If you can prove dangerous man-made global warming, you win $6000

Power engineer Bryan Leyland yesterday spearheaded a dramatic new challenge to publish a peer-reviewed paper that proves we’re endangering the climate. For such a paper, Bryan announced he will give a cash prize of $NZD2000. Some of us have pitched in and already raised the prize money to $5000 $6000.

The challenge is called the Augie Auer Prize, which commemorates an unforgettable founder of the NZ Climate Science Coalition, and the other contributors are Bill Lindqvist, Leighton Smith and yours truly.

The challenge

A prize of $6000 will be awarded for the first peer-reviewed paper that satisfies an independent scientific panel beyond reasonable doubt, based on real-world evidence, that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide will cause an increase in global mean surface temperature that will be dangerous to human welfare by 2050.

The prize will be administered by the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition and the offer is valid for 12 months from yesterday, 29 March, 2017.

Judging will be by an independent panel of three people with qualifications in sciences relevant to climate change and statistical analysis. One person will be chosen by the NZCSC, one by the applicant for the prize and the third by negotiation between these two.

As we are told that the consensus holds that man-made global warming is real and dangerous, we look forward to receiving many applications for the prize.

This offer must grow larger than any excuse to resist, so when it isn’t taken up it will be obvious to everyone that lack of evidence is the only reason. So we invite anyone to contribute to the prize pool. To record your pledge, you can leave a comment below, contact Bryan Leyland or email the NZ Climate Science Coalition.

Benefactors

  • Bryan Leyland
  • Bill Lindqvist
  • Richard Treadgold
  • Leighton Smith
  • Maggy Wassilieff

 

Visits: 543

89 Thoughts on “If you can prove dangerous man-made global warming, you win $6000

  1. Magoo on 31/03/2017 at 12:53 am said:

    Simon and Dennis,

    This is your big chance, the evidence is supposedly ‘overwhelming’ so it should be easy money. You could paste or sticky tape the 2016 El Nino temperatures onto the end of Mann’s hockey stick graph in a similar manner to his trademark dataset splicing technique, supplement it with a pretty collage of dubious alarmist articles snipped out from The Guardian & Greenpeace, & throw in a few failed doomsday predictions from the great & mysterious prophet Goracle (manbearpig be upon him). Maybe mention a few key words like ‘denier’ & ‘polar bear’ a few times – it’s a sure thing.

  2. Dennis N Horne on 31/03/2017 at 9:04 am said:

    PROOF! In science? Ha ha halfwit…
    You deniers wouldn’t recognise science if it slithered up your back passage and bit your brains.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/us/pentagon-says-global-warming-presents-immediate-security-threat.html?_r=0
    Pentagon Signals Security Risks of Climate Change. CORAL DAVENPORT OCT. 13, 2014

    WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Monday released a report asserting decisively that climate change poses an immediate threat to national security, with increased risks from terrorism, infectious disease, global poverty and food shortages. It also predicted rising demand for military disaster responses as extreme weather creates more global humanitarian crises.

    The report lays out a road map to show how the military will adapt to rising sea levels, more violent storms and widespread droughts. The Defense Department will begin by integrating plans for climate change risks across all of its operations, from war games and strategic military planning situations to a rethinking of the movement of supplies.

    Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, speaking Monday at a meeting of defense ministers in Peru, highlighted the report’s findings and the global security threats of climate change.

    “The loss of glaciers will strain water supplies in several areas of our hemisphere,” Mr. Hagel said. “Destruction and devastation from hurricanes can sow the seeds for instability. Droughts and crop failures can leave millions of people without any lifeline, and trigger waves of mass migration.”

    The report is the latest in a series of studies highlighting the national security risks of climate change. But the Pentagon’s characterization of it as a present-day threat demanding immediate action represents a significant shift for the military, which has in the past focused on climate change as a future risk. [continues]

  3. Andy on 31/03/2017 at 9:30 am said:

    Dennis does make a reasonable point in that we don’t “prove” science in the way we prove mathematical theorems

    As Popper stated in Conjectures and Refutations, we create a conjecture that is falsifiable.
    In that respect, we have to define what the conjecture is, and what would refute it.

    To date, answers to these questions have not been forthcoming

  4. Richard Treadgold on 31/03/2017 at 9:52 am said:

    Yes, Dennis does have a point. The word ‘prove’ is used here merely as shorthand for the sake of conversational speech and the brevity of a headline. Dennis plays an unconvincing old greenie trick by listing possible effects of warming while ignoring its cause (I see Simon has just done exactly the same thing). Dennis also ignores the glaring reality that the Pentagon has military-grade financial reasons to fall in with the global warming meme, just as the insurance industry talks it up to prepare its clients for rising premiums. The challenge we’ve offered here is to give solid evidence that we’re causing it, not to speculate on how bad it might be.

  5. Dennis N Horne on 31/03/2017 at 10:19 am said:

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/30/climate-change-global-reshuffle-of-wildlife-will-have-huge-impacts-on-humanity

    Climate change: global reshuffle of wildlife will have huge impacts on humanity
    Mass migration of species to cooler climes has profound implications for society, pushing disease-carrying insects, crop pests and crucial pollinators into new areas, says international team of scientists

    [extract] This mass movement of species is the biggest for about 25,000 years, the peak of the last ice age, say the scientists, who represent more than 40 institutions around the world. “The shifts will leave ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in their wake, radically reshaping the pattern of human wellbeing … and potentially leading to substantial conflict,” the team warn. “Human society has yet to appreciate the implications of unprecedented species redistribution for life on Earth, including for human lives.”

    Climate change driven by human greenhouse gas emissions is not just increasing temperatures, but also raising sea levels, the acidity of the oceans and making extreme weather such as droughts and floods more frequent. All of these are forcing many species to migrate to survive.

    “Land-based species are moving polewards by an average of 17km per decade, and marine species by 72km per decade” said Prof Gretta Pecl at the University of Tasmania in Australia, who led the new analysis.

    ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

    Maybe you could write to these 40 scientific institutions and set them right. Don’t forget to include your CV: qualifications, current research interests, awards (Nobel?) and papers published in Nature and Science…

  6. Maggy Wassilieff on 31/03/2017 at 10:35 am said:

    Count me in for $1000.

    Thank you, Maggy, that’s very generous. I’ll pass your name and email address to Bryan Leyland, who is managing the challenge. – Richard T.

  7. Magoo on 31/03/2017 at 10:45 am said:

    It looks like the US govt is considering funding scientists to challenge anthropogenic global warming and study natural causes:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/03/29/these-climate-doubters-want-to-create-a-red-team-to-challenge-climate-science/?utm_term=.8db31408e54b#comments

    Now that will really rip the green’s nighties.

  8. Andy on 31/03/2017 at 10:46 am said:

    Climate change driven by human greenhouse gas emissions is not just increasing temperatures, but also raising sea levels, the acidity of the oceans and making extreme weather such as droughts and floods more frequent. All of these are forcing many species to migrate to survive.

    How does “raising (sic) sea levels” have an effect on species migration? Is this something someone has studied?

  9. Simon on 31/03/2017 at 11:08 am said:

    Thank you Maggy.
    I request that the prize money be donated to NIWA as partial compensation for the debts owed by Bryan Leyland and the other trustees of NZCSET.

  10. Richard Treadgold on 31/03/2017 at 11:24 am said:

    Simon,

    Don’t be smart, lad. NIWA can apply like everyone else. Just produce some damned science!!

  11. Simon on 31/03/2017 at 1:28 pm said:

    Hansen and others have shown that 2°C of warming above pre-industrial levels will be dangerous. The question is whether and when this will occur. The uncertainty is in what future emissions will occur between now and 2050. Given that the Paris Agreements are insufficient to keep below this level, plus recent changes by the Trump Administraton, and candid admissions by NZ and other governments that they will struggle to meet their targets; it is quite possible that 2°C of warming is reached by 2050.
    Leyland is being quite cunning here, if he had suggested 2100 or later, then he has just lost $2000, unless mankind can keep cumulative emissions below 500 GtC (which is not going to happen). Not that he would ever pay up, he has past history in reneging on promises and financial obligations.

  12. Richard Treadgold on 31/03/2017 at 1:40 pm said:

    Mr Papps,

    he has past history in reneging on promises and financial obligations.

    Kindly justify or apologise for and withdraw these scurrilous accusations (I note your use of the plural) right now or you will be blocked from commenting here again. Referring to the judge’s unprecedented ruling of gigantic costs against our band of citizen whistle-blowers after our failed request for judicial review of NIWA’s actions doesn’t qualify as reneging, since he didn’t act alone.

  13. Andy on 31/03/2017 at 2:03 pm said:

    Hansen’s opinion is that 2 degrees of warming will be dangerous, but not all climate scientists agree. Richard Betts, for example, does not.

    The term “dangerous” is highly subjective and is very politically loaded in this context

  14. Maggy Wassilieff on 31/03/2017 at 2:13 pm said:

    @Simon,

    I have been funding NIWA for the last 25 years.
    If NIWA had been operating in an open, transparent manner, then there would not have been any need for NZCSET.
    You can request all you like about where I squander my money, but as I have no connection with Bryan Leyland or any member of the NZCSET, I reckon you are on a hiding to nothing.
    But if you want to be of use… how about getting Dr Wayne Mapp to run an investigation into why NIWA has failed to carry out the work he promised Parliament they would undertake on the NZ Temperature Record;
    namely publish the method, table of adjustments and results in a peer-reviewed scientific journal?

  15. Andy on 31/03/2017 at 3:20 pm said:

    “he has past history in reneging on promises and financial obligations”

    One could argue about the legitimacy or morality of creating an educational trust to limit liability on court expenses, but as far as I know it isn’t illegal

    You can create a limited liability company to protect your own assets too.

    The public gets shafted all the time by governments. My sympathy with govt funded institutions that have to bear some costs is pretty limited. We firehose millions of taxpayer money down the drain every year, particularly in my industry, that of IT.

  16. Simon on 31/03/2017 at 3:25 pm said:

    Read the discussion below in this article on the whole sad case: http://pundit.co.nz/content/debts-and-lies-are-generally-mixed-together
    The consensus is that Trustees are personally liable for legal costs incurred. The only reason this has not happened is because the cost of pursing the Trustees would exceed the cost outstanding.
    I doubt though that Bryan really understood what he was committing himself to. Reading between the lines, it was the other Trustees who were most actively pursuing the court case.

  17. Andy on 31/03/2017 at 3:32 pm said:

    It makes me laugh when lawyers get all sanctimonious about this. When we were fighting the coastal hazards policies in ChCh, we were the ones giving our time for free. The council had umpteen legal experts on god knows what hourly rate

  18. Andy on 31/03/2017 at 3:36 pm said:

    Geddis doesn’t exactly sound impartial does he?

    “Back in 2010, I posted on the obviously hopeless case brought by the “New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust” – a front organisation I’ll come back to”

    ” obviously hopeless case”
    Obviously guilty, your honour. Case closed

    Having said all this, I think the NZCSC needs some lessons in trolling and fighting the left. Trump is a maestro in this dept

  19. Richard Treadgold on 31/03/2017 at 3:50 pm said:

    Andy,

    One could argue about the legitimacy or morality of creating an educational trust to limit liability on court expenses, but as far as I know it isn’t illegal

    Quite right, sir. But it’s terribly important to understand what is commonplace to any lawyer: the NZCSET was created by the needs of the court, not by our desire to avoid costs. I’ve explained this many times. It was impossible for the Coalition to bring a suit in the High court, because the first thing the judge wants to know is: “who is this party?” But the Coalition had and has no legal existence. It has no licence, no certificate and is entered in no official register. It does not exist. We were therefore obliged to create a legal entity just to enter the court, else we would have had no voice, no possibility of questioning NIWA and our application would have shrivelled before it began. As it’s simply required by law to create one, any ethical arguments become moot.

