I haven’t seen much lately of Gareth Renowden’s climate writing, although I came across him burbling recently about US activist Bill McKibben.
Today I read Renowden’s post at The Daily Blog complaining about Rodney Hide’s NBR article. In it, Rodney criticises Dr James Renwick for comments Renwick made during this interview for TV1’s Q+A programme.
Nasty stuff
In the Daily Blog post, Renowden is distinctly combative, immediately smearing Rodney as ‘irrelevant’ and ‘rabid.’ It’s nasty stuff, but Renowden seems inured to the dirt he shovels. There was nothing in Rodney’s article to deserve this treatment. It’s unclear why Renowden bothers with such an “irrelevant” commentator but comparing Rodney with a mad dog is as outrageous as it is patently untrue.
In the end Renowden shreds his own credibility by inviting Rodney to join the warmists, claiming rather feebly ‘we need all hands on deck’ — as though the rabidly irrelevant would chance his welcome.
James Renwick has confirmed by email that he did not blame global warming for the recent drought. 10:00 pm 16 May 2013
Disagreeing further with Rodney’s article, Gareth makes a point I cannot ignore: “There’s been no warming for 17 years, apparently. Tell that to the Greenland ice sheet, or the Arctic sea ice. Tell that to the warming oceans. Global surface temperatures may not be shooting up as fast as in the recent past, but heat continues to accumulate in the climate system. Rapid climate change is here, now.”
To disavow warming he says everything he can except for: “There has been warming of such-and-such an amount from that year to this year.” Or similar. But he doesn’t say that because it’s not true. Instead, he says “this is rapid climate change.”
Hurrah. Of course. This is climate change so fast you can’t see the temperature change.
It’s like saying I’m so tough my cat opens its own cans.
Come back to the light, Gareth, all is forgiven!
Views: 154
When one is losing the argument, get nasty: after umpty years of patrolling playgrounds and keeping order in classrooms, I recognised immediately that Renowden is using the tactic favoured by almost all frustrated juveniles down the ages. His options now are to a: do more of same, b: check facts (not opinions) then apologise or c: grow up.
Having built his juvenile following by employing juvenile behaviour, I suggest ignoring him in future, a proven tactic when dealing with juveniles of all ages.
I take your point well, Alexander. I was, of course, led into this by Rodney Hide, who had the gall to write the NBR piece criticising Renwick which just had to be excoriated at Hot Topic. So it wasn’t my fault. But I shall be saying a little more in light of the TVNZ press release unearthed by Andy, together with an enlightening comment from Gareth himself. Just to finish him off.
I would say that the TVOne interview is quite hard to fathom because Dann and Renwick talk a load of gibberish that is hard to parse.
However, the TVOne executive summary in the Press Release is quite unambiguous, so any issues of interpretation are between Renwick and TV One, not between Renwick and Rodney Hide/NBR
“When one is losing the argument, get nasty”
Is that why you describe Gareth Renowden as a juvenile?
Richard,
I enjoy reading the “conversation”, absorbing sensible and knowledgeable comment from most of the regulars, thereby learning.
But please Richard, no more of Renowden.
I make no apology for drawing a very unfortunate parallel between Renowden and Renown. The latter sank to a less than glorious end, with almost all hands lost.
Mr Renowden and his silly, poisonous, venal and highly selective, blog are headed in the same direction.
I quite agree, flipper, and see my comments to Alexander above. I put a caveat on your suggestion to ignore Renowden, which is that he must be seen to meet opposition at least occasionally, because so many listen to him. He contributes to SciBlogs, for example, and other web sites. He writes for the Herald and other papers. He’s dangerous just for that, without being wrong, too. But mostly, yes, I promise to ignore him.
Around 3 mins into the TVOne interview, Corin Dann asks
“So the best advice that our best scientists can give is that.. climate change is changing our climate…”
Pretty compelling stuff….
Andy….
Aye lad…..
And it says much about Mr Dann and his producers, does it not? 🙂 🙂
Well, this should end any ambiguity about what was said
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1303/S00196/qa-march-17-corin-dann-interviews-dr-james-renwick.htm
Q+A March 17: Corin Dann interviews Dr James Renwick
Sunday, 17 March 2013, 4:56 pm
Press Release: TVNZ
Sunday 17 March, 2013
TVNZ political editor Corin Dann interviews climate scientist Dr James Renwick
One of the country’s leading climate scientists, Dr James Renwick, has criticised the government for a lack of leadership on adaptation around climate change.
Dr Renwick told TVNZ’s Q+A programme that farmers need prepare for a drier climate in future, adding: “I think the government does have policy around adaptation, but I think, yeah, there could be more political leadership on this issue.”
He also said that New Zealand needed to opt for more sustainability, lower intensity and lower stocking rates in order to cope with the change in weather patterns.
“The present intensification of farming and dairying, in particular, doesn’t look very sustainable, given the way the climate’s likely to change.”
Dr Renwick told the programme that global warming was the only explanation for the drought, saying the average around which temperatures vary is changing and will be hotter over time.
“So what we call a very warm year now will be a cold year in 50 or 60 years’ time. What we’d call a dry summer now will be getting closer to the normal summer in another 50 to 100 years’ time.”
