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[RickBradford]

There was a very interesting debate on BBC Radio  (link probably only good this week) earlier in the week.

The debaters were Philip Stott, a professor emeritus at University of London (skeptic) and Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

In contrast to most discussions of this kind, the men debated politely and rationally, and basically came to an agrrement that:

* CO² is a greenhouse gas and we are pouring it into the atmosphere
* The extent of any human effect on climate cannot be predicted with any accuracy. All we can do is to estimate a risk factor
* We should be looking at non fossil-fuel forms of energy
* Science needs to be more open and accountable, and less politicised.
* Scientists should do the science, and leave policy to the politicians.
* The whole IPCC procedure needs revamping

Mike Hulme was honest, polite, rational, well-informed and genuine in his attempt to find a way forward for this important science.

But this wasn't good enough for extreme Warmist zealots.

In a blog run by Tim Lambert (who debates Christopher Monckton tomorrow in Australia), a commenter wrote:

Quote

"Mike Hulme is the ultimate example of why we are losing against such tossers as Monckton, Stott et al. The 'offical' face of climate science in the UK is crap. Useless. A waste of space. As much use as a chocolate teapot. The Royal Society should hang their heads in shame, as should the other scientific institutions. The media is to blame as well, but after Hulme's performance, why would they bother talking to a climate scientist ever again?

Apart from the vitriol, note the slant. It's nothing to do with the science, or honesty, or integrity, it's about 'winning' through the use of agit-prop.

Quote

"This has to be the most bloody bollocking useless piss-poor performance by a scientist in defence of his life's work I've ever heard. Totally crap. It would have been better to have an empty chair.

There you have the extreme AGW mentality. Forget the science, forget rationality, forget everything except The Cause, in service of which, everything is acceptable except being honest.

Edited by RickBradford, 2010-02-11 11:51:08.

[mridiot]

RickBradford, on 2010-02-11 11:50:31, said:

What is the subject of this thread?  Because I am so stupid, I am confused.  

Are we supposed to be talking about how Thailand's rice production will be impacted by global warming?

Or are we supposed to make that discussion impossible by contining to divert attention away from the subject of the thread?

The skeptics bible, The Idiot's Guide to Becoming a Global Warming Denier, says we should divert attention away from any scientific discussion related to global warming to make it appear as though some debate is taking place.

So, do we continue to divert attention away from the actual subject or not?

[RickBradford]

I think I liked you better as JR....

[canuckamuck]

RickBradford, on 2010-02-11 13:53:43, said:

I think I liked you better as JR....

Yeah but at least this time he's using his real name

[nisakiman]

RickBradford, on 2010-02-11 08:53:43, said:

I think I liked you better as JR....

[RickBradford]

There's an interesting Q&A between Phil Jones of the CRU and the BBC, which is well worth reading.

Both Jones and the BBC have been at the forefront of catastrophic alarmism, so it's instructive to see this piece of psychological negotiation between them (see, we're reasonable balanced folk after all!). It reminds me a bit of two old ladies helping each other across a busy road.

Quote

Q: Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?

A: The warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.
Here are the trends and significances for each period:
Period Length Trend
(Degrees C per decade) Significance
1860-1880 21 0.163 Yes
1910-1940 31 0.15 Yes
1975-1998 24 0.166 Yes
1975-2009 35 0.161 Yes

Q: There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?

A: If the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH [northern hemisphere] and SH [southern hemisphere]) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented.

[RickBradford]

At the same time, Jones did an interview with Roger Harrabin, the BBC's Environment Analyst, another alarmist trying to negotiate his way out.

Quote

Phil Jones, the professor behind the "Climategate" affair, has admitted some of his decades-old weather data was not well enough organised. He said this contributed to his refusal to share raw data with critics - a decision he says he regretted.

His [Jones'] colleagues said that keeping a paper trail was not one of Professor Jones' strong points. Professor Jones told BBC News: "There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the (weather) stations have come from but it's probably not as good as it should be," he admitted.

[teatree]

World's Greatest Political Hoax

(By Leonard Evans - He has a doctorate in physics from Oxford University and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers on many scientific subjects.)

Not even 30 inches of snow falling on Washington has discredited claims of "global warming," the belief that human activity is appreciably warming our planet. Of course, a single snowstorm does not disprove global warming. Weather is not the same as climate. But even after a decade of unexpectedly cool temperatures, global-warming alarmists still show no skepticism. Skepticism is a core value of science.

In "1984," George Orwell wrote about Big Brother (government) being so powerful that it can persuade people to believe things contrary to their senses. It even can convince them that two plus two is not equal to four.