    But back then there was also no reason to imagine that we might be stuck with costs. We had our own solicitor, Barry Brill, working pro bono, and he had wangled the pro bono services of an excellent Queen’s Counsel, Terry Sissons, so we were well prepared from the start to mount a professional case and to pay our own costs. Not many people realise that there was no precedent for a group of citizens, asking questions of a powerful public body, to have costs awarded against them, so when it turned out like that, there were dropped jaws around the country.

    You’re right, that creating a trust just to mount a case is not illegal, but it’s more than that—we were forced into it by the law.

  20. Richard Treadgold on 31/03/2017 at 3:58 pm said:

    Simon,

    I doubt though that Bryan really understood what he was committing himself to.

    That’s neither apology nor justification, nor do you have any idea what he understood. I repeat: apologise or justify your libel now. I draw the line at libel because I’m the one in the firing line. So get on with it right smart or you’re out of here. I don’t care.

  21. Andy on 31/03/2017 at 3:59 pm said:

    OK, thanks for the clarification, RT.

    Those that gang up on the NZCET are doing it for pure political theatre. There is no real concern for the unpaid costs

    I’m pretty sure if some “minority group” was being treated in this way, the tables would be turned.

    Of course, a bunch of grey haired “climate deniers” (like me) could be classified as a minority too, but not the right kind. “White conservative males” are at the bottom of the rung in the Oppression Olympics

  22. Alexander K on 31/03/2017 at 4:27 pm said:

    Andy has it about right: I too am a middle class small-c conservative white male who has committed the awful sin of living a long and (relatively) healthy life and I am becoming very fed-up with the SJWs, Snowflakes and Warmists who think they are so badly treated by us authoritarian and racist old white men who couldn’t possibly know anything.
    When one has been around the traps for some years, observations tend get laid down in the back of the brain ready to be retrieved and used at the appropriate time. The afore-mentioned Snowflakes, SJWs, etc will eventually grow up and realise this, but they want to run the world NOW before they are ready for it.
    Sorry, little luvs, but it aint your turn yet! Watch, wait and listen and you may catch a clue or two as the parade passes you by.
    As the old guy on the cheese ads says “Good things take time.”

  23. Richard Treadgold on 31/03/2017 at 4:35 pm said:

    Andy,

    Right, you are. I should mention the costs ordered by the judge were slightly north of $89,000. No trivial matter, that.

  24. Andy on 31/03/2017 at 4:44 pm said:

    No, not trivial at all. I’m not implying that costs to NZCSC were trivial. However, against the firehose of government wastage, the cost to NIWA was a drop in the ocean

  25. Andy on 31/03/2017 at 5:04 pm said:

    I am going to guess that no one will take the money. Not because they can’t write a paper, but that they can’t take money from “Nazis”.

    If you watched the video I posted earlier, we are all Nazis and Hitler now

    Have a nice weekend my fellow Hitlers!

  26. Richard Treadgold on 31/03/2017 at 5:05 pm said:

    Maggy,

    how about getting Dr Wayne Mapp to run an investigation into why NIWA has failed to carry out the work he promised Parliament they would undertake on the NZ Temperature Record

    Yes, highly relevant; although now the responsible minister would be the Hon Paul Goldsmith, Minister of Science and Innovation. Mapp did not seek reelection in 2011 and was appointed a Law Commissioner in 2012 for a five-year term.

    I was just glancing through Venning J’s decision on recusal and costs and the thought struck me it would be a great place to start preparing an application to have, for example, NIWA’s broken parliamentary promises examined by the High Court. There are lots of lessons to be learned from Venning’s decisions and comments.

  27. Maggy Wassilieff on 31/03/2017 at 7:08 pm said:

    @ Richard Treadgold,
    yes, I know Dr Mapp is not the Min of Science.

    I was alluding to his recent call for an investigation into the Hit & Miss affair in Afghanistan.
    I find it astonishing that he wants to revisit his decision to approve of the SAS operation when he was Min of Defence, but has never expressed any concern about how information was withheld/drip-fed to him about the activities of the group in charge of the NZ Temperature Record.

    It would be timely to revisit NIWA’s broken promise.. especially as a number of associations and respected Scientific Journals are now calling for evidence that data and computer code are readily available and evidence that results are able to be reproduced.
    http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/8/084004/pdf

    It is no longer acceptable for the authors of any scientific work to be solely responsible for access to their data.

  28. Richard Treadgold on 31/03/2017 at 7:36 pm said:

    Ah, I see. I haven’t followed this. The data accessibility issue can be a thorny one. For example, I recently wrote to the lead author of the newly published paper, Regional cooling caused recent New Zealand glacier advances in a period of global warming, Andrew Mackintosh, and in answer to one of my questions he said: “The model uses daily temperature data but I don’t think I can forward these on without agreement from NIWA as these data are not one of their standard products and we used them under contract.”

    So he cannot release the data essential for understanding and replicating their paper, and he cannot be criticised for it. The faux public scientists (required to show a profit) must collect their toll, twice, before other scientists or members of the public can examine their data. Presumably that means that even if I purchased the daily data the terms of sale would prohibit me from publishing them on the blog. Come to think of it, if I asked NIWA nicely, perhaps they would agree to releasing the data to me.

    Which is more important: NIWA making a profit from publicly funded data or a completely open scientific process?

    I’ve just read the abstract of your reference, and I can see it doesn’t exactly relate to the example I’ve just described. Dr Mackintosh isn’t the gatekeeper of the NIWA data he or his institution purchased. Still, these issues are in the same topic, and it’s a good one.

  29. Dennis N Horne on 31/03/2017 at 7:46 pm said:

    It looks like the US govt is considering funding scientists to challenge anthropogenic global warming and study natural causes.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/03/29/these-climate-doubters-want-to-create-a-red-team-to-challenge-climate-science/?utm_term=.8db31408e54b

    Yeah. Nah, If Curry and Christy had anything to challenge the consensus view of — to all intents and purposes — every publishing climate scientist and every informed scientist in the RS, NAS, AAAS, APS, ACS … they’d produce it.

    Nobel Prize and great fame awaits.

    I guess those offering a “reward” to “prove” we’re endangering the climate — whatever that means — just don’t understand how science works. Would the reward be paid in bees? Bees-in-bonnets I mean.

