If we're due for an Ice Age but it's actually getting warmer things must be worse than we thought.

You could be right about air conditioned buildings being grand places in 2068. If the bulk of the citizenry have to live in Coober Pedy style dugouts I'd head for those buildings as well.

Why are all these scientist claiming there is global warming if it was hotter in Canberra 38 years ago? Silly scientist

Great article, puts all the hysteria into perspective.

the most ironic bit of all is the fact that the climate cretins, after all the extraordinary technological change over the past 40 years, still refuse to concede any role for technology is improving carbon management.

They routinely disparage the notion of a "technofix" in the face of overwhelming evidence that solutions get better and cheaper the longer we wait. Instead, they expect us to do the climate equivalent of going $4 million into debt to buy a computer that needs a whole room to fit it but which has only a fraction of the capability of todays lap top. Won't the kids be glad we rushed into a premature solution, "for the sake of the kids" no less, when they are still paying off the useless old dinosour in 2048?

I was a scientifically-literate young man in the 70s. How come I have no memory of the global cooling scare that skeptics often trot out. So Newsweek had an article: big deal.

So the scare is all bred on the internet because you can prove it by googling. Get a grip. I can get over 100 million hits when I google George W Bush and 144 million for astrology. So what does that prove? I bet your great-great grandkids will remember global warming long after George W is a footnote in a fossil fuels magazine you can find in the antiques section.

Perhaps you could give us some indication of any qualifications or knowledge you have to back up your opinion Richard? Your research seems pretty shallow. That’s the trouble with global warming, everyone thinks he can have an opinion about the science because he can remember one hot day.

So perseus, your think Moore's law applies to fossil fuel use, hey. Thats news to me. So what evidence do you have to justify that?
for one thing, if I put off buying a new computer the world doesn't change. If we delay tackling global warming we escalate the problem. Don't technical fixes come from scientific types? Well thousands of them are telling you that they can't see an easy technofix. Why don't you listen to the guys that you allege will deliver the goods and not to the economists and politicians.

Overpopulation causes extinction, and high property prices.

Did you really think you could breed to infinity ?

Peter Costello does.

Global warming or no global warming, where are you going to get your water from, your beef, your paper, your electricity and iron ore ?..
the moon ?

What is your target population for this country, do you even have one ?
Please stop wrecking my planet.

What a silly and misleading article.

Here is very reliable trend, when a climate sceptic provides information, it is either misleading or wrong.

According to the Bureau of Meterology:
"2006 Hottest year on record in Canberra"
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/act/summary.shtml

Here is a summary of Canberra in 2006 by the BOM.
Record mean daily and mean maximum temperatures during 2006 in Canberra. Both October and November had record number of consecutive days of above 30°C. Record amount of sunshine.

But is it misleading to talk about the Canberra heatwave of 1968? Just look at Tryster who asks "Why are all these scientist claiming there is global warming if it was hotter in Canberra 38 years ago."

Do not be mislead. Climate is not about one or two days. According to the BOM it is hotter in Canberra now.

skeptical of skeptics, you may have been scientifically literate - but in which discipline? I was an undergraduate in the late '60s and early '70s doing chemistry and geology, and I clearly remember the prevailing view was that we were heading for an ice age. That and the recognition of plate tectonics seemed to be the two great themes in earth science at the time.

Richard, I think you should stick to your fields of expertise, gambling and civil aviation. Publishing 6 articles in 3 years isn't going to feed you.

I have never been able to understand all the hoo-ha about global warming. If the weather bureau has a real problem in accurately forcasting the temperature in two weeks time, what hope have they in forecasting the temperature in 50 years? I would have thought that extreme scepticism, together with an appreciation of the needs of both the media and the scientific community for alarmist forecasts, would have been the normal response.

Oh for crying out loud, plerdsus. I can't believe I'm reading this one again:

"If the weather bureau has a real problem in accurately forcasting the temperature in two weeks time, what hope have they in forecasting the temperature in 50 years?"

Today's *weather* has no more bearing on global *climate* than your latest pay packet has on international interest rates. Please go and look up the definitions of the two words. I don't know how far the temperature will drop tonight either, but I do know it will be colder than this in July.

Simple trends in complex systems do exist, and they can be graphed and used to make predictions. It's called statistics, and what you are doing is the equivalent of throwing out the entire discipline because you occasionally see outlying points on graphs!

Who were you calling alarmist again?

Thanks jeremy29.

plerdsus,

You make a very valid point. Every summer we are warned it is going to be a long hot one. Every winter is going to be a long cold one. The GW doomsday prophets have no credible evidence for GW. 30 years ago similar scaremongering was taking place with global cooling. Amazing how upset people get when you apply a bit of common sense.

This is a silly article. We are actually in an Ice Age already, albeit a warm phase of one (known as an interstadial).

The science of climatology was pretty primitive in the 1950s. Things have advanced a great deal since then: the climate record is longer, for a start (accurate weather data has been around for a little over a century) and now we have supercomputers which can process masses of data.

What is the point of Castle's article? Global warming (strictly speaking, anthropogenic enhanced global warming) is a media construct?

Yes, David Latimer, climate is not about one or two days (although the 1968 Canberra heat wave was considerably longer than that, as was the recent one). Canberra's record low occurred just a few years later, in 1971 if I recall. I was not implying that one swallow makes a summer - an error I observe more frequently on the 'alarmist' side of the debate. The article is about the GW issue in the context of political and technological change.

Incidentally, I was back in Canberra today, February again. They were still sweeping the ice off the roads after last night's storms. There was considerable damage - it seems those supercomputers didn't give enough advanced warning.

Response to Richard Castles:

The BOM has said that 2006 was the hottest Canberra year, for the whole year. It was hottest in terms of average temperatures and hottest in terms of average daily maximum temperatures.

Why do you overlook the official reports, in preference to your anecdotal storytelling? Look at how you have responded by ignoring and dismissing the reliable information provided by reputable bodies.

Are you going to call the Bureau of Meterology hysterical? An example of "new global media"?

You are trying to persuade people that Canberra is not hotter now compared to past decades. Reference to the recent hailstorm shows how you continue in this pattern. And we can see this from the responses in this forum that your efforts have already mislead. Your article has led Treyster to call scientists "silly" (28Feb07 10:10AM) and Plerdsus calls the scientific community "alarmist". (28Feb07 4:59PM)

Remember that global warming deniers operate by providing misleading or wrong information. When that fails they then proceed to attack the scientific community. Article after article, post after post, this pattern repeats itself as amply demonstrated above.

Can anyone say Holocene era? Perhaps it is ending...

I studied physics, Reynard and I am sure that I should have paid more attention to climate issues etc. It seemed a boring subject with no immediate impact. The greenhouse effect would have seemed as interesting as accountancy to me then. My point is that the global cooling scare Richard is talking about is mainly a product of spin; it didn’t really register with the public. I have tried to dig up popular articles, etc referring to it and they are pretty thin on the ground.

Thanks for the stats on Canberra, David. An issue that interests me is whether 2006 would have been even hotter without the effects of the drought. The average minimum for Canberra was up despite the fact that: “There were 117 frosts in 2006, well above the average of 96 frosts”. Well we got those frosts because there was so little water vapour in the air (water vapour being a greenhouse gas, of course) and so little cloud cover, but we still managed a higher than average minimum for the year. So the drought tends to heat things up during the day, due to less cloud cover, but cool things down at night. Does anyone know where the balance lies?

As for the hailstorms, Richard, couldn’t they be a sign of global warming too! I know that it seems to be having it both ways. But isn’t one of the predictions that there will be more severe events. Simple-mindedly more heat means more energy in the system. Greater updrafts in storms mean more hail. Don’t we tend to get more hail in summer? Therefore more hail seems an accentuation of summer conditions to me not the opposite.

If you can understand graphs an' all those things, have a deko at
http://www.lastsuperpower.net/disc/members/00915869073237

"Remember that global warming deniers”
You mean Global Warming Green House Gas doom and gloom denying Heretics David.
Just because I or others do not worship your god of Altruism and depravity, does not make me any less offensive to you as you are to others. Predominantly Christian / Jew

There are a great many Global green house doomsday heretics David and I suppose in your philosophical spirituality reality do not get a look in.

