I know the usual gang don't want to hear this but I think the intellectual battle has already been won.

McKinsey and Company and PwC, the world's two leading business consultancies both have publications that assume the reality of AGW:

See:

McKinsey Global Institute Research
The carbon productivity challenge: Curbing climate change and sustaining economic growth

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/mgi/research/natural_resources/the_carbon_productivity_challenge

and:

PwC Low Carbon Economy Index 2012: Too late for two degrees?

http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/sustainability/publications/low-carbon-economy-index/index.jhtml

>>The annual PwC Low Carbon Economy Index centres on one core statistic: the rate of change of global carbon intensity. This year we estimated that the required improvement in global carbon intensity to meet a 2ºC warming target has risen to 5.1% a year, from now to 2050.>>

Leading business publication Bloomberg Business Week calls Obama a wimp on climate!

See:

Blame Wimpy for Slow U.S. Response to Climate Change

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-15/blame-wimpy-for-slow-u-s-response-to-climate-change.html

And apparently a clear majority of Republicans now believe the climate is changing:

See: Record Heat Wave Pushes U.S. Belief in Climate Change to 70%

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-18/record-heat-wave-pushes-u-dot-s-dot-belief-in-climate-change-to-70-percent

The poll did not ask respondents about climate change causes. Still it is significant that a majority of even Republicans now believe climate change is occurring. So opinion is shifting. From a belief in the reality of climate change to a belief that humans are causing it may be a shorter step than we think.

Even News Corporation is shifting its stance. It acquired Business Spectator which includes among its publications the Climate Spectator.

I think most political and business leaders now accept the reality of human induced global warming. They may continue to play the game of denial in public and the gullible will buy the "party line" (and repeat it on OLO)

But behind the scenes I think it's game over.

Of course knowing there's a problem and doing something about it is a different matter. There is a strong temptation to put climate into the "too hard" basket.

Any action would require a deal between the US and China and that seems unlikely for now. The public posturing may continue for a while.

So it goes

It's a strange thing that with hurricane Sandy and a few other extreme events around the world, how the "opinions" about AGW have changed.
When extreme events really get bad, there will be a chorus of "why did they not tell us about this before" and "why don't they do something about it".
Too late of course.

1 High-cost GHG mitigation polices are not justified

1.1 Man-made catastrophic climate change is very unlikely
Because:
1.1.1 Earth has been much warmer in the past, and life thrived
1.1.2 Life thrives when warmer, struggles when colder (AR4 Chapter 6)
1.1.3 The planet has been warmer for most of the time multi-cell life has thrived on Earth (past 550 million years). There has been no ice at the poles for 75% of this time.
1.1.4 Sea level rise is not catastrophic. It is a trivial cost over 90 years. It is estimated at less than 0.03% of global GDP over that time.

1.2 High-cost mitigation policies – such as carbon pricing and renewable energy - will not be sustainable politically
Because:
1.2.1 Risk of CO2 causing catastrophe is no greater than other risks that are not being mitigated
1.2.2 High-cost mitigation policies will harm world economy – i.e., harm human wellbeing
1.2.3 Benefits of the policies are uncertain / not demonstrable
1.2.4 Not a robust solution
1.2.5 Subject to political interference

1.3 Cost competitive alternative to fossil fuels, i.e. ‘No Regrets’ policies, are best way to cut CO2 emissions
Because:
1.3.1 Smallest temperature increase, lowest damage cost, lowest abatement cost
1.3.2 Global decarbonisation rate, required verses current
1.3.3 Decarbonisation rate requires substitution for fossil fuels

1.4 ‘No Regrets’ policies are achievable and can do the job
Because:
1.4.1 Cost competitive alternative to fossil fuels is achievable as a 'No regrets' policy

1.3 Cost competitive alternative to fossil fuels, i.e. ‘No Regrets’ policies, are best way to cut CO2 emissions
Because:
1.3.1 Smallest temperature increase, lowest damage cost, lowest abatement cost

Basis:
William Nordhaus (2008) ‘A Question of Balance’ http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf

Nordhaus used estimates available up to 2007 to estimate the damage cost of 3.06°C warming (from 1900) with no mitigation would be $22.55 trillion (in 2005 US $) (Table 5-1, p82-83). He estimated the damages with the ‘Optimal’ carbon price policy would be $17.31 trillion. (Temperature change from 1900 = 2.61°C, a saving of just 0.47°C)

Importantly, he estimated the abatement cost with the ‘Optimal’ carbon price policy would be $2.2 trillion.

That is, Nordhaus estimated the cost to avoid 0.47°C of warming at $2.2 trillion.

However, Nordhaus also makes statements in the text that, taken together, show carbon pricing cannot work in the real world (see my summary here: http://judithcurry.com/2012/09/12/the-costs-of-tackling-or-not-tackling-anthropogenic-global-warming/#comment-239089.

Therefore, carbon pricing would set the world back $2.2 trillion (2005 US$) for no benefit.

This is an important issue. Little if any work has been done to show that carbon pricing can achieve the benefits that Nordhaus and the other carbon price advocates assume. They are making an unsupported assumption. Richard Tol acknowledged it in his reply to my question here: http://judithcurry.com/2012/09/12/the-costs-of-tackling-or-not-tackling-anthropogenic-global-warming/#comment-239101

As an aside, Nordhaus also shows the estimated damage costs, abatement costs and Temperature change (from 1900) for other policies. Here is an extract from Table 5-1 for four of the sixteen polices listed.

