Week in review 1/13/12

by Judith Curry

Here are a few things that caught my eye this past week.

Steve McIntyre has a must read post Stocker’s Earmarks.  It addresses efforts by IPCC WG1 to circumvent the transparency objectives recommended by the IAC by inhibiting distribution of draft reports.  The justification is “These could prematurely circulate in the public domain, creating confusion, and that would be a bad service of IPCC to society.”  It seems that the only people interested in looking at the ZOD and FOD drafts are people that are interested in auditing the process of the IPCC assessment.   I don’t encourage any participating in the IPCC as an author or reviewer to break their agreement with the IPCC.  However, all of these drafts should be made public and if they are made available by whoever and however, I see no problem with discussing them publicly.

——

South African weathermen face jail or fines if they get it wrong:   Independent forecasters have been told they could be imprisoned for up to ten years – or fined up to £800,000 – if they issue incorrect severe weather warnings without official permission.  The astonishing threat is contained in a new law designed to prevent panic and economic damage caused by false predictions of gales, flash flooding or drought.

——-

Michael Mann defends climate models in ScientificAmerican, particularly against Freeman Dyson’s argument “That makes them useful for understanding climate but not for predicting climate change“.  Mann dances around the issue Dyson raises, does not address it head on IMO.  I would like to see if any climate modelers can provide a better argument against Dyson.

———-

Bjorn Lomborg on the Emperor’s New Climate-Change AgreementDressing up failure as victory has been integral to climate-change negotiations since they started 20 years ago. The latest round of talks in Durban, South Africa, in December was no exception. The first step . . . is to end our collective suspension of disbelief when it comes to climate-change negotiations. We need to see through the hype and self-serving political spin. We owe it to the future to do better.

——–

In the latest issue of Nature Climate Change, there is an interview with Richard Muller (behind paywall).  Its a good interview, with this notable Q&A:

Q:  Do you believe the global warming you see is a result of human actions?

RM:  I have not a done a scientific study, but my own impression–based on reading the literature-is that some of the warming we have seen is caused by humans.  To my mind, you can’t rule out half of the warming being caused by humans, but I think to conclude that most of it is–as the IPCC says–could be an overestimate.  This is my personal impression; the other members of the team might feel differently.

Well said, RM.

——-

I look forward to hearing about other issues that you’ve identified this past week.


145 responses to “Week in review 1/13/12

  1. I’m interested in the last paragraph above. Obviously Muller’s remarks chime very well with your own public statements on attribution. I’ve no idea about Muller’s physics, but his English can be confusing. He says you can’t rule out 50%, but ‘more than’ 50% could be an overestimate.

    I’m left none-the-wiser. 50% plausible, 55% implausible?

    Maybe because the kind of evidence we have doesn’t translate well to specific numbers, proportions or percentages? Perhaps it’ll always be possible to scrutinise the numbers and question the evidence for the particular ones chosen. However I don’t think that means it is impossible to say something useful on the subject.

    For me, the mistake is to have a probability as well as a percentage. ‘More than 90% chance of more than 50% attribution’. I just don’t think that works. So I’d be happier to hear people say ‘we believe’ that the majority of late C20 warming is anthropogenic [if that is what the consensus believes]. I surprise myself by thinking I wouldn’t have any reason to dispute a statement saying ‘we believe that at least three quarters of the late C20 warming is anthropogenic’ I have no idea whether it is true but it would sound quite reasonable. It makes me think of the IPCC [in that one regard] as being conservative.

    I think the desire to use specific numbers is a desperate attempt to exaggerate certainty or even to quantify uncertainty. Surely, with respect to the climate that is a false hope. Surely the ‘more than 90%’ is just an inappropriately numerical way of saying ‘we’re pretty sure’. I think the numbers and percentages actually hinder rather than help – because they are clearly undetermined by the evidence and so will always be suspect. I understand the desire/ temptation for scientists to frame expectations and understanding numerically – I just think it is a mistake.

    • Anteros; as long as there are B/S consumers – there is going to be B/S producers and distributors. When I prove that there was no GLOBAL warming; the laws of physics don’t permit warming of the whole planet; you bluntly refuse it, as mushrooms avoiding sunlight. Asking for proofs from the top Warmist protagonist it’s called Sadomasochism. (self- inflicted)

      People as Eli Rabbet, WebHub, Vukcevic, first they ridicule me, then I prove them wrong, beyond any reasonable doubt. But you Anteros, like to be the devil’s advocate – constantly attempting to run with one leg on each side of barb-wire fence. The truth: any GLOBAL warming, anthropogenic or not, is ZERO – there was no GLOBAL warming – there is NO global cooling NOBODY MONITORS THE TEMPERATURE ON THE WHOLE PLANET, for every 10-15 minutes in the troposphere = nobody knows what is the temperature, to save his / her life!!! All data is cooked! (pretend data collection – same as children with the ”fire trucks on the sandpit”) If you as a grown up are prepared to take it for real, it’s not their fault; guess who’s fault it is?!

      If you don’t want the truth – pick any number between 1%-1000%. It’s on your personal discretion how much B/S you like to buy /consume. Aren’t you lucky?

      • Stefan –
        I’ll have to bow to your greater certainty, but I appreciate the comment that I sometimes play devils advocate.
        Assuming it’s a compliment :)

      • Anteros,

        Yes, it must be a compliment. He seems to be giving you credit for having cojones of steel, “-constantly attempting to run with one leg on each side of barb-wire fence”. But he also called you a sun avoiding mushroom, so I ain’t so sure.

        Anyway, interesting fellow. Sometimes I don’t get what he is talking about. Must be some obscure Aussie vernacular. I have never heard it before, on my many pleasant trips down under. But maybe it was New Zealand, I was in.

        I can see why josh is afraid to tangle with this guy. Their styles are too similar.

      • John Carpenter

        “I can see why josh is afraid to tangle with this guy.”

        Even Robert doesn’t tangle with stefanthedenier… now what does that say?

      • I can’t speak to the issue as colorfully as stefanthedenier, but he speaks correctly of the battle between B/S and reality. This week B/S producers lost more ground to reality:

        1. BBC Loses Climate Bet
        http://thegwpf.org/uk-news/4750-david-whitehouse-wins-bbc-climate-bet.html

        2. UK Parliament Concerned About IPCC Science
        http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld/ldtoday/l_20.htm

        3. Antarctic Melt Volume Unchanged for 1979–2010
        http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2011GL050207.shtml

        4. Events this week further confirmed the reality that has gradually emerged after Climategate e-mails and documents revealed data manipulation: Earth’s heat source is the gigantic nuclear furnace that made our elements and is still a million times bigger than Earth.

      • “Don Monfort | January 13, 2012 at 10:16 pm |

        Anteros,
        Sometimes I don’t get what he is talking about. Must be some obscure Aussie vernacular. I have never heard it before, on my many pleasant trips down under”

        I’m down under all the time and it is a vernacular foreign to me as well. Stephan sounds like a Eastern European Aussie, and a good one too.

      • markus,

        I was kidding. I sometimes do that. I agree that he seems to be from Romania, or somewhere, and any kind of English is not his first language. Nothing wrong with that. But he is tilting at windmills (no pun intended).

      • markus; commenting about ascent / misspelling; you are not original. Few people before you; when they refuse to realize that; the truth is different, than what they have being brainwashed into; they go into bigotry of; his English is bad.

        Markus, this is a debate about the ”phony GLOBAL warming and the real climatic changes’ Marcus, if this was a debate about the Oxford English – I would have run 5 light years away. I know what I am not good for, but you should learn about warming / self adjustments / self – regulation of temperature, from me. Ridiculing somebody – doesn’t change the truth – only exposes you, for what you really are. If it makes you feel good that you succeed to learn your first language – give yourself another pat on the shoulder, from me

    • I value Dr Muller’s descriptions about the uncertainty, the temp trends, the science, etc. Just as I value Dr Curry’s, Lindzen’s, Happer’s, w.e.’s, and a host of others. In regard to their hunches about attribution, they are no more relevant than my own drawn from all of the same scientific knowledge and data.

      • I agree with you. Put very well.
        However, that peace and harmony among us all comes a bit of a cropper when the world wants some numbers from the IPCC. What to do? As I mentioned above, I’d be tempted to resist resorting to both probabilities and percentages. Don’t try to nail it down beyond what the messy information allows.

        Maybe that’s what they did and the result of a grilling over ‘very likely’ and ‘most’ produced the inappropriate numericality?

  2. In front of the congressional group he said attribution to humans could exceed 100%.

    • Without going through all of his statements that I have read recently, I tend to think he is a very good politicians or unbelievably wishy-washy. I hope it is not that he forgets what he just said a few weeks before

  3. @Judith C

    re ZOD’s

    ” … However, all of these drafts should be made public and if they are made available by whoever and however, I see no problem with discussing them publicly. …”

    Agreed, but the real point is to compare the ZOD’s with later drafts and final reports

    For the record, I have ZOD Chapters 2,3,4,5,8,9,10 and look forward to the later comparisons

    If anyone has working links to Chapters 1,6,7 these would be appreciated

  4. Muller said said “attribution to humans could exceed 100%.” I remember reading that. Judith Curry please- did Muller say that? Do you know what he meant?

    • Doesn’t he mean (quite reasonably/possibly) that if natural variability has been a negative influence for the last, say, 60 years, then the AGW influence will have been greater than that recorded by thermometers?.

      it’s an argument that I’m surprised I don’t hear from the most extreme alarmists. I.e. ‘what proportion of late C20 warming is anthropogenic?’ – ‘200%!!’

      • If you were cycling along and someone asked you how much your increased speed was due to extra effort, you might say ‘250%’ – if it happens that you’ve also started pedalling uphill and into the wind.

        If we can’t be sure of the influence of natural variability, ‘100%’ is an illusory barrier. So, actually is 0% – negative numbers are also possible [OK, I know – not exactly likely]

      • Someone said 120%. I think it’s pretty much 0%. Or maybe -20%.