Science and history tell you, but your God is all so powerful and full of cow paddies- Hmm Sounds like some other Idled deity from a Moon background I could name.

And you wonder why they call you people Looters and Proletariat Lobotomized.
Fairdinkum.

What cave is your new address, I will send you a bill by carrier pigion.

Well, is mise there are plenty of statistics on that site you’all recommended. In particular patrickm shows a lot of stats which he says are the result of “educating himself” on the topic. Well I educated myself more thoroughly by reading the BBC article referred to more carefully. I quote the scientist interviewed: “A key factor in the formation of a tropical cyclone - a low-pressure region that can turn into a hurricane - is sea-surface temperature, which has to be above about 27 degrees Celsius.” Now may be I’m naïve but I think sea temps will go up with global warming.
Next quote:“The most recent study on the issue, published this month in the journal Science, found that while the incidence of hurricanes and tropical storms has remained roughly constant over the last 30 years, there has been a rise in the number of intense hurricanes with wind speeds above 211km/h (131mph).”
In fact, for trends in hurricanes the key question is the energy level of hurricanes (which rises with the square of wind speed (?) and correlates with their potential destructiveness). These levels are not accurately represented in the categorization which is why the stats on this site are misleading to the layman.
If you want a fuller education on hurricane changes you need to combine stats with the science. Try reading what scientists have to say at: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/09/hurricanes-and-global-warming/

David: “Why do you overlook the official reports, in preference to your anecdotal storytelling?”

I don’t. I haven’t doubted or challenged your figures from the BOM.

David: “You are trying to persuade people that Canberra is not hotter now compared to past decades.”

No, I’m not. You seem very confused. You will note that I state that the 1968 temp occurred during a time when average temps were agreed to be dropping and that the 1989 figure was during a time when they were agreed to be rising. This is the warming we are talking about, no?

I mentioned the storms as an incidental aside. They were fantastic. How things have changed: Everybody wants to do something about the weather; nobody wants to talk about it.

Skeptical of Skeptics asks, “How come I have no memory of the global cooling scare that skeptics often trot out.” And later, “My point is that the global cooling scare Richard is talking about is mainly a product of spin; it didn’t really register with the public.”

Did you mean to agree with me? I am aware that there are people who do not believe there was much science behind the cooling scare (I don’t love the headline written for this piece as I didn’t want to make a big deal of the Ice Age stuff – perhaps ‘Cold Warring to Global Wiring’), but nonetheless you seem to have inadvertently grasped my point.

The author is questioning why a 0.2 degree average drop over approx 30 years hardly caused a ripple, while a 0.3 degree rise over a similar period has lead to mass panic. The author opines that this may relate to social and geo-political changes, and the advent of the global media we are currently using to foster this debate (unless, of course, you are billie).

Discuss.

I remember back in the 70's that there was debate over co2 causing either warming or an ice age.No one took any notice since scientists could not make up their minds.

Scientists today say that they are 90% sure that co2 is responsible for global warming.They were also 90% sure that the millinium bug would bring about a world economic collapse.

I think the entire world including poor countries need to clean up their acts sa regards the environment,but we should not be too keen about signing the Kyoto Protocol unless the same rules apply to countries like China,who alone,increase the entire world's pollution by almost 2% per year.

No one is mentioning the world's population problems which have the most direct influence on pollution and with the envitable scarcity of resources and energy,will reduce us all to poverty and war.The world is a finite place and we ignore that reality at the planet's peril,as well as our own.

Russell, when you use terms like “scare”, “virus”, “ blow the budget”, “a speculative state … in 50, 100, 200 years,” forgive me if I feel you are slanting the argument. (Also when I said the global cooling scare was a product of spin, I meant that this was manufactured after the event by "skeptics".)
To get to your thesis that this “scare” is bred on the internet, however: my take is quite different.
In the 70s, the 0.2 degree cooling was very uncertain and speculative, derived by a small band of scientists. (Can you imagine the fun that the internet “skeptics” would have with “scaremongers” that raised such speculations now if they had the temerity to threaten “our way of life” with such claptrap?)
Our knowledge of the warming trend now, however, is much firmer. That’s only because of an enormous collaborative effort by thousands of scientists using millions of dollars of computer power. The explosion of effort and money which has gone into this issue is comparable to the growth of the internet. (In fact, in my opinion, it is this growth in knowledge and the new world of computer models which has left many old climate hands floundering and skeptical. Have you noticed how nearly all of the skeptics are older people—who probably are struggling to keep up with the internet too?)
My next point about the internet is that you seem to imply that it has concentrated our fears. As I said before the google numbers don’t add up for this. I could equally say that the internet is a great distractor. To put global warming in context you really need to compare its numbers with total internet traffic, I think you will find it swamped by distractions such as Paris Hilton, youtube, and on and on and on.

Alternatively I agree the end of the cold war removed a distraction (and gave the American right a dose of hubris to fuel the skeptical reaction)but personally I am pleased that we are now looking 50-100 years ahead. At last we are beginning to grow up!

Thanks for your comment Skeptical. You say that "In the 70s, the 0.2 degree cooling was very uncertain and speculative, derived by a small band of scientists." No, the belief in a continuing trend came from a small band; the cooling is on the record, and generally accepted, as is the recent warming - bearing in mind, of course, all the uncertainties that surround even the measurement of these figures, ie. they are averages - not globally uniform, instrument error, technological change, urban heat effects etc, etc, etc., lots of etceteras...

I also disagee that older people (skeptic or otherwise) are necessarily struggling to "keep up" with the internet. They may not use it to download every latest pic of Paris, but I know plenty of older people who are making great use of the technology. Maybe some of these older people, who've been around the block a few more times, aren't distracted as easily by the medium itself, but can see through the BS to what's really going on - perhaps history repeating itself. I don't think the internet is concentrating our fears, but disseminating them.

But I appreciate your comment.

Richard (not Russell)

Sorry Richard (not Russell).
I do indeed allege that the basis for the science of global cooling of the 70s was (at the time) sketchy, just as was its extrapolation. To quote realclimate’s article: “The global cooling myth”:
“… there was a trend of cooling from the 40's to the 70's (although that needs to be qualified, as hemispheric or global temperature datasets were only just beginning to be assembled then)”.
By concentrating upon this alleged “scare”, I think you have been sold a bill of goods. Such “skeptical” and populist products are manufactured as much over the internet as anywhere. The democratising effect of the internet, for better or worse, gives weight and distribution to views which would not previously have got that treatment.
Look, I don’t want to overstate the age effect in the AGW debate (being an older citizen myself), though I note you won’t concede my memory of the 70s has much weight. My assessment of this factor comes from such articles as the Washington Post’s on Bill Gray:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301305.html

Sorry, skeptical of skeptics, but you’re the one who’s been sold a bill of goods. There was genuine expert concern about global cooling in the 1970s and it certainly wasn’t manufactured over the internet or made up by the media.

The US National Defense University conducted an international survey of expert views on prospective climate change to the year 2000 in 1976 and 1977, and published the results in the report “Climate Change to the Year 2000: A Survey of Expert Opinion” (1978). Individual quantitative responses were weighted according to expertise and then averaged. The aggregated subjective probabilities were used to construct five possible climate scenarios for the year 2000, each having a “probability” of occurrence. The survey showed that expert opinion was fairly evenly divided between expectations of warming and cooling and that there was a significant minority opinion (10% probability) expecting large cooling. This scenario was described in the “Global 2000 Report to the President” (1980), prepared jointly by the US Environmental Protection Authority and the State Department, in the following terms:

‘The global trend that began in the 1940s accelerated rapidly in the last quarter of the 20th century. The average global temperature reached its lowest value of the past century a few years before the century ended. By the year 2000, the mean Northern Hemisphere temperature was about 0.6 deg. C colder than in the early 1970s, and climate conditions showed a striking similarity to the period around 1820. Climatologists explained this large global cooling in terms of natural climatic cycles, partly solar induced and partly attributable to several major volcanic eruptions that occurred between 1980 and 2000’ (vol. 2, p. 52).

Skeptical, I mean no disrespect to you, your age or your memory, when I say that your lack of such memories of the 70s doesn't negate my thesis, but supports it. The concern about cooling didn't grab the public. Had the internet been around (and The Wall not) it may have been quite different.

