Clownfish,

I don't want to argue the point about crime in the US nor do I really want to read up on the various arguments. If you have done so then I am in no position to contest the matter. As a matter of interest how did Roe vs Wade affect subsequent crime rates? Were the law enforcement agencies reporting a huge number of illegal abortions prior to their legalization as a result of the judgment? On the face of it I fail to see a connection.

You say, "What had really happened was that the real world had thrown a completely unanticipated spanner into the works of the experts' neat modelling."

Well yes obviously if there happens to be a completely unforeseen event that overrides or counteracts the assumptions that have been used to guide the modelling then its accuracy will be compromised. It is much easier to predict the past than the future when we are faced with all those unknown unknowns. Should we therefore just give up or do the best we can and respond accordingly?

Mark

No ... temperatures are not “coming off a peak”. The rate of warming has slowed.

Yes, “scientists (climate modelers) will be very embarrassed” if this slowing does not rise again by 2015 (for statistical significance).

<< Now I'm sorry if you don't like being dictated to by a mere journalist (albeit a former science writer with a dusty degree in science) >>

<< but it is best to remain courteous in these discussions. >>

I will if you will.

_________

Kulu

No one is giving up, especially the ones that count.

Bugsy - sorry but you have missed the point of what I was saying and have misread the graph. the cooling trend started - or seems to have started from around 2000-2001 on a five year average, because that's when it started. You don't go to another year and say there's been no change from that year.. you say, that warming continued more or less up to 2000-2001 or whatever then seemed to have stopped and is now coming down.. in other words coming off a peak.. that we are near a peak is undoubted, hence the business about warmest years. The point is that around 2001 scientists tried forecasting that warming would continue, and accelerate - on the assumption that the additional CO2 was causing that warming up to that point. The physical system then started doing something else.
Q&A - regretably the warming has stopped. There has been some work by Keenleyside et al (Nature, Letters May 1) which modify the IPCC forecasts with climate cycles. If you go with that forecast, a weak cooling trend is expected up to 2014 about..

I don't think it's me who has misread the graph Mark. Yes, I'll admit that when you start with the 2000-2004 five year average, you can get a downward trend line, of about 0.015 degrees. You can even get it to go down by 0.04 degrees over the last 5 data points if you start at the 2001-2005 average! Isn't that something. But start any year earlier, including 1998 on a five year average and the trend disappears. That's some severe data manipulation.

By you own logic, if we are "coming off a peak", and when we look at the historical data provided in your article,

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/themi/g17.htm

then we were coming off a peak in the early-mid 60s, early 70s, early 80s and early 90s! Now we seem to have been 'coming off a peak' since the early/mid 2000s.

Each of these decades peaks being higher than the previous decades. Yes, I think I'm beginning to see a trend here, but I think we might have to wait a little longer than two years to get a five year average of the early 2010s. In the meantime, please stop truncating the dataset.

Thanks Mark. I am very aware of Noel's work and what he has to say. Many so called 'denialists' still take his findings out of context, often intentionally.

Mark,

You have a budding ally in senator Steve Fielding who has returned from the US on his fact finding mission on the science of climate change.
After discussing the matter with scientists of the Heartland Institute he has come away repeating the same claim as you have been making about global cooling in the last ten years.

When it was pointed out to him that the Heartland Institute was funded by the fossil fuel industry he claimed he did not care who provided him with his information. If he approached any other scientists involved in the issue with a view to getting a balanced picture he certainly did not make that clear although he could easily have done so. Why not I wonder?

Should I take the man for being a fool or just naive? Or should I begin to doubt his repeatedly made claim that his trip to the US was self funded?

Any thoughts anyone?

A short video clip of his interview can be viewed on:-
http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/