(My emphasis added – Andy)
I didn’t get the Corin Dann quote quite right. The transcript above states
I have gone over the transcript and nowhere does Dr Renwick say “that global warming was the only explanation for the drought.”
I assume your emphasis on that statement was to show that the TVNZ press release was incorrect, as was what Rodney said in his silly little article in the NBR?
David
I have replied here and at Ken’s blog.
Furthermore, Renwick had just got off the plane, so I don’t know whether he had been briefed as to the lead-in from Wood
This seems like pretty cheap journalism from TV One.
So that means some of the claims in Rodney’s article were false because they were based on something that Dr Renwick never said.
Thanks for pointing that out.
TVNZ are to blame here. This is quite clear in their executive summary
I suggest that they deliberately set out to mislead the public. Whatever downstream articles appeared are a side-effect of that
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Ken claims that there was no mention of the drought in the interview between Corin Dann and Renwick before the “there is no other explanation possible” quote.
Actually, Ken appears to be right on this matter. If you watch the interview and read the transcript, this is true.
However, in the lead in to the interview, Susan Wood mentions the drought quite extensively, and then Dann asks Renwick “what is happening to our climate”?
Furthermore, the TV One press release explicitly makes the link between the drought and global warming as I point out in this thread
Therefore, the issue is not with “pseudosceptics”, it is with TV One, and I suggest Ken takes his complaint there.
Gareth – “Tell that to the warming oceans”
All the upper oceans, Pacific (cooling this century) Atlantic (no warming this century) Indian (warming ceased about 4 years ago), have reached a standstill in heat content or are cooling i.e. no warming e.g. Pacific:-
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/01-argo-era-pacific-ohc.png
Sea surface temperature has been cooling this century:-
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadsst2gl/from:2002/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/trend
Gareth should update himself with the current data, not the now-traditional warmist truncation of data back to whenever it suits them. Case in point re ocean heat, Balmaseda et al 2012. They end their global aggregate series (not even a basis-by-basin analysis as above) in 2009 because to include the most up to data is not a good look for them.
Tell that to Gareth.
Should be – Balmaseda et al [2013]
http://www.carbonbrief.org/media/158828/balmaseda_et_al._ocean_heat_content_600x415.jpg
All the warming in the global aggregate OHC for Balmaseda et al was from the contribution of the Indian Ocean:-
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/19-argo-era-ohc-atl-ind-pac.png
Now even the Indian OHC is at standstill (or cooling) since 4Q2010.
Gareth, this is for your edification.
I politely mentioned the lack of warming in the upper ocean to Gareth over at Daily Blog, but the comment was moderated out of existence for some strange reason.
The moderation at TDB seems pretty haphazard; some of my comments have not made it though, and I am always so polite as you know (* coughs *)
I would point out too that when the warming “standstill” argument (or warming vs standstill vs cooling) moves from the atmosphere to the ocean, the warmist fallback for the 21st century data – “the data is so noisy” (Simon) – goes through the shredder.
The upper Pacific and Atlantic COOLING in the 21st century ARGO era are about the only 2 climate metric data series that can be best represented statistically (best R2 value) by a linear trend instead of a curve because the data is as close to a straight line as any climate time series data gets:-
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/19-argo-era-ohc-atl-ind-pac.png
Without going through the exercise of determining the actual statistical significance numerically (no time unfortunately), those 2 decade-long series exhibit the characteristics of a statistically significant LINEAR trend i.e. no noise.
And just the heat quantity losses alone from the Pacific and Atlantic are massive, rendering variation of total atmospheric heat totally insignificant by comparison.
[Ken, the statistically significant linear trend “one-trick-pony” Perrott, please note]
Should be – “Atlantic (cooling this century)”
See Pacific vs Atlantic vs Indian plot above.
Given that Richard C is not the most reliable of reporters, here is the actual abstract from Balmeseda et al (2013):
“The elusive nature of the post-2004 upper ocean warming has exposed uncertainties in the ocean’s role in the Earth’s energy budget and transient climate sensitivity. Here we present the time evolution of the global ocean heat content for 1958 through 2009 from a new observational-based reanalysis of the ocean. Volcanic eruptions and El Niño events are identified as sharp cooling events punctuating a long-term ocean warming trend, while heating continues during the recent upper-ocean-warming hiatus, but the heat is absorbed in the deeper ocean. In the last decade, about 30% of the warming has occurred below 700 m, contributing significantly to an acceleration of the warming trend. The warming below 700 m remains even when the Argo observing system is withdrawn although the trends are reduced. Sensitivity experiments illustrate that surface wind variability is largely responsible for the changing ocean heat vertical distribution.”
Now, RC, plse cite your research that shows that the deep ocean has ceased to warm since 2009, and that the overall OHC is no longer increasing…
RRO, thanks for confirming my point e.g. from the abstract:-
“Here we present the time evolution of the global ocean heat content for 1958 through 2009”
2009 is not the end of “the last decade” is it? Neither is 1958 “this century” or “ARGO era” is it?
But then they go on (and I’m sure you concur RRO – do you?):-
“In the last decade”
Balmaseda et al (2013) is an out of date study.