Global Temp change (°C from 1900); cost (2005 US$ trillion)
Carbon price policy Damage cost Abatement cost Temp change
Delay mitigation 250 years $22.6 $0.0 3.1
Optimal carbon price $17.3 $2.2 2.6
Stern Review (discounting) $9.0 $27.7 1.5
Low-cost alternative to FF $4.9 $0.5 0.9

The low-cost alternative to fossil fuels (Nordhaus calls it ‘Low-cost backstop’ policy) is by far the cheapest, by far the least damaging and gives by far the smallest temperature increase (based on Nordhaus’s estimates)

1.4 ‘No Regrets’ policies are achievable and can do the job
Because:
1.4.1 Cost competitive alternative to fossil fuels is achievable as a 'No regrets' policy

By far the least cost way to reduce global emissions would be with a cost competitive alternative to fossil fuels. Just replacing coal fired electricity would avoid 20 Gt/a in 2035: http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/tablebrowser/#release=IEO2011&subject=3-IEO2011&table=13-IEO2011&region=0-0&cases=Reference-0504a_1630 That’s nearly half the global emissions from fossil fuels. True it is not feasible to do this by 2035, but it shows the magnitude of the saving that nuclear could provide, and would have done if development hadn’t been thwarted so badly for the past 50 years.

If nuclear power is allowed to be significantly cheaper than fossil fuels, then low emissions electricity will substitute for some gas for heating and some oil for land transport. That would mean nuclear power would displace more fossil fuels (and the associated fugitive emissions).

To make this possible we need small nuclear power plants. Large plants like the ones being built now are too expensive and there is too much investor risk in building them. They are also not suitable for small grids, like Australia’s. We need small plants that can be implemented incrementally.

In February 2012, President Obama approved funding for just this – small, modular, factory-built, nuclear power plants. In November 2012, Department of energy selected the first design to be supported through to commercialisation: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/26/nuclear-small-modular-reactors/1727001/ .

Once in commercial production, small, modular nuclear power plants could be built as fast as global demand dictates. And costs will come down – perhaps 20% per doubling of capacity (according to Rod Adams). That is, the price would be halved by the time 1.5 GW is commissioned and would continuing down to perhaps 25% of first unit cost by the time12 GW are commissioned (I accept this may be optimistic, I am trying to get the big picture concepts across).

There are 43 small nuclear power plant designs described here: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html . The more that are commercialised the better. Competition improves the breed and reduces costs – just like it has done with commercial aircraft.

I'm generally a believer in AGW - but one of my hobbies as an Australian/Canadian academic
is to become knowledgable about our national hero Captain James Cook.
In 1770 Cook charted the coast of Newfoundland, including many small towns still existing.
Yesterday I looked at Cook's charts for the harbours around the towns of Placentia and Trepassey, which are still inhabited. I compared these with yesterday's satellite photographs of these locations. THERE IS ESSENTIALLY NO DIFFERENCE IN SEA LEVEL.
How is this consistent with claims of sea level rise?
Comments/criticism welcome.

Brian Lynch, Ph D [Melbourne], FRSC [UK]
St Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia

The analogy of the AGW deniers with the denials still coming from Big Tobacco are so very obvious. And time is running out. Indeed, it is already too late to avoid some of the damage to the globe's environment already in the pipeline.
However, Australia is in a unique position to actually do something about this. We can (1) stop mining coal, (2) start mining uranium and (3) get a wriggle on with harnessing the sun.

The question more aptly is "How to save us from the climate-change deniers."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-03/annual-report-shows-carbon-emissions-continue-to-grow/4403778

stevenlmeyer
Please think before you link material. Of course the two reports you linked assumed global warming. Consultancy on these matters is big business, and those organisations are both consultancies. Both organisations also released reports before the year 2000 which assumed that Y2K would result in a computer meltdown. You're basically linking marketing material.

Robert LePage
I don't agree that the extreme events have changed opinions. the extreme events gave those pushing this stuff another excuse to peddle the same other theories that are losing their scare power. This has been going on for more than 20 years now (the first IPCC report was in 1990, and that organisation was formed due to a scare campaign), and its difficult to think of any change in all that time that people might actually notice. Not even temperatures. Yes, go and look at the main temperature indexes. How much change has there been in the past 13 years or so? How much change has there been in sea levels? In fact sea levels have increased 62mm, and are increasing at a steady, average rate of 3.1 mm a year (University of Colorado site..)

Peter Lang
is quite right to say that there is no economic case for limiting emissions. In fact, among the advanced economies which may be the only ones that do try to limit emissions, there may be no economic damage from global warming at all - if and when it does occur - if the economies are simply permitted to adjust.

Crispin Hull -wrote 3 December 2012:

> The change in public opinion is evidence that the world's scientists are failing us ...

No, scientists and other professionals, can present evidence, conclusions and make recommendations, but they can't force public, the government or industry to act.

I am a member of the Australian Computer Society (ACS), which commissioned studies into the carbon emissions from computers and telecommunications. The results were presented widely and confirmed by other national and international bodies. The ACS made recommendations to government and industry for action. Some of those recommendations have been acted on.

The ACS commissioned me to design a course on how to estimate and reduce emissions using ICT. The course was first run in 2009 and is now also run by the Australian National University and Athabasca University (Canada). A few weeks ago I was discussing a version for Indonesia: http://tomw.net.au/technology/it/sustainable_development_through_green_ict/

As part of the course I teach the students how to make a good case to their boss on the need for action and how this can save money. Where the students are employed by government and industry I encourage them to write a real report to their real boss. The course notes are published free online as "ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future": http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/

@Poirot -

"The question more aptly is 'How to save us from the climate-change deniers.'" (!?)

Yes, it's shocking, isn't it Poirot?

And even worse. It looks like those deniers are starting to win, check this out -

Reuters
EU climate fight hit by new record low carbon price
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/30/us-carbon-price-idUSBRE8AT0U020121130

What can people be thinking of?