Allison, how does the The Defense Technology Information Center summarise this survey?
It mentions that it was a survey of 24 climatologists from seven countries. (This doesn’t seem a large number, especially in modern terms.)
It goes on to say: “The derived climate scenarios manifest a broad range of perceptions about possible temperature trends to the end of this century, but suggest as most likely a climate resembling the average for the past 30 years. Collectively, the respondents tended to anticipate a slight global warming rather than a cooling. More specifically, their assessments pointed toward only one chance in five that changes in average global temperatures will fall outside the range of -0.3C to +0.6C.”
I would be interested to know how you fit a scare about global cooling into the above summary.

Arjay, interesting that you would raise the topic of the millennium bug (well you said "millinium bug" but I think I know what you meant).

Leaving aside that Y2K had nothing to do with scientists, but rather engineers like myself, it is quite telling that you laugh it off like that.

Do you have any idea how many billions were spent worldwide to ensure that Y2K didn't become a world-crippling problem? I don't have any solid figures to hand, but I would guess that it may well have been orders of magnitude more than has been spent on the reduction of carbon emissions.

It's very easy for you to use inductive reasoning and say "the world has never ended before, so it's not going to end in my lifetime", and then laugh at any successful prevention of a global crisis. But civilizations and ecosystems have both been observed to collapse before, so it does need to be taken seriously.

Note that I am *not* stating that Y2K "would have been" an economic crisis. I am pointing out that the people involved had the foresight to take it seriously and do something about it, *years before* any directly observable crisis would start to unfold.

Skeptical of skeptics, the US interdepartmental survey of international expert opinion was only the first stage in the study of prospective climate change to 2000. As noted in my earlier posting, the responses to the survey questionnaires were used to construct five possible climate scenarios for the year 2000, each with a specified “probability” of occurrence. The scenarios were reviewed by climatologists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research at Boulder, Colorado in consultations with project staff. As reported in Global 2000, “The details and the conditional probabilities of [the] end scenarios ... reflect the judgments of more people than the limited number of panelists who responded to the questionnaires along the lines of these scenarios. The review process, which essentially strengthened the data bases of the end scenarios, resulted in significant changes to only one of them, the large cooling scenario” (Global 2000, vol. 3, p. 189).

Here is a further extract from the description of the “large global cooling” scenario, which was assessed as having a probability of occurrence of 10%:

“The north polar latitudes, marked by an expansion of arctic sea ice and snow cover ... had cooled by about 2 deg C since the early 1970s... The large global cooling trend was also reflected in a significant decrease in the length of the growing season in the higher middle latitudes and a substantial increase in the variability in the length of the growing season from year to year. By the year 2000, it was also raining less in the higher middle and subtropical latitudes... Precipitation also became more variable. The westerlies showed a pronounced shift [which] brought brief, yet severe ... droughts as well as well as severe cold spells (including early and late killing frosts) in the lower middle latitudes. The higher middle latitudes, particularly Canada, from which the westerlies and their associated storm tracks were displaced, suffered an increasing incidence of long-term drought and winter cold ... "

Cont...

"The center and intensity of the Asiatic monsoon changed dramatically between the late 1970s and the turn of the century. The frequency of monsoon failure in northwest India increased to such an extent that the last decade of the 20th century bore a resemblance to the period from 1900 to 1925. Droughts were also more frequent in the Sahel region of Africa.”

The description of the Case III (Cooling) scenario in the Global 2000 study, which was assessed as having a probability of occurrence of 25%, included the following:

“This ... scenario leads to a global temperature decrease of 0.5 deg. C, with 1 deg. C cooling in the higher and middle latitudes and smaller changes near the equator. Precipitation amounts decrease, and month to month and year to year variability increases... Monsoon failures would become more frequent and severe in India, and the Sahel would experience more frequent severe droughts. Wheat yields in Canada and the Soviet Union would be reduced, but other key crops would not be severely affected. The demand for energy would increase ... [This] might also result from attempts to relideve drought effects in densely populated areas by producing water in massive desalinations programs. Forested areas at higher latitudes of the Northern hemisphere would become less accessible, and grow more slowly.”

Cont...

Richard Castles writes back to me saying:
"I don’t. I haven’t doubted or challenged your figures from the BOM."

He does not get it. These are not *MY* figures from the BOM. This is a statement from the BOM which says 2006 was the hottest Canberra year. (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/act/summary.shtml)

Note how with a simple pronoun, he tries to devalue the information published by the BOM as just one persons view. I keep pointing out that global warming skeptics are forced to either lie or mislead in order to make their arguments.

Let's go to the other topic that Richard Castles uses to distract. Global cooling did not grab the public attention because the world was not cooling and did not cool. How simple is that to understand?

Response to Alison71:
Please stop quoting from a 27 year-old report. Who cares?

David, that is a desperate response. Clearly, when I said "your figures from the BOM", I was referring to the figures that you presented FROM THE BOM. (A reiteration to all: they are FROM THE BOM, not David's personal thermometer.) Nothing indicates I thought they were 'yours', and only someone with poor comprehension skills or deliberately trying to mislead would suggest otherwise.

"Global cooling did not grab the public attention because the world was not cooling and did not cool. How simple is that to understand?"

Too simple even for the IPCC, apparently, whose views you are now also in conflict with. See:

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/figspm-1.htm

It is easy when you are misinformed to accuse others of deception.

Richard, those graphs don't show a cooling trend. They show a small dent in an overwhelmingly large warming trend.

Surely you must be able to see that those graphs are absolutely smothered in noise - the averaged trend line looks like it is covered in hair. But if you zoom out a little further, the two temperature drops you're making so much fuss about (in the mid-40s and mid-60s) look the same - like a bit of aberrant noise hair on the larger trend graph.

It's all about scale:

1. Day and night cycle through hot and cold.
2. Summer and winter cycle through hot and cold.
3. Ocean currents and conveyors, ocean flora, and other factors also cycle the water, oxygen, and carbon through cycles that drive hot and cold over decades, centuries, and millennia.

You can choose to latch onto "trends" at any of these scales, but the moment you take them out of this very complex context and start making blanket declarations, as you just did then - you are misusing the data.

While we're here, Richard, I'd just like to add something else:

You talk about how Climate Change is the first global issue of the Internet Age. I don't know how far into this age you consider us to be, but I feel like we're almost a decade in, and I heard a lot more noise about climate change *off-line* in the 90s than I did on the internet of 1996 through 2005.

Meanwhile, the internet has been much more interested in several other global issues. Here's a hopelessly incomplete 10 year braindump of grouped buzzwords:

1) September 11 2001, theocracy, terrorism, pre-emptive military action, jihad, detention.
2) SARS, bird flu, and other pandemics.
3) Copyright law, piracy, patent legislation.
4) Genetic research and reproductive rights (GMO food, cloning, stem cell research).
5) Economic globalisation.
6) The redefinition of a new global culture and its key subcultures and philosophies (the most notable being Open Source, its software and its encyclopedias).
7) The internet versus the courts (pornography, censorship, net neutrality).
8) The constant background noise of crap buzzwords like "Paris Hilton".

Maybe I've been on a different internet to everyone else, but I honestly think dozens of other issues have dominated the attention of the mainstream internet, before climate change found its (probably fleeting) moment.

Dewi, I provided the link to the IPCC graph only to show the cooling which David denies. Nothing more. What one makes of it - a blip, a dent, a trend - is interpretation and, yes, a matter of scale, but it helps to start with the accepted data.

Continued from above...

These were the kinds of concerns that led the late Professor Rhys Jones of the Division of Archaeology and Natural History at the Australian National University to tell a National Academies Forum on Climate Change in 1996 that:

“From one’s perspective as a pre-historian, the greatest catastrophe that one could possibly imagine for human kind would not be some small degree of ‘global warming’ but rather a return to glacial conditions... Mrs Brundtland’s Norway would be covered with ice, with only the mountains sticking out like Antarctic nunataks. North Germany would be a polar desert, devoid of human population as it was during the period from 23,000 to 13,000 years ago... In north America, there would be ice lobes pushing glacial outwash from New York west to St Louis. Wheat production would not be possible in the prairies of North America, not Europe, the Ukraine nor northern China ... [Some] northern hemisphere OECD countries would be mere shadows of their former selves... One might in this context argue as J M Mitchell (1973, 1977) has done, that a regime of industrially released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere might even be a good thing, in that it might artificially extend the present interglacial by another few thousand years.”

