Signs of strain in justifying climate predictions

Professor Michael Kelly, Prince Philip Professor of Technology, University of Cambridge, kindly sends us his comments on a letter this month to Nature Geoscience, Test of a decadal climate forecast, by Myles R. Allen, John F.B. Mitchell and Peter A. Stott. I previously commented on the letter in Climate forecasts fulfilled or what? Mike just returned to England after spending seven months as Visiting Professor at the prestigious MacDiarmid Institute, Victoria University of Wellington.

The recent paper of Allen et al. does a careful job of estimating errors in forward projections of global temperatures from earlier calculations on global circulation models of the atmosphere. Given the simple question — are the models doing a good job or not — the increasing level of sophistication needed to defend them is of concern. For many of us, a temperature stasis of 17 years is enough to suggest that the models are not as robust as some of their advocates maintain. Continue Reading →

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Is the game nearly over

From a correspondent

I think the game is up for the pro-AGW crowd due to the lack of temperature rises over the last 16-23 years.

It looks like Gavin Schmidt might be jumping from the sinking ship now as well. To me, Gavin looks like he’s positioning himself for a back-down on his AGW position – why would he point out the flaws with Nuccitelli’s post otherwise, it’s no concern to him? I think Hansen, even though he admitted the lack of a temp rise over the last 16 years, was given the boot from NASA Continue Reading →

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IPCC created and controlled by activists

illusion in grey

Be in no doubt

A reader, Simon, made some interesting points when he commented on my assertion that scientists “incite” policy, saying:

The relatively recent trend of activism by individual scientists is solely because of the way their work is being misrepresented and their concern over the changing environment.

What he calls “concern over the changing environment” is the motivation for activism, so I’m glad we agree on that. But if they only looked more closely rather than satisfying their expectations at first glance they wouldn’t detect any change beyond the ordinary. Because no unprecedented climatic fluctuations have been reported. So why be concerned?

He refers to scientific activism as a “recent trend”, blatantly ignoring the fact that the whole climate scam was started by activists, and describes activism by “individual scientists” to imply they are few. In fact, they are thickly distributed throughout the UN, the IPCC, national and international scientific organisations and national governments, and their pronouncements and opinions are broadcast constantly.

How much more must they do before Simon notices them? Continue Reading →

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Policy: politicians write it but scientists incite it

policy document

It’s hard to know if a reader, Simon, was being serious when he said “Scientists don’t set policy either, politicians do that” because it’s blindingly obvious that scientists don’t keep their hands off policy. They constantly agitate because — surprise — they constantly need funding.

That’s the very reason we’re in this climate change mess, because politicians alone couldn’t have done it. A few smart leaders might have come up with the idea of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW) justifying deep government interference in our lives, but they had to be assisted by publicly-funded scientists who became heavily involved in supporting policy proposals, even to the point of activism.

At all levels of science and of government, scientists have spent thirty years providing assistance of varying magnitude to politicians; it’s not only cynics who remark that scientists made friends with politicians only to safeguard their funding. Continue Reading →

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The industry of denial

Dr. David Deming in the Washington Times: “With each passing year, it is becoming increasingly clear that global warming is not a scientific theory subject to empirical falsification, but a political ideology that has to be fiercely defended against any challenge. It is ironic that skeptics are called “deniers” when every fact that would tend to falsify global warming is immediately explained away by an industry of denial.”

via Quote of the Week: the industry of denial | Watts Up With That?.

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Lord Monckton complains to VUW

These documents posted two days ago on the NZ Climate Science Coalition’s web site record Christopher Monckton’s complaint against Victoria University of Wellington for refusing him access to its campus, for dishonesty and for slandering him.

Document 1. Lord Monckton’s complaint, repeated below.
Document 2. Is CO2 mitigation cost-effective? A paper to be published soon.
Document 3. Professor Boston’s fraudulent graph. Referring to the professor’s use in 2008 of a faulty IPCC graph from the AR4, 2007.

Here is the full text of his complaint, addressed to the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Pat Walsh.

11 April 2013

Professor Pat Walsh, Vice-Chancellor,

Victoria University of Wellington.

pat.walsh@vuw.ac.nz

Sir,

Dishonesty and other serious misconduct by three staff

I should be grateful if you would investigate dishonesty and other serious breaches of your university’s code of conduct on the part of three staff. Continue Reading →

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Climate forecasts fulfilled or what?

Earlier today someone mentioned to me that a Guardian article confirmed the remarkable claim that climate models correctly predicted the evolution of this century’s temperatures. By implication, either they predicted the hiatus or the hiatus hasn’t occurred. I was intrigued.

It turns out the article came from a paper (actually a letter), Test of a decadal climate forecast, by Myles R. Allen, John F.B. Mitchell and Peter A. Stott, published online by Nature Geoscience on 27 March.