      • Anteros – I made it today with respect to 2005 to today, 2012.

        But I do not think that was Muller’s point.

      • 200% of zero Global warming is same as 3% or 70000%. That makes the Warmist correct, what does that make the Skeptics, I don’t know, because is on the top of my tongue.

    • This is a reasonably close approximation of what Muller said. I had to decide how to convert it to sentences.

      …The amount that’s due to humans is still open, and there are very big uncertainties in that. I, my doubts about that are similar to the doubts I had two years ago about climate change, and perhaps in a few years I will be convinced of that, but in my mind humans have contributed to climate change. The real issue is how much. Uh, and if it’s at the lower end of the IPCC estimate, let’s say half of the observed change in the last, uh, in the last 50 years, then we have much more time to prepare and to adapt than we do if it’s a 100%, and it could actually be more than 100% if the aerosols are canceling it out. …

      • JCH –
        Pretty much as I surmised above – the possibility of there being negative contributions means that AGW contributions can be more than 100%.

        However, in typically confusing Muller fashion he mentions a negative contribution that is also anthropogenic, but if we see that as very short term and potentially ‘masking’ a longer term/ more permanent influence, his words verge on the meaningful.

      • Whatever he may have meant precisely in his testimony (why is it that climate “scientists” seem incapable of clear use of the English language?), it’s a long way from “To my mind, you can’t rule out half of the warming being caused by humans, but I think to conclude that most of it is–as the IPCC says–could be an overestimate.”

  5. METHANEGATE – IDENTIFIED /EXPOSED
    To cover up the damages in progress, by using methane for misleading; Warmist used another dirty trick. You will be shocked about those damages; first here is their trick:

    The good Lord made, methane to be produced as a compound with other heavier elements. By itself, methane is odorless; but is very smelly, when produced. The ‘’smelly’’ bit is the organic particles, the SINKER; to make it to sink in the ground. After, those organic particles disintegrate deep in the soil. Warmist to discredit me, they point that; methane is not as heavy as air. Well, they don’t have to tell; how does it sink? Why is so much of it in the ground for fracking, how did it get their; why are they not fracking for methane in the clouds, instead deep down in the ground?! Many times they go to Antarctic, Greenland and bring lots of lies. For you is cheaper to believe them, than to go there in person and see that they are lying. But for methane is NOT necessary – because all of you are producing it! Admit that it smells, when fresh, is not pure / odorless! For how long can one cover up the stench / the sinker?

    Same as when the cow is belching, or releasing methane from the other end. ‘’METHANEGATE’’ is to cover up the smell. Well, unless the Green People go behind every cow, elephant, bison and instantly purify the methane = they are hiding the stench, to use methane for destroying the grazing animals. P.s. methane produced from coal doesn’t smell; that’s where the ‘’canary in the coal-mine’’ comes from. In the coal-mine the good Lord didn’t need to invent something, to make methane to sink, because is produced in the ground. Organically produced methane above the ground, is never in a pure form. You don’t need to go and sniff the cow’s exhaust, grass clipping from the lawnmower after a week smell same as the cows methane. Simple proof of Warmist ‘’Methanegate’’. Please read the rest on my blog, after you read the page on ‘’creation of crude oil’’ to see what they are really covering up; it will knock your socks off:

  6. Judith,

    Did you mean the Muller Q to say ‘warming’ rather than ‘arming’?

  7. “Do you believe the global arming you see is a result of human actions?”

    Hmm.

    “That makes them useful for understanding climate but not for predicting climate change“.

    They could be useful, but they’re not used for understandig. They’re used for confirming CO2GW and playing with epicycles.

  8. “To my mind, you can’t rule out half of the warming being caused by humans, but I think to conclude that most of it is–as the IPCC says–could be an overestimate.”

    Well except that Richard Muller is an outright LIER.

    This is what the IPCC ACTUALLY said;

    The IPCC statement was (and I qoute);

    “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”

    In IPCC jargon “most” means equal OR greater than 50% (p => 0.5).
    In IPCC jargon “very likely” means equal OR greater than 90% (p => 0.9).

    The IPCC statement read in whole means exactly this;

    It is more than 89.999999999999999999999999999999999% certain that more than 49.999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the observed warming is anthropogenic in origin.

    That means at least half, not with 100% certainty, but that at least half, with at least 90%.

    Two numbers, as stated by the IPCC somehow get changed to one number, the higher mumber in Dr. Muller’s own mind. Talk about confirmation bias. right there in writing, Dr. Muller does not desire to know the truth. Simple as that.

    Here’s Dr. Muller’s math;

    1 + 1 = 1

    Now you know why I don’t trust Dr. C to say one truthful thing about the IPCC or to speak with ANY authority (just Dr. C’s obviously negatively biased opinions about) AGW.

    I rest my case.

    This site should be rebranded;

    WE’RE ALL LIERS HERE TELLING OUR LIES.

    As that world renound poet Allen Iverson said many a time, this one is a …

    SLAMDUNK!

    • LOL, Junior was a perfect choice for your handle :)

    • EFS_Junior,

      Again, sorry I messed up my original, “Kids say the darndest things” comment. But seriously, this is a Friday night. Think: football game, pizza parlor with your pals, interminable true-love chit-chat on the phone with your girlfriend. You know, healthy, age-appropriate stuff like that. Leave the blog business to the geezers and the geeks.

      Sure your mom knows how you’re spending your time, Junior?

      • He has a kind of youthful exuberance. The nutty kind, that usually leads to incarceration.

      • John Carpenter

        Don, junior fancies himself as a Renaissance man. You know he is a polymath… don’t you? I would look out for that. Here’s an example:

        “1 + 1 = 1”

        see how he used that equation above? Notice how it is not equal? That’s how a polymath makes a point about how someone is a little screwy in the head…. apparently. Elegantly simple to understand for us monomaths, yet deep and complex once you peel back the layers.

        And the quote from Allen Iverson?…. pure enlightenment… sheer genius. junior is not one to be trifled with.

      • John,

        Yes, that polymath thing and I think it is interesting that Junior has been so affected by the wisdom handed down to the world by Allen Iverson.

    • EFS_Junior | January 13, 2012 at 8:28 pm | ……………………… says lots of stuff.

      It’s Friday night (just after 7 PM here on the west coast), by chance are you located on the east coast and have you maybe had one to many beers before you posted your comment. I happen to be enjoying a very nice red wine from my local area before dinner. I don’t know about you, but qualifiers (say >90% sure that greater then 50% of something) always go better with a nice red wine. As does the Tilapia. I just received a left over concoction from my biochemist wife- she can do amazing things with food. It annoys me occasionally as I can’t adapt to the options available any where near as well as she does when it comes down to making tasty meals. It’s a damn good thing I am good at doing the dishes- among a few other thing. I am much more of an engineer when it comes down to food preparation.

      Back to qualifiers. For the life of me I can’t figure out why anyone would use/state something at 90% confidence. 95% I can understand- that a 2 sigma event (large sample size from a normal distribution of data- and hopefully you have data to ensure that the distribution is normal). That’s the percentage I used what I told some folks: marketing, sales, scientists (one heck of an eclectic group of genius with expertise in chemistry, optics, electrical engineering, and that pesky group of MD’s who that keep reminding me of the importance of clinical significance when looking at data in decision making- that composed the product design team), production engineering, quality assurance and regulatory to believe me (concur with my assessment- I am not sure this is consensus: expect the part about 5% of the results being outside the spec I was talking about implementing).

      I have finished my tasty meal and my wife says it’s time to go. So what has pissed me off about your comments “lies-, change the name of the site, etc.” Where else are you going to get an OPEN HONEST discussion about attribution and the limits of our understanding of the climate models. Actually, I think you need another beer and a bit of time for some reflection. If you aren’t up for that how about you develop a model for Al Gore’s new effort that will help public utilities commissioners allocate costs out here for our electrical energy in CA.

  9. randomengineer

    Muller — To my mind, you can’t rule out half of the warming being caused by humans, but I think to conclude that most of it is–as the IPCC says–could be an overestimate.

    IPCC — “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”

    Seems pretty straightforward.

    Idiot boy — In IPCC jargon “most” means …

    Actually, most seems like it means “most.”

    “English, motherf***er. Do you speak it?”
    ………………………..— Samuel L Jackson in ‘Pulp Fiction’

  10. Dr Muller says: “my own impression–based on reading the literature-is that some of the warming we have seen is caused by humans. To my mind, you can’t rule out half of the warming being caused by humans.”

    But notice that he didn’t say what proportion of the human caused warming we have seen is caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Dr Roger Pielke Sr makes a compelling argument (supported by Peter Andrews in Australia and others) that anthropogenic land-use factors (deforestation, urbanisation, draining of swamps, interference in natural hydrological systems etc) is causing local and regional warming, and desertification in some areas.

    However, for some reason, it seems that all of the attention of “the concerned” is focused on anthropogenic CO2, and very little on the land-use factors. Isn’t this ignoring the known knowns?

  11. KIds say the darndest things!

    • Sorry, EFS_Junior,

      I “messed-up.” The above comment was intended to follow your 8:28 pm, Jan 13, comment topside.

      • That proves that you re not eved deserving of even being called a halfwit.

        What a n00b.

      • O. K., Junior, I’ll bite:

        Noob? Noob?! Noob???!!!! Well…WELL!….at least I’m not some elephant-ears, flying pachytherm Doombo doomer!!!!!!! Betcha can’t say the same, Junior. Can yah?! Huh? Huh?

        See how it’s done? And while you’re at it, I perceive a really great opportunity for some quality family time in the Junior household–ask your mom to show you how to use the dictionary to obtain the proper spelling for the word that describes someone who lies. A teachable moment–you know what I mean, Junior?

        Let me add, Junior, that I’m, normally, I’m the last person in the world to be picky about grammar, spelling and all that good stuff. But for one of your tender, over-praised and over-indulged years, I make an exception.

      • Why on earth do you think EFS_Junior is a kid?