    Why don’t you watch Professor Alley explain the science to you.
    Richard Alley – 4.6 Billion Years of Earth’s Climate History: The Role of CO2. National Academy of Sciences
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujkcTZZlikg

  30. Dennis N Horne on 01/04/2017 at 7:46 am said:

    No global warming today.

    April Fool!

    Energy equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima bombs will be added to the climate system today. Today and every day.

    Deniers know less than Fourier in 1827
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/mar/31/scientists-understood-the-climate-150-years-ago-better-than-the-epa-head-today

  31. Bryan Leyland on 01/04/2017 at 9:21 am said:

    I am still waiting for someone to produce some credible evidence supported by observational data.

    All we get is articles that assume that it is real and dangerous.

    If everyone is so sure the evidence exists, why can’t they produce it at the drop of a hat???

  32. Richard Treadgold on 01/04/2017 at 10:39 am said:

    Dennis,

    Energy equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima bombs will be added to the climate system today. Today and every day.

    Well done for attempting to show the scale of human influence. However, on this occasion it doesn’t help us much because it’s woefully incomplete. When you know that the energy from the sun is the equivalent of about 1000 Hiroshima bombs per second, you can’t be impressed at a human influence of only 4 bombs per second, or 0.004 of the natural solar force.

  33. Richard Treadgold on 01/04/2017 at 10:44 am said:

    Hi Bryan,

    If everyone is so sure the evidence exists, why can’t they produce it at the drop of a hat???

    Great to see you here. It’s a simple enough question, isn’t it, and we’ve been asking it for years. We have truculent characters like Dennis who swagger in to save the earth, strong on abuse and short on climate facts, who just don’t help. I think it’s a great time for your Augie Auer Challenge. Let’s hope it shakes something loose.

  34. Magoo on 01/04/2017 at 6:48 pm said:

    I thought the evidence is supposed to be ‘overwhelming’, very funny that this ‘overwhelming’ evidence is nowhere to be seen, not even when a prize worth thousands of dollars is offered.

    Dennis’ frothing rants in lieu of any ‘overwhelming’ evidence just confirms what we all know is true – there is no ‘overwhelming’ evidence for AGW. BTW, the frothing rants have really hit top gear since the prize was offered – hilarious.

  35. Dennis N Horne on 02/04/2017 at 7:45 am said:

    The issue is – which is the dominant forcing right now?

    The climate responds to the sum of the effects of the various forcings.

    The current sum of natural forcings is very slightly negative, which means the Earth should be cooling very very slowly.

    This is useful:

    http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Book_chapters/Rahmstorf_Zedillo_2008.pdf

    Page 47 of the text (which is actually page 14 of the pdf) is the key.

    Near the top of that page….

    …. the magnitude of the warming is what is expected from the anthropogenic perturbation of the radiation balance, so anthropogenic forcing is able to explain all of the temperature rise

    Further down…..

    The second important piece of evidence is clear: there is no viable alternative explanation.

    In the scientific literature, no serious alternative hypothesis has been proposed to explain the observed global warming.

    Other possible causes, such as solar activity, volcanic activity, cosmic rays, or orbital cycles, are well observed, but they do not show trends capable of explaining the observed warming.

  36. Dennis N Horne on 02/04/2017 at 8:02 am said:

    The American Association for the Advancement of Science endorses the consensus and publishes the prestigious journal Science. Doesn’t “prove” global warming/climate change, but it certainly proves the biggest scientific academy in the world accepts it. Along with all the others, of course.

    Denialism is a psychological mechanism. Your irrational response to scientific method and knowledge explained:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fle_FkILmEQ&feature=youtu.be
    It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine) | Daniel Gilbert | TEDxAcademy

    But hey, you can “believe” anything you want. Chemtrails. Fake moon landings. 9/11 demolition. Sky-Daddy. Wanganui River is a person. You know something the global community of scientists doesn’t.

    I think you can even deny the Holocaust. In New Zealand, anyway.

  37. Andy on 02/04/2017 at 8:04 am said:

    How much ‘observed warming” are we referring to? Over what time period?

    Is it dangerous? Will it be dangerous in the future? How do we reconcile this theory with the lack of observed forcing as predicted by the theory?

  38. Maggy Wassilieff on 02/04/2017 at 8:58 am said:

    Here’s a brief glimpse of some of the ‘global ecodisasters” we have been warned about since the 1970s.
    https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/04/01/april-fools/#more-27050
    These ones have not come to pass in the time period specified.

    It’s looking very much that Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming predictions will soon be consigned to this list of elaborate ecoscares.

  39. Richard Treadgold on 02/04/2017 at 9:40 am said:

    Dennis,

    The current sum of natural forcings is very slightly negative, which means the Earth should be cooling very very slowly. … the magnitude of the warming is what is expected from the anthropogenic perturbation of the radiation balance, so anthropogenic forcing is able to explain all of the temperature rise

    Just because it appears to confirm our guess of the anthropogenic perturbation doesn’t mean it’s correct, because we just don’t know any of this with precision. Whenever I read the IPCC reports on this, their confidence levels are poor, and whenever they produce graphs the errors bars are large. That’s because our best knowledge of both natural and anthropogenic forcing is poor. We don’t know what they are. How can we explain all the temperature rise so precisely, when we don’t even know what put us into the LIA or what lifted us out?

    The second important piece of evidence is clear: there is no viable alternative explanation.

    Thinking that it doesn’t exist if we don’t know it is deep hubris.

    In the scientific literature, no serious alternative hypothesis has been proposed to explain the observed global warming.

    This is wrong. Cloud cover is widely regarded as capable of significantly altering the insolation that reaches the troposphere, and hence change the balance of forcings, with changes of only a few percent but we’ve never had good enough data on actual global cloud cover to ascertain whether it does.