The point at issue here is not whether these assessments were valid but whether they did in fact command the support of a significant minority of expert opinion.

Richard, you are looking at the IPCC graph from the 3rd report. Unfortunately the scientists seem to have moved the goal posts here or cooked the books;)
Looking at the global average temp graph at page 6 of the latest summary for policy makers it looks like the only significant decade for cooling was the '40s. How can they change the "facts" like that in the middle of a good argument?

Sorry Alison but it is past my bedtime, I will try to answer your postings later.

by the way, Richard i think dewi's list is a good one. Plenty of distractions from global warming there. Surely the obvious psychological replacement for the cold war is the War on Terror. That seems a no-brainer to me. You would have to refute its candidacy before your thesis about global warming could fill the void.

Alison, I appreciate your posts but you mistake me. I object to the title (which Richard admits misleads) and his statement: “Average temperatures fell by 0.2 degrees over 30 years, and many scientists believed the trend would continue.” This misleads rather than lies. His thesis is that we were stoical then (whereas now a 0.3 degree rise makes Chicken Littles of us all). I refute this:

1. The 0.2 figure was uncertain then and scientists’ ability to predict was meagre. These uncertainties meant the public needn’t take the issue seriously, stoic or not. Here is John Gribbin, writing in 1988: “(in 1975) estimates of temperature increase for doubling of CO2 varied from 0.7 to 9.6 degrees”. (By the way, if I were the scientist with the 9.6 degree estimate, I would have wonderful grounds to scare about heating not cooling.)

2. I object to “many”. Surely this means more than 10%. It also depends on the rest going along with the “scaremongers.” Here is Gribbin again; saying that, in 1975, Wallace Broeker’s paper in Science let the CO2 problem out of the box: “he came up with the prediction that the runaway exponential growth in the amount of CO2 would take temperatures by 2000 higher than they had been for 1000+ years.” So some were beating up warming while others were scaring with cooling? Others were saying: “we just don’t know?” The World Climate Conference (1979): “Climate will continue to vary and change due to natural causes. The slow cooling trend in parts of the northern hemisphere during the last few decades is similar to others of natural origin, and thus whether it will continue or not is unknown". Yawn! (William Connolley’s site on “globalcooling”.)

In summary, the usual denialist argument: “The scientists tried to scare us with global cooling in the 70s, now they are trying to scare us with warming. Don’t believe them: they are scaremongers,” doesn’t stack up. In the 70s there was “The Great Climate Uncertainty”, which, of course, being about uncertainty of the facts and the predictions, wasn’t scary at all.

S of S, thanks for mentioning the 4th report policy summary. You say: “In the 70s there was “The Great Climate Uncertainty”. But then refer to the adjusted data of this document regarding the 40’s to 60’s (there are other adjustments) and make the relevant remark “How can they change the ‘facts’ like that in the middle of a good argument?” If there is still so much uncertainty about the recorded data, such that it 'changes' in just 7 years, and the IPCC has significantly altered its projections in that time as well, what makes you so much more certain today, and what certainty can there possibly be about temps in 100 years time? The argument about the “primitive” climate science of the past seems nullified. There also seems to be a great danger of the data being adjusted to the theory, which is unscientific. As one commentator at

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1175#comments

says:

"We’ll lose the concept of time soon. It will undoubtedly get warmer in the future, but also past temperatures will get colder in the future."

I do not feel last two summers were much warmer than ten years ago.

Even opposite.

Richard, from a scientific viewpoint the global average temperature is very indirect evidence. This average is a sophisticated amalgamation of local observations and working out what it actually was in the past is doubly difficult. It is always going to have a degree of uncertainty to it and be open to revision. I would liken it to assessing all the gold reserves, say, in the world. To be sure of getting it right you have to be determined to drill holes in less and less accessible places and to a finer and finer scale and once you have done it, what does it actually prove? It satisfies your critics, may be?

What gives me certainty is the bigger picture. Look at the temp of the moon; compare it to the Earth’s. Why is there a difference? Compare Earth to Venus? Why is there a difference? Here’s an interesting figure for you, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s up or down a bit: current global annual consumption of oil: one cubic mile. Try to imagine that, a huge tank rising into the clouds and much of it being turned into CO2 which is measured in part per million! (and this figure does not include coal, etc)

The greenhouse gases with their absorption bands are the only game in town from my perspective. Don’t be distracted by the bulls*it on the internet! Isn’t that what you are saying is the modern problem?

As they say, statistics lie: don’t trust them. Statistical types love playing with them. Fair enough, theories in areas like economics will (may be) never be good enough, so you need statistics as a back up and to keep you honest. But it seems to me that the people at places like climateaudit live in their own little world. They’re trying to work out if someone’s cooking the books by looking at the shadow of the smoke. If you are into conspiracy theories, that’s your bag. I don’t buy it. Sorry, out of time and word limit

Let's go over the real issues sofar, because Richard Castles is muddying the waters and I'm not interested in that.

Castles writes an article about the mild weather of Canberra and the 42 degree heatwave which occurred in 1968. This is used to suggest that climate change has somehow missed Canberra and who knows the future. Global warming is an Internet "virus", suggests Castles. We can see some posters have taken up these suggestions.

But the glaring and inexcusable omission is that the Bureau of Meterology has said that 2006 was the hottest Canberra year on record. One can look at the other BOM weather summaries over the past few years and can see other reports on the increasingly warm weather in the nations capital. (See http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/act/summary.shtml)

Since presenting the BOM view on Canberra's weather, Castles has made three posts (28/2, 1/3 and 7/3) which do everything but explain the glaring disparity between his anecodotal article and the BOM report based on 60 plus years of readings.

Did Castles fail to research his article properly?

Does Castles dispute the BOM and other scientific reports?

Does Castles still believe that there is no evidence for a warmer Canberra?

We do not know these answers because it is necessary for a global warming skeptic to give a obtuse or political reponse for them to hold onto their outdated views. That is the internal psychological mechanism for those too embarassed to find that they were wrong.

This is a great shame, as for anyone who is concerned for their children or grandchildren, one would think this would override any personal intertia to review their position. The above series of posts from Richard Castles is an example of this not happening.

David Latimer: "We do not know these answers..."

Well, not through lack of trying.

SoS, thank you for your comments, but I’m afraid you’ve lost me.

First you say: “The democratising effect of the internet, for better or worse, gives weight and distribution to views which would not previously have got that treatment.” Then: “Don’t be distracted by the bulls*it on the internet!”

You say statistics lie, but then that you need them “as a back up and to keep you honest.”

I concede I may have misunderstood you - There can be a lot of 'noise' in the simplest communication - but it seems that the skeptical loop suggested by your nom de plume is getting you tangled.

You seem to concur that there is a degree of uncertainty in even the basic measurements. Surely, the statistical “types” you talk of should be there to dispassionately keep an eye out for cases where statistics are being misused, especially to assert a degree of certainty that doesn’t exist.

Finally, how is the difference between the earth and the moon, relevant to changes on earth over time?

"How is the difference between the earth and the moon, relevant to changes on earth over time?" (Posted by Richard Castles)- "How is the difference between the earth and the moon, relevant to changes on earth over time?" (Posted by Richard Castles)- So far as I remember, planetary forces reflect planets' masses-in-square ratio while altering of geo-magnetic characteristics affects no grand mass of the Earth eventually.

Therefore, difference between Moon and Earth is stable from a cosmic view

Richard, sorry if I confused. We seem to come from different perspectives. I assumed that you’d understand how Venus and Moon fit in this: one exhibiting a runaway greenhouse effect, the other a complete lack thereof. I wonder about your scientific background and therefore the basis for your strong opinion on this subject.