>”Now, RC, plse cite your research that shows that the deep ocean has ceased to warm since 2009, and that the overall OHC is no longer increasing…”
Who cares about the deep ocean RRO (and I never mentioned it as you misconstrue)?
If the upper Pacific and Atlantic are cooling this century (as proved by ARGO plots up-thread) and the upper Indian has stabilized since 4Q2010 when up to date data is used, ocean warming – and certainly not anthropogenic ocean warming – is no longer an issue. Deep ocean heat is merely circulation processes at work distributing heat laid down by solar in the upper ocean 10 – 100 years previously – see Trenberth “The role of the oceans in climate”).
Major fail, Balmaseda et al (2013) – including Trenberth.
As I thought, RC, you are simply flailing around trying to justify your personal opinions, unsupported by data, based on your own strange brand of hand waving and chop-logic.
Which is presumably why you hang out here, where no-one knows enough to get the joke…
Of course, you could come along to the NZCCRI conference in P. Nth this June and see how well you do – oh, you’re unable to attend?
What a surprise!
Please present your logic or facts RRO and lay off the snark. This last comment of yours contains no information and only a little in the way of worth.
And I think you’d be surprised at what I consider worthy in your comment. The very large majority if people reading these comments are attempting to sift fact from fantasy. Rude, snarky, ill-informed and often informationless comments from such as you and Ken go a long way to helping them make up their minds.
Being polite, presenting facts, explaining clearly and laying off the ad-hominum attacks are the way to convince your audience. Which is why I have sometimes called for calm and polite behaviour from our regular posters; to make the contrast more obvious to our readers. And why we should be slow to suppress rude commenters of a warmist persuasion.
My comments stand. You are being misinformed by the likes of Richard Cumming, whose voluminous citations from “research” often turn out, on close inspection, to have been altered to fit his predjudices.
The NZCCRI event in open to the public; put up or shut up, RC!
>”Richard Cumming, whose voluminous citations from “research” often turn out, on close inspection, to have been altered to fit his predjudices”
A bald-faced lie Rob Taylor – prove it.
The truth of OHC has been “put up” in the above comments Rob, it’s no secret now. So I suggest it is you that should “shut up”.
For the record, here is but one of many instances of Richard C deliberately misrepresenting science to suit his own ends:
http://openparachute.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/a-global-warming-hoax-meme-is-born-in-new-zealand-too/
Most of what RC posts is copy-pasted from professional denier websites like CO2science, which is funded by US pollutocrats via the Heartland Institute:
http://www.desmogblog.com/craig-idso
What exactly is the misrepresentation Rob Taylor?
In your own words – “put up, or shut up”.
>”As I thought, RC, you are simply flailing around trying to justify your personal opinions, unsupported by data, based on your own strange brand of hand waving and chop-logic.”
Firstly, there’s a ‘Reply’ button at the bottom of the comment you are addressing – use it.
Secondly – in the absence of any meaning to your blather – I’ll assume you think I’m out on a limb re deep ocean heat lag i.e solar-ocean-atmosphere response. Well lets see what Kevin Trenberth says……..
Did you get that Rob Taylor (aka RRO)? Lagged responses – 6 years, 10 – 100 years, Trenberth entirely consistent with Abdussamatov or Scafetta wrt the lagged response of the ocean and atmosphere to solar radiation. Since the upper ocean has now either stabilized (Indian) or is cooling (Pacific and Atlantic), there is less heat to move through to the deep ocean by the processes explained by Trenberth above so it will follow suit eventually given the lags.
Kevin Trenberth knew all this but still associated himself with a paper designed to create the illusion – desperately it can only be assumed – that warming continues unabated but in the ocean when that clearly has not been the case for some time in the upper ocean and wont be in the deep ocean either once the lagged cooling takes effect.
RC, if you know so much more than Trenberth, et al, then, rather than just quoting selectively from his work and putting your own spin on it, why are you wasting your time in this backwater, when fame and fortune await the publication of your research in the scientific literature?
The fact is, you know you can’t do more than confuse the already bewildered, because you are nothing but a Gish-galloping fraud who knows just enough to copy-paste from denial websites like CO2science and PSI.
Also, what happened to your magic undersea volcanoes and your new theory of thermodynamics? We’re still waiting for those papers, too…
RRO:
It seems to me, observing this little exchange, that Richard C has repeatedly presented actual evidence to support his view, and that you, RRO, have presented only one paper abstract and a whole broadside of ad-homs with no scientific value whatsoever.
As Huub said above, your side does this continually, which is why you’re losing.
The difference is, Huub, that I’m not pretending to know more than I do.
Whilst I understand the theory and observe the real-world evidence for AGW, I don’t pretend to be a climate scientist; but I’ve been around long enough to know con-men and pseudoscience when I see them, and i see them a lot on this site.
And those are the words of a smart man. Like everyone I see posting here, I know 5/8ths of F-all about climate science (especially compared to people like Hansen, Trenberth etc) and I don’t have the time or ability to undertake the several decades or research I would need to get where they are. As a result I listen to what they say and check that it is logical and makes sense and has been through by a process that I know to be an excellent bullshit filter (the peer review process) I take what they say seriously.
Then I listen to what you guys, people like Cameron Slater and blogs like Watts Up With that have to say and apply the same screening process before basing my opinion on the strongest and most rigorously constructed argument.