    The following passage from Climate4you explains the principles and sketches the magnitudes:

    Within the still short period of satellite cloud cover observations, the total global cloud cover reached a maximum of about 69 percent in 1987 and a minimum of about 64 percent in 2000 (see diagram above), a decrease of about 5 percent. This decrease roughly corresponds to a radiative net change of about 0.9 W/m2 within a period of only 13 years, which may be compared with the total net change from 1750 to 2006 of 1.6 W/m2 of all climatic drivers as estimated in the IPCC 2007 report, including release of greenhouse gasses from the burning of fossil fuels. These observations leave little doubt that cloud cover variations may have a profound effect on global climate and meteorology on almost any time scale considered.

    The issue is – which is the dominant forcing right now?

    Yes, that’s right. But our knowledge is simply incapable of establishing it. You rather trustingly outline a cosy scientific understanding of global temperature control, when scientists can only speculate even on causes of the early 21st-century temperature hiatus. Last I heard, they’d dreamed up about 60 of them. That’s not knowledge, Dennis, that’s guessing.

  40. Richard Treadgold on 02/04/2017 at 10:36 am said:

    Dennis,

    “Denialism is a psychological mechanism.”

    There are others hanging around here who could give really amusing answers to this, but I’m different. I think you’re right, for that’s what denialism is. But you’re trying to hang the label on us just to avoid our questions. What other reason could there possibly be? See, the best sceptics deny nothing, but they carefully express penetrating questions about the topic. The only ones bleating about deniers are those annoyed by the questions.

    You stand out, Dennis, as one who almost never answers our questions. Sometimes, as today, in fact, you give well researched answers, but not so as we might notice. It seems you try to hide them. That is, you never repeat our question and say directly “here’s an answer to that” just for the avoidance of doubt. But though you answer some of them, our questions must still annoy you, for you accuse us of denying. It’s a dead giveaway.

    Never mind. Let us for a moment say that you were correct, and we were all soaked in the most egregious denial of the truth of climatology and global warming. That would still not answer our questions. The questions would remain for as long as humanity might remain, until a bold soul looks again and examines the climate. I’m trying to say that it’s quite useless to keep up your harassment of us on personal grounds; the only thing that might advance your agenda, which is to change our minds, is to address our questions, which necessarily means using science and observations. You know this. Today you took another step towards it. Nothing else matters.

  41. Andy on 02/04/2017 at 11:51 am said:

    But hey, you can “believe” anything you want. Chemtrails. Fake moon landings. 9/11 demolition. Sky-Daddy

    Dennis, do you accept that everything governments and the media tells you is true?

    I can point holes in some of your favorite list above, but that would be going off topic.

  42. Dennis N Horne on 02/04/2017 at 4:53 pm said:

    Wrong, Richard Treadgold. I’m not annoyed by your questions.

    What questions?

    I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind. I know there is no cure for people who really believe they know “something” that tens of thousands of climate scientists – experts in the field – have somehow missed. Or lie about. Who know more science than the informed scientists in every scientific institution and society on the planet.

    I’m just examining the depths of the delusions displayed by your little coterie.

    Long may the experiment continue. It’s going to be spectacular when West Antarctica collapses. Better eat less and exercise more …

  43. Magoo on 02/04/2017 at 5:48 pm said:

    ‘Who know[s] more science than the informed scientists in every scientific institution and society on the planet.’

    Really? Where is the evidence that ‘scientists in every scientific institution and society on the planet’ all agree with AGW or the conclusions of the IPCC – did they ask the members for their opinions?

    Now, what were you saying about lying Dennis dear boy?

    If you want to examine ‘the depths of the delusions’, there’s no better example than one of your frothing rants when confronted with empirical evidence from the IPCC – it’s very funny. 😉

  44. Andy on 02/04/2017 at 8:30 pm said:

    Dennis

    You will never change my mind about anything when you are such a sanctimonious and ignorant arsehole

  45. Maggy Wassilieff on 03/04/2017 at 10:01 am said:

    “Denialism is a psychological mechanism.”

    Denialism is an ugly neologism. No decent dictionary knows of its existence.

    It belongs in the realms of fraudulent science… as does most of the stuff published in psychology journals.
    http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-reproducibility-test-1.18248

    http://boingboing.net/2017/03/02/psychology-journal-editor-aske.html

  46. Andy on 03/04/2017 at 10:10 am said:

    Denialism is an essentially irrational action that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event, by the person refusing to accept an empirically verifiable reality

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism

    So, by being rational actors, we are exhibiting irrational behaviour. Typical Orwellian Doublethink

  47. Richard Treadgold on 03/04/2017 at 11:17 am said:

    Maggy,

    Denialism is an ugly neologism. No decent dictionary knows of its existence.

    I wish that were true, but the online Oxford recognises denialist, noun:

    A person who refuses to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of scientific or historical evidence.

    Then, unsurprisingly, uses climate change as an example:

    ‘the small minority of very vocal climate change denialists’

    What a revelation your citations from psychology are! I am amazed. Still, as in climate studies, there is movement in the right direction.

  48. Maggy Wassilieff on 03/04/2017 at 12:38 pm said:

    @Richard T

    Anyone can invent words, and silly editors can adopt them.
    Denial is a perfectly fine noun, and denier is a perfectly fine adjective.

  49. Magoo on 03/04/2017 at 1:29 pm said:

    How about a Dennisialister – it works on several levels.

    I suggest Mann also, such as “Opps, I just stood in a Mann”, or “Call the plumber, there’s a Mann stuck in the u-bend”.

    Now is the Autumn of our sweet content,
    Cast winter by these Dennisialister clouds;
    And all the negative feedback clouds that lour’d upon our house
    In the deep bosom of the non accelerating ocean levels buried.

  50. Maggy Wassilieff on 03/04/2017 at 6:55 pm said:

    oh woops, denier is a noun…

    (unless you are talking about 40 denier stockings)

  51. Maggy Wassilieff on 04/04/2017 at 8:07 am said:

    Over 150 scientific papers published so far in 2017 that indicate changes in atmospheric CO2 are not a major influence on weather or climate.
    http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.PYYtzCi2.dpbs

    Year after year, the number of papers countering the “consensus” view grows.
    How long before the main stream media start paying attention?