According to the palaeoecological record,
90 million years ago, the world warmed by around 5C!
5C was enough to very nearly wipe out all life!
[And we are on track to see global warming of around 4-6C by the turn of the century, and the formerly frozen tundra is already melting.]
The palaeoecological record confirms this outcome, with a mother Hubbard, bone bare cupboard!
Should we listen to the endless detractors, and just sit on our asses waiting for an environmental Armageddon, or take what actions are actually available for us; now today, to mitigate against history repeating itself!
And what are the chances of that, when some of our more puerile politicians, think that climate change is all BS.
And or, that we should mine and export more coal!
Or self defeating, disturbed environmental activists/bewildered cloud dwellers, who refuse to countenance, carbon free nuclear power!
Or incredibly ignorant detractors, who routinely ignore measurable upward temperature trends, measurable increasing acidification of our oceans, increasing measurable ocean current temps, some by as much as 2C!
Measurable and increasing record ice melts, and a tundra that is now visibly thawing!
Something none of us can recall, even as we consult verbal history, from long before we had written words, or scholars who could decipher them?
A friend confided that they had to abort planting, because the seed was going in too deep, meaning the planter had to be recalibrated.
This meant a delay of just two or three days, which finished with a drownpour.
And a field knee deep in water, which would have simply drowned any emerging grain crop.
We can hunker in a bunker, but if we can't grow food, due to record flood events, or heat waves or violent storms, hail wind, wild fire, etc/etc, we can and will starve; and, long before our world becomes little more than a wind swept, salt laden, bone dry desert.
Rhrosty.

voxUnius and others

The following peak scientific bodies have issued position papers warning their governments of the dangers of adding CO2 to the atmosphere.

Brazilian Academy of Sciences

Royal Society (Britain)

French Academy of Sciences

Max Planck Institute (Germany)

Indian Institutes of Technology

Science Council of Japan

National Academy of Sciences (US)

I have struggled to find a single scientific institute of international repute that dissents from the view that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real and may have catastrophic consequences.

Among science Nobel Prize winners there seems to be a lone dissident, Ivar Giaever. All other science Nobelists who have commented on the matter are in no doubt that AGW is real and potentially catastrophic.

This is as close to scientific consensus as it is possible to get.

I guess the real scientists are not reading wattsupwiththat.com.

They prefer to look at the ever mounting evidence in the real world.

Leading business publications such as Bloomberg Business Week, Fortune Magazine, the Financial Times and the Economist all take reality of AGW for granted. I guess they're also not reading wattsupwiththat.com. They prefer to take the word of real scientists.

In the English speaking world the lone holdouts among major business publications seem to be the always eccentric Forbes Magazine and the Murdoch-controlled Wall Street Journal.

Policy responses, their successes and failures and public opinion do not affect the validity of the science.

As I pointed out in the first post in this thread, I suspect the intellectual battle is over. Whatever their public posturing, the world's key decision makers seem to be accepting the word of real scientists.

Historically the scientific consensus has usually, not always but usually, been more nearly right than dissenters.

In the past 120 years, when the scientific consensus has been overturned it has always been as a result of scientists doing the hard yards. There are no recent examples of outsiders with pamphlets or websites proving the scientific consensus wrong.

So keep fighting the good fight if that's what you want but you're facing long odds

Wonderful, voxUnius,

Let's all celebrate ignorance and its perpetuation!

That the deniaist camp is pretty much full of sound and fury emanating in the main from those who are not climate scientists - and who have much to gain from preserving the status quo - it's not really surprising that you would claim it's all about which side is "winning".

If all the land based ice melts, we could see ocean level rises of as much as 70 metres.
Even 10 metres would be absolutely disastrous, and drown all of our coastal cites; and or, around 70% of our economy.
And let's not forget, just how much of our population; and or, best arable land hugs the coast.
At my age, I expect to be in the ground long before the worst effects of climate change and a now thawing tundra, impacts negatively, on all life.
So, why should I care or seek viable solutions, preferably before we experience an absolute calamity!
Those with large land holdings on the coast, may cry BS, even as they try to unload holdings, which are becoming less and less desirable and consequently, less and less valuable.
A good businessman knows when to cut his/her losses and get out!
Meanwhile, our politicians are reacting with glacial speed, to this emerging threat?
[When they need to get ahead of the curve, and become proactive! Pick and fund winners!]
Why? Well when you get down and dirty; or just too busy slinging mud and vying for the spoils of political defeat?
There's simply no time to focus on anything actually important or likely to result in TIMELY, nation saving or nation building outcomes!?
Rhrosty.

We have another lie-fest coming up in Qatar shortly, so brace yourselves for the obligatory flurry of climate lies.

Dohar is an appropriate place. It is rich in the type of energy of which the AGW fraud backers wish to deprive us, but it is an appropriate place to hope for relief from the freezing weather which traditionally dogs these presentations of mendacity.

The nonsense that Carson did anything but harm in backing the banning of DDT has long been put to rest. It was established by an full enquiry that there was no scientific basis for the banning of DDT. The EPA said that the decision they made was not scientific, but political. It caused millions of unnecessary deaths.

Ban Ki-Moon, the main presenter of lies about climate, has been requested by 125 top climate scientists to stop lying about climate.

OPEN CLIMATE LETTER TO UN SECRETARY-GENERAL: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists.

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/11/29/open-climate-letter-to-un-secretary-general-current-scientific-knowledge-does-not-substantiate-ban-ki-moon-assertions-on-weather-and-climate-say-125-scientists/

There is no scientific basis for the assertion that human emissions have any measurable effect on climate.

Until there is such science, which is unlikely, considering the futile and expensive efforts to date, nonsense like this article is counterproductive.

125-plus scientists.

Chortle......

I'll bet there's another of those fly in global warming conferences, in some lovely resort area somewhere right now.

There must be, it is usual for all the tin pot academics to burst into print, with inane bits of bumph, or appeals to authority, which ever is easier, when one of those annual holiday rhorts is on.

The word must go out from higher authority, demanding a new blast of all the old, all ready disproven, global warming scenarios.

Who do you reckon it comes from? Does Julia issue a demand for those in government pay to give a blast of carbon tax supporting bull?

You know, I think she might, she is very fond of lies, now isn't she?