        I don’t know what his/her job is, or his/her academic training, but I think I know where he/she works, and I would guess the IQ threshold is quite high. My Uncle worked for a similar entity during WW2 as a junior physicist on a team that greatly advanced fracture mechanics, among other things.

      • JCH,

        You say, “Why on earth do you think EFS_Junior is a kid?” Well, JCH, perhaps it has something to do with Junior acting like a spoiled brat kid desperately in need of distance between him and the smothering, over-protective, pushy embrace of his well-intention, I’m sure, but mis-guided, horror-story mom.

        On the other hand, if Junior is actually an “adult”–and I mean of the “arrested development” variety–and the booger-brain, doom-butt is actually employed in some sort of firm/institution that specializes in smarty-pants weirdos, then don’t be coy, JCH. Name his employer, please! Some of us may have stock in his employer’s company that we need to immediately dump. Or write our reps in Congress about yet more waste of our taxpayer dollars on CAGW’s, never-ending-scams-and-hustles, as appropriate.

        C’mon, JCH, you’re puttin’ me on, aren’t you. Junior really is a “Delinquent Teenager” and you know it. Right, JCH? Had me goin’ there for a moment. And speak to Junior’s mom will you? She needs to understand that the kid needs some help.

      • Thanks JCH.

        I’m retired now, but my entire working career was spent at the USACE ERDC CHL Also known as the Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg, MS. I was born, raised, and educated in Vermont and New York (VTC, UVM, and Cornell). Formal title was Research Hydraulic Engineer.

        The ERDC has won so many Army science lab of the year awards, that I’ve frankly lost count. I’ve played my rather small part, most recently on their LMCS project, where I developed the primary scaling law for flexable (rigid) hinged structures in fluids (published at the ASC a few years back, heck I beat all the GSL Research Structural Engineers on our team on that one). When we tested our (actually my) 1:10 scale model at OSU’s tsunami facility, it withtood SS6 wave heights (in other words the largest waves that that facility could through at my physical model). Did the scaling theory work? Absolutely, at full and model scales. At that time, I became a SME in the area of high strength tensile plastics (Kevlar, Dyneema/Spectra, Zylon, Technora, Vectran, Pentex), used in ropes, fabrics, and unidirectional configurations. I’m one of the patent holders on the LMCS structural concept.

        My formal education is in structural mechanics and hydrodynamics (switch the two words if you must). Which, although I didn’t know it at that time. has a formal name, naval architecture.

        Work experience is in military engineering in addition to the previous two fields mentioned (mostly ship motion and floating bodies). My knowledge spans from the prototype (field work, full scale and data collection (all the EE stuff, mind you) and anaylses) to the model (numerical and physical, again full scale to at scale). With all the contingencies required to be a SME in all three diciplines at the same time (the stovepipe nature of the Army, as well as in most fields, usually requires one to branch out into either field, laboratory, or numerical areas).

        Coming from Vermont, we have an expression, Flatlanders.

        Now The Three Stooges above are quite clearly Flatlanders .

        They suffer from D-K syndrome, and in the four catagories of knowledge attainment;

        (1) know a lot about a little
        (2) know a little about a lot
        (3) know a lot about a lot
        (4) know a little about a little

        They, like Dr. C., fall into the 4th catagory, while I fall into the 3rd catagory.

        My best climate science denier take downs to date?

        Houston and Dean (2011), which in the latest USACE planning guidence on SLR, is relegated to a mere mention (as in a bibliographic reference, like in, hey there, these two n00bs wrote an article on SLR, we the USACE mention this only in passing, as in we actually read it and it has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on our current updated SLR guidance).

        Real all about it here (throughout);

        http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/07/is-sea-level-rise-accelerating/

        And yes I’m the same Junior everywhere I go. I’ve now been banned from WTFUWT?, a badge of honor, after reading and commenting on the abjectly beyond very poor articles written over there by the likes of Willis, et. al..

        Over here, my best take down has been the outright loopy ET conjecture presented by one DocMartyn, see (towards the end);

        http://judithcurry.com/2011/12/21/a-biologists-perspective-on-ice-ages-and-climate-sensitivity-part-i/

        Dr. C byline?

        “While I have gone through this essay carefully, I am unfamiliar with the primary literature on this topic.”

        You can say that again!

        But prior to my reading of this abject nonsense, I too was “totally unfamiliar with the primary literature on this topic.”

        So how long did it take me to become “totally FAMILIAR with the primary literature” on this topic?

        Less than three hours, tops. Seriously. I’m still waiting on DocMartyn’s parts II/III.

        Finally, as to the IPCC nonsense above (by Dr. C, Dr. Muller, and the usual crowd of inbred D-K’ers).

        I listened to the IPCC PR back in 2007 over the Internets. The very FIRST thing I did, after that, was to search out and find the quantitative meanings the IPCC used for “most” and “very likely” and those two numbers are as I accurately reported above ( p of 0.5 and 0.9, respectively).

        That is all.

      • John Carpenter

        and modest too.

      • John –
        It must be a spoof. Nobody could be such an a-hole and then crow about it.

        Could they?

      • Everybody knew that DocMartyn was out in left field, junior. You just piled on at the end. Is that how you usually roll? Anyway, if you are not too tired, give yourself another pat on the back from me. And grow up.

      • I don’t suffer fools and I don’t take prisoners.

        Fool tool…

      • I can hardly believe that EFS-Junior has shown his face here again. Why am I not surprised that EFS-Jr. is a master of hyper-energetic, flamboyant credentials-flashing ?–and I also checked out this weirdo on some other blogs and, sure enough, EFS-Jr. is also a world-class name-dropper.

        So where do the greenshirts come up you doom-butt leg-humpers, EFS-Junior? I mean, like, they seem to have an inexhaustible supply of you booger-eaters. Maybe there’s a whole hive of your creep-outs in Vermont. Maybe that’s it.

        So EFS-Junior, now that you’ve wowed us with your well-practiced “I’m a smarty-pants” attention-gainer, why don’t you continue on and explain how it is that a really-important-and-smart-dude like you has such a problem with: acting your age, showing some dignity worthy of your supposed big-deal achievements and connections, and offering something half-way intelligent as a contribution to this blog?

        And, oh by the way, you don’t have a twin-brother named Robert, do you?

      • Don –

        I think the best explanation is a mental breakdown leading to irrevesible age-regression and multiple delusions.

        Viz – “My best climate science denier take downs to date?

        And we got a link to the blog Realclimate, where there was a thread based on an excerpt of a someone else’s reply to a third person’s paper…. Buried in the 192 comments on that thread was some tendentious garbage from the ‘infant’, well, agreeing with S Rahmstorf!

        So, we have someone whose self-confessed claim to fame is getting a comment accepted on an alarmist blog!!

        I suppose it is true that reasonable comments often get deleted there, but still – with a bit of practice – most five-year-olds should be able to manage it.

      • mike –
        I did wonder about possible filial relations (or other) with our resident ‘idiot’, but I think the psycho-pathology is subtly different. Robert is a particularly misanthropic doomer; the infant keeps his madness mostly facing inwards..

        P.S. I like your menagerie of doom-types :)

      • I know some EFS types. Cynical but self congratulatory, and not aware that most of what they say is strongly discounted by their peers. They can ocassionally make contributions and even publish papers but are ignorant outside their narrow and usually not very rigorous specialty. For this type of person, retirement can be pretty stressful, because the usual bogeymen whose debunking keeps them sane at work are not readily available, so they move to the web to find them. In this case, its the people on this blog. It is a contradiction in terms, though, if he thinks many of us are liars, why come here at all? A place like Real Climate might be a better place for his no doubt manifold talents.

      • For this type of person, retirement can be pretty stressful, because the usual bogeymen whose debunking keeps them sane at work are not readily available, so they move to the web to find them.

        Regarding retirement, you have just described many of the skeptical crackpots who advertise their theories here. A couple are retired from NASA.

      • WebHubTelescope; calling somebody a ;; crackpot” doesn’t make to be one, unless you are talking to your mirror

    • EFS_Junior – ignore the nonsense.

      My Uncle was a junior physicist on George Rankine Irwin’s team at Naval Research Laboratory during WW2. Irwin did a lot to advance the ball on fracture mechanics.

      • Was your uncle cynical and prone to call honest people liars? This is stuff you might expect to see in 19th century politics or in banana republic politics, not science. Or more aptly, its the kind of stuff you see on a school playground. We all know and put up with Junior types, they make a small contribution, but are generally wrong and an annoyance. You weigh the pluses and minuses of firing them or accepting a small benefit/benefit ratio for a while.

      • Dy – if you think you can determine such things from internet comments, fine. I do not think you can.

      • If he wants to use his real name, we can check his credentials. He may have made a big contribution, I’m just saying most really good scientists don’t call honest people liars when there is no evidence for it whatsoever.

      • David Young
        Liars always like to be in a cocoon – to be heard, but not to listen. If you can ”pretend that you know the correct temperature on the planet; when you / IPCC don’t have 0,0000000000000000001% of the data ESSENTIAL, it goes with the profession. If you are scared from my REAL PROOFS, is because: if taken your education away and proven that: temperature OVERALL is always the same – you must feel as losing your cloths… start getting used to it: There is no such a thing as warmer or colder years! if is some place warmer – search for the place that is colder. In Europe / USA can get warmer than normal by 5C – in Oceania needs to get colder by 0,5C, to equalize; because Oceania is 10 times larger area

        if you monitor the temperature in the sea, from the surface to the bottom – there will be 30 different temperatures – DIFFERENT thickens layer of water and that thickness CHANGES for different degrees constantly. It’s nothing wrong not to know; but pretending to know; on other people’s expense; in any other profession is a crime apart in ”climatology” Same laws will catch up for climatology (retrospective). The debate is not a sport; but billions of dollars ripped-off from millions of people. The cocoon will be bursted from the inside out, or from outside in. Brainwashing the kids in school and university that; the planet is gone warmer, is grotesque crime. Obviously David Young and Don Monfort don’t have capacity to understand about the crimes in progress; or don’t want to understand, because they are part of it, time will be the best detective / judge

  12. I commend your attention to the comments section of the “Scientific American” piece on Michael Mann v. Freeman Dyson. There are some interesting posts.

