Dear Tony153,

Mann was spectacularly vindicated by the North Report in 2006.

"The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators". It said "Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Report

I'm even more impressed by Hansen whose predictions are proving to be very impressive given the state of modelling when he first raised the issue.

Rock solid science usually stands the test of time and these two have been standouts.

ALTRAV
An interesting view on this conversation. Somewhat distorted by toss away comment on Al Gore. Do you know how much he spends on Climate Change actions? How many CC speakers has he trained? Can you compare his income with that of fossil fuel industry heads? Your tone is that of a denialist. However, consensus - well and truly addressed, as long as a 97% to 3% of climate change scientist agreeing that CC is real and frightening. See the next item that gives detailed insight into how consensus was measured. I would like to know if Graham suggested such a topic to you.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=home

GRAHAM - I think others should know more about your organisation:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/11/21/climate-science-denial-promoters-queensland-energy-scare-election-headlines

That reference goes to a specific page on that site that covers your organisation, the Australian Institute for Progress, youself and others..

It issued a report just before coming Qld elections. “Nervous Energy” read the headline, claiming an “Exclusive” on a “Dire warning of power station closures, blackout.”
Although AIP claimed it was based on a model, none could be provided.

The “institute” is stacked with current and former senior Liberal National Party members. 
What’s more, the same institute has heavily promoted the rejection of the science linking fossil fuel burning to dangerous climate change.

The AiP also has strong and enduring political ties to the LNP.  Graham Young, AiP’s executive director, is a former campaign chairman of the state Liberals.

Young also rejects the evidence that human-caused climate change is a problem and, as publisher of the OnLine Opinion website, has given a platform to several (read MANY) climate science deniers.

The Desmog page mentions a number of events where AIP apparently paraded numbers of well known skeptics, the views of which are without a science base.

Of course Graham cant agree with views that understand CC.

It means, that where possible, his writings must contain only fake science, if any at all. And, he must not comment when knowing people, fearing for what we are leaving our children, want to publish TRUTH.

SR, science is mostly theory and little factually confirmed and proven. ALL the scientists must agree with the conclusions. Global warming has been de-buncked years ago when it was found that it was not true. So the greens, not wanting to lose even more cred, decided to find a name that was hard to denigrate. So the new con was renamed climate change, because the climate has been changing naturally since the very beginning of the world and it is virtually impossible to quantify and compare temperature changes due to a lack of real historical numbers and not theoretical ones. So I'll stick with those saying global warming is a load of crap, until all the scientists agree, one way or the other.

Tony, I have no co-conspirators, only reason and common sense. Whilst a lot of comments are made on this topic and a lot of references mentioned, I would not be too quick to accept any of the conclusions just yet. Tony I care not how much Gore says he spends on anything he says. Whatever he spends I can assure you he receives far more than he spends. Politicians will say and use whatever tactics and language they can to make their point. Gore is a nobody. His biggest claim to fame is he is a politician. Tony you sound like a better informed person than myself and plenty of others here so I would have thought that you would be a little more skeptical and wary of people like Gore and not take them at face value. I also do not accept your 97% to 3% example you gave as it is out of sync with historical figures quoted regularly. There are too many scientists at odds over this. The imbalance is much closer than your figures. You may have read your figures somewhere but I'll bet if you went and looked for more stats you would find it was always changing, like a work in progress.

ALTRAV,
There are "scientists" around who still insist that smoking not as harmful as the rest insist and they have blurred the science enough to prevent the US Surgeon General from having it banned.
Likewise there are others who want DDT bans lifted and others who claim acid rain is not caused by heavy industrial fallout.

There are other people who claim that the earth is flat and others who insist the moon landing was a hoax. How many of these are required to activate your personal doubt trigger?

There's a meme around that says "You are about to drive over a bridge but there are 100 engineers standing in your way. 97 of them claim that the bridge is unsafe while 3 say it's OK. Would you drive over that bridge?"

If it's not 97 to 3 percent, what are the real figures?

You will never get 100% consensus on ANYTHING and science is about constant and examination and re-revaluation.

It cannot be some sort of global mass delusion so it must the an international conspiracy unlike any we have ever seen before and has been decades in the making. If so, who is behind it and why? The ones who started it all are gone so who profits?

I don't need proof that gravity exists yet there is constant scientific debate about how it actually works. Some things are pretty obvious to most of us on the balance of plain old logic and common sense. Yours seems very different.

Re Mann: have those who rely on Wikipedia (ie (an)Tony and SR) to provide them with comfort that Mann really was right, ought to acquaint themselves with William Connelly, and to understand that going to Wikipedia on matters climate is like going to the Vatican on matters religious.

Two examples:
1. (an)Tony quotes (accurately..a new first!!) Wikipedia as saying that Marcott13 supported the hockey stick BS. But anyone who is even passingly familiar with the Marcott13 reconstruction (http://www.opednews.com/populum/uploadnic/--png_505486_20170331-85.png) knows that it utterly debunks the hockey stick claims. Whatismore, the Marcott paper itself acknowledges the LIA which Mann purported to disprove, and that temperature were often higher during the Holocene than at present.

2. SR falls for the propaganda around North. Remember that this was a political document which pussy-footed around the criticisms of Mann thus allowing the dissemblers to extract bits to fool the likes of SR. But a full reading of North shows that they held no truck with Mann. North was very supportive of the McIntyre debunking of Mann's methods. North, answering questions about his report to Congress said, "Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his coworkers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman." Remember Wegman was highly critical of Mann.

Even the IPCC has dropped all use of MBH98 and the last report accepted the reality of the LIA/MWP.

________________________________________________________________

Re Greenland

I've seen no reason to doubt the overall data from GRACE which shows a loss of about 200gt/yr over the past 15 years.

BUT two things mean that this is a "so-what" issue:

1. The margin of error admitted by GRACE is significant and could be as high as 50%.

2. 200gt out of 2,700,000gt which is the total mass of Greenland is a mere rounding error. Just to highlight how insignificant it is, 200gt is a mere 0.007% of the total. At this rate Greenland's ice will be gone by the year 16500AD. Oh the humanity!