  52. Andy on 04/04/2017 at 9:39 am said:

    I rather suspect the mainstream media will actually die off before the climate scare does

  53. Andy on 04/04/2017 at 2:22 pm said:

    Hot Topicers are all claiming that this is “rigged” (like the US elections, per chance?)

  54. Richard Treadgold on 04/04/2017 at 3:41 pm said:

    The Coalition appoints one of three adjudicators. They cannot rig it — as the whingers can discover if they overcome their fear and just apply with their favourite paper.

  55. Andy on 04/04/2017 at 4:26 pm said:

    If they had any honesty, they could phrase a response on the lines that there are a range of potential outcomes, some of which might be dangerous, and that it is a question of risk management.

    Therefore the “proof” required is a statistical distribution that has a lot of subjective interpretation

    But, that would confuse the public and might delay “taking action” on climate change, and we couldn’t have that

  56. Magoo on 04/04/2017 at 4:53 pm said:

    I personally think that deep down alarmists are fully aware that CAGW is a failed theory, but they’ve entrenched themselves so deeply and have treated those who they disagree with so badly that there’s no going back for them. To admit defeat is to eat mud with a giant side dish of humble pie.

    The challenge won’t be accepted because they know there’s absolutely no possibility of meeting the criteria due to a complete lack of empirical evidence to back up their position. You could try advertising it on WUWT.

  57. Andy on 04/04/2017 at 4:57 pm said:

    Half of the problem is that we are dealing with a large group of people who exist in a Postmodernist world view, where objective facts don’t exist, and it’s all “social justice”

    You might as well ask them for evidence that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman

  58. Dennis N Horne on 05/04/2017 at 7:21 am said:

    Maggy Wassilieff on April 4, 2017 at 8:07 am said:
    Over 150 scientific papers published so far in 2017 that indicate changes in atmospheric CO2 are not a major influence on weather or climate: http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.PYYtzCi2.dpbs

    First “paper”:
    Learning from the climate’s history: the Arctic heat waves of the 1930s and 40s By Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt [German text translated/edited by P Gosselin] – See more at: http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.PYYtzCi2.6vZ9uYZS.dpuf

    You mean this “expert”:
    http://www.realclimate.org/images/Vahrenholt_en.jpg

    How long before the main stream media start paying attention?

    Yes, how long before the world takes more notice of a tricky accountant blog than the RS, NAS, AAAS, APS, ACS and every informed scientists on planet Earth? Hmm.

    Never mind. If people need to deny the science to remain sane and functioning day-to-day, they should be excused. Won’t make any difference.

    Let the grand experiment continue!

  59. Andy on 05/04/2017 at 8:39 am said:

    How long before the main stream media start paying attention?

    I have no trust in the MSM whatsoever. The sooner they go out of business the better

    They have zero credibility. The latest fiasco over Susan Rice is just another example of their corruption and partisanship

    They have been propping up the climate gravy train for decades.

  60. Magoo on 05/04/2017 at 9:15 am said:

    Dennis dear boy,

    If you think Vahrenholt’s prediction is bad (if realclimate’s portrayal of it is correct) then have a look at this graph of predictions from the ‘experts’ in the IPCC AR5 report:

    http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/figures/WGI_AR5_FigTS-14.jpg

    The funny thing is they still believe in those ‘projections’ even though they’ve failed. I wonder why they don’t have that graph on realclimate.

  61. Andy on 05/04/2017 at 10:23 am said:

    Gosh, Bryan is brave sticking his head into the hornet’s nest at Hot Topic on this subject

    it must be only a matter of time before someone calls him a racist or Nazi or White Supremacist

  62. Richard Treadgold on 05/04/2017 at 11:21 am said:

    You made me go have a look and now I’ve wasted half an hour. And you’ll probably blame me. (That was self-ironly ironing hionly self-irony.)

  63. Andy on 05/04/2017 at 11:25 am said:

    Hmm, sorry about the half an hour

  64. Richard Treadgold on 05/04/2017 at 11:38 am said:

    Thanks. But it’s all right — I feel wiser, as I’ve re-resolved not to return. So that’s something.

  65. Andy on 05/04/2017 at 12:14 pm said:

    Well, as one who has been accused there of the following:
    A White Supremacist, a racist, an agent for the Alt-Right, a Brownshirt to name a few, I think I have reached the end of the road too.

  66. Richard Treadgold on 05/04/2017 at 12:56 pm said:

    That’s quite a list, but it’s not necessarily road’s end. You seem more robustly inclined than I am (or you seek perilous ways of living), so it could be appropriate. Certainly the rapport you sometimes strike must do them good and without doubt keeps us and our cause in public with a not-unfriendly face, which is good. You have a rare ability to insult and mock without enraging your target. Also (I sincerely hope!) an efficient way of shrugging it off, which not many can manage.

  67. Dennis N Horne on 05/04/2017 at 1:19 pm said:

    Comment disappeared.

  68. Dennis N Horne on 05/04/2017 at 1:20 pm said:

    Just a reminder. From the American Association for the Advancement of Science:

    We are at risk of pushing our climate system toward abrupt, unpredictable, and potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts. Earth’s climate is on a path to warm beyond the range of what has been experienced over the past millions of years.[ii] The range of uncertainty for the warming along the current emissions path is wide enough to encompass massively disruptive consequences to societies and ecosystems:
    http://whatweknow.aaas.org/get-the-facts/

    https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
    https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-change-evidence-causes/

  69. Richard Treadgold on 05/04/2017 at 2:10 pm said:

    Dennis,

    It wasn’t me. Did you press the wrong button?

  70. Andy on 05/04/2017 at 2:13 pm said:

    I can’t see me going back to HT. Admittedly we were going off topic on problems with Islam and the rapes in Sweden. My last comment that was deleted as “racist” made the suggestion that men from Arab countries don’t treat women very well. From that snipped comment, Thomas deduces (?) that I am a violent extremist that attacks women.