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=michael-mann-defends-climate-comput-12-01-10#comment-02

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=michael-mann-defends-climate-comput-12-01-10#comment-54

  13. stefanthedenier has missed his calling: science writer for The Onion. I think all you folks are being spoofed!

    • Check out his website. I think, he thinks, he is serious.

      • Don, how can one get serious; when see that are grown up people in this world to believe that IPCC can tell if this year was warmer by 0,3C than another year. How can grown up people believe that 1230AD was warmer PLANET; when people at that time were scared to sail more than 50km west of Portugal – not to fall of the planet?!

        I have the proofs Don; I don’t go on; maybe, 90%, it’s possible, can happen… no Don, if it can happen – it will happen. But so many things are known; why guessing? Same laws of physics will be in 100y as today = me and the laws of physics can’t be wrong! Robert and Joshua must have being to my website; it is difficult to argue against the truth… sorry Josh, somebody was comparing me with you… what’s the name of your solicitor?!

      • Pity – I quite like the idea of being spoofed.

      • I want to write a bot that spews stephanthe denier prose.
        then it and Junior can get a room and duke it out

      • Steven Mosher, as you are resorting to ridicule me about my misspelling – is a proof that you cannot find wrong about the SUBSTANCE of my comments – because on most subjects I’m of opposite opinion than you = that makes you wrong on almost everything.

        1] all the phony GLOBAL warmings were localized. 2] all the extra warmth accumulated in the atmosphere for the last 150y, wouldn’t be enough to boil one chicken egg; because extra heat is not accumulative, Steven, who is correct; you, or the laws of physics and my formula: EH >AE >ECI.

        Above is my comment, the ”CLIMATEGATE” Steve, we cannot be both correct – you are avoiding to comment on my ”proofs” as a typical Sargent Schulz; ”I know nooothing”. ”CLIMATEGATE” exposes half of the IPCC’s lies, my formula proofs the other half that is a complete lie. IPCC will not be impressed with you either I’m debating the most important subjects, you and Fred are leaving WebHub to argue / insult /debate me by himself. Steven, put in writing about the substance of my proofs, silence is admission that you know that what you promote is Warmist crap!

      • Stefan,

        Yes they are guessing, but that is what Judith is talking about.

        “the laws of physics don’t permit warming of the whole planet”

        If you are around long enough you will find out that is incorrect. Got something to do with the sun becoming a red giant. It’s going to get warm around here.

        “The truth: any GLOBAL warming, anthropogenic or not, is ZERO – there was no GLOBAL warming – there is NO global cooling NOBODY MONITORS THE TEMPERATURE ON THE WHOLE PLANET, for every 10-15 minutes in the troposphere = nobody knows what is the temperature, to save his / her life!!! All data is cooked!”

        You are correct: nobody monitors the temp on the whole planet. But we do have surface stations, radiosondes, satellites, argus buoys, etc that sample the earth’s surface, parts of the oceans, and the atmosphere. We get estimates of temperature that most accept as being good enough for government work, in the absence of anything better.

        We don’t know exactly what the average world temp is at any given time, but we do know when it get’s warmer or colder (see what happened after Pinatubo). Do you think that we would not notice that it is getting colder, as we descended into another ice age? Do we have enough thermometers to pick that up?

        We talk about the uncertainty all the time here. What you are talking about is pure denial. It’s useless nonsense. Try to listen to others for a while.

      • Don Monfort;
        for governments / lefty politicians, and people like you that took the Warmist carrot, you will defend every Warmist lie, to the last taxpayer’s dollar. Because your ego is paramount… you promote old crap

        You said that you have being to my website, but need to read; not to be scared from the first solid proof and run – remember, the reality will follow you; same as the kids plying with fire trucks, have to outgrow it.. Few small examples: 1] satellite takes two-dimensional picture of heat. I.e. if there is 1km thick layer of air of 5C degrees and 100mm thickens of 10C – because of constant horizontal and vertical winds; in 15 minutes changes / swaps the ration – for the satellite would be the same. Occasionally sending a balloon, or satellite photo is: compost, to keep ”pretend Skeptics” like you in top form. Because people like you are doing the Warmist’ dirty job. Warmist use you as a role of toilet paper. They will defend you – they need you; but the truth will win!!

        Water in the sea, with change of temperature > changes density. If is 2m of water at 25C on the top – but below is 200m thickens of water at 4C – then on the surface gets to 30C, because of some invisible olive oil slick prevented evaporation – but the currents below made 400m of 4C water – you will register on every front page of newspaper that ”the seawater is getting warmer” Monfort, lying for pagan climatologist becomes natural, goes with the profession.

        You say that: you will notice if it gets much colder also. You were not given any other choice by nature for the previous 2-3 Januaries in Europe / USA; but blinded by former brainwashing education – refuse to
        acknowledge my formula, that: .the only way some part to get colder – other part MUST get warmer. Dig this:

        a] if the WHOLE planet’s atmosphere gets colder by 0,5C > troposphere shrinks by 100m. Intercepts less coldness for 3,5 seconds to equalize – then back to normal (in solar eclipse from the moon, Venus, Mercury; that happens regularly, nobody even notices, because of the self readjusting. b] the only way part of the troposphere can get colder – if other part gets WARMER!!! Because on the part where got warmer – increased the volume of the atmosphere – to compensate for shrinkage where is gone colder. ”Children’s see-saw plank” should be your example / guidance. Don; start learning from the beginning. Children know what you are ignorant that: one side of the plank doesn’t go up, unless the other side goes down. Any ”pretend Skeptics” interested to learn the ”brilliant self adjusting mechanism for the troposphere and the water in the / sea / soil; my blog. Clear the desc from Paganistic crap, learn the self regulation:: EH>AE>ECI.

        When the seawater gets warmer than normal (because of submarine volcanoes / hot vents > evaporation increases > clouds increase – clouds are the ”sun umbrella” reflects / intercepts lots of sunlight not to get to the ground / sea-surface . Cooling of that extra heat intercepted in the clouds is much more efficient, than on the ground. Learn and be proud of – or leave in shame with the old Pagan believes that; the planet’s temperature goes up and down as a yo-yo

        stefanthedenier

      • Yu angry little dood, steffie. Du yu no how read? I atollayu dat I no beeleeb ebberyting dey say.

        Yu reed gin, get back me. Take yu meds ferst.

        Seriously dummy, you don’t have a clue. The earth can warm, and it can cool. Happens all the time. I never said I had confidence in the temperature record, or that I endorsed the warmistas’ misuse of it to scare people.

        They say it has warmed since the 1950s, or so. I believe that much. They say it has warmed .8C in the last century, or whatever. OK, I don’t really care. I like it warm. They say a doubling of CO2, from whatever to whatever, will cause 1.2C, or thereabouts, of warming. Don’t care about that either. Doesn’t scare me. Don’t care about arguing the physics of back radiation, or that a colder body can’t warm a warmer body. They got you there, dummy. What I care about is the part that gets us from pleasantly warmer, to burning up. That is the part to argue about. And you are not following any of this, because you are irrational and ignorant.

        You are the warmistas’ caricature of a clueless, rabid skeptic. Are you on the IPCC payroll?

  14. This caught my eye.

    David Whitehouse won his bet with James Annan on BBC radio program “More or Less”, made 4 years ago, with respect to global temperatures. See

    http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/4748-winning-a-climate-bet.html

    • Congratulation to skeptic David Whitehouse
      http://bit.ly/qAXJ60

      Commiseration to climate scientist James Annan
      http://bit.ly/yBd072

      • I am not a Limey. I have been a soldier, and a student of military history. I wouldn’t want to have to fight the Limeys. Was your uncle commanding a French battalion, in the bocage? That would explain his comment.

      • Don,

        I’m certainly the last person to disparage any of the feats-of-arms of those who served in WWII (or Korea, or Vietnam, or, lately, the Middle East). But the battles you cite (and I would add Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Pelilieu) are those fought predominantly by Marines (Okinawa excepted). And while “Soldiers of the Sea” survives as a Marine sobriquet, Marine are not “soldiers.” And my previous comment was in terms of “soldiers.”

        And I might add, that casualty figures are not the sole judge of the “challenges” of a fight. No theater of WWII is more under-appreciated than the South-West Pacific. Please check-out, if you have not already, the the hellish nature of Buna’s terrain; the formidable advantages of Buna’s terrain in favor of the Japanese defenders; the fanatical, tenacious, skilled resolve of the enemy; and the plight of the U. S. 32nd Division, a hastily formed-up, National Guard unit thrown into the fight with no jungle training and precious little artillery and armor support (thanks to the Army Air Corp (currently Air Force) and its perennial, phony-baloney assurance that “air-power” is all you need). But those American citizen soldiers, unfairly maligned by, among others, their valiant, but sometimes a**hole, Australian comrades-in-arms, defeated the ija in its considerable prime–did the “doggies” proud and then some. The Japanese had a saying that went something like: “Java is heaven, Burma is hell, but you never come back from New Guinea.”

        And while I, again, never in the least demean Britain’s awesome feats-of-arms, when it comes to Normandy, if I encounter any disparagement of American troops vis-a-vis their British counterparts (please, I appreciate that you’ve offered no such disparagement, Don)–I direct the unfortunate soul to the Battle of Villers Bocage and the exploits of a certain Captain Michael Wittman.

        And, as you know, Don, it was the Americans who achieved the break-out from Normandy’s bocage district and whose fuel-efficient, highly-reliable Sherman tanks raced to capture Paris, leaving Germany’s vaunted, fuel-guzzling, maintenance-nightmare, lumbering Tiger tanks in their wake, to achieve a brilliant, decisive, low-cost, victory in the Second Battle of France. But however great that victory, the balmy, temperate countryside of France is not Papua.