I lost confidence in the author's objectivity at:
"A few maverick scientists and commentators have seen their chance to be noted as brave and healthily sceptical people willing to buck the conventional view."

stevenlmeyer

At least this time you are not linking marketing material, as I pointed out earlier, but the scientific institutes you list are essentially acting as trade unions lobbying on behalf of their members, and they are all echoing the orthodoxy. (I think you'll find that one of the few holdouts is the Russian body, but no matter.) That orthodoxy is that part of the climatically warm temperatures we are now experiencing are due to human activity, and its garnered millions if not billions of dollars worth of research funds for scientists. No wonder their organisations are enthusiastic about it.

But because something is held as correct by scientists at one point, does not necessarily make it true. Climate forecasting has no track record to speak of, and until it does all of endorsements you so diligently point to are so much hot air.The theory needs a few runs on the board - runs that it is obviously lacking (and Australia could use more of). At the moment it is something like economics where it has to infer trends from past results, and the results are likely to be just as bad.

Peak civilisation = peak denial!

And this is why civilisations collapse.

Many people still deny global warming, human induced or natural. Global warming is an outcome of changes in the basic chemistry and physics of the atmosphere. If you don’t believe the science, how do you think the internal combustion in your car works?

Physics doesn't care.

Lawrence Livermore climate scientists and colleagues from 16 other organisations have found that tropospheric and stratospheric temperature changes are clearly related to human activities.

The team looked at geographical patterns of atmospheric temperature change over the period of satellite observations. The team's goal of the study was to determine whether previous findings of a "discernible human influence" on tropospheric and stratospheric temperature were sensitive to current uncertainties in climate models and satellite data.

The satellite temperature data sets were produced by three different research groups, and rely on measurements of the microwave emissions of oxygen molecules. Each group made different choices in processing these raw measurements and in accounting for such complex effects as drifts in satellite orbits and in instrument calibrations.

In both satellite observations and the computer model simulations of historical climate change, the lower stratosphere cools markedly over the past 33 years. This cooling is primarily a response to the human-caused depletion of stratospheric ozone. The observations and model simulations also show a common pattern of large-scale warming of the lower troposphere, with largest warming over the Arctic, and muted warming (or even cooling) over Antarctica.

Tropospheric warming is mainly driven by human-caused increases in well-mixed greenhouse gases.

"It's very unlikely that natural causes can explain these distinctive patterns of temperature change," said Laboratory atmospheric scientist Benjamin Santer, who is lead author of the paper which was published on the 29th of November 2012 online edition of the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"No known mode of natural climate variability can cause sustained, global-scale warming of the troposphere and cooling of the lower stratosphere."

There you go, another bit of conclusive science that will in most cases be ignored.

Given our business as usual mantra, it just doesn't matter, or does it?

I dont think we should be gambling with our future.

The business as usual argument seems a bit neanderthal to me, despite science being unlikley to ever offer exact predictions.

I feel there is enough evidence out there to suggest that humanity is doing real damage to the environment.

That is my gut feeling. I have done my bit to reduce my own emissions; perhaps that is all i can do (solar panels, public transort or walking more).

Sure there will be economic decline if all reduce our ecological footprint, but i hope more and more do so.

As for Labor, they can keep spinnng their bs while they export more and more fuel to boost internaitonal growth. BS is what politicians do.

Ah, the good old Precautionary Principle! Or, as I like to think of it,

"When in danger or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout!"

Or better still, spend vast quantities of other people's money for no discernible benefit. I note that the IPCC has not been invited to Doha this year, and the US has said in so many words that they are not going to cripple their tottering economy for the sake of a hypothetical climate disaster at some unspecified date in the future.

Others have already competently punctured the AGW nonsense in this article, so all that's left for me to point out that is there has been no global warming for seventeen years, during which CO2 levels have been going gangbusters. You alarmists are never going to win unless you can get the climate back on your side. Good luck with that!

There is an excellent piece on the gathering of the Climate Thieves in Qatar, at the following web address:

http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.au/

“These are the folks who came up with the Kyoto Protocols that were intended to reduce "greenhouse gas" emissions, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), in order to save the Earth from becoming a crispy desert as the result of global warming. Adopted on December 11, 1997, the protocols set "binding targets for 37 industrialized nations and the European community with the goal of reducing 1990 levels of CO2 over a five-year period 2008 to 2012." Two major emitters, China and India, were exempted from the Protocols, thus rendering it even more idiotic than it already was.”

The earth has been cooling for the past 15 years, while the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing. Remember how the increase in CO2 would warm the Earth, according to frauds like Al Gore and James Hansen? Just nonsense from the AGW fraud backers.

Why this rubbish continues to be put forward is beyond comprehension. Even if the CO2 increase was caused by human emissions, which it is not, because the Northern hemisphere absorbs more CO2 than it emits, we are observing the reality that the planet is not warming. The warming experienced last century, of less than 1 degree has caused CO2 to be released from the ocean, which has increased the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere.

It has nothing to do with human emissions. The IPCC was formed to examine the effect of human activity on climate. This "effect" is not measurable, and the IPCC has no function. It should have the honesty to disband.

I am amazed that people can be so sure that he world is actually cooling. I hope it is, but would personally bet it is not and seas are rising.

I also admit i have lost lots of bets over the years. I hope this is another losing bet.

Chris Lewis

>>I am amazed that people can be so sure that he world is actually cooling. …

I also admit i have lost lots of bets over the years. I hope this is another losing bet.>>

You and me both mate!

This graphic illustrates nicely why I think so-called "sceptics" are deluding themselves.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/SkepticsvRealistsv3.gif

The following piece in PNAS offers an interesting perspective on what appears to be a recent cooling trend:

Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998–2008

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/29/11790.abstract?sid=20fe112c-2b62-4be8-b914-9c9842c709a2

To cut a long story short, rising sulphate emissions from Chinese power station are temporarily shielding the planet as appears to have happened in the 1950s.