All I can access at present is the abstract and a single page (through ReadCube) but I can see some things to question, and I’d like to ask readers to help give some understanding of it.

The hiatus could falsify the DAGW hypothesis, so weakening the hiatus strengthens DAGW. It’s important we understand it correctly.

UPDATE 13 Apr 2013 11:55 am

Professor Mike Kelly, of Cambridge University, has kindly sent me a copy of the paper, saying he would review it for us. Reading through the extra page (two pages that change everything!), I find it packed with questions and comments.

Abstract

To the Editor — Early climate forecasts are often claimed to have overestimated recent warming. However, their evaluation is challenging for two reasons. Continue Reading →

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Snip-it

Are current temperatures hotter than ever?

Not so far

Scissors

Was there a Medieval Warm Period somewhere in the world in addition to the area surrounding the North Atlantic Ocean, where its occurrence is uncontested? This question is of utmost importance to the ongoing global warming debate, for if the Medieval Warm Period is found to have been a global climatic phenomenon, and if the locations where it occurred were as warm in medieval times as they are currently, there is no need to consider the temperature increase of the past century as anything other than the natural progression of the persistent millennial-scale oscillation of climate that regularly brings the earth several-hundred-year periods of modestly higher and lower temperatures that are totally independent of variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration.

via CO2 Science.

The CO2 Science web site thus introduces a literature review of temperature studies around 950–1400, known traditionally as the Medieval Warm Period.

The review concludes that the findings of the 24 studies examined suggest “there is nothing that is unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about the current level of Earth’s warmth, which further suggests that the historical increase in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration may not have had anything to do with concomitant 20th-century global warming.”


The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change was founded by Dr Craig D. Idso (the present chairman), Dr Sherwood B. Idso is its President and Dr Keith E. Idso its Vice President. Craig and Keith are brothers, Sherwood is their father; each is a respected scientist with an impressive publication record.

h/t WUWT, who includes this handy comparison:

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Forget prosperity, we need the extra tree

Cost-benefit analysis, anyone?

The Green Party today revealed that the National Government is allowing mining companies to search for minerals on our most protected conservation land.

To reassure New Zealanders that our National Parks and most precious conservation land won’t ever be open for mining, the Government should stop allowing minerals prospecting and exploration there.

via Our most precious wilderness not safe from mining | Greenweek, the newsletter

They say 50,000 people wanted to tell 4 million what to do. Without even discussing whether to measure the value of having reserves against the cost of locking away their natural resources.

Actually, our wilderness is not so precious that we’d give up prosperity to keep a particular piece of it. That’s taking the principle too far. We can replace a piece of any old reserve with another piece somewhere else. There’s plenty of it. Look at a map. Continue Reading →

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Snip-it

Freedom by any means is freedom

Scissors

Auckland’s transport system is clogged up, and as it’s our largest city, the whole country will benefit from freeing it up.

The solutions already exist and are achievable. Please join me, and our transport spokesperson Julie Anne Genter, this Sunday afternoon at the Green Party Auckland office to launch our new transport campaign Reconnect Auckland.

Green transport solutions, like the City Rail Link, will help build a smart, green city of the future.

via Free up Auckland | Greenweek, the newsletter

Whenever new lanes, tunnels and bridges are proposed to accommodate more vehicles and alleviate Auckland’s transport woes, the Greens oppose them, even though it always becomes faster to get around.

Now they argue that the “whole country” will benefit from the “green” solution of a few more buses and trains, seeming not to realise that’s also the aim of the extra motorways and tunnels. Also seeming not to understand that public transport is no solution.

That’s because we already have private transport, which we control. We can already go wherever we want to, whenever we like.

A bus or a train cannot take a person where they want to be, because nobody (beyond a few sex “workers”) has business at a bus stop or railway station. Sure, in the city there’s no difference between a short walk to the office from the bus stop or the car park and it’s a trivial thing. But we’re talking about every trip, not only into a crowded city, but also around the suburbs and even, oddly, into the far more spacious countryside, where no bus can serve everyone. Each of these trips must negotiate the perilously crowded main roads in and around the city.

Importantly, buses and trains don’t use the most efficient route, or go at the right time, so they are more expensive — and less convenient — than a private car.

But don’t try telling the Greens that people insist on going where they want to go, right when it suits them.

Because the Greens know little about serving the people and don’t seem to care.

Big roads and private cars are the “greenest” of transport solutions, because they keep the big dangerous bus monsters off our roads.

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NZ warming to soar and slump

Today, the NZ Herald announced:

New Zealand’s climate is forecast to warm by at least 1°C by 2050, while the average rate for the world has been put at more than 2°C.

via Warming likely boost to vineyards – NZ Herald.

The article said it was good news for wine. James Renwick was asked to comment and thought stonefruit and pipfruit wouldn’t suit warmer conditions and “other potential negatives included more floods and cyclones, sea level rises, and more plant and insect pests.” (There’s always someone with a gloomy view, isn’t there?)