I am basically saying that the theoretical underpinning of AGW is very strong. If the earth were moon-like in atmosphere it would have an average temperature of about minus 17 degrees Celsius. Its actual temperature is some thirty degrees warmer. It is long- established that the only explanation for this is the natural greenhouse effect. This being so, a naïve thinker should opine that 30% increase of the GHGs, as at present, would result in a 10 degree temperature increase. That should be the position of an unscientific person skeptical of modern science, models, etc. He should be asking how come the present warming is so small, not the other way around, as the alleged “skeptics” do.

As the big picture of the strength of the greenhouse effect, which is backed by lab measurements of gas absorption bands, etc, etc, is so strong, the scientists are not going to be deflected by highly derivative figures like global average temperatures which are of necessity noisy and hard to pin down. What are climateaudit trying to do? Find that the warming trend has been 0.4 instead of 0.6 degrees? Prove the scientists are hiding an inconvenient truth? They are basically a small, less-deluded-than-average subset of conspiracy theorists. The scientists would be quite happy if the figure were lower and we had more time to fight the problem. However, given the strength of the theory, they are more likely just to worry about the source of the error.

It’s your thesis that fear of AGW is bred on the internet. My counter-theory is that conspiracy theorists like climateaudit are muddying the waters and damping down public reaction to a legitimate public concern

SoS, I am aware of the greenhouse effect. I understand Venus's "runaway" effect begins with the fact that it is closer to the sun. I would indeed question why current warming is so small, given that "the theoretical underpinning of AGW is very strong" and "the big picture of the strength of the greenhouse effect...is so strong". Suggests some gaps in our knowledge.

Richard,
So if a smoke alarm goes off but you can't see the fire you say: "It's a faulty theory! I'll try to persuade the rest of the family not to worry. I'll look around later when I'm sure there really is a fire."

So you agree that the greenhouse effect has raised the temperature of the planet by 30 odd degrees in the past but the same mechanism no longer seems (to you ) to apply when mankind adds to the load.

SoS,

To push your fire alarm analogy a little further....
Yes you might evacuate the house... thats sensible!
Do you immediately also turn on the sprinkler system?
That would cause a lot of damage and wouldnt that be a shame if the alram turned out to be a false alarm?

Im not getting my knickers in a knot over global warming.....
Why?

Firstly... I am old enough to have heard a lot of people predicting lots of awful things that never happen. Obviously there is a natural tendency for humans to be fearful about the future.

Now.. I hear people predicting global warming with supposed dire consequences. Some are predicting temperature rises of 9+C. But temperatures obviously haven't changed that much.

As for actual measurement of 'global temperature' this seems to be a developing technology... lots of argument about whether they had it right 30 years ago. It seems the business of measuring global temperature is itself changing and the results are producing variations of .3C to about .6C. That isnt very convincing evidence for the models that predict +9C.

But I observe that the method of calculating average global temperatures is changing so I am hardly surprised that the result is changing. Perhaps we are just seeing variations due to measurement and calculation differences. At any rate the numbers are not impressive.

Next the climate models are being refined and 'surprise, surprise' the models predictions are starting to line up with actual measurements and someone says..... "see my model is right"...

Should I be impressed yet?

A (smoke) alarmist response? Seeing how you mention it, my smoke alarm often goes off when there's no fire, just a piece of smoking toast - a source of ongoing frustration. I suppose, regarding climate, the question is whether one hears or sees alarms.

I agree it is a legitimate public concern, too important to shut out experts with differing views, and too important to be dictated by fear. When we have Tim Flannery telling people to imagine 10 storey buildings with water lapping at the roofs, when even the IPCC's highest projection is something like a 59cm sea level rise, give me climateaudit "damping down" public reaction over scare-mongering every time.

Yeah, maybe, Australian experts’ views are different but their incapability to create something practical is not unique.

Let’s better talk of the US.

Richard and wb,
Smoke alarms represent science and technology that we accept without doubting the manufacturers’ competence, motives or the scientific principles. Nor do we assume those who install them are alarmists suffering from some sort of modern, chicken little complex.

(By the way, Richard, I installed the new hard-wired variety. They rarely false alarm compared to the battery-operated ones. Like with so many things, some inconvenience and money solves the problem.)

I bought the alarms from a reputable firm (the smoke alarm equivalent of the IPCC and (what is it, 20 or so?) national academies that have endorsed the theory of AGW). I didn't even think of checking the internet to see if they were shysters. Climateaudit isn’t doing the hard slog of experimental science, which I know from passing experience is tedious, boring and frustratingly slow. Although they pontificate about graphs and give the illusion of being careful, critical-thinkers their expertise is illusory and too light-weight to be balanced against conventional science. It’s true we should listen to the whole range of expert opinion, but we must also carefully assess relative degrees of expertise and experience.

We all have a lot to lose if this issue is wrongly handled either way. We take the fruits of science everyday with both hands. It seems hypocritical to me to try to throw a cordon round one area, ie climate science, and label them scaremongers, politically correct, deluded, whatever, while happily using the science of the internet to communicate our fears that they are wrong.

So, SoS, you don't see Flannery's exaggeration as scaremongering?

You say "we must also carefully assess relative degrees of expertise and experience". Prior to the release of the Stern Review, the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs published its 2nd Report on The Economics of Climate Change. The following witnesses gave evidence: Professor Dennis Anderson, Imperial College, Dr Terry Barker, Cambridge University, Mr Christopher Beauman, former adviser, Cabinet Office, BP, Dr Leonard Brookes, Fellow of the Energy Institute, Sir Ian Byatt, Dr Ian Castles, Australian National University, Canberra, CSERGE (the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Professor Paul Ekins, Policy Studies Institute, George C Marshall Institute, Washington DC, Dr Indur M Goklany, Professor Michael Grubb, Imperial College, Dr Dieter Helm, New College, Oxford, Dr Cameron Hepburn, St High’s College, University of Oxford, Professor David Henderson, Westminster Business School, Mr David Holland, MIEE, Dr Chris Hope, University of Cambridge, Sir John Houghton International Council for Capital Formation (ICCF), International Policy Network, Sir David King, Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, Professor Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor Bjorn Lomborg, University of Aarhus, Professor Angus Maddison, Dr David Maddison, University College London, Professor Ross McKitrick, University of Guelph, Canada, Professor Robert Mendelsohn, Yale University, Professor Nils-Axel Morner, Stockholm University, Professor Julian Morris, University of Buckingham, Professor Nebojsa Nakicenovic, IIASA and Vienna University, Dr R Pachauri, Chairman, IPCC, Dr Peter Read.

The list includes eminent and respected experts from around the world, from a broad political spectrum, and with an array of views on climate change, 'skeptical' and 'non-skeptical'. The report expressed serious concerns about the operations of your reputable firm, the IPCC.

The Stern Review, released shortly after, on the same subject, had something like 1,100 references, but not one to this report. Looks like a lot of expertise and experience to ignore.

Okay, Richard. The way you dramatise this, I almost missed how little your last comment really said! Let me just repeat it, with the obfuscation and drama removed:

1. The Select Committee published a report containing a couple of dozen testimonies. It also contained some criticism of the IPCC.
2. The Stern Review was published, and it referenced some 1,100 papers, but not the Select Committee report.

You haven't told us how many of your dozens of people actually expressed concerns about the IPCC. Not being referenced by the Stern Review does not convince me that they were somehow "silenced" either.

But assuming the worst - that all your experts had serious concerns, and that the Stern Report deliberately snubbed them - that's still only a few dozen experts out of the thousands you have stated were referenced by the Stern Review! Is this really "a lot of expertise and experience to ignore"? No, it's one paper in a thousand - an insignificantly tiny minority.

What makes all this really tedious is that you haven't told us what these serious concerns about the IPCC actually were. I've read that the IPCC's 2007 report was "produced by around 600 authors from 40 countries, and reviewed by over 620 experts and governments." It sounds decentralised and inclusive - and again these numbers dwarf your list of protests.

Richard, can we exchange all these vague and misleading implications for some substantive arguments?

You know what disturbs me most about this whole process?

Science (the process) is supposed to consider every objection, examine ever counter-argument. This means that science (the collected mass of opinion) is a bit of a huge, slow-moving beast. It's marching along, giving due consideration and being generally thoughtful, and all these interest groups (including IDers and (A)GW-skeptics) are buzzing around making so much noise, and repeating the same already-falsified arguments so often, that nobody outside the field can be quite sure what the consensus of the moderates really is.