Eventually, of course, the effects of rising CO2 levels catch up.

Heaven help us if the Chinese clean up their act by removing sulphur from their coal. We may discover very quickly that the underlying situation is worse than we thought. Much worse.

Anyone who looks at the evidence as a whole right now and doesn't experience a twinge of fear either doesn't understand the situation or is being deliberately obtuse.

Curmudgeon

You misunderstand the nature of the bodies I quoted. You do not join eg the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) as you would join a trade union. You have to be elected.

Election is on the basis of the quality of your scientific work.

By the time you are a NAS "fellow" your prestige is such that you rarely have to worry about funding.

NAS has nothing to gain by supporting the AGW consensus. It has much to lose because Republicans have threatened them with funding cuts because of their stance.

Most NAS fellows are not climatologists and have no financial incentives to support AGW.

Similar considerations apply to the other bodies I quoted.

Climatologists have quite a few "runs on the board" as you put it. Compared to economic forecasters their record is stellar.

I'm not going to repeat them all here. If you want a picture based on real science try:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

http://www.realclimate.org/

Also browse the Scientific American website:

http://www.scientificamerican.com

Stevenlmeyer,
<<I have struggled to find a single scientific institute of international repute that dissents from the view that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real and may have catastrophic consequences.>>

I remember a scientific *consensus* --nay, consensus is too weak a concept, it was more like an inalienable truth, that told us that the moon was totally devoid of water. And, anyone who talked of the possibility of water ice on Mercury was in danger of being carted off to the loony room –my oh my how things change.

Incidentally, I came across this interesting quote from someone you’re fond of citing: “Science is ‘the organized scepticism in the reliability of expert opinion’”

Yes, it’s from Richard Feynman

stevenlmeyer

There you go again linking activist sites with the disadvantage, this time, that they don't address the point at all. Where on earth did you get the idea that climate science had any forecasting track record? What area are you pointing to? It is also absurd to referring me to the Scientific America web site and claim, vaguely, that the answer must be in there somewhere.

Now look at the GEOFF OF PERTH post.
You see that Geoff is forced to repeat this business about scientists claiming that patterns of warming match what they believe should be happening in the atmosphere if human-induced global warming was real. The story has changed from the 2007 IPCC report when they couldn't show it, so perhaps the theory had to be "adjusted" to meet the challenge of reality. In any case, all this messing around with patterns of warming in the atmosphere is because the satellite records for actual change in global temperatures show no significant warming for the past 13 years, and comparatively slight warming before that (the ground based records show more warming.) See .. http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt

Its just the data so you'll have to get our your excel skills but you won't find any useful trends in the global temperature figures since before the turn of the century.

Dear curmudgeon,

Still at the barricades I see. A sterling sight and one to calm all those fears in the rest of us.

Timely too. In the last few weeks we Victorians have seen our highest ever recorded November temperature and experienced for the first time in living memory an extensive algal bloom off our south west coast.

So thankfully I can dismiss these concerns along with record low summer Arctic ice as just fearmongering. Indeed I laugh them off. They are obviously staged or just abberations.

I will sleep better at night knowing my children, and their children after that, will be facing a safe and secure future. There is absolutely no need to act on emissions because you have so steadfastly held the line you must know what you are talking about.

Thank God for people like yourself, the world could do with far more of you.

SPQR

Your last post is so weak I've wondered whether I should respond.

For the edification of others I will.

The non-existence of water on the moon was never regarded as an "inalienable truth" whatever that may mean. Peak scientific bodies did not publish position papers saying "No water on the moon."

In the 1960s, some scientists started speculating about the possibility of finding water on the moon. There was no consensus one way or the other, merely scepticism.

However there was enough curiosity about the possibility to try and detect it. Water was finally detected in 2009.

Note:

--While most scientists were sceptical almost everyone agreed it was worthwhile looking. The discovery of lunar water was not an accident. It was found through carefully designed observation.

--The matter was settled by professional scientists, not by "loonies" with websites.

Similarly for ice on Mercury. No one was going to be carted off to a "looney" bin for speculating about the possibility. The attitude was very much one of let's try and find out. Again, the matter was settled by professional scientists.

The situation with AGW is different. We have physical theory combined with a growing body of evidence. Many professional scientific bodies have felt compelled to make a stand in the face of persistent denialism.

Scepticism does not mean ignoring the evidence, twisting it or cherry picking to suit your own predilections. Nor does it mean that amateurs can do better than professionals. Experts can be sceptical of "expert" opinion.

Poirot,

"Chortle" is the only adequate response to "125 plus scientists"

Curmudgeon,

OK here's one for you. In his testimony before the US Senate in 1988 James Hansen forecast more extreme heatwaves. He even named four cities that he thought would be worst hit. By 2011 he had scored 2.5 out of 4.

Most economists would sell their grandmothers into slavery for a 62.5% batting average.

This graphic from The Economist tells part of the story.

http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/290-width/images/print-edition/20120811_STC780.png

The sites I've recommended deal with the science as a whole, not with specific forecasts. However see also my previous post.

stevenlmeyer, could you explain that graphic please - its way outside my comfort zone. The horizontal and vertical axes represent?

I was going to put in extra question marks to emphasise my confusion but I was told in rude red words "There is no need for that many question marks. Remove them to continue." What ill-mannered pedant wrote that bit of software, I wonder, slamming the door on an extra question mark but letting through all sorts of other written oddities.

The main game here is the usual capitalist scam of transferring the costs of the externalities of production, criminality and incompetence onto the taxpayers by denying that any problem exists, it's an old technique that has usually saved shareholders billions. Once the smart money is aggregated in 'renewable' industries, most climate change "scepticism" will disappear, unfortunately the taxpayers will still be left with the bill.

stevenmeyer,

"Most economists would sell their grandmothers into slavery for a 62.5% batting average"
Or any percentage > 0

Steven,

Thanks for putting up that skeptical science "skeptics vs realists" link....I was just about to post it when I noticed you'd already done so.

