, don’t you?

As you have failed to understand what the paper was about, your other criticisms are moot.

I see you have trouble reading frequency distributions as well. If you want the one in 100 year event, you look at the extremes of the frequency distribution, not the average.

"The predictions made from the model are based on known cyclical behaviours of the sun, known circulation of water and air, and known (and predicted) concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere – among other factors."

That's what Stockwell bases that paper's prediction on. I think it's amusing you have concentrated on the prediction graph from Stockwell and not the break concept and the strong statistical and climate evidence to support it; while at the same time extolling the virtues of AGW predictions which attempt to do the same thing with a less appropriate statistical model.

Anyway you say this about Easterling:

"No assumption of symmetric oscillation was made."

Easterling, page 5:

"Not surprisingly the probabilities for the long control runs are symmetrical around a zero trend, with more or less equal chances of a positive or negative decadal trend over the entire global surface air temperature time series."

On that assumption about natural variability Easterling then go on and declare that any trend must be due to AGW forcing; this conclusion is defective for the reasons I gave in my last post.

And you have the hide to say I haven't read or understood Easterling!

cohenite, you must have misread Stockwell and Cox. I suggest for punishment you should go and read it again. The model they proposed in Figure 3 is based entirely on 2 of the 3 lines they drew through the variable temperature data. It even says so in the legend to the figure.

“Prediction of global temperature to 2100, by projecting the trends of segments delineated by significant regime-shifts.” http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.1650v3

Nothing there about circulation models or anything else. The only stuff about underlying factors in the paper is post hoc. I am coming to the conclusion that you don’t understand statistical models at all, given the ludicrous claims you are making about Stockwell and Cox.

I see you have failed to understand Easterling and Wehner or are deliberately trying to mislead readers about the paper. I don’t really know how you manage this, the paper is after all only 3 pages long. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL037810.shtml

For the benefit of those reading, the bit you have cited from the paper is a conclusion from their analysis of the climate models without greenhouse forcing. It is not an assumption of their method. For you to continue to say so is wrong.

"the paper is after all only 3 pages long."

No, it is 13 pages long:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/csi/images/GRL2009_ClimateWarming.pdf

About Stockwell you quote the predictive criteria used in that paper:

"Prediction of global temperature to 2100, by projecting the trends of segments delineated by significant regime-shifts.”

How have I been saying anything different?! It's a paper about breaks in climate conditions which the paper statistically connects with climate regime shifts and the attendant climate factors associated with such regime shifts; an attribute of climatology which is not controversial.

So, I'm wrong and can't understand statistics because the paper does what I say it did! That's just great!

And this:

"the bit you have cited from the paper is a conclusion from their analysis of the climate models without greenhouse forcing. It is not an assumption of their method. For you to continue to say so is wrong."

That's what I said!! The assumption of a zero trend around a symmetrical oscillation is how Easterling describes natural variation; it is their starting point with any trend above that zero assumption attributable to AGW. Their whole point is that in any period where there is no warming it is due to a period of natural variation which is compensating for the forced trend.

The foolishness of this idea is that in those periods where natural variation is the same as the trend the trend should be amplified to a trend which is the same as the trend is reduced in the periods when the natural variation is contrary to the trend. It isn't, so either the theory is wrong about the extent of AGW forcing or about natural variation or both.

In any event you are on another planet.

"...you must have misread Stockwell and Cox..."

This is getting weirder by the minute.

You do realise, Agronomist, the you are currently debating the "Cox" of Stockwell and Cox....as in cohenite.

And is mass-debating Cox(s) something one should be doing in public?

This is how I see it.
I am no scientist, but I have read fairly widely on it and have tried
to understand some of the scientific papers.
There is a widespread argument between people who know a lot more than me.

What is certain is that the science is NOT settled.

What I do know is that the relationship between CO2 & temperature is logarithmic.
ie each increase has less effect than the previous same increase.
I also believe that the models used do not use the latest availability of fossil fuels.