The louder science protests against this assault, the more partisan and closed and less like science it looks. Every authority has to choose between guilty silence, and being painted as just another casualty of the "conspiracy". The networks of trust corrode away.

We can't all become scientists in every field, so all I can do is hope we all learn enough propaganda-resistance to get by.

Dewi, What obsfucation? What drama? How vague? How misleading? Substantive arguments, please.

"that's still only a few dozen experts out of the thousands you have stated were referenced by the Stern Review!" This is INCORRECT. There were about 1,100 references - not experts!

Is this really "a lot of expertise and experience to ignore"? YES - it's not one paper in a thousand, it was a Select Committe report drawing on some of the world's leading experts - such as Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology at MIT - on the very subject of the Stern Review (repeat Review).

You can read the report yourself at:

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:qMoYm8OO8WoJ:www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12i.pdf+house+lords+select+climate&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=au

The comment was in response to SoS on 'degrees of expertise and experience'. That you have missed the point, and also seem to think science is a numbers game (a collected mass of opinions), is no reason to make baseless accusations. That we can't all be scientists in every field does not mean you should assume that the stuff you don't understand is propaganda.

Richard,
I thought we were discussing the science and who we should believe regarding the science. You seem to be sliding off topic. You cut and paste a list of names of individuals who gave evidence before an economics committee. You give no evidence that you have done your own homework on who they are but you expect me to give a considered response! The economics committee may well be able to elicit expertise about the cost/benefit analysis of installing a smoke alarm but I cannot see how its expertise extends to knowing how to build one and whether the theory it is based on is sound.

A committee of the House of Lords clearly has no direct knowledge of climate change. No more than a committee of our Senate. Therefore if they are to make a valid judgment on the subject they would need to have selected a broad spectrum of scientific witnesses. From those names I recognise on your list it would seem that they have, by no means, chosen a representative sample of climate scientists. In fact they are a stand out example of what you accuse me of doing, ie whoever selected the witnesses (I think it is suspected Nigel Lawson did) has favoured one side. When I look at the list I can immediately see the names of 8 individuals who are either sceptics or fiercely suspicious of the IPCC, ie Sir Ian Byatt, Dr Ian Castles (no relative I hope as you have not declared a conflict of interest), Professor Paul Ekins, Dr Indur M Goklany, Professor David Henderson, Professor Richard Lindzen, Professor Bjorn Lomborg, Professor Ross McKitrick. That’s just off the top of the bat, more than a third of the 27 who I am aware are highly partisan on the topic. Climate scientists seem pretty thin on the ground, but the most respectable skeptic, Lindzen, is there. If they are to get a representative sample of those with opposing views to him they would have had 50-100 more eminent scientists to choose from but they were not invited.

SoS

You said
"I thought we were discussing the science and who we should believe regarding the science."

Obviously Global Warming has religious significance for you. Science is not about 'believing' its about evidence, interpretation and sceptical review. 'Believing' has no place in science... that is the sort of thinking that leads to scientific nonsense like Creationism and Intelligent Design.
If this thread is about deciding who to believe then it is simply a waste of time. Actually your arguments sound very similar in approach to those of my Creationist friends.
As a matter of simple logic if the GCMs get so much as one number even slightly wrong then that is sufficient evidence to PROVE that the model is wrong. The only question that remains is just how far wrong are they. That is a good scientific question. I think that is what this thread is really about.

Wb, give me a break. It is my way of speaking to say I “believe” the sun will rise tomorrow. I don’t put religious significance onto that word.

I could with more justice accuse you of religious thinking in your trying to “prove” the models wrong if they get one figure wrong. I would say that your test of the models is illogical. It is based upon perfectionistic, ie religious-type thinking. The logical way to assess their relevance is not whether the models are inaccurate but whether they are less inaccurate than the alternatives. The only alternative I know of is human judgement, ie hunches based upon experience. For many logical reasons, which I have tried to explain, I think or “believe” or estimate or assess or opine (or whatever you like) that the models will be more accurate and, importantly, more transparent, than relying upon human judgment.

For instance, Richard is upset with Tim Flannery over his talk of flooding buildings. Being a forgiving soul (oops, I really haven’t a religious bone in my body) I assume that he has come to that judgment on sound intuition.
(I respect his judgment because I suspect he knows more about the theory than me although I have been studying it part time for a couple of years now. I put in the effort for the very reason that I very much hoped it was not true. Unfortunately my due diligence informs me its highly likely true no matter how inconvenient to me and everyone else.)

I doubt whether scientists would produce a model that yielded such a result because the intellectual process of fashioning it using mathematics, etc precludes the sort of thinking that Flannery has used. Flannery may well be right in his judgment for all I know, and I don’t even know the context of his remark, so I will not pass judgment on it

SoS

Having degrees in both Theology and Pure Mathematics I've a fair idea of the difference between Religion and Science and sorry to be blunt about it but you dont appear to be very knowledgable on either subject. You need, for starters, basic courses in epistomolgy and logic.

But... have it your way...
You think, believe, estimate, assess, opine etc etc that the models are accurate....

Even YOU stop short of saying that you KNOW the models are 'more accurate' and that is the point. The models are indeed very impressive... but they are obviously flawed since their a posteriori 'predictions' for known values havent been 'accurate'.

When I say that the GCMs are flawed I am not necessarily 'denying' global warming. Again you have jumped to this conclusion irrationally. The greenhouse effect is a well established process and its application to the atmosphere appears to be quite valid. It is, however, just one factor among... who knows how many others.

In fact, I regard this issue as important otherwise this thread would not interest me at all. It would be well if everyone concerned themselves with the subject and found in the good science reason enough to modify their behaviour so as to reduce their consumption of energy, water, etc and consider the implications of all forms of pollution.

We have good reason to be concerned about global warming but realistically we cant expect governments, business etc to turn themselves inside out overnight without COMPELLING evidence of the type that good science can produce. As yet the evidence is not sufficiently compelling (though you obviously believe that it is) to justify radical mitigation measures. It is, however, compelling enough to justify significant investment in further work in climate studies and sufficient to alert people to the need to be more responsible environmentally. Inthe right environment good pursuasive science could provide the knowledge that will help us to anticipate pending disaster and respond appropriately. The science might never be done ifthe potential investors are put off by scaremongering doomsayers. Their efforts are likely tobe counterproductive.

SoS, the ground on which you stand is getting shakier by the comment.

Where do I start? You have doubt over “human judgment, ie. hunches based upon experience” but respect Flannery for coming to his “judgment” on something called “sound intuition”. Perhaps you could clarify the difference. You trust your reliable firm, the IPCC, yet Flannery disagrees with its (upper level) sea rise projections to the tune of something like 5000%. Yet if another expert (Flannery is a paleontologist, Lindzen, eg, a meteorologist), questions the figures at all (0.4 vs 06 degrees), they are a misleading denialist.

I agree largely with waterboy. “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” – Einstein. Or how about Huxley – “The great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

You say my list of experts is an "example of what you accuse me of doing”. I have scanned my comments and can’t find any such accusation. Can you direct me to it?

You refer to the partisanship of the list. Indeed, it is the politicization of climate science that is a cause of much concern. It would be wonderful if these experts were included in Dewi’s “inclusive” IPCC, but as disagreeing is not respected in its circle, they are on the outer. Is it any wonder then that 'alternative publications' are made up prominently of ‘skeptics’. (Although Dr Pauchari was a witness to the Lords Committee, a generosity he seems less willing to afford those who question the IPCC.) Your logic is again circular. The ‘skeptics’ are wrong because they are on the outer, they are on the outer because they are wrong.

The reports are on the economics of CC, because the ‘scientific’ projections produced incorporate economic scenarios.

The assumptions you (and others) have made about me are similar to those expressed by waterboy, to the extent that even when I have essentially agreed with a statement, it can’t be comprehended.

Your extended and dubious smoke alarm metaphor is beginning to sound like a phobic obsession.

