Climate delegates in dark

Expect no wisdom

UNFCCC Climate Change Conference

The thirty-eighth sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI 38) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA 38), as well as the second part of the second session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP 2-2) is taking place at the Maritim Hotel from 3-14 June, 2013 in Bonn, Germany.

via Bonn Climate Change Conference – June 2013.

According to the Irish Times, the eleven-day conference has 670 delegates from 176 countries and is working towards a global agreement in 2015.

The CFACT video posted earlier today has drawn criticism. It shows interviews with nine delegates, asking if they knew of the lack of warming since 1997. Most of them confess complete ignorance about the lack of warming but one or two actually dismiss it, saying it’s unimportant.

The nine interviewees represent a sizeable 1.3 per cent of the 670 delegates and include influential representatives of Greenpeace International and the OECD. Another is a candidate for a Masters degree in Climate Change at the University of East Anglia. In other words, they’re not lightweights.

But they all spoke artlessly about the global temperature record over the last 20 years or so. They clearly knew nothing about the facts; it was a meek display.

Whatever one’s opinion of CFACT (who commissioned the interviews), these delegates inspired no confidence in rational decision-making by the United Nations about global warming.

Visits: 73

32 Thoughts on “Climate delegates in dark

  1. Simon on 08/06/2013 at 5:29 am said:

    Two years ago it was 15 years, then 16 years, now 17 years. What the heck, let’s round it to 20. Just so long as the start-point is the 1997/98 El Niño. The ‘hiatus’ is partially related the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the preponderance of La Niña conditions. Your argument will evaporate when these conditions eventually change and stored ocean heat is released into the atmosphere.

    • Magoo on 08/06/2013 at 9:49 am said:

      Simon:

      Only 2 temperature records show the 1997/98 El Nino as the start point of no warming, all other records show a stasis warming starting prior to these dates. According to Sks, all the temperature datasets show a lack of warming for between 15-23 yrs – both satellite and surface based records.

      http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php

      ‘Data sources: GISTEMP, NOAA, HADCRUT, RSS, UAH, BEST.’

      No warming trend greater than the +/- error margins from the following dates:

      GISTEMP 1994 – No warming in 19 yrs
      NOAA (Land/Sea) 1994 – No warming in 19 yrs
      HADCRUT3 1993 – No warming in 20 yrs
      HADCRUT4 1994 – No warming in 19 yrs
      BEST 1998 – No warming in 15 yrs
      NOAA (Land) 1997 – No warming in 16 yrs
      RSS 1990 – No warming in 23 yrs
      UAH 1994 – No warming in 19 yrs

      The La Nina argument is pretty weak:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Enso-global-temp-anomalies.png

    • Andy on 08/06/2013 at 10:29 am said:

      The reality mocks models graph in the right sidebar =>

      Is the best description of why the pause in temps is real and matters.

    • Magoo on 09/06/2013 at 12:50 pm said:

      There’s this starry new & improved one from Dr. Spencer now with 73 models vs. the average of both satellites and balloons:

      http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png

    • Richard C (NZ) on 08/06/2013 at 11:37 am said:

      >”The ‘hiatus’ is partially related the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation”

      Glad you’re up to speed Simon. Unfortunately climate science isn’t so astute. Certainly not going by their non-cyclical GCM performance.

      >”…and the preponderance of La Niña conditions”

      Well yes, cyclicity also. There was El Nino dominance 1977 – 2007 (ish) and prior to that La Nina dominance (the 60 year cycle you said was “mysterious” Simon):

      http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif

      Now it’s back to La Nina domination for about the next 20 years so get used to it and natural variation (cyclicity) gazumps CO2 forcing. Get used to that too. The forecast is for weak La Nina if anything so no El Nino coming to the rescue of AGW (the Hansen/Renowden type warmists last hope gone). AGW was supposed to produce permanent El Nino conditions – what happened to that?

      “Your argument will evaporate when these conditions eventually change and stored ocean heat is released into the atmosphere.”

      Rubbish. The ocean is continually losing heat. The accumulation is a result of high energy input levels (highest for over 1000 years). Now that the input level is reducing, the accumulation is reversing starting with the upper parts of the largest basin, the Pacific:

      http://oi56.tinypic.com/2llhpva.jpg

      That accumulation reversal process has been going on in the upper ocean (except Indian – that gets circulation from the Pacific) for at least the ARGO era and will of necessity (TSI plummeting over the next 20 years) become more apparent in the future.