I am sufficiently computer literate to know never put too much trust in someones computer program.
Together with a number of other "doubts" about which I have read
I am not prepared to come to conclusion that we know it all.

As a consequence I think we are being stupid to lay out so much money
on various dubious co2 schemes, especially ETSs.

Bazz,

One common error in AGW discussions is to conflate the "environmental" with the "economic".

I am satisfied that AGW is a robust idea. There is a broad consensus among climate scientists, who have cross-checked each others' computer models against each other, against historical records, and are checking against predictions of the near future.

The arguments against AGW are being mainly advocated by folks like our professor Ollier, a retired soil scientist. For these folks, there will always be a debate.

As for economic interventions to lessen the impact of AGW, the arguments are far less conclusive. No wonder. Now we are talking about $$$ billions, and advocates' vested interests range from the political through the economic, on past the barking mad. Their proposals (from do nothing, through injecting the ocean(s) with iron/injecting the atmosphere with sunlight-reflective particles, through meditating with amethyst crystals) are likewise varied.

My reason for wanting a halt to AGW is based on the precautionary principle. There is a recognised risk of a tipping point, beyond which feedback leads toward catastrophy for the global economic network (and its parts, both large and small).

You know what happens when you get a microphone too close to the speakers that amplify its sound. That is an example of catastrophic feedback, although the catastrophe is minor and usually easily reversed.

The Arctic sea ice record over the past 30+ years provides an example of change that may well reach a tipping point. Its disappearance could cause a shift to a warmer climate regime that will have far-reaching economic impacts, or perhaps it could initiate a feedback cycle that has catastrophic impacts.

I am satisfied that increased CO2 in the atmosphere increases the risk of catastrophe. On a geological scale, the planet and the biosphere will survive. On a human-history scale, most of us will be in for hard times. I include myself in this, though I often wonder whether people like prof Ollier do likewise, as go about adding to the dithering and confusion about a settled question.

Here's a link to the Arctic sea ice record:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews

"I am satisfied that AGW is a robust idea."

And to justify your leap of faith you refer to the consensus, precautionary principle and the tipping point arguments, none of which have any scientific substance.

In respect of the consensus, it is problematic in any event:

http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/consensus-myth-97-of-nothing.html

But even if a majority of scientists did support the concept of AGW that does not mean the science is settled; science is never settled. As Richard Feynman said [The Meaning of it All, 1999]:

"The exception proves that the rule is wrong. That is the principle of science. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong."

There is plenty of observational evidence that AGW is wrong.

The precautionary principle is Pascal's Wager rebadged: that approach is critiqued here:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/43878.html

In respect of tipping points; there is no doubt recent climatic history has featured what are known as Dansgaard-Oeschger [DO] events, which are sudden movements in teperature. However, since the PETM there have been no warming DO's [and even the PETM seems to be independent of CO2 levels] and the cooling ones appear to be periodic as this paper suggests:

http://friendsofginandtonic.org/assets/Loehle_Singer_2010.pdf

So, basically your "robust idea" is a matter of emotional conviction by you unsupported by any scientific evidence of any substance at all.

This thread simply gives oxygen to the fraud backers.

AGW is dead, but they will not let up. The nonsense which csteele raises does not warrant a reply, and avoids the fact that there is no scientific basis for the assertion that human activity has any but a trivial effect on climate. So trivial that it is not measurable.

The fraud backer approach is to raise irrelevant points as if they have any significance to AGW, which they do not, in the absence of any scientific basis for the assertion of an effect, other than trivial, by human emissions.

The likes of bonmot, Poirot, Kenny and others, contribute nothing but nonsensical remarks, of no significance, but always backing the AGW fraud.

I believe a good comparison is the termination of hostilities with Japan in WW11. Thousands of Japanese soldiers on Pacific islands were unaware that the war was over, and some were discovered decades after peace was declared, still carrying on their military activities, without support or supplies, or even an enemy.