"It would be wonderful if these experts were included in Dewi’s “inclusive” IPCC, but as disagreeing is not respected in its circle, they are on the outer. Is it any wonder then that 'alternative publications' are made up prominently of ‘skeptics’... The ‘skeptics’ are wrong because they are on the outer, they are on the outer because they are wrong." -- Richard Castles

Yes, this is very concerning. And it was not my intention to state categorically that the IPCC is inclusive - but it does look to me like it involves a very large distribution of scientists.

Waterboy can wax theological about science having nothing to do with belief, but in the real world the non-climatologists have to believe one side or the other. I don't mean blind belief, but even the best climatologist in the world hasn't run *all* the experiments personally.

All I can say is that the "GW skeptics" have often seemed *to me* to be more partisan than skeptical. More intent on disrupting scientific research than suggesting alternative models. Models for complex chaotic systems are likely to always have flaws, but we *must* use the best model we have, or improve upon it. The stakes are high enough to absolutely demand it.

However, the "GW skeptics" often conclude (as happened in the article and many times in the comments) that our knowledge is flawed, so we should ignore what it indicates as being *likely* and go on with our lives. Often with a focus on some minor statistical anomaly at the expense of the big picture, and with a suggestion that that "wasted" grant money should be cut off. This is just as hysterical as the worst excesses of the AGW camp, and it is *this* sort of non-science that inevitably damages the credibility of any responsible skeptics out there.

One must remember the golden rule with a climate sceptic: They have to either lie or misrepresent in order to make their arguments.

We have already noted the Canberra debacle, which was the central plank of misinformation in Richard Castle's article. The BOM says that 2006 was Canberra's hottest year on record and Castle has done everything to avoid discussing this.

Remember to keep the golden rule foremost in your mind. It is necessary for climate sceptics to misinform, and proven every article on OLO.

Now we have a list of "eminent scientists" posted by Castles (14Mar2007 6:16PM) who were "witnesses" and the resulting report "expressed serious concerns" and that "Looks like a lot of expertise and experience to ignore. Given that this is is an argument denying climate change, it follows that there must be a trick, lie or misinformation in the argument. Just find the trick.

It is pretty obvious really. The Stern Report was able to directly reference the real expertise, rather than through the report. For example, first on the list, Prof Dennis Anderson, played a major role in the Stern Review. Look up his report from here: http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/content/view/358/853. Second on list Prof Terry Barker's Stern Submission is here: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/F72/C6/climatechange_imp_1.pdf

By including climate sceptics like Bjorn Lomborg later in the list, Castles avoids telling a fib outright. The misinformation is in suggesting this is a list of experts ignored by the Stern Report or critical of the IPCC. In fact, the real experts are part of the scientific consensus.

Proving once again how climate sceptics use misinformation to argue their cases. Remember its the golden rule.

I don't know how to read what you say David;
Your interpretations are totally void of Heuristic value ; and you display a continuous insistence to work off the typical Proletariat idiotic model.
The Philosophical Model you work from is garbage’ as was the Stern report.
Continued delusional state of consciousness is not healthy for an individual, or indeed the collective. Regardless of your motives.

Total politicized philosophical Hypotheses of conjured up nonsense algorithm and deliberate bug infected programs; then reinvented heuristic value that you claim (Just use the Computer Virus model if you do not comprehend what I say) - but of course, that is an oxymoron. There is no scientific value to you rants or heuristic value, it is invented propaganda based on selective Ignorance- and Intellectual programmed Ignorance.
Hmmmmmmmmm,

Question is David.
Why?

‘””” {The misinformation is in suggesting this is a list of experts ignored by the Stern Report or critical of the IPCC. In fact, the real experts are part of the scientific consensus}.””

In fact, another factual error in your linguistics expression David explained under the heading ; “Phonocentrism- Logocentrism”

There is no such thing a scientific consensus and discovery;
It is ether true and can be improved thus - or it is a lie that is only propped up by fraudulent pseudo scientific consensus – then we have an alternant motive David.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/print?id=2938762

http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20070306-122226-6282r.htm

Now here is some real truth David about your motivation, and fits in well with your profile.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=440869&in_page_id=1965&in_page_id=1965&expand=true#StartComments

Richard, sorry for misunderstandings. 350 word limit’s a pain. Your comments, in order:

1. Judgment. My comparisons were re the models. The latter are mathematical descriptions of orderly aspects of climate change. In that limited field, I consider them sounder, more conservative and more transparent than judgments alone. My assessment of the usefulness of models is, of course, a judgment because ultimately we are only left with human judgment.

Human judgment is free to draw upon information which is too disorderly, etc to get into the models. This is what Flannery is doing. Although not a climatologist he is in good company: Jim Hansen and Carl Wunsch have also recently stated they think sea rises are underrepresented in the IPCC report (see the latter’s comments in his response to his misrepresentation in the “Swindle” film: http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/responseto_channel4.htm.)

2. I agree completely with the Einstein/Huxley quotes. Point me to the experiment/facts which disprove AGW theory and I will take your side. Planetary scale experiments are hard to find. As I said before nature’s experiments offer us the moon to gauge the strength of the greenhouse effect and Venus to suggest the possibility the GHE can runaway. It is a truism that we can never prove scientific theories. I cannot prove to you that the sun will rise tomorrow. The above (however well expressed) quotes do no more than state this.

3. Sorry about the “accusing” bit. You didn’t say it directly, it was my inference. I inferred that by raising climateaudit and HoL as sources of expert views that you thought I was drawing on too narrow a range of experts. I was well aware of them although I don’t have a detailed knowledge because I don’t rate them highly. A quick look at the HoL report shows they took testimony from “several scientists”. They had a tutorial on CC from climate scientists of their own choosing. Unfortunately their sampling technique for testifying scientists was unscientific! They want broader input into the IPCC but they themselves didn’t widely canvass the scientific community to determine their own inputs. Up to word limit .

Continued.

4.Richard I disagree with: “The ‘skeptics’ are wrong because they are on the outer, they are on the outer because they are wrong.” Take Lindzen, he was involved in earlier IPCC deliberations. As far as I am aware he has now opted out. He is on the outer because he chose it. Point out to me active climatologists who have been excluded. No doubt others in the broader scientific community would like to opt in to the IPCC. I have a degree in physics and soundly based opinions on the theory. Do you think I should be able to opt in?

I also take issue with “politicization of climate science”. I admit that in the broader community arguments have got political. AGW has been painted as left/right, politically correct, etc. I disagree that this has occurred within the climatological community. In any scientific community their will be “political” jostling in the sense that status, etc are involved in getting your POV on an issue to prevail. If someone like Lindzen has a POV then it is up to him to persuade others to it. If he has the smarts, persuasiveness and, above all, the scientific ideas, he should by now have a band of followers drawn from younger, flexible, keen, climatologists. As far as I’m aware he hasn’t achieved this sign of influence. I am not saying he is not held in regard but his views on this issue are no more than his personal judgment which must be weighed against the judgments of many others.

Broadly speaking I agree with Dewi’s assertion that science is a numbers game in the sense that a theory gains credibility the more scientists are attracted to it. It is then up to the adherents to a theory to get the majority of the community to agree also. David, although polemically, also makes a valid point. The appropriate way for Stern to assess expert opinion is to go directly to the writings of the HoL experts rather than the amateur, filtered version thereof which is the HoL report.

Apology gracefully accepted, SoS. I have enjoyed the discussion, but don't have time to respond at length today.

Briefly, you say: "The appropriate way for Stern to assess expert opinion is to go directly to the writings of the HoL experts rather than the amateur, filtered version thereof which is the HoL report." Apparently, your guideline doesn't apply to the IPCC, Stern's first reference being to the TAR. According to you, this is inappropriate, and he should go directly to the writings. Indeed, many of the IPCC scientists, were concerned that the uncertainty in their research was "filtered" out, solidified or twisted out of shape through the IPCC process and some of them opted out on principle, putting faith in independent science. The IPCC is a "consensus manufacturer".

David,

You say: "By including climate sceptics like Bjorn Lomborg later in the list, Castles avoids telling a fib outright."

SoS correctly pointed out that I had simply cut & pasted the complete list of witnesses. That you can read motivation into it is actually indicative of a serious thought disorder.