      The stored ocean heat will not be released in a searing rush that fries us all, so relax Simon. The ocean is the climate modulator, storing heat (gradually) when there is excess, releasing heat (gradually) when there’s deficit as the AO interface conditions allow (radiation, evaporation, conduction/convection).

    • Bob D on 08/06/2013 at 2:47 pm said:

      Richard C:

      “The ocean is the climate modulator, storing heat (gradually) when there is excess, releasing heat (gradually) when there’s deficit…”

      Exactly.

    • Mike Jowsey on 10/06/2013 at 3:51 pm said:

      Hey Simon, it might even be 22 years if you take out the Pinitubo eruption.
      Twenty Two Years Of No Actual Global Warming

    • Richard C (NZ) on 11/06/2013 at 11:14 am said:

      Link in comments to C3 Headlines post comparing 60 years HadCRUT4 to April 2013 vs 60 years to November 1949 and the respective CO2 levels:

      http://www.c3headlines.com/2013/06/ipccs-gold-standard-hadcrut-confirms-co2s-impact-on-global-temps-statistically-immaterial-insignific.html

      The graph:

      http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01901d26f85e970b-pi

      20 ppm to 0.5 C is not the same as 85 ppm is to 0.7 C, there should have been a 2 C rise 1953 – 2013.

      The CO2 series is actually two disparate datasets of course – Law Dome ice core and Mauna Loa.

  2. Andy on 08/06/2013 at 9:28 am said:

    They no nothing of science. Climate change conferences are not about science, it has no relevance to them. The science is settled, the need to take action is urgent.

    They are dreary beige non entities who talk acronyms and green mumbo jumbo that is impenetrable to the rest of the world.

    Civil society, intergenerational justice, emissions targets, global agreements, blah blah blah

    It is hardly surprising that the public lost interest years ago.

  3. Richard C (NZ) on 08/06/2013 at 12:21 pm said:

    I suspect many of those delegates are in dark because they take Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-Moon’s word on climate as impeccable, e.g.

    “The reason climate change has risen on the global agenda is because the facts don’t lie. Our world is warming, and our greenhouse gas emissions are a significant cause,” Mr. Ban told members of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

    http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=45120&Cr=climate+change&Cr1=

    I wonder if there was a little uneasy shifting on seats in the UCAR assembly.

    And (quoting report again),

    Mr. Ban pointed out that in recent years climate change has risen to the top of the UN’s agenda as an urgent priority that is affecting all countries in increasingly extreme ways, from flooding in Asia to tornadoes in the United States and drought in the Sahel.

    More shifting.

    Apparently Mr Ban will receive an honorary degree from the University of Denver. Why?

    • Andy on 08/06/2013 at 12:54 pm said:

      Exactly, it has nothing to do with science. These delegates are just crawling up the NGO career ladder. Science is either an aid or an impediment to that

  4. Richard C (NZ) on 08/06/2013 at 3:09 pm said:

    RSS is out for May, +0.139 in ENSO-neutral conditions:

    http://climate4you.com/images/MSU%20RSS%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif

    According to Foster and Rahmstorf’s “true global warming signal”, RSS should be up around +0.45 at their “adjusted” trend (ENSO “removed”) of 0.15 °C/decade after accounting for the below baseline RSS series start level (0.15 x 3.3 = 0.495), see Figure 2 (black dot RSS):

    http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/fulltext/

    F&R state “The long-term warming trend almost exclusively stems from anthropogenic forcing” but here the latest RSS ENSO-neutral conditions are 0.3 °C (0.45 – 0.14) BELOW where that (supposedly) ENSO-neutral anthropogenic trend has gone since 2010.

    F&R assume 0 months lag for TSI (Table 1, and “solar irradiance forces the system from the top” – don’t they read the literature?) which translates apparently, after application of response coefficient 0.125 (Figure 3), to a − 0.023  °C/decade (Table 3) signal component due to TSI.

    Given the 21st century slump in the bicentennial component of TSI (Figure 7), − 0.023  °C/decade TSI was NEVER going to produce 2013 levels even in the fastest responses (their “0 months lag”) i.e. there’s more to come, hence RSS 0.3 °C below their “true global warming signal”. A decade ago (2003), RSS moving average was at +0.3 °C in ENSO-neutral conditions, now (2013) it’s probably around +0.2 and the -0.1 °C cooling is exactly opposite to F&R’s “Adjusted Data” (Figure 4).