As once savvy poster often said on this forum, "The trick is to distinguish natural variability (noise) from the anthropogenic causes (signal) - [and]we can...."

csteele,

Just as a matter of interest, we in the South West had a typical "winter" event last week in the form of two days of major wind and storm.

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/11/29/3643917.htm?site=southwestwa

Strange days indeed.

The only real world evidence that I have read that shows a relationship between CO2 and global atmospheric temperature is that CO2 levels follow global average temperatures by several hundred years.

The only 'one to one' relationship I have seen regarding climate, is between solar activity and global temperature.

Rachel Carson was a purveyor of 'junk science' and could be said to have rivalled Pol Pot and Mao with the number of deaths her perverted science was responsible for.

'Hindsight', ain't it wonderful.

How to save us from climate-change doomsayers ?
Ignore them & do your own thing. Even if they're 100% right there's still nothing we can do now to change the change that's underway.
Nature has got time, she isn't one bit worried. It's the silly humans who first destroy everything & then start panicking when it's too late.
We have had several so-called Civilisations over the past several thousand years and, just like they did then we are doing now.
A Tax to stop Evolution ? What a brilliant idea !

Promepete:"Rachel Carson was a purveyor of 'junk science' and could be said to have rivalled Pol Pot and Mao with the number of deaths her perverted science was responsible for."

Yes, but only by people who don't know any history (and don't care) and only read right-wing blogs and opinion pieces for their information because they fit their particular prejudices.

In other words, yes, it could be said, but is usually only actually said by morons.

Crispin,

Time to explain, including to real estate or related industry speculators, that you can have a vibrant community, with new products arising all the time, with full employment, by stabilising our population growth.

The billions wasted on more people and the related polluting infrastructure, could alternatively be spent on non-carbon emitting technology, education, health and high end manufacture and services.

The basic design is to balance inflow and outflow of residents and abolish the baby bonus . If 100,00 leave each year, then bring in 100,000 . Our birthrate is double our death rate ( ABS Stats ), so get rid of the baby bonus . Finally, our foreign aid should all be targeted at world stabilsation.

Cheers,

Ralph

Re CFC's my understanding was that the manufacture was transferred from the West to India and Russia and they are producing more CFC's today than were produced 20 years ago? Please discuss.

Regarding CFCs and DDT:
I visited Pakistan in 1991 and noticed the absence of insects in rural areas
where there were vast cotton fields. The use of DDT was universal!
I wonder if things have changed at all!

Brian Lynch

JBowyer: "Re CFC's my understanding was that the manufacture was transferred from the West to India and Russia and they are producing more CFC's today than were produced 20 years ago?"

Is it "your understanding"? Where do you come by this marvelous information?

Probably the same place Mark Lawson got that the Russian Academy of Sciences doesn't have a position on climate change. Those Ruskies eh? LMAO.

I'm an open water Yachtsman. I take a keen interest in the weather, meteorology, and all things that effect the weather.

Most of my learning has been based around information passed on by RN officers who have written books. Their knowledge is based on the RN experience of the weather over 600 odd years.

Oddly a couple of the features they rely heavily upon in forcasting weather I rarely see raised or discussed as a possibility in effecting the current changing climate patterns.

Guess what they are

I know and am laughing at all those scientists and alarmists who tell me the climate is changing and extreme weather events are caused by rising co2 emissions

Good one Bugsy. That seem to have comprehensively addressed the 'Silent Spring' issue then. Oh hang on, you've covered the CFC issue with the same degree of erudition. Gee wiz. Awesome.

What Silent Spring "issue", Prompete?

If it's erudition you want in an argument, then why don't you employ some yourself rather than spitballing giant wads of BS?

There is much more to the DDT story than what you seem to want to believe. Why don't you tell me what you actually believe and why, and I can tell you where you are wrong. How's that?

Bugsy.
www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/.../rachel-carsons-deadly-fantasies/
pubs.acs.org › Home › Editor's Page
http://junkscience.com/ddt/

" spitballing giant wads of BS?"

You won me over with that one.

Ok, I was right then. Blog and opinion sites it is. Think for your self man.

Why don't you do yourself a favour and find out when DDT was banned in say, the UK? or when it was banned in South Africa, or anywhere in Africa. There is a persistent myth that somehow there was a worldwide ban on DDT usage that followed closely after the 'hysteria' whipped up by Rachael Carsons book.

There was never a worldwide ban. There was always provision in the UN charters on persistent environmental pollutants for public health use in the fight against arthropod borne diseases. The vast majority of restrictions were against general broadacre spraying of the stuff, especially on food. This is because DDT is a persistent environmental pollutant-they are still finding it in the fat tissues of Antarctic penguins FFS. Most restrictions occurred because of high residues detected in food and resistance in target insect populations that required ever higher doses for effectiveness.

There is no case against Rachael Carson and the proverbial 'blood on her hands'. There sure as hell aint millions that would otherwise be alive. "Junk Science" is obviously not a website for scientists.

Can people please stop bagging Rachel Carson and repeating chemical industry propaganda and lies about her 48 years after she died in 1964, simply because she was courageous enough to speak out publicly against the damaging effects of pesticides on the environment (including fish and birds) and ultimately on human health. Rachel Carson was a highly qualified and published marine biologist (i.e. a 'proper' scientist). Her legacy, both scientific and personal (she adopted a child) is stellar.

"Chortle" is the only adequate response to "125 plus scientists"

You are right steven, it confirms once again that she cannot even read. She incorrectly transcribed my post which says “125 scientists” and gives a link to where the name and background of each of them is appended to the letter which they wrote to the leader of the Dohar lie-fest, Ban Ki-Moon.

Poirot, like her science deficient friend, bonmot, is incapable of a coherent, much less fact-based, post.