Of course we’re “losing”, Bob / Manfred – how could we possibly “win” with such formidable minds as RC and Glenn Gruenhagen on “your side’?
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/16/minnesota_goper_climate_change_is_a_united_nations_fraud/
Yeah, right…
I have no idea who Glenn Gruenhagen is, nor do I see how he’s relevant to me. However, he is correct that there has been no warming over the past 16 years, and you can go to your favourite site SkS to check that.
Well, as it happens, he is correct that exhalation causes CO2 to emit from the body, just as exhalation from cows causes CH4 to be emitted from the bodies of cows.
Both are natural parts of the carbon cycle, and don’t contribute to “global warming” if the numbers of creatures remains constant.
The difference, of course, is that the NZ green’s would like CH4 to be taxed.
On a side note, I sometimes wonder why we demonise “carbon” when in fact we are referring to CO2, which has twice has much oxygen and carbon. Shouldn’t we be referring to “oxygen pollution” and “oxygen taxes”
Oh no, that would be just silly. Oxygen is an essential part of life, so calling oxygen “pollution” would be just dumb.
Just like “carbon pollution”.
Oh never mind
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Bob, in the reality-based community, your statement
“there has been no warming over the past 16 years, and you can go to your favourite site SkS to check that.”
is technically known as an easily-disproved “lie”:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998-intermediate.htm
Who, may I ask, do you think you are fooling?
Rob, you must have thought about the matter for yourself, obviously. Has it occurred to you to wonder how “ocean heating” can increase without some corresponding increase in “ocean temperature”? This SkS article is disingenuous and unpersuasive. The introduction states:
At first, they minimise the influence of the atmosphere (“just a small fraction”), but then claim “the atmosphere is warming” as though it’s important. But, patently, it is not warming, so they need to concoct this argument that it is! They don’t claim the oceans are warming, they claim instead that they are “accumulating energy.”
That’s impossible to do without affecting the temperature and guess what? We wouldn’t expect the temperature to go down.
They claim the planet has an energy imbalance and is thus accumulating “heat”. That probably explains why it radiates more energy to space. Why would it continue to build up, when there’s little impediment to an escape to space?
They paint a picture of heat building up everywhere, a massive blue wave from Murphy 2009 to prove it. But it’s incredible that this should happen with no increase at all in air temperature, don’t you think? So what’s the worry?
Richard T:
Quite right, they do. The funny thing is that the energy imbalance isn’t a measured result at all, it’s the output from Hansen’s GISS models. See Hansen (2005). Hansen keeps having to adjust it when the planet fails to conform to his models.
Take away the “imbalance” and SkS’s argument evaporates.
We know the air isn’t warming (empirical fact). The top layers of the ocean aren’t warming (empirical fact). The slight warming below 700m (empirical fact) is due to the time lag from earlier warming (Trenberth and others), which nobody denies.
but remember that the warming below 700m is causing the NZ drought, via some mysterious teleconnection.
The whole “below 700m” thing is hilarious. When the planet was warming nobody ever worried about the deep ocean. But now of course there isn’t the catastrophic global warming happening, so suddenly all the attention is focussed on the ONLY area of the globe that is showing any warming at all – the deep ocean. Ironically, also the ONLY place where atmospheric concentrations of CO2 could have no immediate effect.
Funny, it would be, were it not for the billions of dollars wasted on this nonsense.
The other issue I have with the deep ocean thing is that at some stage all this heat will have to emerge from the deep ocean and bite us in the bum, because no one lives 700m below sea level. no one actually cares.
So does anyone have any idea when this amazing event is going to happen?
No, but I can hardly wait.
Bob, quite so. There’s also strong reason to doubt the conclusion of warming below 700 m, because of the paucity of data there.
At 16 May 2013 the ARGO project reported 3555 floats operational, distributed as shown in oceans totalling 361,000,000 km2. On average each float occupies just over 100,000 km2 of ocean. That’s a square approx. 320 km on a side. I don’t think a single thermometer in that much water tells us all there is to know about the temperature, although it’s certainly better than nothing. I gather many of the floats spend much of the time 1000 m down, just drifting.
The coverage gets reduced at depth. About 70% of floats are programmed to descend below 1500 m — about 2500 of them. The coverage is 45% greater, at 145,000 sq km, or a square about 380 km on a side. They remain at depth for 10 days at a time. I haven’t found how long they spend at the surface and travelling to and from depth. But this shows the picture is far from complete, which means our confidence in the temperature profiles has to be low.
Basically, the data deeper than 1500 m are sketchy.
Richard, Lord knows I’ve tried, but it is not my responsibility to educate you; it is up to you.
If you are genuinely interested in these issues, read a basic text on climate science. There are plenty of online resources and courses to help, e.g. the Royal Societies, NASA, NIWA, etc.
If, on the other hand, you prefer to remain mired in ignorance and superstition, stick with your current disinformation sources.
RRO:
Check Magoo’s links he gave earlier. Sks had a convenient online calculator.