    Everything they say and do is in a parallel universe to me. It’s not good for my mental health

  71. Richard Treadgold on 05/04/2017 at 3:03 pm said:

    Dennis,

    We are at risk of pushing our climate system

    That’s not science. It’s easy to presume that a human influence on the global climate probably exists, since regional influences such as UHI on temperature, drainage and dam-building on hydrology and afforestation and deforestation on precipitation are readily apparent, but we’ve found no evidence of its (global) magnitude, therefore the statement is but hand-waving. If we don’t know the size of our influence, we cannot possibly say what effect we might have on the climate system. And before you ask, I’m unable to explain why these activists who have infiltrated the AAAS have subverted its democratic processes and are thus able to issue public messages like this in complete freedom from the strictures of scientific reasoning.

    Nor am I required to.

    I hope you’ve noticed that, in the second paragraph of the AAAS page you cite, they make it clear that there’s only a small chance of this catastrophe:

    there is a small, but real chance of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts

    But again, not knowing the size of the human influence, it’s impossible to quantify the risk. Not that that matters to them, since they just want to spread fear. The page is entitled “What we know” which neatly highlights the con job going on, because all they talk about is the exact opposite: what we don’t know. It describes persuasively the “overwhelming evidence” (without giving any), “a high degree of agreement among climate scientists that human-caused climate change is real” (real, yes, but how big?), claims a “disconnect between scientific knowledge and public perception”, quotes the totally fraudulent consensus which claims that “97% of climate scientists” agree on this and sadly declines to provide “yet another extensive review” of the scientific evidence for climate change. They’re most regretful, but they know we’ve heard all the evidence before. Actually, we haven’t, and even one piece of evidence would be remarkably refreshing; it’d be enough, too — I’d change my mind! The once-respectable AAAS presents a page that makes me puke.

  72. Mike Jowsey on 05/04/2017 at 6:38 pm said:

    Nothing else matters.

  73. Richard Treadgold on 05/04/2017 at 6:42 pm said:

    Hi Mike. What?

  74. Dennis N Horne on 05/04/2017 at 9:02 pm said:

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2017/apr/05/climate-change-life-wildlife-animals-biodiversity-ecosystems-genetics
    Climate change is rapidly becoming a crisis that defies hyperbole.

    For all the sound and fury of climate change denialists, self-deluding politicians and a very bewildered global public, the science behind climate change is rock solid while the impacts – observed on every ecosystem on the planet – are occurring faster in many parts of the world than even the most gloomy scientists predicted.

    Given all this, it’s logical to assume life on Earth – the millions of species that cohabitate our little ball of rock in space – would be impacted. But it still feels unnerving to discover that this is no longer about just polar bears; it’s not only coral reefs and sea turtles or pikas and penguins; it about practically everything – including us.

    Three recent studies have illustrated just how widespread climate change’s effect on life on our planet has already become. [continues]

  75. Magoo on 05/04/2017 at 9:14 pm said:

    Strange, it hasn’t even warmed in the past 20 odd yrs (except for temporary El Ninos that vent heat to space) so it’s hard to see how a lack of warming is such a problem.

    Still waiting to see the $6000 prize winning peer reviewed paper though – I hear the evidence is ‘overwhelming’. 😂

  76. Andy on 05/04/2017 at 9:44 pm said:

    Sea level rise in NZ is exactly what it was 100 years ago

    We are told this is the biggest crisis facing humanity

  77. Mike Jowsey on 06/04/2017 at 7:02 am said:

    to change our minds … address our questions … Nothing else matters.

    Sorry for being cryptic.

  78. Richard Treadgold on 06/04/2017 at 11:13 am said:

    Dennis,

    the science behind climate change is rock solid

    This reassuring assertion merely papers over the cracks in our understanding of the theory of dangerous man-made global warming. At several key points this necessary chain of logic has gaps which, until they’re closed, renders the theory not partly but completely incompetent to describe our influence on the climate. What we don’t know includes but is not limited to: the sources and magnitudes of the increasing atmospheric level of CO2; the sensitivity of the climate system to increased CO2 and therefore the warming likely by, say, 2100; the warming likely by, say, 2050, without the mile-wide error bars; the process by which the atmospheric fraction of human emissions of CO2 might significantly radiatively heat the ocean; the magnitude and sign of the role of clouds in the climate system; the magnitude and sign of feedbacks to climate warming; the precise range and magnitude of areas of ocean acidification.

    Until these points are adequately described by science, all the diverting descriptions of the effects of global warming are nothing more than startling images to arrest our reason, for they have no foundation. Certainly, in this forum we’re not fooled. You really must address the fundamental science because that’s all that can change our mind.

  79. Andy on 06/04/2017 at 11:59 am said:

    By the way, if your are on Facebook, there is a scammer pretending to me me sending friend requests

    I just reported this to Facebook

  80. Richard Treadgold on 06/04/2017 at 12:04 pm said:

    This blog message arrived as I pressed Send to advise you I’ve had a spurious FB message. It’s all go.

  81. Richard Treadgold on 06/04/2017 at 12:23 pm said:

    Mike,

    Sorry for being cryptic.

    Cryptic’s good. Ambiguity not so much. 🙂

  82. Andy on 06/04/2017 at 2:34 pm said:

    My FB imposter has been vaporised

    Thank goodness. His grammar and spelling were terrible

  83. Richard Treadgold on 06/04/2017 at 2:46 pm said:

    Oh, no! But we’re friends now.

  84. Andy on 11/04/2017 at 10:00 am said:

    Hot Topicers are busy ganging up on Bryan Leyland, yet none of them wants to claim the prize

    Beta male behaviour

  85. RdM on 22/04/2017 at 11:19 pm said:

    I’ve only just discovered this blog, site, you folk here, but also some others recently.

    I ask you to consider:

    http://www.thebestschools.org/special/karoly-happer-dialogue-global-warming/happer-major-statement/
    (and the prior interview, linked early on and in the small right sidebar a bit down.)
    http://www.thebestschools.org/special/karoly-happer-dialogue-global-warming/william-happer-interview/
    (and NB that a similar $5k prize also offered there!)

    I hear now the phrase “carbon dioxide pollution” uttered on Radio NZ news.
    What utterly dangerous nonsense!
    We need more CO2, it is not a “pollutant”! Or a CAGW cause, it’s a tiny %.