Once Gillard is outed and we get rid of the scurrilous carbon tax, we will be able to forget AGW, leaving the fraud backers to their now pointless, baseless activity, which we can then ignore.

Ha! csteele, you made my day..."And is mass-debating Cox(s) something one should be doing in public?"

Yes, Cohenite, it's all about faith. Never give up.

As for the rest of your post, I agree to disagree with you, in general.

Hoping you have faith in your air conditioner, I remain

Bazz. well said!

And if you should think it possible that you might lose faith in your air conditioner, cohenite,

then you may wish to either study this website at your earliest convenience or else save the link for later, sort of like a bottle of scotch in the cupboard. Just in case you need it for medicinal purposes.

http://www.nas-sites.org/climatemodeling/

cohenite wrote:

“No, it is 13 pages long:”

I find it hard to believe you would be so ignorant not to know the difference between a manuscript and a published paper. The published paper is 3 pages long.

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36, L08706, 3 PP., 2009
doi:10.1029/2009GL037810

As for the Stockwell and Cox paper, in your previous post you claimed the predictions were based on the known behaviour of the sun and physical properties of atmospheric gasses. When I pointed out, with a quote from the paper, that was not true, you now state the predictions were based on extrapolation of some lines drawn through the data. Have you changed your mind in less than a day about the methodology? Or have you had trouble grasping the arguments in the paper? I know it is a pile of rubbish and badly presented, but I didn’t find it too hard to work out the central argument. I find it staggering that your name was on the paper, given you can’t seem to work out what it was about. What part of Stockwell and Cox did you actually contribute to?

Perhaps I should not be surprised. You write one thing here and when it is pointed out to be wrong, you suddenly claim you wrote something else entirely. You first claimed Easterling and Wehner “assumes a symmetrical oscillation around a neutral mean with any overall trend above that attributable to AGW” I pointed out that was not correct in that this was not an assumption made by Easterling and Wehner, but a result from their analysis. You then claimed “On that assumption about natural variability Easterling then go on and declare that any trend must be due to AGW forcing”. Again I have pointed out this is incorrect. This was a result from their analysis, not an assumption. You are now claiming that you never said it was an assumption.

You are not related to Humpty Dumpty are you?

The Easterling paper/manuscript I linked to and was discussing was the 13 page version. Neither the version I linked to or the Letter version are peer reviewed, did you know that; so I'll prefer the longer version which reveals the absurdism of the paradigm. Anyway you changed the goal posts and switched to the 3 page version. And you have the hide to be arrogant about your tactic and your misunderstanding of what Easterling has said.

You don't understand Stockwell; that is evident. You say this:

"in your previous post you claimed the predictions were based on the known behaviour of the sun and physical properties of atmospheric gasses"

I did no such thing; the paper is about "regime shifts" in the climate which in turn are associated with oceanic upwelling variations, and ENSO and PDO phase shift; none of which are controversial. Neither is the statistical method, a Chow test, which is used in the paper to isolate breaks in the data.

None of this is controversial, yet you cherry pick the prediction graph, Figure 3, which is an addendum to the main point of the paper and dismiss it, on what grounds?

Do you even know the difference between a Chow test and a linear regression? Care to explain?

Humpty Dumpty eh? An appropriate insult since dealing with you is like reading nursery rhymes. A genuine scientist would have been interested in Figures 1 and 2 which show the achieved breaks in Australia and globally; you are obviously not a scientist.

Sir Ivor,
The relationship between levels of co2 and temperature seem to be at
the crux of the problem. I have seen one graph, and one graph only, so
I am not sure how much reliance to put on it, that showed the
exponential relationship. The curve has rolled over so far that a
doubling of the co2 would be hardly detectable in temperature change.
From memory, it required something like a 1000 times increase in co2
to get less than one degree rise.
I wish I could remember where I saw it.
However it might explain the statement that all of Australia's saving
of co2 emissions will result in a temperature .0004 deg C lower than
it otherwise would be.