Below is an extract of some atmospheric studies- I give you fair warning that if we apply the Radical Greens/Global warming worshipers principle, then we are certainly within the bounds of every human purchasing a chainsaw and getting to work on these Environmental polluters immediately
Sorry – that means Trees- Who-da thunk it.
Science without consensus brings you some hard hitting truth.Or more like expose the proposition of Enviro-"mental"-ists fraud and Intellectual disorder.

Alkenes such as 2-methyl-1,3-butadiene (isoprene) and the monoterpenes are emitted by various types of plants. Isoprene is the predominant VOC emitted by forest species such as poplar, oak, willow, sycamore and eucalyptus making up as much as 80 %. Several studies in recent years have shown isoprene to be a key VOC in tropospheric chemistry on both regional and global scales. Emissions appear to be higher than that of any other non-methane hydrocarbon. Terpenes are a classification of biogenic compounds; monoterpenes are a subgroup of terpenes some of which have structures which be thought as being loosely based on that of two isoprene molecules.

Monoterpenes can be either acyclic (e.g. myrcene), or contain one ring (d-limonene) or two ring structures (alpha and beta-pinene, 3-carene). The emissions from deciduous (hardwood/broadleaf) trees such as oak, poplar, aspens and willows comprise mainly of isoprene, whereas coniferous (softwood) woodland such as pine trees, cedars, redwood and firs emit predominantly monoterpene. There are several species which emit both isoprene and monoterpenes such as spruce and eucalyptus. Eucalyptus and pine are the trees which we studied in Portugal during the AEROBIC '96 Campaign.

Isoprene is almost exclusively emitted during daylight hours, hence reaction with hydroxyl radicals will be the major degradation path for isoprene in the troposphere. It has been estimated that the lifetime of isoprene in the troposphere is only a few hours, this is due to the relatively fast reaction between isoprene and the hydroxyl radical.

We are now clear on three things:

1. Richard Castle's article about the mild weather of Canberra is misleading given the BOM analysis of 2006, saying that year was the hottest on record. (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/act/summary.shtml)

2. Richard Castle is happy to mislead people into thinking a list of eminent scientists supports his view that the IPCC is flawed and believe that their expertise is wasted. In fact, the eminent scientists on this list support action on global warming and have made valuable contributions to the Stern Report, the IPCC or both.

What is his explanation? "I had simply cut & pasted the complete list of witnesses" (RC 17Mar2007) This is an astonishing admission. Was any thought given to the reputation of these scientists and their valuable contribution to resolving the global warming issue?

3. Rather than be prepared to back away from these suggestions about either Canberra's weather or the view of these scientists, Richard Castles, muddies his response with a personal attack. He does the same for others.

Does this surprise anyone? Not at all.

As we have seen, in OLO and elsewhere, it is not possible to write a honest article or post while pretending there'll be no consequences of greenhouse gas emissions this century. Like all of us, Richard Castles has a moral choice to make and we can only hope these revolting personal attacks are the last refusal to make it.

An apology David. My last response was written in haste, and on reflection, I realise that you may not have been aware that the list was a complete list - I assumed that someone making your sort of accusations would check first. What I should have said was that someone reading motivation into such a list would be showing signs of a serious thought disorder

PS. The cut & paste function is very handy.

"Was any thought given to the reputation of these scientists and their valuable contribution to resolving the global warming issue?"

Evidently, more than you. Firstly, they are not all scientists.

"Richard Castle (sic) is happy to mislead people into thinking a list of eminent scientists supports his view that the IPCC is flawed and believe that their expertise is wasted."

Hilarious! The Chair of the IPCC itself is on the list.

Beware of generalizations, David. From yesterday's Australian: Richard Lindzen "remains highly critical of how the [IPCC] operates, claiming it is largely a political process underpinned by science, which carefully stage-manages the release of its reports to maximise political impact.

The IPCC made headlines across the world in February with the release of the executive summary of its assessment report, which Lindzen says was severely modified by the political session that writes it and which is now modifying the full scientific report to fit for release in May. "That's a very funny procedure by most standards," he said. "You don't appeal to consensus if you have a scientific argument.

"Very few of the models are independent and they all share certain profound difficulties. They all get clouds hugely wrong and a small change in clouds has a much bigger effect than doubling CO2."

That's it for me with you David. My only moral concern is whether I should be debating with someone who is...well, let's just say I have moral concerns.

Richard,
you’re slow in response so its time for me to summarise and end my side of this. AGW believers must choose between indulging in argument (which can be never-ending) and convincing the family to turn off the bl**dy lights, etc, etc : ) !!
.
Note 1: apparently Lindzen is involved in formulating AR4 so IPCC is more inclusive than you think.
Note 2: Stern’s procedure is correct. He’s an economist, not a scientist. He takes the most authoritative science as a given. Other economists can see his assumptions and do likewise if they want.

More on: “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” This is valid for Einstein because he has the knowledge and the genius to recognize an invalidating experiment if he sees one. The trouble is that 99% of skeptics do not have the requisite knowledge to recognize this. I am sorry if this seems harsh on the intelligent layman but it is the biggest inconvenient truth of the advanced state of scientific knowledge on climate. Having worked hard on this subject for over two years now I have direct evidence from my efforts, stumbles, etc of what’s involved before one can start to intelligently criticize.

I admire you for having the courage to put your thoughts and thesis into the public arena. However to argue with amateurs like me is not fruitful. If you would argue that we with deep concerns about AGW are deranged: argue with a psychologist. If you disagree with the scientific institutions: argue with scientists directly. As I disagree with Lindzen, I should try and contact him. Unfortunately he is hard to track down. You, however, have countless climatologists with whom to take issue. You can go to realclimate and put your points there. I think you will find the commentors and practising scientists there sufficiently “alarmist” to debate.

I hope you don’t take the above as patronising, etc. I take you as an honest seeker after truth although from my perspective your approach is not the most productive

Richard Castles gets himself into darker territory with his latest postings.

He finds it "Hilarious" that he can cut and paste a list of witness to an inquiry and attribute his views upon them. Then he talks about the couple of sceptics on his list who share his views.

This is once again proving the point that global warming sceptics have to resort to misinformation. Don't try to pretend I was unaware of what you were doing. I am aware of the tricks. This is why you are quoting from Richard Lindzen -- trying to change take the heat off what you have said and your own article.

Clearly there are people on the list who have contributed to the scientific evidence, who have contributed to the Stern Report and who have contributed to the IPCC reports.

Let's be clear: The list of people and the attributed views are entirely seperate. These are your views. They are not the views of the all the list of witnesses. They are not the views of the House of Lords Select Committee as has already been discussed.

And let's be clear about Canberra: 2006 was its hottest year and it is the latest in a trend of ever hotter years. That turns your article into nothing but hot air.

And for the road: Make a personal attack, apologise and then repeat the same personal attack using indirect speech. What a hero!

Thank you SoS. There is a touching comment in there somewhere. I think the question of why we do anything was beautifully explored in the film Chariots of Fire – for the glory of God, for revenge, as a bourgeois indulgence, for money…? The question is another where ‘skeptics’ can’t seem to win – eg. if professional, they are just on the take; if amateur (i.e. for the love), they are ‘unprofessional’. Looking into myself at the moment, I suspect my motivation might be largely procrastination. You are probably quite right. A bit of a waste of time and energy - certainly with some - and I have other tasks to which I should be allocating my resources. So I think I’ll turn out my own lights on this one too and, for now, wish you well.

Let's hope David "Don't try to pretend I was unaware of what you were doing. I am aware of the tricks!" Fawlty doesn't keep us both awake screaming at the moon.

Looking back at all the silly articles posted on OLO trying to debunk global warming, the Internet has been a valuable tool.

The Internet makes it very easy to check the credentials of various authors and those being quoted. From our desks we can check the so-called facts by looking up the websites of reputable organisations like the Bureau of Meteorology. Without it, it would be impossible for a single person to uncover all the misinformation and nonsense offered by climate sceptics.

When the statements about Canberra's climate were made, I could verify both the 1968 heatwave, but also find the expert analysis which looked at the climate overall. It meant that Richard Castles could not get away with using the singular event to suggest that Canberra was hotter in the past. Indeed, Canberra was hottest in 2006.

Perhaps this is why Richard Castles describes the Internet as spreading news and information like a virus.

To Castles it is a virus.

To the rest of us, its finding out the truth.