        That’s my best shot, Don. However, my study of certain WWII battles is not systematic (and usually limited to either Marine operations or those that offer an interesting case-study of the influences of climate, weather, and terrain on military operations), and I can certainly profit from any better insights than those my haphazard inquiries have provided me to date.

      • Sad!

        David says he is not a skeptic.

        http://bbc.in/yEJBn6
        16:30 Friday, 13th January

        Starts at 14:38

    • Here is James Annan’s rationale for the bet:

      Wednesday, April 30, 2008

      More on the 4-year bet
      http://bit.ly/yKRgH2

      So, the program went out on Monday (and can be listened to on-line for those who missed it) and IMO they covered the issue very well. In fact the whole program was interesting – I’m a bit embarrassed not to have discovered it earlier. The presenter seems to do a lot of interesting things – he also has his own webpage/blog.

      David Whitehouse stated very clearly on the program that he would bet £100 against a new record by 2011, although I’ve not yet had a reply to the email I sent on Monday. If any reader knows him directly, I’m be grateful for some contact. In the comments to my earlier post, Chris Randles seemed a bit sceptical of my justification for why I think the bet is a good one (and why I think 30% per year is a reasonable estimate for the probability of a new record in 2009-2011), so here’s a bit more background. Actually 30% was partly an inverse calculation, “what would the probability have to be to make the bet an attractive one”, but I don’t think it is overly optimistic, for the following reasons.

      First, here is a bit of Fig 10.4 from the recent IPCC report. The left hand half consists of the last 20y of the models’ historical 20th century simulations, and the right half is the first 20y of projections under various scenarios. The yellow/orange future is for fixed atmospheric constituents (at year 2000 values) so is not at all realistic, but the other scenarios all show a near-linear response on average.

      Figure 1

      I drew on the green line by hand, but it has the right slope for the historical trend. The point here is that for all models under all plausible scenarios, the climate response is very close to linear plus natural variability “noise” over this sort of time scale. In fact the models tend to show a modest increase in trend, although I personally would not be too surprised if this does not actually transpire. But over the next 5 years that is not an issue anyway.

      This linear response is a well-known property of the system, basically due to thermal inertia and the steady ongoing increase in CO2. The only real question is, what is the true underlying trend?

      Now here’s a modified version of the graph I showed last time.

      Figure 2

      Here, all the blue lines are the even-year trends from 8 to 40 years duration, extrapolated out to 2011 (I just chose even numbers to limit the clutter). Most of these exceed the 1998 record before 2011, some by quite a lot. I’ve also put dots on the 30y trend line (a rather arbitrary choice, but actually one of the lower trends) just to show that it crosses the 1998 record between 2010 and 2011. Some important details: the residuals have negligible autocorrelation, so it is reasonable to consider each year’s anomaly (compared to the trend) as independent. Also, the RMS of the residuals is about 0.08, and the 1998 value is 2.5 standard deviations (a 1% event, if we assume Gaussian residuals, which I would not hang my hat on but it’s a reasonable starting point). None of the cold anomalies are that extreme, not even those due to the Pinatubo and El Chichon eruptions. In fact the cold anomaly in 1996 is greater than either of those, with no volcano to explain it. The 2007 cold anomaly is also an entirely unremarkable 0.8 standard deviations, and all 5 years from 2001-2005 were above the trend line. So there is absolutely no evidence of any strange cooling in the recent record – it’s just that 1998 was abnormally warm. Using a conservative “underlying” temperature anomaly of 0.5 (on that scale) over the interval 2009-2011, we only need a further 0.026 due to natural variability – about 0.3 standard deviations, a 40% event – to break the old record. So that makes my 30% guesstimate seem a touch pessimistic. Of course the historical trend may be somewhat “contaminated” by some natural variability or other forcings. But this may work either way, it arguably increases the uncertainty a bit but should not bias the results significantly (in fact an increase in uncertainty for the trend in future temperatures would make the odds closer to 50% for each year, which is better for me).

      Finally, this is from Smith et al which I talked about earlier. I’ve added on a couple of lines as guides.

      Figure 3

      The green one is just the trend, extrapolated (again positioned by hand but the slope is right). This plot uses seasonal anomalies so the link to annual average is not perfect, but it should be good enough. Their own model forecast (white line with red shading) exceeds the old record from 2008 onwards, with high confidence. In fact their paper contains the explicit statement that “at least half of the years after 2009 are predicted to be warmer than 1998, the warmest year currently on record.” Actually on re-reading it that phrase is slightly ambiguous, I suspect they mean that each year from 2009 will beat the old record with probability 50% or more (obviously if you run out far enough into the future then the vast majority of years will break the old record). So according to that statement, I’ve got a 1-0.53 = 87.5% chance of winning.

      Posted by James Annan

      • As my Uncle, an infantry battalion commander in the bocage, would say, never bet on a Limey.

      • JCH,

        Message to your uncle got misplaced above. I said your uncle must be French.

      • JCH,

        A bit OT, but please accept my admiration and gratitude for your Uncle’s service. Except for Papua, no American soldiers in WWII had a tougher fight than in the Normandy bocage. It was men like your uncle who made America great–and as a kid growing up with the inspiring personal example of such men, I can say they were everything that doom-butt cruds like Robert and EFS-Junior are not.

        I mean, if I were to assault a hedgerow full of German grenadiers and Tiger tanks, I’d rather have Hilary and Louise, any day, at my back than “the Idiot” and “the Creep-out”. And I’m sure your Uncle would feel the same.

      • mike,

        I am sure that JCH’s uncle was a great guy, except for his disparagement of his valiant Limey allies, who were also fighting and being killed and wounded, in the bocage. Also, the fighting in the Pacific was tougher. There were 12,000 US dead on Okinawa, and nearly 7,000 on Iwo Jima. Proportionally, much higher casualties than were suffered in the Battle of Normandy.

      • Don – he would always refer to himself as being a Cajun, but he came off a plantation and was of English descent with a really strange accent.

        And he would be very upset with me for neglecting to use an explanation point as he would mock the English with a smile. He was also very fond of the French as they were very helpful to him in Normandy.

        mike – my Uncle was pretty impressed with where my Dad was: Iwo Jima.

      • JCH and Don,

        Sorry, the aging-process has taken its toll on my truly pathetic, blog-skills again. My reply to both your comments is to be found at my January 14, 4:10 pm comment topside. Sorry for the confusion. And, JCH, having know more than a few Iwo Jima vets, myself, then I assure you, no one is more in humble awe of your father and his fellow Marines, than myself. However, please note, my response to Don was in terms of “soldier” not Marines. Marines (and Corpsmen) are not “soldiers”–I’m sure your Dad taught you the distinction.

      • JCH,

        Sorry, didn’t see the smile. I have mocked the English, in jest. I am usually serious, when I mock the French. My ancestors were from Normandy (originally Norsemen, out of Africa, like everyone else) who stopped in a place called Montfort-fort on a mountain-which was probably on a hill. From there, they invaded England in 1066. That was when the Limeys weren’t well organized. Didn’t put up much of a fight. Anyway, I have plenty of Limeys in my woodpile, and I will always believe that English civilization and it’s offshoots have saved the world from being totally dominated by tyrants. With special thanks to people like your father and uncle.

      • mike,

        I always considered Marines to be fellow soldiers, although inferior to us Army paratroopers :) We are all on the same page mike.

      • O. K., Don, as you can imagine, I’m not totally on-board with your sentiments, but I’d say they, nevertheless, rate a heart-felt “Semper Fi!”. And thank God we still have young men and women worthy of their Army and Marine Corps forebears. May God watch over them.

      • Don – a large number of the Marines in my father’s platoon were former Paramarines. My father was their Navy corpsman.

        OT – NOAA (one of its predecessor organizations) climate scientists were with the 28th when it captured Mt. Suribachi. The put up a scientific devise right after Rosenthal took his photograph of the flag replacement.

    • It was foolish to bet on such a short time scale as four years. Anyone knows you have to at least bet on decadal averages to remove natural variability.

      • Jim, the bet is of no scientific consequence. The winner is still wrong and the loser is still right.

      • Jim D, you and your side only con yourself ” by debunking others with ostrich tactics”

        My the truth win: 1] if you ignore half of the planet; between day and night in 12h the ‘average temp difference / fluctuates on YOUR GLOBE by 12C degrees. When you wake up; you will find out that on the other end of the planet is night, when is daylight on your side – to balance.

        If you ignore the S/H, between SUMMER AND WINTER, on YOUR planet would be 14C degrees difference; because of ignoring 50% of the planet. IPCC ignores 998, 999% of the planet, plus/ minus inaccuracy is tremendous / unknown – they, and you are scared from the truth as devil from the cross. You rely on help from the ”pretend Skeptics” to keep your nose above water (to keep your but clean from the regular dysentery you receive from IPCC). Jim, there is no such a thing as ”overall variability” not for 1h in a decade!!! Parts of the planet get warmer / colder; variability every day, every month and = other parts SIMULTANEOUSLY get colder / warmer. Laws of physics, boys

        Only people that don’t believe in their own knowledge, prefer to silence different theory / knowledge. My suggestion: study my formulas and compare with others: EH>AE>ECI / EC> AS > LCI (Extra Heat> Atmosphere Expands> Extra Coldness Intercepts *** Extra Coldness>Atmosphere Shrinks>Less Coldness Intercepts) if you cannot prove me and the laws of physics wrong; don’t waist your life in outdated pagan believes! Majority doesn’t = the truth. My the truth win!!!

    • Don,

      My January 14, 4:10 pm comment was intended as a reply to your 3:05 pm comment. Sorry for the mix-up.

  15. “To my mind, you can’t rule out half of the warming being caused by humans, but I think to conclude that most of it is–as the IPCC says–could be an overestimate.”

    “You can’t rule it out.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the consensus view. But my question is, what warming? You mean the same warming we’ve been seeing since the end of the LIA… which has continued more or less apace ever since. These people are simply guessing. And that’s the bottom line.