    Clearly, Foster and Rahmstorf’s long-term anthropogenic global warming signal is junk.

    As is AGW – and man-made climate change.

  5. Andy on 09/06/2013 at 11:00 am said:

    The only connection I can find between the link I am posting and this thread is that they both mention climate science grads from UAE, but Delingpole makes some good points on why not to engage with trolls, particularly for your own sanity

    http://bogpaper.com/2013/06/08/delingpole-at-the-weekend-why-i-dont-talk-to-trolls/

    Best line,

    “Well I’ve done my research and I know what I think and I know I’m right – so what could I possibly have to learn from someone talking bollocks?

    • An excellent article. Entertaining and logical. Thanks.

    • Alexander K on 09/06/2013 at 5:33 pm said:

      Andy,
      Just read the Dellers thing you kindly provided the link to – I’m still laughing!
      Dellers always gives value for money …I worked in a fairly rough Comprehensive school in the UK with a very tough little Welsh ex-Marine maths teacher who had the same attitude and was equally funny.
      One of the faults I have noticed with many of the regulars here, IMHO, is that you tend to be too kind to the trolls and display endless patience with them. Either that, or you guys can type incredibly fast and accurately!

    • Andy on 09/06/2013 at 6:57 pm said:

      Alexander, this site BogPaper.com is a veritable treasure trove of nuggets; not just Delingpole but his offsider Kevin Mark

      http://bogpaper.com/2012/12/03/kevin-mark-lefty/

    • Richard C (NZ) on 09/06/2013 at 7:11 pm said:

      I find it hones my case Alexander, and invariably they tie themselves in knots with their case.

      For example, we now have Thomas on record as agreeing with sceptics that AGW is a perpetual motion machine. Just search the blog with the term “outed himself” and you will get to comment thread.

      Another was Tom Curtis at Skeptical Science tying himself in knots trying to describe “mainstream science view” anthro ocean heating (I have that on record too), except in that case he was on the side of the in-house argument and I was the intruder.

      Neither of these (Thomas or myself, or Nick say) could really be described as Trolls I think, although I have been put in permanent moderation at Hot Topic for “simple trolling” when my case got too troublesome for Gareth Renowden (I showed that GCMs were “hard-wired” for CO2 by providing GISS ModelE code, much to his chagrin because he was adamant that they were not). Thomas seems to be arguing his case – albeit warm-biased and irrelevant mostly – rather than trolling IMO although you may disagree.

      But for a Troll, Rob Taylor fits the mold a little better IMO even though he tries a bit with science now and then. My replies to him are more for amusement/sport than anything. He does inject a bit of levity.

      I can’t recall a genuine “Troll” off-hand that’s turned up although there’s been the odd one now and then.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 09/06/2013 at 7:40 pm said:

      >”…AGW is a perpetual motion machine…”

      Speak of the dev…..

      Just saw a TVNZ newsclip featuring NIWA climate change science which flashed a graphic animation depicting that very same perpetual motion machine. A bit like this but the OLR-DLR was repeated indefinitely:

      http://envis.tropmet.res.in/kidscorner/KidsCornerImg/greenhouse/GreenhouseEffect.jpg

    • Richard C (NZ) on 09/06/2013 at 7:55 pm said:

      This was the news clip:

      Answers to extreme weather could be trapped in ice (2:03)

      6:09PM Sunday June 09, 2013

      http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/answers-extreme-weather-could-trapped-in-ice-video-5459750

  6. Andy on 09/06/2013 at 9:55 pm said:

    Speaking of being kept in the dark, Booker reports of the moves to limit energy consumption in the UK by turning your lights and heating off.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/10107478/MPs-want-to-turn-your-lights-off.-A-shame-no-one-told-you.html

    I wonder if local NZ Eco fascists are considering these policies?