Here you go RROK::
Using the skeptical science temperature trend calculator below (don’t forget to clear the dates in the autocorrel function as sks states they raise the uncertainty factor), it can be seen that there has been no statistically significant warming from between 15-23 yrs depending on the data source:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
‘Data sources: GISTEMP, NOAA, HADCRUT, RSS, UAH, BEST.’
No warming trend greater than the +/- error margins from the following dates:
GISTEMP 1994
NOAA (Land/Sea) 1994
HADCRUT3 1993
HADCRUT4 1994
BEST 1998
NOAA (Land) 1997
RSS 1990
UAH 1994′
Also:-
‘2013 In Global Temperature: Standstill Continues’
* Date: 15/05/13
* Dr David Whitehouse
“So far 2013 is proving to be statistically identical to the past 15-years or so, and if it is destined to be a record year then the monthly averages for the rest of the year will have to behave abnormally to make up the increasing shortfall when compared to the ‘warm’ years of 2010 and 2007. In Nasa Giss for example there is 0.88 deg C to make up after only four months.
One has to be careful in looking at the global annual average temperature for the past 15-years or so. I would go no further than saying that it is remarkably flat with no statistically significant change. But something to look out for comes from NOAA data as reproduced below. It shows 0.1 deg C decline in global temperatures in the past decade! What would it have been like if the 2010 El Nino had not taken place? Won’t the next five years of data prove interesting”
http://www.thegwpf.org/2013-global-temperature-change/
NOAA: ‘March Global Land and Ocean Temperature Anomalies’ [2001 – 2013]
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/05/NOAATREND.jpg
# # #
Apparently, global warming goes on holiday in March.
I have a few questions for you guys that have been puzzling me.
!, 97% of actively publishing climate scientists are convinced by the evidence of anthropogenic climate change.
2. Highly respected and well resourced organisations like NASA, the WMO, The Royal Society, the UN, NIWA, the NOAA etc all strongly disagree with your position on climate change.
3. the world’s leading businesses and business advisors including PWC, Ernst & Young, BMW, Apple, Samsung, Siemens etc are all taking climate change very, very seriously and investing hundreds of millions to prepare for a warmer world and to cut their emissions.
Are they all intentionally lying, and if so, how come nobody has caught them out? Or are none of them as smart or as well informed as you guys?
Low-carbon business practices are more efficient than high carbon and renewable energy sources are cheaper (especially in the long run) than fossil fuel, so what’s actually wrong with cutting carbon emissions?
And why do you take an op-ed piece written by an ex Act MP more seriously than peer reviewed papers written by top climate scientists in highly respected scientific journals?
You guys just don’t make sense to me.
!, 97% of actively publishing climate scientists are convinced by the evidence of anthropogenic climate change.
You know this how?
2. Highly respected and well resourced organisations like NASA, the WMO, The Royal Society, the UN, NIWA, the NOAA etc all strongly disagree with your position on climate change.
What is our position on climate change? What are the parameters that you think are different?
3. the world’s leading businesses and business advisors including PWC, Ernst & Young, BMW, Apple, Samsung, Siemens etc are all taking climate change very, very seriously and investing hundreds of millions to prepare for a warmer world and to cut their emissions.
Business always follows the latest fads
Are they all intentionally lying, and if so, how come nobody has caught them out? Or are none of them as smart or as well informed as you guys?
Ask the other climate scientists who don’t agree with the IPCC> Ask them about the bullying and intimidation. Ask them about the fact they can’t get grants, or no one will debate them on TV
Low-carbon business practices are more efficient than high carbon and renewable energy sources are cheaper (especially in the long run) than fossil fuel, so what’s actually wrong with cutting carbon emissions?
What’s wrong with carpeting our lands with useless windmills that push up power prices, don’t reduce emisisons to any meaningful degree, and push people into fuel poverty?
And why do you take an op-ed piece written by an ex Act MP more seriously than peer reviewed papers written by top climate scientists in highly respected scientific journals?
Who said we were?
Re the study finding that 97% of climate scientists agree that group-think is highly conducive to funding (sarc):-
“Another co-author, Dana Nuccitelli of Skeptical Science, said she was encouraging scientists to stress the consensus “at every opportunity, particularly in media interviews”. ”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/8681809/Not-much-climate-change-doubt-in-science
I see 2/3 of the papers didn’t endorse AGW anyway:-
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/debunk/skepticalscience/cook-97-consensus.gif
Is this like product endorsement?
Group think conducive to funding? WTF – do you know anything at all about how research gets funded or how scientists work?
And 2/3 of the papers didn’t express a position in the abstracts, not “didn’t endorse AGW” (endorse????). Have you ever read a scientific paper? The abstract is a paragraph or 2 that summarises what the paper is about and the fact that around 1/3 did state a position at all is significant. Especially when you compare it with “0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming”
“Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.”
Sorry lads, you’re standing on very thin ice (no pun intended). Don’t you think the smart move is just to admit you’re wrong before you really look silly?
I am going to write a paper about the lichen that is found on the foothills of the NZ alps. I will mention AGW in the abstract, thereby endorsing it and securing my funding
Although this is a hypothetical scenario, this is not too dissimilar to some of the abstracts I saw when doing the IPCC citizen audit
1. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024
2. That’s actually a good question because in effect the purpose of this site seems not to be to expand knowledge, rather to attack the scientific consensus, climate scientists (eg Dr Renwick) or anyone who disagrees with you. If I were to describe the position that Richard Treadgold and the majority of people posting on this site (including you); it would be that climate change probably isn’t happening to any real extent and even if it were, the cause has little or nothing to do with human activity.