We have a much more serious problem than AGW ahead of us.
Unless we can stop the government from hiding our energy crisis from
us we will plough headlong into a liquid fuels shortage.
Not even the oil companies closing refineries seems to have woken them
up from their, "Don't talk to me about that" attitude.

When they even go to the trouble of suppressing reports from their
own organisations you know we have a problem.
Now there is a real worry !

cohenite, you astound me more with each post you make. Your knowledge of the scientific publication process is woeful. The manuscript version is what gets submitted. It is long because it is double spaced and all the figures are on separate pages. The final printed version will be much shorter. GRL is a peer reviewed journal. http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/submissions.shtml The designation “Letters” in the title indicates papers need to be short, not that they are correspondence.

I think you need to go back and read your posts. This one in particular http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=14089#243852

So Figure 3 is now an addendum? When did that happen? The manuscript you linked to on ArXiv has Figure 3 in the body of the paper. It presence is even indicated in the last line of abstract. Are you reading the same Stockwell and Cox manuscript I am reading? It certainly appears not.

I picked on Figure 3 because it is complete rubbish and is a clear example of the rubbish in the rest of the paper. Do you agree with me that the figure is complete rubbish?

I know the difference between a Chow test and a linear regression, do you? Do you know the Type 1 errors that are likely to arise in the use of a Chow test and how to manage for them? Has it not occurred to you that my scepticism about the use of the Chow test in this circumstance is because there is no a prior reason to use such a test on a data set like this?

And you astound me when you say this:

"my scepticism about the use of the Chow test in this circumstance is because there is no a prior reason to use such a test on a data set like this".

In doing so you dismiss the bulk of the field of meteorology that studies DISCRETE changes in atmospheric regimes, ENSO transitions between El Nino and La Nina, PDO, drought and flood and other discrete climate changes. You also dismiss the oceanography concerned with the effects of sudden changes in ocean currents, such as the shutdown of the Gulf Stream.

You also reject large parts of econometrics that have shown the folly of assuming that all the parameters of a model are always constant. The Chow test relaxes that assumption by allowing some of the parameters to change their value. In a statistical model of a part of a complex system (which a fit to surface temperature is), it’s a risky assumption that all the parameters remain constant.

Heat going alternately into the upper 700m of the ocean, then into the lower 700-2000m could produce the kind of alternation of trend around a general rising trend that Fig 3 models. The Stockwell paper attempts to model such a process.

How is that rubbish Agronomist?

You mention Type 1 errors Agronomist. The Chow Test was employed in Stockwell to ascertain the validity of breaks in data to a confidence level of 95%. In a linear trend there can be breaks contrary to the trend within the overall linear trend; those breaks are not breaks in the linear trend because before and after them the linear trend continues.

If a break is determined by the Chow to the 95% CL it means the trends before and after were different and not linear. A linear model cannot show this.

The point can be illustrated by a typical linear model, the running mean. A series of numbers: 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11; is a sequence of values. The first 6 have an average of 13.5; the 2nd 6, an average of 14.16; the 3rd 6 14.5; 4th 6, 14.5; the trend is increasing but the values are declining so every trend after the 1st is misleading.

The Chow would pick the break in trend at 16 and isolate the 2 different trends before and after the break.

What Type 1 errors has the Chow Test caused to “arise” Agronomist? Are you saying the effect of AGW is linear?

Agronomist; I am waiting for your response to my reasonable comments; the general gist and tenor of your's to date have been both patronising and ill-informed. I had assumed you had some scientific capacity to justify your condescension, which I don't object to, as long as it is accompanied by some insight.

It seems I will have to put you into the same basket as the other time wasters and trolls on the issue of AGW.

Some people say "look at me, look at me, look at me" ... others just have a real life and live it.