Eventually the truth will out. When global warming finally is recognized as the world's greatest political hoax, those discredited will not be the perpetrators.

The perpetrators are politicians and traditional media. After the credibility bubble bursts, the same politicians and media will continue to influence what the public is told. They will effectively claim that they never misled anyone. The fall guy will be science.

Lost in the confusion will be the distinction between science and the scientific community.

The scientific community has largely abandoned science. It has degenerated into little more than just another lobbying group seeking advancement for its members.

The scientific community gets it right when the stakes are unimportant. It effectively opposed such anti-scientific nonsense as creationism. If the religious zealots had won, children would be told that the Old Testament described things that really happened. Not good - but it would do little harm and certainly would not harm the world's economies.

How starkly the vigorous opposition to creationism contrasts with the community's near silence in response to the anti-scientific nonsense coming from the likes of Al Gore. Worse than silence, in all too many cases, the community has been an enthusiastic participant in an orgy of unreason. It has been an orgy lubricated by almost limitless opportunities to grab influence, physical resources and cool cash.

Galileo Galilei, the father of experimental science, was convicted of a crime in 1633 for stating "that the Earth is not at the center of the universe, and it moves." This contradicted the then-prevailing belief, supported by most highly credentialed astronomers of the day. His sentence was house arrest until his death in 1642.

Galileo was treated more leniently than earlier pioneer Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake in 1600 for similar crimes.

Then, it was fear of the unknown that threatened intellectual freedom. Today, it is governments and international bodies. While they do not execute or imprison heretics, they still wield enormous power.

"Climate of Fear. Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence" was the headline on a column in the Wall Street Journal by Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Lindzen writes, "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis."

It is easy to create the illusion of consensus when those who disagree are silenced.

It is not known what the majority of scientists think about global warming, not that it matters all that much. Science is not about counting votes. However, I can offer an anecdotal observation.

I am a scientist, while my wife is a professor of art history. Her colleagues generally think all scientists support Mr. Gore - after all, they have been so informed by such authoritative sources as the New York Times. My fellow doctorate-holding science colleagues generally share my conclusion: The claim that human activity has appreciably warmed our planet is the greatest political hoax ever.

Many specific actions supported by global-warming alarmists are admirable. We ought to pollute less and transfer less wealth to Middle Eastern oil-producing tyrannies. These issues should be addressed on their merits. They have little to do with global temperature.

To do sensible things for irrational reasons just validates irrationality. And who can tell what future horrors will be justified by irrationality?

When the global-warming hoax eventually collapses, the victim will be science. When science suffers, we all suffer.

Leonard Evans has a doctorate in physics from Oxford University and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers on many scientific subjects.

http://washingtontim...-you-snowed-in/

[canuckamuck]

Thanks teatree, it feels good to see credentialed people putting into their own words the same things we have saying for the last couple of years and were ridiculed and mocked over.

I generally hope that the science community will get a rebirth of scientific conservatism. Agenda driven science is a very real global threat. I see the Copenhagen summit  as a 'Bay of Pigs' type scenario where the world was dangerously close to permanently harming national sovereignty. Whoever was behind the email hacks at East Anglia should be awarded Gore and Obama's undeserved Nobel Prizes, for in doing so they may have saved the millions of lives in the third world. A tremdous achievement.

[RickBradford]

Quote

. I see the Copenhagen summit as a 'Bay of Pigs' type scenario where the world was dangerously close to permanently harming national sovereignty.

I agree. In Warmist langauge, it was a 'tipping point.'

Quote

Whoever was behind the email hacks at East Anglia should be awarded Gore and Obama's undeserved Nobel Prizes, for in doing so they may have saved the millions of lives in the third world. A tremdous achievement.

Absolutely. A hero. But one who faces a very difficult future if ever his/her name is discovered.

To me, the other big element of this is the self-destruction of the mainstream media, which has for years been blindly and desperately pushing AGW mania and has been shoved firmly onto its a*se by the bloggers out there.

To watch organisations such as the BBC, The Guardian, and The Sydney Morning Herald trying to negotiate their way back into credibility is going to be one of the fun stories over the next few months.

[teatree]

canuckamuck, on 2010-02-13 11:18:32, said:

Whoever was behind the email hacks at East Anglia should be awarded Gore and Obama's undeserved Nobel Prizes, for in doing so they may have saved the millions of lives in the third world. A tremdous achievement.

Agree that he/she/they deserve our utmost respect for their service to the world.  