I guess the purpose of this site is to create confusion and thereby hamper political action.
3. “Business always follows the latest fads”
BULLSHIT! Do you seriously think businesses like PWC would waste the huge amounts they’re spending on climate change if they weren’t convinced it it’s veracity? And lets assume that you guys are right and it’s all bullshit – what do you think their reputation would be when (your) truth finally comes out? Would ANYONE pay them several hundred dollars an hour for their advice if they were that stupid?
4. You obviously have no understanding of how research gets funded and how academics and scientists work. It’s bloody near impossible to get funding for anything that doesn’t add to the available knowledge by uncovering new stuff, And as for bullying and intimidation – have you any idea how silly that sounds when you look at how Dr Renwick has been attacked on this blog?
5. That is just plain silly – do you have any understanding of business at all?
Good grief poor old Renwick getting savaged by a dead sheep in the NBR and here. He must be quaking in his boots
How about Chris de Freitas who has been repeatedly vilified in the NZ press and elsewhere, had attempts by Salinger to get him fired from Auckland Uni, and worse still
I do know how business works. I have my own IT business.
This has to be the most faddish and fashion conscious industry in the world. I am glad to be working on technical software these days. The corporate IT mob stitch up govt IT depts with overpriced rubbish that they don’t need (think Novopay).
I imagine govt science works the same way
Calling Rodney Hide a “dead sheep” is a little harsh: the last I heard he was very much alive.
And yes, IT is a faddish and fashion driven business, but owning an IT company (or any company for that matter) doesn’t mean you understand how business works – believe me, I work with people like you all the time. My wife owns a car, she has no idea how it works.
And on that note, beer is calling my name. Later
David, thanks for your questions. There’s nothing like genuine inquiry.
First, I agree with what Andy just said. Plus:
This figure originates with a 2009 online survey by an MSc candidate that used the views of just 77 participants, 75 of whom (97%!) thought humans contribute to climate change. Larry Solomon gives a very good summary. It’s a travesty that these quite unscientific results are still cited and obscure the truth.
Further to Andy’s comments: I personally agree with most of what the warmists say and I try not to denigrate them just for expressing their opinion. But disagreements arise only over magnitudes. For example, I agree (and most sceptics do) that CO2 causes warming, but it’s just not very much warming. There are other examples. For this we are excoriated and even reviled with terms like “denier.”
I’ve no idea whether they’re lying and have no intention of accusing them of lying. I just have a few simple questions that are not answered by what I’ve heard and read. Such as, why has the temperature not been rising? In my opinion, it’s no answer to say: “But heat energy has been entering the oceans.”
Hydrocarbons are dense with energy and are thus the most efficient fuels we have for transporting and burning them. So long as we control the real pollution (sulphates, acids, particulates, aerosols, etc.) we get from them, we’re better off. There’s absolutely no danger from the CO2 in the quantities we emit at present. So carbon fuels are more efficient. They’re also cheaper and thus more accessible to the third world.
The alternatives are more expensive and often more intrusive, such as bird-chomping wind turbines. Solar collectors, wave and tidal generators and CO2 collection technologies are hellishly expensive, immature and are failing all around the world.
I regret you don’t understand us. I take that personally, and I’ll put out greater effort to reach you and others like you, because we’re not “mad as bat shit” (which illogical expression was fired at me personally the other day at The Daily Blog, bless them) nor do we deny any observable climate phenomenon. We’re quite reasonable, really.
Any more questions, ask somebody who cares — no, just kidding!
—————
Wow! I’ve just noticed a whole lot of other replies since I started work on this one.
On the topic of papers, in my view the only ones of interest are the detection and attribution ones, and the ones on climate sensitivity
There aren’t really that many studies on CS and many of the more recent ones are pointing towards low end values, despite what the activists tell us
“in my view the only ones of interest are the detection and attribution ones, and the ones on climate sensitivity”. Don’t you mean the ones that you agree with? Are you familiar with the concept of confirmation bias?
Anyway, cite some of these papers please, knowledge is my friend.
Thanks Richard, Cook et al (2013) “addressed the issue of representativeness by selecting the largest sample to date for this type of literature analysis.Nevertheless, 11,944 papers is only a fraction of the climate literature”. Looking at their methodology their sample selection meets any tests for validity and those figures are reflected in every other assessment of scientific consensus.
If you don’t like being called a denier, why do you call people you disagree with “warmists”? Wikipaedia defines “Scientific skepticism (also spelled scepticism) is the practice of questioning whether claims are supported by empirical research and have reproducibility, as part of a methodological norm pursuing “the extension of certified knowledge”. What empirical research have any of you guys engaged in? Or for that matter, people like Larry Solomon and Watts chap? If your actiities conformed to any credible definition of scientific scepticism I would call you sceptics. BTW, what is the meaning of the word “warmist”? It’s not in any dictionary I own,
If the fact that heat has been entering the oceans, and therefore warming them. how is that not warming? And there is a huge amount of peer reviewed and rigorously conducted data supporting that. As for the warming effect of GHGs in the atmosphere, there is no doubt that it is causing heat retention and if anything faster than initially expected. It’s not certain because we’re in unknown territory now.