    The IPCC’s assessment “could be an overestimate” Muller says. Really? You think? This would be funny if it weren’t so scary.

    • pokerguy, yes, you can conclude that: 100% of the phony GLOBAL warming is anthropogenic. 100% of ZERO WARMING IS HOW MUCH???!!! Any other Global warming is in the Believer’s heads! As a Pokerguy, you suppose to have cool head, what happened to you, dude? What have the Warmist done to you?

  16. He also said this:

    The amount that’s due to humans is still open, and there are very big uncertainties in that. I, my doubts about that are similar to the doubts I had two years ago about climate change, and perhaps in a few years I will be convinced of that, but in my mind humans have contributed to climate change. The real issue is how much. Uh, and if it’s at the lower end of the IPCC estimate, let’s say half of the observed change in the last, uh, in the last 50 years, then we have much more time to prepare and to adapt than we do if it’s 100%, and it could actually be more than 100% if the aerosols are canceling it out. …

    • Twaddle. So he said it. So what? It’s obvious that he’s guessing. He admits he’s guessing. They’re all guessing. Well here’s a guess for you. With the PDO now cold, the AMO ready to flip cold, and the sun getting ready for a nice long snooze, we’re going to get colder, much, much colder.

      • And here’s some guesses for you. The phase of the AMO ain’t gonna make much difference. The sunny snoozer will supply ample rays, and we’re going to get hotter.

      • The only thing that ain’t gonna make much difference is CO2. How long will it take for warmists to realise that nature’s phenomena don’t agree with their “theory”? It’s already getting ridiculous.

  17. rehuie; I don’t know what ”writer for the onion means”; you people talk in code. If the truth spoofs somebody, so be it – they will get used to it. It’s even worse; after so much effort from me to prove that: there is no such a thing as GLOBAL warming; some not to have common sense to understand that the laws of physics have the last laugh, not the Swindlers.

    Com-on guys, 3 cornered contest will make things more interesting and closer to the truth. O.K. how many of you still think that IPCC knows what was the GLOBAL temperature for the last year; or for year before; or for 98?! Now, how many of you believe that the ”pretend Skeptics” know the correct GLOBAL .temperature was for 5BC, for 1234AD, 1477AD…?! When people believed that the other half of the planet didn’t even exist… Make it a year for common sense; that’s what is missing in both camps, ”common sense” . My formula should make people to rejoice; the earth will not boil and second flood. Maybe an onion for evil people, the sooner they face the truth = less damages done = better for the Swindlers also. See, simple

  18. Let us revisit Spiegel’s article on the main actors of the climate war:

    1) Mann
    http://bit.ly/zGiuT2

    2) McIntyre
    http://bit.ly/xWfV4O


    ‘Effective Long-Term Strategies’

    Paleoclimatologist Michael Mann from Pennsylvania State University also tried to rein in his colleagues. In an e-mail dated Sept. 17, 1998, he urged them to form a “united front” in order to be able to develop “effective long-term strategies.” Paleoclimatologists try to reconstruct the climate of the past. Their primary source of data is found in old tree trunks whose annual rings give clues about the weather in years gone by.

    No one knows better than the researchers themselves that tree data can be very unreliable, and an exchange of e-mails shows that they discussed the problems at length. Even so, meaningful climate reconstructions can be made if the data are analyzed carefully. The only problem is that you get different climate change graphs depending on which data you use.

    Mann and his colleagues were pioneers in this field. They were the first to draw up a graph of average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 1,000 years. That is indisputably an impressive achievement. Because of its shape, his diagram was dubbed the “hockey stick graph.” According to this, the climate changed little for about 850 years, then temperatures rose dramatically (the blade of the stick). However, a few years later, it turned out that the graph was not as accurate as first assumed.

    ‘I’d Hate to Give It Fodder’

    In 1999, CRU chief Phil Jones and fellow British researcher Keith Briffa drew up a second climate graph. Perhaps not surprisingly, this led to a row between the two groups about which graph should be published in the summary for politicians at the front of the IPCC report.

    The hockey stick graph was appealing on account of its convincing shape. After all, the unique temperature rise of the last 150 years appeared to provide clear proof of man’s influence on our climate. But Briffa cautioned about overestimating the significance of the hockey stick. In an e-mail to his colleagues in September 1999, Briffa said that Mann’s graph “should not be taken as read,” even though it presented “a nice tidy story.”

    In contrast to Mann et al’s hockey stick, Briffa’s graph contained a warm period in the High Middle Ages. “I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago,” he wrote. Fortunately for the researchers, the hefty dispute that followed was quickly defused when they realized they were better served by joining forces against the common

    . Climate-change skeptics use Briffa’s graph to cast doubt over the assertion that man’s activities have affected our climate. They claim that if our atmosphere is as warm now as it was in the Middle Ages — when there was no man-made pollution — carbon dioxide emissions can’t possibly be responsible for the rise in temperatures.

    “I don’t think that doubt is scientifically justified, and I’d hate to be the one to have to give it fodder,” Mann wrote to his colleagues. The tactic proved a successful one. Mann’s hockey stick graph ended up at the front of the UN climate report of 2001. In fact it became the report’s defining element.

    An Innocent Phrase Seized by Republicans

    In order to get unambiguous graphs, the researchers had to tweak their data slightly. In probably the most infamous of the Climategate e-mails, Phil Jones wrote that he had used Mann’s “trick” to “hide the decline” in temperatures. Following the leaking of the e-mails, the expression “hide the decline” was turned into a song about the alleged scandal and seized upon by Republican politicians in the US, who quoted it endlessly in an attempt to discredit the climate experts.

    But what appeared at first glance to be fraud was actually merely a face-saving fudge: Tree-ring data indicates no global warming since the mid-20th century, and therefore contradicts the temperature measurements. The clearly erroneous tree data was thus corrected by the so-called “trick” with the temperature graphs.

    The row grew more and more bitter as the years passed, as the leaked e-mails between researchers shows. Since the late 1990s, several climate-change skeptics have repeatedly asked Jones and Mann for their tree-ring data and calculation models, citing the legal right to access scientific data.

    ‘I Think I’ll Delete the File’

    In 2003, mineralogist Stephen McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick published a paper that highlighted systematic errors in the statistics underlying the hockey stick graph. However Michael Mann rejected the paper, which he saw as part of a “highly orchestrated, heavily funded corporate attack campaign,” as he wrote in September 2009.

    More and more, Mann and his colleagues refused to hand out their data to “the contrarians,” as skeptical researchers were referred to in a number of e-mails. On Feb. 2, 2005, Jones went so far as to write, “I think I’ll delete the file rather than send it to anyone.”

    Today, Mann defends himself by saying his university has looked into the e-mails and decided that he had not suppressed data at any time. However, an inquiry conducted by the British parliament came to a very different conclusion. “The leaked e-mails appear to show a culture of non-disclosure at CRU and instances where information may have been deleted to avoid disclosure,” the House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee announced in its findings on March 31.

    Sociologist Peter Weingart believes that the damage could be irreparable. “A loss of credibility is the biggest risk inherent in scientific communication,” he said, adding that trust can only be regained through complete transparency

    Plugging the Leak

    In an e-mail dated March 11, 2003, Michael Mann said there was only one possibility: Skeptics had taken over the journal. He therefore demanded that the enemy be stopped in its tracks. The “hockey team” launched a powerful counterattack that shook Climate Research magazine to its foundations. Several of its editors resigned. Vociferous as they were, though, the skeptics did not have that much influence. If it turned out that alarmist climate studies were flawed — and this was the case on several occasions — the consequences of the climate catastrophe would not be as dire as had been predicted.

    Yet there were also limits to the influence had by Mann and Jones, as became apparent in 2005, when relentless hockey stick critics Ross McKitrick and Stephen McIntyre were able to publish studies in the most important geophysical journal, Geophysical Research Letters (GRL). “Apparently, the contrarians now have an ‘in’ with GRL,” Mann wrote to his colleagues in a leaked e-mail. “We can’t afford to lose GRL.”

    Mann discovered that one of the editors of GRL had once worked at the same university as the feared climate skeptic Patrick Michaels. He therefore put two and two together: “I think we now know how various papers have gotten published in GRL,” he wrote on January 20, 2005. At the same time, the scientists discussed how to get rid of GRL editor James Saiers, himself a climate researcher. Saiers quit his post a year later — allegedly of his own accord. “The GRL leak may have been plugged up now,” a relieved Mann wrote in an e-mail to the “hockey team.”

    Source: http://bit.ly/dyuZdC

  19. Mann dances around the issue Dyson raises, does not address it head on IMO. I would like to see if any climate modelers can provide a better argument against Dyson.

    I agree. Mann’s arguments are very bad. The modeling issues in climate science have nothing to do with modeling issues related to the Higg’s boson. There’s also a fundamental difference between the use of models in the development of an airplane and modeling climate and the wider Earth system.

    In case of Higg’s boson the scientists are after better fundamental theory. They cannot solve their proposed theories accurately, but they can make some crude predictions and they can tell that their present formulation requires the Higg’s boson. Excluding the existence of the Higgs’s boson over the whole range achievable at CERN would be a serious blow against the theory, although some explanations might be found. In climate science no new fundamental theories have been proposed, the question is about the ability to make predictions based on the existing theories with the help of computer models.

    Engineering applications like the airplane have the advantage that experiments can be made. Thus the validity of turbulence models and other details that cannot be modeled exactly from first principles can be studied extensively and the models refined based on that. Blind extrapolation is not needed or is needed only little. Furthermore the results can be largely verified during the test flight program that precedes commercial use of the airplane.

    Nothing in the above tells about the quality of the climate models or their suitability for making forecasts (or projections) of future climate. Completely different arguments are needed for that. Presenting bad arguments in public is not good for trust in the field of science. It’s even worse for the trust in the judgments of the scientist who presents the arguments.

