Janama
You refer to Monckton's 'paper' and make strong assertions. I suggest you slow down.

The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:

"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."

An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS. The header of this newsletter carries the statement that "Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum." This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed.

http://www.aps.org/

Don Aitken
I did not say "the warming trend will pick up again in 2015". Please try and refrain from distorting or misrepresenting what I say. If you don't understand, just ask - that goes for the Argo data and signal/noise as well.


I will be back next week.

Janama: "you should read this review of your 'peer reviewed' IPCC report"

Are you suggesting the IPCC report is a peer reviewed paper published in a recognised journal? Obviously it isn't. For a start, everybody was invited submit comments on the report. Lots of talking heads took up the invitation to become self appointed climate experts, with predictable results. Also it wasn't published a journal that had a reputation to protect. Anyone who suggests the IPCC report is representative of how the normal peer reviewed scientific process works obviously hasn't seen the real one at work.

As for John McLean's work on the IPCC report. Yes it does a good job of pointing out some flaws in the process the IPCC used. It would be easier to take McLean's report seriously if its tone was the balanced, conservative one normally found in academic publications. Perhaps something along the lines of "this is how it is broken, and these are my recommendations for fixing it". Given he doesn't do that it seems his real purpose is to undermine the credibility of the report itself, not improve its contents next time around. As he is reduced to attacking the process, instead of showing directly the report doesn't reflect the state of the science, his argument is pretty weak.

By the by, I don't find the small number of contributors very surprising. Its not original science, and it attracts a huge amount of flak. Getting people to work on it when their main interest is sitting in a quiet corner and pondering must be very hard.

Don Aitkin: "yes, peer-reviewed"

OK Don, if the evidence is as strong as you say, perhaps its time to have another crack at the type of study done previously by Peiser and Oreskes. If it comes up with the result you imply you will be famous. If you do decide to take it on, can you make me a promise? Say you will publish the results regardless of whether the outcome is positive or negative. As you know, its important for the debate to publicise both outcomes.

to Q&A: I'm sorry that I was not more precise in what I wrote. I did not say that you had claimed that warming would resume again in 2015, but I thought I had seen such a claim on this thread and gestured vaguely — '(see above)'. I'm not sure why you think that I had you in mind. I didn't. I think it is the Keenlyside paper that suggests that warming will resume again in 2015. If not, it's there in the literature somewhere. So, I'm sorry that you think I distorted or misrepresented what you say. But I didn't mention you in this context at all.

to rstuart: I have too much to do to take on such a project. In any case, the data are there for all to see, and my view is that we should learn to study them and discuss them. The central issues are plain enough, and the uncertainty about them is increasing, not diminishing. I think my most useful role is as a an ordinary commentator.

Dr David Evans has a well written piece in the Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html

He says "The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy."

Rudd and Wong will need to present every last detail of factual, forensic, empirical evidence that explains their reasons for taxing Australian's CO2 emissions because it reads clearly as nothing more than hocus-pocus. Opinions from so called experts is not evidence. Presenting the drying out Murray/Darling rivers is not evidence.

This is such a serious issue and if there is no evidence then it is a giant hoax. Hoaxes that cause mass panics or convey fear for the safety of a person or of property can come under the CRIMES ACT 1900 - SECT 93Q. Like if someone went into a shopping centre or cinema and yelled "fire" to cause mass panic they would be in a great deal of trouble. How does this differ from a hoax from Rudd or Wong on the Australian people?

93Q Conveying false information that a person or property is in danger
(1) A person who conveys information:
(a) that the person knows to be false or misleading, and
(b) that is likely to make the person to whom the information is conveyed fear for the safety of a person or of property, or both, is guilty of an offence.
Maximum penalty: Imprisonment for 5 years.

David Evans: "I am the rocket scientist " ...

A very lofty self-appraisal, while in fact, David Evans is an electrical engineer that, as a consultant, wrote some computer code for the AGO:
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/DavidEvansbio.html
If he has any article published in peer-reviewed science journals, please link to them.

Further information on Spencer's & Braswell's PP presentation they gave yesterday. From Roger Pielke Snr's site: -

"Dr. Roy Spencer from The University of Alabama at Huntsville will be presenting a special seminar at CU Boulder in the CIRES Auditorium on Thursday, July 17th. The extended abstract is below and a flyer is available for printing and download at the link below. A pdf of the presentation is linked for download as well".

http://climatesci.org/2008/07/10/special-guest-seminar-at-cu-by-roy-spencer-july-17-2008global-warming-recent-evidence-for-reduced-climate-sensitivity/

http://climatesci.org/wp-content/uploads/spencer-ppt.pdf

http://climatesci.org/wp-content/uploads/spencer-7-17-08.pdf

Abstract

“A simple model and satellite observations are used to demonstrate that previous diagnoses of climate feedbacks from the satellite record have a strong bias in the direction of high climate sensitivity (positive feedback). The source of the bias is chaotic radiative forcing generated within the climate system, most likely due to low clouds. Through analysis of frequency histograms of local regression slopes computed throughout the low-pass filtered time series of temperature and total (reflected shortwave SW and emitted longwave LW) radiative fluxes, the radiative forcing signal is shown to have a unique signature separate from the feedback signature. The global oceanic averages of satellite CERES data during 2000 through 2005 reveal a net (SW+LW) feedback parameter of around 8 W m-2 K-1. This strong negative feedback signal exists independent of the low-pass filter time scale, from 10 day to 2 years. In stark contrast, IPCC AR4 models analyzed with the same method all exhibit positive feedbacks of various strengths. It is suggested that the unrealistically high sensitivity of the climate models is the result of a misinterpretation of the co-variability of clouds and temperature when specifying cloud parameterizations. Since only radiative feedback has been assumed in feedback analysis of natural variability (clouds being forced by temperature), the presence of chaotic radiative forcing of temperature by clouds causes the false appearance of positive feedback. In short, cause and effect have been confused. Finally, if such a strong negative feedback has indeed been operating on multi-decadal time scales, this means that the radiative forcing from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is not nearly strong enough to explain the 1°C warming in the last century.”