    As for the nonsense about the “97% consensus”, perhaps consider these:
    (although there was another link I viewed recently I can’t find showing how this was contorted*)
    http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015/06/climate-wars-done-science/
    http://joannenova.com.au/2015/03/the-97-consensus-misrepresented-miscalculated-misleading/

    (* although perhaps will help:- https://defyccc.com/search/?q=97%25&pg=all&rnk=def )

    In case some “true believers” missed the paragraphs, or couldn’t be bothered reading, from
    http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015/06/climate-wars-done-science/

    “The 97 per cent figure is derived from two pieces of pseudoscience that would have embarrassed a homeopath. The first was a poll that found that 97 per cent of just seventy-nine scientists thought climate change was man-made—not that it was dangerous. A more recent poll of 1854 members of the American Meteorological Society found the true number is 52 per cent.

    The second source of the 97 per cent number was a survey of scientific papers, which has now been comprehensively demolished by Professor Richard Tol of Sussex University, who is probably the world’s leading climate economist. As the Australian blogger Joanne Nova summarised Tol’s findings, John Cook of the University of Queensland and his team used an unrepresentative sample, left out much useful data, used biased observers who disagreed with the authors of the papers they were classifying nearly two-thirds of the time, and collected and analysed the data in such a way as to allow the authors to adjust their preliminary conclusions as they went along, a scientific no-no if ever there was one. The data could not be replicated, and Cook himself threatened legal action to hide them. Yet neither the journal nor the university where Cook works has retracted the paper, and the scientific establishment refuses to stop citing it, let alone blow the whistle on it. Its conclusion is too useful.

    This should be a huge scandal, not fodder for a tweet by the leader of the free world. Joanne Nova, incidentally, is an example of a new breed of science critic that the climate debate has spawned. With little backing, and facing ostracism for her heresy, this talented science journalist had abandoned any chance of a normal, lucrative career and systematically set out to expose the way the huge financial gravy train that is climate science has distorted the methods of science. In her chapter in The Facts, Nova points out that the entire trillion-dollar industry of climate change policy rests on a single hypothetical assumption, first advanced in 1896, for which to this day there is no evidence.

    The assumption is that modest warming from carbon dioxide must be trebly amplified by extra water vapour—that as the air warms there will be an increase in absolute humidity providing “a positive feedback”. That assumption led to specific predictions that could be tested. And the tests come back negative again and again. The large positive feedback that can turn a mild warming into a dangerous one just is not there. There is no tropical troposphere hot-spot. Ice cores unambiguously show that temperature can fall while carbon dioxide stays high. Estimates of climate sensitivity, which should be high if positive feedbacks are strong, are instead getting lower and lower. Above all, the temperature has failed to rise as predicted by the models.”

    You might also consider even older papers, referenced here, that show that CO2 saturates, & etc.
    https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2015/05/17/influence-of-carbon-dioxide-on-temperatures/
    Physics of the Air – W. J. Humphreys – 1929

    The temperature is ever so slightly rising because we’re coming out of an ice age… but because the sun is going through a cooling quiet phase now, we might find that the earth is going to be cooling too…

    No trouble reaching the Paris agreement keeping it below whatever then, eh? ;- except for all the money promised to poorer nations and the Agenda 21 style global tax impositions as a Trojan Horse for attempted global technocratic government, managed by an elite, all on a Chicken Little bogeyman,

    Sky is falling down!

    As for the “March for Science” today, how laughable, such transparent propaganda and useful idiots!
    They must be chuckling all the way back to whatever Directorate manages influence campaigns today…

    IMO Trump was right, if likely wrong about what country was behind the hoax – and Scott Pruitt spot on.

    It’s a global scam second only to the anti-tobacco scam, both getting the West to destroy itself, by itself.

    In its own mind… with the effects on the populace, not just the billions & trillions spent on such hoaxes.

    The gravy trains are immense.

    Weird theoretical mathematical speculative physics theories are another sinkhole for billions of dollars.

    (I might follow up on that later;- but for now, my late-night in vino veritas rave:- CO2 is good for the planet!)

  86. Magoo on 11/06/2017 at 12:51 pm said:

    Still no takers on the grand prize I see. I thought the evidence was supposed to be ‘overwhelming’.

    In the meantime 17 more peer reviewed papers have been published disputing CO2 greenhouse effect as the primary explanation for climate change:

    http://notrickszone.com/2017/06/08/17-new-scientific-papers-dispute-co2-greenhouse-effect-as-primary-explanation-for-climate-change/#sthash.EWAl0hQ2.dpbs

  87. GRANT SUMNER on 02/09/2017 at 1:17 pm said:

    There is no vindication around the phrase .””CLIMATE CHANGE.”‘it has posthumerously been adapted by the alarmist’s for no other reason , than it gives them status around a arguable imagination that fossil fuel has the inclination as the causation of CO2 EMISSIONS, that increases our global temperature commensurate with the usual array of alarmist junk science fed by a whole host of FAKE protagonists non more so than the infamous. .”Al Gore.” whose latest rendition of FAKE scientific godswallop has given Al the status of the BOX OFFICE , flop of the year..along with the imaginary.””.Rockefeller Foundation Brothers Fund,”” whose divestment out of all fossil generating fuels, just like our superannuation funds, the university’s, the local body councils, all based on news media hype, non of it eventuated, certainly no evidence has been forth-coming of their intentions to act accordingly, the weather patterns remain incapsulated as in the 10bc- 16 century 20th century-..fire-famin -wind-snow-hail-sunshine.etc.etc etc..all peer reviewed data from the UN IPPC has been ridiculed as computer driven dribble, the physics of our universe suggest therorical manipulation of our computer data has falsely driven the ALARMIST gender around the fake science, manipulated by the politicians and the greenies in the causation of society adapting different energy forms around.intermitted.WIND & SOLAR.both completely useless unsustainable forms of energy that has driven society globally to spend Trillions chasing a false dream in the renewables energy fields all based on ALARMIST CONJECTURE..[.Heartland Group sustaining the environment.!!]

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