You are the only person I know who thinks that 400 ppm presents “absolutely no danger”, and it’s your complete refusal to even consider the validity of what is as close as we can get to certainty that I don’t understand.
>”You are the only person I know who thinks that 400 ppm presents “absolutely no danger” ”
Good grief. Small circle of friends David?
FYI the fruit sector raises CO2 levels to about 5% in coolstores to keep fruit from ripening (controlled atmosphere – CA). Breathing equipment must be used for work inside and venting is done before unaided ingress.
Thing is, it’s cold in a high CO2 level store – not hot.
CO2 is a refrigerant, code R744.
>”..the fruit sector raises CO2 levels to about 5% in coolstores to keep fruit from ripening”
More to this and the detail might not be be right on the fly – no time to get it right now, got to go store some fruit in a coolstore – all night.
David
Those that follow the scriptures of the warmist creed tell us that CO2 is a major “control knob” of the Earth’s climate
Tell me whether you agree with this looking at this graph
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/images/co2-levels-over-time_thumb.png
I have no opinion on that graph because it has no context, there is no data, no source, no methodology and it comes from a blog. All it is is a picture, and on that I do have an opinion – those are terrible colour choices.
I am starting to understand why you guys think the way you do, visiting this site has been very interesting and more than a little amusing.
Have a nice evening
David
That graph is a fairly good representation of the geological record and our knowledge of the levels of CO2 and the global mean temperature across geological time frames
There are many other places you can find this graph, just find out for yourself
We know that CO2 levels increase after warming. This has been shown in the Vostok ice cores, that showed that CO2 levels increased about 600-700 years after a warming episode. This, incidentally, was the graph shown in Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth. Mr Gore conveniently told us in the movie that the relationship between Co2 and temperature was “complicated”. This intuitively suggests to me that CO2 is not driving climate change
I can show you links to papers and scientific discussion that suggests that climate sensitivity to CO2 is low
Let me know if you are interested
Cheers
David, the graph is real, but the implication is not; this is just the long-debunked straw man argument that CO2 is the only driver of climate.
We see this taken to the depths of absurdity in RC’s comment above:
For the benefit of the reality-challenged, if you were to turn off the coolstore refrigerator and let the sunshine in, it would quickly get very hot indeed…
Over geologic time, the primary driver is the solar luminosity, as is well explained in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ6Z04VJDco
This information is, of course, available in any basic text on climate change, which the denizens of this blog steadfastly refuse to read, lest they be educated out of their ideologically-prescribed ignorance.
Here is a site I think you will find refreshingly informative:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/big-picture.html
RROK, “Here is a site that you will find refreshingly informative”
Or perhaps The 97% consensus – a lie of epic proportions
or as Brandon Schollenburg concludes from the survey’s own data
>”…if you were to turn off the coolstore refrigerator and let the sunshine in, it would quickly get very hot indeed…”
And to extract the heat, you can use the very efficient heat transfer medium (i.e. it absorbs heat, carries it, releases it, but doesn’t “trap” it), refrigerant carbon dioxide R744.
Just like a greenhouse, a coolstore heating up when the cooling system is off is due to lack of convection but you can’t “let the sunshine in” to a coolstore Rob. They are completely insulated and the doors open to the INSIDE of a shed or canopy.
The inside of a coolstore will not reach outside ambient temperature if the heat in the fruit has been removed before turning off the cooling system. It would not (and doesn’t) “get very hot indeed…”, in fact it will stay relatively cool compared to outside ambient temperature but not cold enough for fruit storage purposes.
David,
You seem to have a copy of Cook et al (2013) — please send it or cite a reference.
Well, first, because it’s not insulting! It’s not remotely in the same filthy league as denier, but it’s the best name I’ve found so far. One needs to refer to those of a certain persuasion so a name is called for. Those of us sceptical of the CAGW hypothesis were at first called sceptics (which was good) but then denialists and deniers (which are detestable). What to call those who call us detestable names? I have no wish to offend and I thought warmist was the least offensive but still indicates activism against man-made global warming. It’s an ancient and valid construction to add -ist to a word to indicate a belief or practice — such as artist, Calvinist, capitalist, fascist and activist, so new ones crop up every few years. If you have a better name for yourselves which reveals something of the activism you practise I’d like to hear it. Lately we sceptics refer to each other as climate realists. But you’d like that one, too, right?
I cannot speak for Solomon or Watts, but I know they’ve written a great deal. For that matter I can’t speak for many of the readers here. I’ve not published anything scientific though I’m widely published as a technical writer (in software development) and have edited hundreds of documents, including many academic papers, in many fields. I’ve published about 740 articles here, plus comments around the world, over about eight years, meaning more than 750,000 words, on global warming, most of which has been quite thoroughly peer reviewed (with mixed success).
Some here and others in the Climate Science Coalition, which I belong to, are scientists and have published papers; some have been prolific. There is work in the pipeline.