    • There is no better argument. Dyson is stating the obvious. One can’t predict anything with GCM. It’s amazing that some scientists think it’s possible.

      I predict 2010s will be much colder than 2000s. 2020s will be even colder. I also predict that my prediction will be better than any made according to the CO2GW “theory”.

    • Pekka, You are exactly right. Certifying an aircraft would not be possible without wind tunnel and flight testing. These tests are then used to validate models that can be used for estimating what will happen the next time you design an aircraft — always subject to further testing. Aircraft design is aided by the fact that the models are relatively good for attached flow. Separated flows are much more difficult, but not as relevant because the air load on the structure generally levels off or decreases after separation of the flow. In climate, unfortunately, the system involves a lot of separation and other phenomena that are well known to be ill-posed such as convection and vortex dominated flows.

  20. Mann’s arguments are very bad. The modeling issues in climate science have nothing to do with modeling issues related to the Higg’s boson.

    But this line of argument did allow the great Professor Mann to compare himself, in effect, with the altogether inferior Peter Higgs, to say nothing of the halfwit Freeman Dyson. In that sense Mann’s arguments were very good indeed. The ego needs feeding and who are we to deny it.

  21. Germany’s Wind Power Revolution in the Doldrums

    The construction of offshore wind parks in the North Sea has hit a snag with a vital link to the onshore power grid hopelessly behind schedule. The delays have some reconsidering the ability of wind power to propel Germany into the post-nuclear era.

    http://bit.ly/u1JsH6

    • Good thing those kinds of problems never happen with other sources of energy:

      Electricite de France SA, Europe’s biggest generator, said stress tests following the Fukushima atomic disaster and fatal accidents have raised the cost and delayed the start of its new reactor at Flamanville in Normandy.

      The EPR will cost around 6 billion euros ($8.5 million) and start selling power commercially in 2016 compared with a previous estimate of about 5 billion euros and 2014, according to an e-mailed statement today from the Paris-based company.

      • That plant will produce reliable power, whether the wind is blowing or not, night and day, for many years to come. You forgot about that.

  22. It is good to see some push-back by skeptics against the extremist deniers. Here we have Don Monfort against stefanthedenier, and over at WUWT we have Willis against Nikolov and Zeller and Jelbring and even tallbloke who supports their view. If they can take care of those extremists, the rest of us can focus on the proper debating topics. Few of us on the AGW side would want to devote time to argue with extremists who are beyond hope.

    • Don’t get too excited. I am just trying to move him from the denier camp, to the rabid semi-literate skeptic camp. We still need him on our side :)

      What do you see as the proper debating topics? I am down to about one that that really matters to me. feedbacks

      • The topics I see worth debating are sensitivity (feedbacks), attribution, physics (not at the basic level), understanding current and paleoclimate changes, global temperature changes and other observed trends in the atmosphere, ocean, ice, and biosphere. This is on the science side, where I have more interest, but there are also meta-debates about how this whole discussion is carried out in blogs, the media and politics, which is another characteristic of this blog.

    • I will go after the crackpots on the skeptic side, and the ones that make assertions based only on anecdotes on the AGW side.

      That would get rid of much of the noise, and the rest of the signal we could debate over, such as uncertainty levels and if, or how, we can reduce analysis complexity.

      • It will interesting to see if web will post more that meaningless posts.

      • WHT, I have done that in the past, and occasionally do it recreationally, but it is like shooting fish in a barrel sometimes when they deny basic physics.

      • It will interesting to see if web will post more that meaningless posts.

        I can’t even interpret what this means. I have done one blog post here, so I assume you are referring to comments. And that my comments have no meaning. Whatever. I will pick up what I can and am happy to get some good ideas from the recent nonequilibrium thermodynamics post and discussion comments. Cheers.

      • WebHub, you started barking first, still keep going. Above is my comment on ”METHANEGATE” you are part of that cover-up. Prove me wrong if you can; I’m easy target. My formulas are the proofs. If you had anything solid; you wouldn’t have resorted to: crayons, crackpots.. Prove what’s wrong, put it in writing – so others can see / read; to judge for themselves who is correct, me or you! I was provoking you, to see your interpretation; so I can paste it in my second book I’m writing. The challenge stays, don’t be coward. You have realized that I have all the solid proofs of the lies you protect / promote. The truth will win

    • Jim D, Extremist are in your camp; misleading that is going to be GLOBAL warming in 100years… BOO! B] the other extreme are the ”believers” in lots and lots of GLOBAL warmings / coolings in the past; which were localized, NEVER global.

      That makes me and others that don’t believe in crappy thing in the ”golden middle” Believing in lies, just because is trendy / fashionable – doesn’t make one moderate / secular, Don Monfort admits that is not going any monitoring on most of the planet; but is fanatically into their lies. I have proven that their lies are lies – I will never blame the honest. Your camp prefer the ”pretend Skeptics” because both camps are barking up the SAME wrong tree. The presumption that: ”in 100 years the phony Skeptics will not remember what was said / done today” doesn’t apply any more. I have proven NOW, that is not going to be any GLOBAL warming in 100y, Because in 100 years will be the SAME LAWS OF PHYSICS AS TODAY. It’s same as travelling to 2100. Real proofs made the Warmist to panic and go into damage control; by using Monfort, obviously he is with the lowest IQ in the pack. He is ridiculing me for not speaking English; because he can’t find anything wrong in my real proofs. Don, human brains is like parachute, only work when is open. Picking on my limited English and not on my proofs = it proves that his brains must be clinically dead.

      Jim D, I have challenged you all, on couple off occasions, all of you; to find something wrong. Unless you can find something wrong in my facts and formulas, 1000 Monforts will not help you!!! The truth remains to be faced. THE TRUTH always wins on the end!!!! stefanthedenier

      • Your whole message had no facts in it, just unfounded assertions. What am I supposed to challenge? Whose science do you follow, because it looks like you invent your own from what I have seen here?

      • Sorry, steffie. You lose out to the warmistas. They are correct in consigning you to the nutty crank bin. The rest of us will now have to overcome the stigma that you have allowed them to assign to skeptics. Nice work, dummy.

      • Jon D, you are asking; ”who am I following” Jon, I follow THE LAWS OF PHYSICS AND COMMON SENSE. I don’t follow Al Gore or Ian Plimer; because both of them think that they have abolished the laws of physics and both are common sense deficient. I can see on many blogs people are constantly trying to score a point; regardless if it makes sense / if one is correct or not. As soon as I have 100 honest people, to adopt the laws of physics and my formulas; start to utilize common sense; I will go fishing. I’m here to bring sanity back; because, millions of hones people are getting robbed / destroyed / brainwashed by the propaganda.

        Then I’ll go fishing, I love fishing, I hate internet / computers – then I will leave all in the hands of people that enjoy internet debates. My English is limited, fishing is my meditation; for me internet is boring. Plus internet is taking too much of my time, no time to finish writing my second book

        Read what is on my website; you will see that I have all the solid proofs, to see the end of the propaganda. Anybody prepared to stand-up for the truth, with REAL PROOFS, should join me and stop wasting his time with outdated fairy-tales. Same laws of physics that are today, will be in 100years. What those laws and my formulas don’t approve, is WRONG!

      • Don Monfort, I have being going out of my way; to point that ” I’m not a ”pretend Skeptic” not in your camp; therefore, you are an embarrassment to the truth. Millions of people are getting robed for billions of dollars; for you the debate is as music competition, do you know why?

        You are comfortable in Joshua’s kindergarten; Josh is very clever person, he is taking good care of his toddlers. It’s my duty to point out to the community at large that: GLOBAL warming is 100% lie; climate can be improved, if people know the truth. Water improves the climate; Warmist cannot admit it, because in the beginning they associated / compared water vapour with CO2. Humanity depends on the weather, rain / climate… toddlers in Joshua’s kindergarten when get wet – is not from rain. Don, because you are in Warmist bed with your bigotry, should the truth be silenced; what do you think?

        You are telling me that you like warmer climate, this and that; Don, because of clowns like you, Warmist are flourishing. You are covering up their destructions; because of irresponsible / ignorant attitude. The world is not spinning around you, you are just Warmist’ collateral damage. People like WebHub, Mosher are spooked, because they have brains to understand that I have the real proofs, to say with legitimacy: THE KING IS NAKED. On the other hand, you are their obedient roll of toilet paper. Robert and Joshua love ignorants like you. They must have tried to debunk my formulas – then coiled their tails between their legs. If they can’t prove me wrong with their intelligence, how can you prove anything with your bigotry… Start using your brains Don, and prove me wrong that your brains is not ”clinically dead” I would love to be proven wrong on that one

        You are perfect example, why I’m needed. Propaganda cooked many people’s brains like yours. Human Brains is like parachute, only works when is open. What have they done to you Don?!

      • stefan, I am not sure what you understand as true, and your Web site doesn’t look at the basics at all. It starts with the concept of solar in, infrared out in balance. Do you understand that part? [I know this won’t help Stefan, but other beginners reading might be interested in what would be a first step to understanding].
        Don, sometimes the margin is slight but we can tell the Stefans from the people who have a clue. The Stefans make up their own field of science.

  23. Reality Check: China’s renewables surge dampened by growth in coal consumption The Guardian, Thursday 12 January 2012 06.31 EST

    After burning an extra 95m tonnes last year, China will soon account for half the coal burned on the planet. . . .Liu Tienan – the director of the National Energy Administration – called for energy use to be kept below 4.1bn tonnes of coal equivalent per year by 2015. . . .
    the proposed figure remains the subject of fierce discussion as it was based on an assumption that China’s economy will grow at 7.5% per annum up until 2015, by which time the government is supposed to bring down energy intensity (units of energy per unit of GDP) by 16%.
    However, provincial governments are projecting a combined economic growth rate of more than 9%, which means they will face a fuel shortfall unless the energy target are raised or they fail to reach their goals. . . .it is believed that the provinces are arguing for a higher target of between 4.25 and 5 bn tonnes. . . .
    photovoltaic power generation, which rose threefold to 3GW, . . .
    Chinese energy consumption rose almost threefold from 2000 to reach 3.2bn tonnes of coal equivalent in 2010. On current trends it will rise to almost 5bn tonnes by 2020.