But this move in temperatures is hard to reconcile with what we know. Continue Reading →

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Simple arithmetic

For all of its apparent complexity, the threat of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW) formulated at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 is based on a very simple assumption:

When X = 560, Y = ECS

where

X = atmospheric concentration of CO2e in parts-per-million
Y = the increase in temperature since pre-1880, in °C
ECS (Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity) = 1°C plus the ultimate net effect of feedbacks

X is taken from the Mauna Loa observatory and Y is provided by five published temperature series, neither being deeply controversial. The sole debatable element is ECS, the assessment of which is described in Wikipedia: Continue Reading →

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Miffed Michele mangles Monckton meeting

But she never asked this expert IPCC reviewer about climate change! It was either a lost opportunity or she didn’t know what to do with it.

Today I emailed Michele Hewitson to learn whether she asked Lord Monckton anything about the climate and how he may have annoyed her. I hope she replies, but she may not, especially if she spots these comments, posted before she had a chance to reply to me. But I must comment — her journalistic behaviour was crude, unprofessional, unattractive, unfair and unworthy of Christopher Monckton. To specialise in painting a “personality” in her subject can be admired. A descent into hollow chatter and rambling, malicious gossip cheapens both subject and reader.

via Michele Hewitson interview: Christopher Monckton – NZ Herald:

There was one question I really wanted to ask Viscount Christopher Monckton, the visiting climate change sceptic, and it wasn’t about climate. It was about … giving those pesky Argies the squits … during the Falklands War…

She refuses to ask intelligent questions about his vast knowledge of climate change, which brings him here, and instead employs a 30-year-old scatalogical yarn to mock him against today’s values. To assert that this spicy question was her most important raises to a virtue either mere vapidity or a taste to scandalise, neither of which empty urges sits well with the formidable tradition of the Herald. Continue Reading →

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Herald, APNZ play fair

Pull straying journalist back into line

The NZ Herald has given Lord Monckton the floor to allow him to rebut the ridiculous criticisms of him by a bunch of so-called Kiwi scientists. Or perhaps it was a bunch of merely shallow scientists who were journalistically ambushed and their comments taken out of context. Who knows?

The culprit was the leftist idealogue employed by the APNZ as the “journalist” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) Kurt Bayer. I notice Bayer’s byline, which accompanied the original article, has been removed from today’s story, no doubt as part of his punishment for treating a subject with complete, premeditated disdain. His only concern was clearly the advancement of a private agenda.

Under the heading “Climate change sceptic rejects criticism as ‘hate speech'” the NZ Herald has published an APNZ response to Lord Monckton’s complaint about the APNZ’s woefully innaccurate and shamefully unbalanced article in last Tuesday’s Herald.

Today’s article says:

Lord Christopher Monckton has rejected criticism of his views about climate change as his public speaking tour of New Zealand continues.

It then goes on to quote much of Christopher’s remarkably moderately-phrased written complaint verbatim.

Well done, them.

Christopher’s well-attended presentation last night in Northcote was stunning. I look forward to more of the same in central Auckland tonight.

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Herald, APNZ find Monckton no easy target

Should try practising responsible journalism

The following correspondence from Lord Monckton to the NZ Herald concerning a scurrilous, misleading and repugnant APNZ article published today was posted on the NZ Climate Science Coalition’s web site

VISCOUNT MONCKTON’S RESPONSE TO DENIGRATORY ARTICLE IN NZ HERALD

Posted 3 April 2013

Viscount Christopher Monckton, who has just begun a speaking tour of New Zealand, has responded to an article in the on-line edition of the New Zealand Herald, attacking his qualifications and motives.

Lord Monckton comments: “I have attached some recent material, for interest. The paper on climate economics has been accepted for publication in the Annual Proceedings of the World Federation of Scientists, now in its 45th year of publication. My expert-review comments on the forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report will, I hope, demonstrate that I have taken a constructive approach.

For the sake of correcting the factual record, I am inviting the Climate Science Coalition to post up and circulate widely a copy of my letter to the editor correcting the slew of malicious inaccuracies in the Herald’s article as soon as the Herald has published it, so as to minimize the intended damage to my reputation.” Continue Reading →

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Save gas and power, cut costs — wow

But then, we knew that, right?

The “carbon footprint” justification is loopy (because it cannot alter global warming, even if there was any), but its righteousness distracts people so they forget about other ways of saving money.

Auckland[‘s publicly-funded War Memorial Museum] expects to spend 35 per cent less on gas and electricity, saving $340,000.

Auckland Museum is being touted as a green example for other city organisations after it succeeded in slashing its carbon footprint by 30 per cent in just two years.

The reduction – saving the museum around $340,000 this year – has prompted a call by Auckland Mayor Len Brown for others to follow its lead. Continue Reading →

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