Speaking of trolls and timewasters, right on cue; why don't you give your life advice to your mates at Sks:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/15/we-need-a-conspiracy-to-save-humanity/

You call me, amongst other things: idiot, pathetic, snob, hysterical, frenchie, fruit loop, rat bag, weasel, nasty, bean bag, stupid, hopeless, angry groupie, etc. etc. etc.

No Anthony, YOU are the cyber bully, YOU ARE THE TROLL.

I am reminded of this exchange:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13019#225111

If Anthony Cox/cohenite wants to use OLO as a platform for the Cox 'brand of science', so be it.

If Cox/cohenite wants to troll the Nova, Watts or his own blog site and re-post his 'brand of science' here, so be it.

However, do real scientists have to reconcile with Cox/cohenite on a site like this when his 'brand of science' has been dealt with numerous times before in more robust forums - not least the literature?

No, we have better things to do, not least living a normal life.

Anthony, you need help ... seriously.

@ Agronomist: Your choice but as they say: Don't feed the trolls.

Yeah, yeah; what about the use of the Chow to detect breaks? Why don't you stop complaining and discuss the science; all I have ever got from you is a few links, mainly to Sks, RC and OM. I've explained why the use of the Chow is appropriate and how it works and all you can say is I "need help". Maybe Lewandowsky will help correct my deviant outlook, eh; is that you mean bonmot?

Dear cohenite,

When you get a spanking the likes of which Agronomist just gave you then the best idea is to withdraw gracefully, not to just keep blathering and thinking that the last post 'wins' the argument because it doesn't.

Truthfully I'm starting to wince reading your posts so time to drop the 'Chow' my friend and live to fight another day.

cohenite, I see you have been hanging out for this post. I am not quite sure how to break this to you, but the Chow test was applied incorrectly in Stockwell and Cox. I am not sure you had anything to do with this, so the statistical explanation to come may be a bit over your head. The Chow test would normally be used in a situation where a known change had occurred and there was a desire to see whether this had an impact. This is why it is used in economics, to test the impact of Government decisions for example. As I pointed out in an earlier post, all the explanations given for the breaks were post hoc. As an aside, the Chow test shouldn’t be used at all and the Wald test used, because it is exact rather than an estimate of the statistic.

What you (or I should say Stockwell, because I am convinced you had nothing to do with it) did was to run multiple Chow tests and look for significance. This is wrong, because it greatly increases the probability of Type I errors. One could correct for such errors by using an approach like Benjamini and Hochberg, but I noticed you did no such thing.

I wouldn’t use a Chow test on this sort of data set, because there is no reason to suppose there has been a sudden change in the behaviour of the climate caused by an outside factor, such as a new Government regulation or a meteorite striking the Earth. All of the data you included had been to some extent influenced by CO2.

In summary, it was an inappropriate method used in an inappropriate way with inappropriate conclusions drawn. I can’t really say fairer than that. Do you understand now why I referred to the paper as bilge? Those flaws might go a fair way to explaining why the manuscript was rejected for publication.

Ciao for now.

Right, good to see your 4 days research was so productive Agronomist.

Yeah, David is a very good statistician but I find I only need my undergraduate training to see the loopholes in AGW science.

You don't understand the paper. You say this:

"The Chow test would normally be used in a situation where a known change had occurred and there was a desire to see whether this had an impact."

What would you describe the 1976 climate shift and the 1998 super El Nino? You don't call those known changes? And they are a priori not post hoc!

And this:

"As an aside, the Chow test shouldn’t be used at all and the Wald test used, because it is exact rather than an estimate of the statistic."

That is just crap; the Chow is used iteratively in Stockwell along a stream of data where the breaks are known to test whether the known breaks were optimal; they were to a 95% CL.

And I quite frankly am mystified by your focus on type 1 errors or rejecting the null hypothesis of no effect when it should be accepted. Stockwell didn't do that; the breaks were accepted.