    Compare: US oil usage grew 9.1%/year for 60 years from 1880 to 1940. See Tad Patzek, Hubbert Peaks 2006

    Patzek reports that world crude oil production grew 6.6% per year for 90 years from 1880 and 1970.
    Exponential growth, energetic Hubbert cycles, and the advancement of technology, Tad W. Patzek, Archives of Mining Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Accepted May 3, 2008

    China’s growth rate could well continue near 7%-9%/year if availability of crude oil was not a constraint.
    BUT after India’s use – that leaves declines for the rest of the world! See: Peak Net Exports—A Five Year Retrospective and a Look Forward
    Available Net Exports (after China+India) are down 13% since 2005!

  24. Closing IPCC Reviews into a Secretive Society
    Thomas Stocker Co-Chair of AR5 WG1 (with Phil Jones) have
    transformed the IPCC review process from:

    openness and transparency.

    TO Secret and opaque. Now the

    IPCC considers its draft reports, prior to acceptance, to be pre-decisional, provided in confidence to reviewers, and not for public distribution, quotation or citation.”

    Consquently, IPCC has demanded that ClimateAudit:

    remove the relevant parts with discussions of the ZOD from your blog and, furthermore, that this does not happen with the FOD.

    Steve McIntyre traces this backroom policy inversion in: Stocker’s Earmarks

    This is directly opposite the principles of the THE AARHUS Convention that “secures citizen’s rights though “access to information and public participation”. See the “UN/ECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters” 2000. It also runs directly contrary to the US Freedom of Information Act 5 USC 552.

    The Empire has struck back! It is a sad day as “climate science” descends into closed secret proceedings – where a self chosen clique of unelected alarmists bias the “science” to coerce politicians to force taxpayers to bury trillions of dollars in the ground – and starve the poor in developing countries of the resources needed for critical humanitarian projects.

    With the EU and US providing most funds for the IPCC, legislators should require the equivalent freedom of information for all citizens from the IPCC. Call you legislators!

    • The IPCC has further sealed comments from other reviewers.
      See also Steve McIntyre Jan 13, 2012 at 12:11 PM | Permalink

      one other change that has passed under the radar.

      Under previous rules, a reviewer was entitled to see review comments during the process. Under that provision, I asked for Review Comments of the AR4 First Draft. They sent them to me after some reflection. To be annoying, they sent them in a paper copy, non-searchable. Now review comments of the first draft are sealed even for reviewers until after publication of the final report.

  25. Dr Curry – do you think the recent treatment of Katherine Hayhoe by ‘skeptics’ was warranted – she too says that she is trying to build bridges?

    http://www.rtcc.org/policy/katharine-hayhoe-qa-climate-scientists-in-usa-under-attack/

    • Louise, I don’t know Katharine Hayhoe personally. I first came across her a few years ago when I heard her debate a skeptic on radio. I thought she did a very good job at presenting a reasonable perspective. She seems to be engaging with a number of groups that are inclined to be skeptical. What I find most interesting is that she is persisting in maintaining her middle ground, which is something I failed to do in 2005/2006 when I was slammed by skeptics and warmly welcomed by the consensus. I think Katharine Hayhoe is becoming an increasingly important voice in the climate debate, and from my perspective a very welcome one.

      The way she is being treated by limbaugh’s attack dogs (or whoever is doing the attacking) is reprehensible, and in this particular case, counterproductive if it causes her to veer from her middle ground. On the subject of reprehensible attacks, see this article about attacks on Kerry Emanuel (and even his wife).
      http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/13/us-climate-scientist-wife-email-hate?newsfeed=true

      Does anyone know who is behind these kinds of attacks? Is this something Limbaugh and the dittoheads are taking credit for? I don’t think it is spontaneous, seems too well organized.

      • Nice to see that you’re up on both of these events, Judith: The Gingrich development is particularly interesting. I guess he decided that the climate change debate was more political than scientific in nature. Curious that not only he, but also Romney and even Huntsman also suddenly interpreted the data differently once they were on the campaign trail.

        Does anyone know who is behind these kinds of attacks?

        Seems like this is a place to start:

        One website, Climate Depot, posted Emanuel’s email address.

      • I suspect it is spontaneous, not that some don’t make a deliberate effort to inflame passions.

        Sadly, I think it originates in a climate where scientists are accused of deliberate manipulation, fraud, and acting out of pure self-interest (ie financial), etc. This kind of rhetoric sets the scene for these attacks from a small subset of people take these accusations very literally and respond in kind.

        People who frame the scienitfic disagreements in terms of purposeful malfeasance on the part of some scientists, should have a good hard think about what contribution they may be making to this problem.

      • Michael –

        I suspect it is spontaneous, not that some don’t make a deliberate effort to inflame passions.

        I agree. It doesn’t seem to me to be particularly likely to be coordinated.

        But I would add to your comment that seen within the larger context of partisan battling, there’s nothing unusual here. It’s more than just conspiracy-mongering about climate scientists – it’s reflective of the kind of tribalism that is endemic to virtually any controversy, because some people are willing to jettison principles of critical thinking to protect their cultural, social, or political allegiances.

      • I believe the Climate Despot site is run by the political operative Marc Morano, who worked for senator Inhofe and for Limbaugh in the past.
        http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2012/01/13/morano-abets-threats/

      • WHT –

        I believe the Climate Despot site is run by the political operative Marc Morano, who worked for senator Inhofe and for Limbaugh in the past.

        Creating a tribalistic environment is, no doubt, a coordinated effort; it serves a political agenda. I’d say that it’s a stretch to say that those kinds of attacks are coordinated. The problem, IMO, is that some folks fail to see any connection between fanning tribalism and the resulting tribalistic behavior (no doubt, on both sides of the debate).

      • randomengineer

        The Gingrich development is particularly interesting. I guess he decided that the climate change debate was more political than scientific in nature.

        Or it could be that climate is on the backburner due to a crap economy, idiotic current energy policy, and the GOP base isn’t champing at the bit to implement carbon taxes. IOW addressing climate comes after fixing energy policy, which is a reflection of what can be realistically addressed and in what order. Pragmatism rules.

        Claiming that re-ordering the priority list indicates a rejection of science is simply dishonest.

      • John Carpenter

        “Nice to see that you’re up on both of these events, Judith: The Gingrich development is particularly interesting. I guess he decided that the climate change debate was more political than scientific in nature. Curious that not only he, but also Romney and even Huntsman also suddenly interpreted the data differently once they were on the campaign trail.”

        Joshua, why would this development be curious? They have to appeal to the right fringe at this time in order to gain the nomination. It should not be surprising or curious for anyone middle aged or older to know this is exactly how politicians behave…

        “Does anyone know who is behind these kinds of attacks? Is this something Limbaugh and the dittoheads are taking credit for? I don’t think it is spontaneous, seems too well organized.”

        I am not familiar with Katherine Hayhoe or her climate change position. She says she is in the middle. She expressed she is a christian several times, married to a minister and apparently conservative in her thinking. Curious to me is how she probably would disagree with you, Louise, and Michael on 99/100 issues, but the one issue that apparently has brought her hate mail by the likes of Limbaugh followers is strong enough for three liberal minded individuals to come running to her defense. It goes to show how biased everyone can be in the way they pick and choose who to defend…. it just depends on the what the issue is.

        For example, we see a liberal minded person like Mark Lynas ‘open his mind’ about questioning the workings of the IPCC and bam, the left is all over him like a wet blanket and the ‘skeptics’ cosy up to him as a new pal. Do you think he received a few hate mails? I dunno, but I guess he probably did based on what I read during that debate. Take Steve McIntyre as another example. He’s a liberal thinker and full believer in AGW, yet gets branded as an AGW skeptic by those who don’t know what his mission is. Who is behind that propaganda campaign? The folks over at RC and those that tag along on their coat tails?

        I am largely a conservatively minded person. IMO, Limbaugh is a blowhard and I can’t stand listening to him. He is all about polarization because that is what makes him popular among his followers. What that says to me is… there are those who can think for themselves, can study an issue fairly from both sides and forge an opinion and there are those who follow a leader and ape his/her message because it does not involve any personal thought and examination. I think we are dealing with the latter half wrt those who have sent hate mail to Katherin Hayhoe.

      • WebHubTelescope
        Re ClimateDepot.com – it is a project of CFACT.org – The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow dedicated to:

        Prospering Lives. Promoting Progress. Protecting the Earth.
        At the heart of CFACT, our goal is to “enhance the fruitfulness of the earth and all of its inhabitants”. CFACT accomplishes this through four main strategies:
        Prospering Lives. CFACT works to help people find better ways to provide for food, water, energy and other essential human services.
        Promoting Progress. CFACT advocates the use of safe, affordable technologies and the pursuit of economic policies that reduce pollution and waste, and maximize the use of resources.
        Protecting the Earth. CFACT helps protect the earth through wise stewardship of the land and its wildlife.
        Education. CFACT educates various sectors of the public about important facts and practical solutions regarding environmental concerns.

        Marc Morano is

        CFACT’s editor in chief of Climate Depot, and he has been garnering extensive coverage lately. Last week he was cited in the Washington Times. This week it’s the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang and Fox Nation.
        Today, Andrew Freedman of the Washington Post described Climate Depot as “the climate skeptic equivalent of the Drudge Report.”
        Yesterday, Marc Morano wrote a story about how Al Gore, self-proclaimed inventor of the internet, had his website crash because it could not handle all the traffic it received after Drudge linked to it. That story was quickly picked up by Fox News, which reposted it on its Fox Nation website.

  26. I’ve located most of the AR5 ZODs and have put them up here:
    http://www.davidappell.com/ZODS/

    I’m still looking for a few chapters, if you have them and are willing to share.