Although, I suspect that the emails were not actually hacked but rather leaked by someone involved in the 'climate research' who could see from the inside just how dishonestly the IPCC scientists were behaving.

[Garry9999]

OSLO (Reuters) - The U.N. panel of climate experts overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level, according to a preliminary report on Saturday, admitting yet another flaw after a row last month over Himalayan glacier melt.

A background note by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said a 2007 report wrongly stated that 55 percent of the country was below sea level since the figure included areas above sea level, prone to flooding along rivers.

The United Nations has said errors in the 2007 report of about 3,000 pages do not affect the core conclusions that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, are warming the globe.

"The sea level statistic was used for background information only, and the updated information remains consistent with the overall conclusions," the IPCC note dated February 12 said.

Skeptics say errors have exposed sloppiness and over-reliance on "grey literature" outside leading scientific journals. The panel's reports are a main guide for governments seeking to work out costly policies to combat global warming.

[RickBradford]

Out of the huge mass of material documenting the final collapse of the man-made global warming fraud, I have found one article which may be of interest as it sums up the whole thing neatly.

In sum, Henk Tennekes was director of the KNMI, the Dutch Meteorological Institute until he was forced to resign, because he refuted AGW claims and refused to fall into line with the official line on AGW, incurring the wrath of both his bureaucratic seniors, and junior science colleagues, who wanted to laze around rather than trying to do hard science.

He was routinely ridiculed in the media, and turned to teaching college courses to retirees to make ends meet.

Now, the Netherlands' largest newspaper De Telegraaf, finally feeling able to speak out, has published an interview with Tennekes, headlined: "Henk Tennekes - he was right after all."

Tennekes:

Quote

“I worry a lot these days. I worry about the arrogance of scientists who blithely claim that they are here to solve the climate problem, as long as they receive massive increases in funding. I worry about the way they covet new supercomputers. Others talk about ”stabilizing the climate“. I’m terrified of the arrogance, vanity and recklessness of those words. Why is it so difficult to demonstrate a little humility?

"The notion that the climate is the biggest catastrophe of our time, is pure grandstanding. Who’s taken in by all this climate talk? Moreover, the general public is systematically exposed to nightmare scenarios."

It's a good read, a good insight into the rotten structures that supported AGW, and perhaps one that Thailand's relevant ministries should read.

[teatree]

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

http://www.dailymail...d.html?ITO=1490

[canuckamuck]

But where is the outrage? Where is the mainstream media?
Co-conspirators me thinks.

[RickBradford]

The mainstream media has committed collective suicide. They were losing circulation hand over fist before, and their hysterical agit-prop in defence of this fraud has eroded any remaining credibility they might have had.

In March 2009, George Monbiot, the Guardian's Alarmist-in-Chief, even had the gall to create a deck of cards (remember the Iraq invasion?) with pictures of climate "deniers" instead of Iraqi officials. The smug little p*ssant was at least bright enough to see when the game was up, and has been desperately backtracking over the past 2 months, to very little effect.

The US mainstream media largely still refuses to give up, instead writing a series of increasingly helpless suicide notes.

[RickBradford]

A German site has put together this stunning graphic of measurements of the Mediaeval Warm Period (the one which the IPCC tried to eradicate) from all over the world.

As Professor Phil Jones of CRU has stated, if the MWP was generally warmer than today, there isn't anything exceptional about today's temperatures or temperature increases, and so the theory of man-made global warming collapses.

It was, there isn't, and so, it does.

No need for Thai rice farmers to worry.

[teatree]

Scientists, journalists and the general public everywhere are trying to climb down from the great global warming band wagon with some dignity and slowly side step away.  

The problem is that so many people have invested so much of themselves in the whole AGW movement that backing out now is very difficult.  People just don't like to admit that they have been 'had'.

[canuckamuck]

Poor guy he should have gone for the science fiction award instead of the Nobel

You can call him Al but he won't call you back

[nisakiman]

The whole edifice of AGW is built on the sand foundations of "peer review".

"The science is settled. It's peer reviewed."

This article, by Frank Furedi (google him) puts the whole subject of peer review into perspective.

Edited by nisakiman, 2010-02-28 03:18:15.

[Spee]

nisakiman, on 2010-02-28 03:15:24, said:

This article, by Frank Furedi (google him) puts the whole subject of peer review into perspective.

An excellent summary of the present situation, IMHO.

I would also suggest that the current situation is the result of the corruption of the western educational system that has taken place over the last 40-45 years, during which there has been a massive shift from education to indoctrination. The whole man-made global warming nonsense is the culmination of 2 generations of indoctrination.