You neglected to read Bob Carter’s excellent exposition of climate science, steven, where he points out that tossing a coin would make one right 50% of the time. You hand picked some forecasts of the climate clown, Hansen, and come up with 62.5%. Average all of this fraud backer’s predictions, and in the end they will come out at 50%.

Your arguments, like Bugsy’s depend on the ignoring of facts and science:

“The ban on DDT was considered the first major victory for the environmentalist movement in the U.S.

The effect of the ban in other nations was less salutary, however.

In Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) DDT spraying had reduced malaria cases from 2.8 million in 1948 to 17 in 1963.

After spraying was stopped in 1964, malaria cases began to rise again and reached 2.5 million in 1969.33 The same pattern was repeated in many other tropical— and usually impoverished—regions of the world. In Zanzibar the prevalence of malaria among the populace dropped from 70 percent in 1958 to 5 percent in 1964.

By 1984 it was back up to between 50 and 60 percent. The chief malaria expert for the U.S. Agency for International Development said that malaria would have been 98 percent eradicated had DDT continued to be used.”

Read the whole of this factual summary here, Bugsy, and stop talking nonsense:

http://dwb.unl.edu/Teacher/NSF/C06/C06Links/www.altgreen.com.au/Chemicals/ddt.html

On Rachel Carson and Silent Spring:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/magazine/how-silent-spring-ignited-the-environmental-movement.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

On pesticides in India:

http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/kerala/article2339998.ece

stevenlmeyer

So far you've scored zero in serious response.. the Economist graph you reference is meaningless without the article, and I suspect it doesn't mean much anyway.. the reason there may have been more heat events since that address by Hanson - and I'm not sure that there has, but its not important - is because it is slightly warmer than the 1980s. No one has ever doubted that.. now go and compare the first IPCC forecast (the 1990 report) with the temperature results since and you'll be disappointed to find that the actual results are below the minimum forecast, and the comparison is getting worse.

The sad fact remains that global warming theory has no track record of any kind, and therefore cannot be used to justify billions of dollars worth of expenditure, and no amount of referral to propaganda or marketing sites will change that. Such has been your response that I suspect you had no idea that the question even existed before our decision, let alone how to answer it.

It is not for me to reference sites but for you. Leave it with you.

Au contraire, Leo Lane, I was quoting the header from your link, which stated "125 plus scientists".

Regarding your latest link - an extract from a publication by "The American Council on Science and Health".

Here's some info on Elizabeth Whelan, the President and co-founder of The American Council on Science and Health.

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

"These early scientific-manipulation activities of the chemical industry were part of an organised reaction to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring", published in 1962. the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) quickly realised that it must organise science and lobbying efforts..."

Same old, same old...

My concluding remarks for this thread.

Candide, Curmudgeon

Sorry, accidentally dropped link to article that goes with the graphic. Here it is.

Bell weather
A statistical analysis shows how things really are heating up

http://www.economist.com/node/21560235

You can also find a more detailed discussion here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/08/extreme-metrics/

I hope these articles explain it Candide.

Curmudgeon

I don't have a link to Hansen's 1988 forecasts but you can find them discussed in:

The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail but Some Don't by Nate Silver

http://www.amazon.com/dp/159420411X

Nate Silver is also the author of the 538blog that forecast the recent US election pretty accurately.

On the whole the planet is responding pretty much as climatologists forecast though there are exceptions.

FEYNMAN

(This is for you SPQR though curmudgeon may be interested)

For some reason "sceptics" keep dragging poor old Feynman into this issue. We even had an article on OLO titled:

Exceptions that disprove the [non-existent] AGW 'rule'

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14179

The piece opens with a quote from Feynman,

SPQR invoked Feynman on this thread as follows:

>>“Science is ‘the organized scepticism in the reliability of expert opinion’”>>

This is the sort of advice Feynman was fond of giving to young scientists. He wanted to caution them against being intimidated by their elders.

Note - it was advice to young scientists, not to the general public.

In fact Feynman was quite scathing about scientific illiterates - especially philosophers - who pontificated on scientific matters. He felt strongly that you should not presume to comment on scientific issues until you had taken the trouble to master the topic under discussion.

So what would Feynman have said to you SPQR?

I suspect it would be along the following lines.

>>You have not taken the trouble to master the topic under discussion; therefore your opinion is as valueless as that of the NASA managers who ordered the Challenger launch to go ahead over the objections of the engineers.>>

My concluding remarks for this thread (cont'd).

Prompete wrote:

>>The only real world evidence that I have read that shows a relationship between CO2 and global atmospheric temperature is that CO2 levels follow global average temperatures by several hundred years.

The only 'one to one' relationship I have seen regarding climate, is between solar activity and global temperature.>>

I'm not sure who, other than yourself, you can blame for your ignorance.

Bugsy, Poirot

In truth I'm a little uneasy about Rachel Carson and "Silent Spring."

I'm not saying she was wrong; but I don’t think the matter got the scrutiny it deserved. I think the DDT ban needs to be revisited.

Hasbeen

>>I'll bet there's another of those fly in global warming conferences, in some lovely resort area somewhere right now.>>

Guess what? The laws of physics don't care. This isn't about conferences. It's about what's happening to the planet. And that is depends on physics.

You wrote:

>>…tin pot academics…>>

Well, just for once a reality check.

You mean "tin pot academics" like this one?

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2001/nurse-lecture.html

Have you ever achieved anything remotely comparable to this "tin pot academic" Hasbeen? I know I haven't.

He has no doubts about the reality of AGW.

Or how about this "tin pot academic"?

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1969/gell-mann-bio.html

Reckon you could have come up with the quark model Hasbeen? I couldn't.

Gell-Mann also thinks there is science backing up AGW.

Those who sincerely want to keep up with developments in the field could do worse than follow these two websites:

http://www.realclimate.org/

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

I don't always agree with what they have to say but at least it's always science based on real science.