I’m not familiar with the latest material on ocean heat content (OHC) but I have the impression that the oceans have stopped warming in the last few years. It would appear that many of the warmist sources omit the last few years in the graphs they use to display warming. It is axiomatic that, with atmospheric warming at a standstill for something like 17 years, none of that extra ocean heat (however much there really has been, and whether at a standstill or not) has re-emerged to contribute to atmospheric warming.
If OHC has increased, that’s one thing, and you can call it warming. But if the air hasn’t been warmed, you can’t call it global warming. The whole point about global warming is that it affects us, animals, plants and the weather and it can do that only if the air has warmed. OHC has become significant only since the stasis in atmospheric warming. Until the early 21st century nobody mentioned ocean heat content. That tells me a strategic decision was made recently.
I quite agree. I think everyone here agrees.
This is the crux of our discussion. This is why we gather in blogs like this to hammer out some agreement if we can. Because we all agree — all of you and we — that CO2 causes warming in the atmosphere.
The big question, the crux, the centrepoint, the biggie, the 64,000 dollar question, is how much warming? To this question we bring evidence. Right now, I’ll remind you that the IPCC says that, without feedbacks, the most warming to be expected from a doubling of CO2 is about 1.2 °C. To that, we might have to add warming from feedbacks — but how much? Tune in next week, folks, at the same time, same Bat Channel, to listen to the next thrilling instalment from The Warming Cave.
That’s fine. Coming here puts you in touch with quite a few more. As you can see, I’m unconvinced by the evidence you’ve presented so far. But perhaps tomorrow you’ll bring something else.
I presume you mean certainty about the capacity of CO2 to cause atmospheric warming, and I say no, you go too far without evidence. You might be frustrated that I don’t agree, but I do consider this very carefully and I just disagree over the magnitude. If you listen, you’ll hear why I disagree. I’ve had to study hard for a long time to understand most of this, to follow the scientific arguments and understand the observations, and after that I’m still nowhere near being a scientist, much less an earth scientist. I have no idea how they handle the multifarious disciplines involved in understanding the atmosphere, the oceans, the hard places, the hydrology, the ice, the radiative effects, the maths, the biology, the chemistry and the physics of all of it. I’m in awe of de Freitas, de Lange, yes, and Renwick, Wratt and the rest of them. Their learning and skills are truly awesome (a word that used to mean inspiring awe).
Some of the science I’ve given up on, like the statistics, or forgotten, like the chemistry. But I keep coming here to read and write, hoping to learn some more.
So thank you for your questions.
In that case, Richard, check this out:
https://www.coursera.org/course/climateliteracy
Rob,
Thanks for the link, my friend. I was interested to see what it might be. But I’m disappointed, for recommending this course shows your basic motivation is activism. You’re hardly interested in the science. The course has ten modules; only three are concerned with the science. The rest cover models to examine possible future results of policy decisions and impacts on society and the environment. The course finishes with “a survey of climate change response policies” and “the most promising opportunities for … ensuring a rapid transition to a fundamentally low-carbon development path.”
Please. You lecture me on my scientific shortcomings and say you want me to understand more about the science, but then you recommend a course unapologetically rooted in social activism. You’re a fraud and a crusader, not balanced, not a scientist.
Notice, David, how Andy immediately segues from his debunked graph to another issue entirely.
This is standard denier-speak for “Oops, looks like they’ve wised up to that one – better try another brand of snake oil”.
All rather predictable and boring; meanwhile, the ice, Nature’s thermometer, continues to melt.
Debunked? I must have missed that one whilst telling “lies” about David King
Anyway, on CNBC, William Happer gets interviewed and repeats all those “denier memes” for us in a short and snappy video
Well worth a watch
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/5/17/happer-on-cnbc.html
An interesting quote from this Happer interview is his statement that our primate ancestors, 70-80 million years ago, lived in a time when CO2 levels were 3000ppm
Well, whoop-de-doo, Andy, our ancestors even further back also survived the Permian and K-T extinction events.
Does that mean that we would? Those times aren’t called “Great Dyings” for no reason…
Human agriculture and civilisation could only happen once we entered the relatively benign and stable climate of the Holocene, which we have now disrupted.
I have an image of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble chugging around in their wooden car “taking action on climate change”. 3000ppm, think of the children!
“which we have now disrupted.”
That is your belief. Lately however, the ‘disruption’ seem minuscule.
RT, your desperate search for any reason to avoid educating yourself is as sad as it is predictable.
You remind me of those cardinals who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope, lest they be “led into sin” by experiencing a truth that the Church denied.
it’s a free course, man! If you only want to watch the science intro, suit yourself.
“97% of Cardinals agree that Galileo is a heretic.”
(village notice headline circa 1558AD)
Yep, those Cardinals knew a thing or two!
I enjoy learning science, Rob, I’m not a bit “desperate” to avoid it. It’s curious that your thoughts turn to religion, for you quite miss my point, almost as though deliberately. I simply ask for information about the climate; when the response is that society must be reshaped I become suspicious. Don’t you?
Actually, RT, when I visit this site, my thoughts turn to poetry; specifically, William Blake, “London”, second verse:
You and your ilk wear your tawdry predjudice and ignorance like a badge of honour; amusing, but also rather sad, like a Monty Python skit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EI7p2p1QJI
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