Not suprisingly, the revolt against this nonsense is increasing to a peak and the facts are emerging in parallel with peoples' disgust of decades of increasingly strangling government control and taxation, and collusion and corruption between big government and big corporations. Case in point for the latter is General Electric's choice to run NBC at a massive deficit in order to push their propaganda campaign for multi-billion dollar government subsidies of so-called "alternative energy" technology.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, our fingers are crossed for a bumper crop harvest of mangos, hopefully starting next week. Any ideas on how to get 70 rai of rice field back into production?

[ding]

Red Menace: Stop the Ug99 Fungus Before Its Spores Bring Starvation

CITED

The pathogen has already been detected in Iran and may now be headed for South Asia’s most important breadbasket, the Punjab, which nourishes hundreds of millions of Indians and Pakistanis. What’s more, Ug99 could easily make the transoceanic leap to the United States. All it would take is for a single spore, barely bigger than a red blood cell, to latch onto the shirt of an oblivious traveler. The toll from that would be ruinous; the US Department of Agriculture estimates that more than 40 million acres of wheat would be at serious risk if Ug99 came to these shores, where the grain is the third most valuable crop, trailing only corn and soybeans. The economic loss might easily exceed $10 billion; a simple loaf of bread could become a luxury. “If this stuff gets into the Western Hemisphere,” Steffenson says, “God help us.”

[ding]

LINK

"A vast iceberg that broke off eastern Antarctic earlier this month could disrupt marine life in the region, scientists have warned.

They say the iceberg, which is 78km long and up to 39km wide..."

<snip>

"A vast iceberg which broke off the Antarctic continent this month could disrupt the world's ocean currents and weather patterns, scientists warn.

Australian researchers say the iceberg - the size of Luxembourg - could block an area that produces a quarter of the world's dense and very cold seawater.

They say a slowdown in the production of this water could result in colder winters in the north Atlantic.

The iceberg is currently floating south of Australia. "

[canuckamuck]

ding, on 2010-02-28 08:01:35, said:

LINK

"A vast iceberg that broke off eastern Antarctic earlier this month could disrupt marine life in the region, scientists have warned.

They say the iceberg, which is 78km long and up to 39km wide..."

<snip>

"A vast iceberg which broke off the Antarctic continent this month could disrupt the world's ocean currents and weather patterns, scientists warn.

Australian researchers say the iceberg - the size of Luxembourg - could block an area that produces a quarter of the world's dense and very cold seawater.

They say a slowdown in the production of this water could result in colder winters in the north Atlantic.

The iceberg is currently floating south of Australia. "

Quote

"This area around the Antarctic coastline, of which the Mertz Peninsula  is one part, produces about one quarter of the Antarctic's bottom  water, but the Mertz polynia is a major contributor," Dr Young said.

It will not block an area that produces 25% of the worlds cold seawater, it is in a part of an area that produces 25% of the worlds cold seawater, and it will still produce cold seawater but potentially less. The scientists in this piece seemed more concerned about the penguins.

The Ug99 fungus seems to be a more compelling concern. But in our sensationalist fear mongering media climate, who can tell anymore what is serious and what is breathless hype?

[RickBradford]

Exclusive! World Doomed!

The MSM does this because many of their readers seem to like it, they seem to have to worry about something.

The new scares coming along soon are:

* No fish left in the sea in fifty years time (BBC). [Industry body: “World fish supply has been boringly stable for the last 35 years”.]

* "Climate change could be accelerated dramatically by rising levels of methane in the Earth’s atmosphere, scientists will warn today. [Professor Nisbet told The Independent at the weekend that the new figures did not necessarily mark a departure from the trend. "It may just be a couple of years of high growth, and it may drop back to what it was," he said.]

* Water. Because water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, accounting for the majority of the Earth's natural greenhouse effect, water vapor emissions during human activities are again coming under increasing scrutiny by US government regulators. [Regulate water in the atmosphere. Yeah, right.]

* Britain facing food crisis as world's soil 'vanishes in 60 years' (SMH) [We haven't had a food scare for, oh 20 years? That was the global cooling=starvation hoax]

* Ocean acidification, caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, "the consequences of which are predicted to be catastrophic." [Debunked so many times it's getting dull. Acidification of the oceans: Physically impossible at the very small changes in partial pressure of CO2 that we can cause.]

I think we've passed "peak" MSM and they will go into a rapid decline....

Edited by RickBradford, 2010-02-28 08:58:19.