Also google the Scientific American, NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) websites with the "site" function as follows:

climate site:scientificamerican.com

climate site:nasa.gov

climate site:noaa.gov

These are the websites the so-called "sceptics" never visit.

I wonder why ;-)

My concluding remarks for this thread (cont'd).

There are scientists, real scientists as opposed to misguided members of the general public, who dissent from the view that AGW is a problem. One of them is the Nobel Prize-winner Ivar Giaever:

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1973/giaever-bio.html

However the weight of scientific opinion supports the view that AGW is a real problem. Public opinion will shift from time to time but sceptics' claims that AGW is losing credibility among scientists are simply untrue.

This does not mean that all scientists agree on all aspects of AGW. There are legitimate questions about how serious a problem it is likely to be and how rapidly the planet will heat up. Latterly, however, the feeling is growing that the official forecasts have erred on the conservative side.

This from the NASA website:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20121129.html

>>In a landmark study published Thursday in the journal Science, 47 researchers from 26 laboratories report the combined rate of melting for the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica has increased during the last 20 years. Together, these ice sheets are losing more than three times as much ice each year (equivalent to sea level rise of 0.04 inches or 0.95 millimeters) as they were in the 1990s (equivalent to 0.01 inches or 0.27 millimeters). About two-thirds of the loss is coming from Greenland, with the rest from Antarctica.

This rate of ice sheet losses falls within the range reported in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The spread of estimates in the 2007 IPCC report was so broad, however, it was not clear whether Antarctica was growing or shrinking. The new estimates, which are more than twice as accurate because of the inclusion of more satellite data, confirm both Antarctica and Greenland are losing ice. Combined, melting of these ice sheets contributed 0.44 inches (11.1 millimeters) to global sea levels since 1992. This accounts for one-fifth of all sea level rise over the 20-year survey period. The remainder is caused by the thermal expansion of the warming ocean, melting of mountain glaciers and small Arctic ice caps, and groundwater mining.>>

My concluding remarks for this thread (cont'd).

"Climate sceptics" and "Greenies" have this in common. Each in their own way makes a religion out of AGW. Both are impervious to data and reason.

AGW is first and foremost a scientific issue. If you're interested get your information from reliable scientific sources. But also be realistic. This is a complex issue. You would have to devote many hundreds of hours to mastering the literature. I'm afraid sometimes you may just have to be prepared to accept the consensus judgement of people who have devoted their lives to studying the Earth's climate. Most of them are pretty smart and most of them are honest.

Some "sceptics" claim that what we are observing is "natural variation."

This cannot be completely ruled out but it is beginning to seem increasingly unlikely. "Skeptical Science" addresses this issue very well so I'll simply post a link to the relevant page.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Could-global-warming-be-caused-by-natural-cycles.html

>>A common misunderstanding of the climate system characterizes it like a pendulum. The planet will warm up to "cancel out" a previous period of cooling, spurred by some internal equilibrium. This view of the climate is incorrect. ….

[…]

…the hypothetical natural cycle would have to explain the observed "fingerprints" of greenhouse gas-induced warming. Even if, for the sake of argument, we were to discount the direct measurements showing an increased greenhouse effect, other lines of evidence point to anthropogenic causes. For example, the troposphere (the lowest part of the atmosphere) is warming, but the levels above, from the stratosphere up, are cooling, as less radiation is escaping out to space. This rules out cycles related to the Sun, as solar influences would warm the entire atmosphere in a uniform fashion. The only explanation that makes sense is greenhouse gases.>>

And that's it for me.

Sadly, the respected Mr Hull has constructed an apparently convincing argument (like the good journalist that he is) that is in fact quite misleading. Apart from the fact that climate science remains a highly speculative discipline, Mt Hull's reference to the outcomes of banning DDT to illustrate the courage of scientists of another era, fails to tell the whole story. In fact, as often happens when rich westerners get a bee in their bonnet, the complete banning of DDT resulted in the deaths of millions of poor people in under developed countries. Evangelism, like that which abounds in the climate change debate, seldom achieves much and almost always has unintended consequences.

Thanks stevenlmeyer for updating the Economist link and for such a comprehensive post.

DDT ban myth bingo.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2005/12/21/ddt-ban-myth-bingo/

I'll type this slowly so that everyone can follow what I am saying:

There was no global ban on DDT that resulted in millions of deaths.

This is a myth, a construct that plays on peoples political prejudices against 'environmentalists' and ignorance of the actual history and attention to things like dates. In fact most of the disuse of DDT came about because of insect RESISTANCE to it. Rachel Carsons work has almost nothing to do with it other than raise attention to the problem of persistent organic pollutants that we were spraying all over the place.

Leo's post exemplifies this is spades. He reposted a link to an article that he thinks tells the "Truth". Well, it doesn't. Sri Lanka did not ban DDT in 1964, and it was never banned for public health use pretty much across the world. Rachel Carsons book was only published in Sept 1962. In fact they changed tactics because of their success and could not regain control again because of insecticide resistance in the population building up from agricultural spraying, because DDT was NOT BANNED.

In fact, the persistence and widespread previous use of DDT has ensured that resistance can build up again pretty quickly, as the genes are still out there. The age of broad scale insecticide use, as wonderful as you may be led to believe, is unsustainable and not because of greenies. It's because the list of suitable chemicals is shortening all the time as chemical after chemical becomes useless in controlling their target pests. Insects have evolved resistance to early every class of chemical that we have thrown at them and it takes too much time and money to develop new ones.

Here's an interesting story, if a few years old:
http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2005/july/ddtinsects.htm

Roll on the genomic revolution...

Bugsey,

A perfect snap shot on insecticide use, abuse and adaptation .

Ralph

Noone ever wants to talk about insecticide resistance. :(

I guess it's a 'specialist' subject, and it's far easier to blame a woman who died 40 years ago for millions of deaths because that suits your ideology.