    • Andy on 10/06/2013 at 8:48 am said:

      Update. Apparently this was not correct. booker misunderstood, see Bishop Hill for details

      Mind you, Trougher Yeo has finally been snabbed in. Sunday Times sting operation.
      http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=84018

    • Andy on 10/06/2013 at 2:22 pm said:

      Booker has issues a correction and apology for his error at the same link

      I must correct a rather serious error in this piece on such an important and complex subject. Although the amendment to the Government’s Energy Bill calling for a 27 percent reduction in Britain’s electricity use was bundled in with others, it was not a Government amendment, and although it was not formally withdrawn, it was not therefore part of the Bill as approved by the House. Later in the debate the minister, Greg Barker, did say that he “welcomed the principle behind the proposal’, but said that this issue should remain part of his Department’s ongoing review of how our electricity demand should be reduced. I apologise profusely to my readers for my misreading of what happened, which I will return to correct and explain in more detail in next week’s column.

  7. Andy on 10/06/2013 at 2:26 pm said:

    Thomas write at Hot Topic

    Their latest climate video abusing young delegates to the UN conference and parading them – very likely without their consent – on their disgusting (and racist most likely) video is indefensible.

    “Abusing young delegates”, “racist most likely”

    Just hilarious, I can’t stop laughing at this.

    • Mike Jowsey on 10/06/2013 at 3:40 pm said:

      Abusing? Simply asking a simple question is not abuse. Although they probably deserved a good slap upside the head for their sheer stupidity.
      Parading? No, they did their own parading in front of a cameraman and interviewer, probably increasing their overpuffed sense of self-importance.
      Racist? Wow, that’s just plain kneejerk BS. Did someone say the N word? Did the interviewer neglect some racial minority?
      Thomas has gone off the rails. The point CFACT make is that these climate change alarmists have no clue what empirical data looks, smells or sounds like. They are too ensconced in the heady, rosy-cheeked politics and activism of it all to let facts get in the way.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 11/06/2013 at 6:49 pm said:

      Thomas and Rob Painting at HT re Euro floods, Painting “it will get much worse” or something like that. Meanwhile at HS:

      ‘New paper finds warming decreases floods’

      A new paper published in Climate of the Past finds floods are more common during periods of cooling and less frequent during periods of warming, the opposite of the claims of climate alarmists. The paper shows that flooding was more common during the Little Ice Age than during the 20th century or the Medieval Warming Period. The paper adds to many other peer-reviewed publications finding that global warming leads to fewer floods. The authors also find flood frequency is “under orbital and possibly solar control.”

      ‘Orbital changes, variation in solar activity and increased anthropogenic activities: controls on the Holocene flood frequency in the Lake Ledro area, Northern Italy’

      B. Vannière1, M. Magny1, S. Joannin1,2, A. Simonneau3, S. B. Wirth4, Y. Hamann4, E. Chapron3, A. Gilli4, M. Desmet5, and F. S. Anselmetti6

      1CNRS, UMR6249, Chrono-Environnement, Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon, France
      2LGL TPE, Université Lyon 1, Villeurbanne, France
      3ISTO, UMR 7327, CNRS, University of Orléans, BRGM, France
      4Geological Institute, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
      5GéHCO, UFR ST, Université Francois Rabelais, Tours, France
      6Institute of Geological Sciences and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Switzerland

      http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/new-paper-finds-warming-decreases-floods.html

    • Andy on 11/06/2013 at 8:07 pm said:

      Yes the responses of the climate crazies at HT are interesting, They even have Dave Frame grovelling to them. Quite unseeming really

    • Richard C (NZ) on 12/06/2013 at 2:54 pm said:

      Actual Painting quote – “it’s likely to get much, much worse and sooner than many people think”

      http://hot-topic.co.nz/nzccc-2013-david-frame-on-climate-sensitivity/#comment-38021

      Also,

      “We have increased our fossil fuel emissions dramatically and this is trapping much more heat in the surface layers of the ocean”

      Fact-check, Pacific 3-Month vertical mean temperature anomaly, 0 – 100 meters (Jan-Mar):

      http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/basin_avt_data.html

      1990.125 0.151
      1991.125 0.234
      1992.125 0.313

      2001.125 0.084
      2002.125 0.196
      2003.125 0.171

      2011.125 0.010
      2012.125 0.080
      2013.125 0.164

      Apparently, the “much more” heat that fossil fuel emissions are “trapping” “dramatically” “in the surface layers of the ocean”, doesn’t have a temperature in the top 100m of the Pacific.

      Similar fact-check at WUWT by Bob Tisdale:

      ‘A Couple of Comments about the Oppenheimer and Trenberth Op-Ed in the Washington Post’

      “Oppenheimer and Trenberth made claims of “conclusive evidence” about Hurricane Sandy that are not supported by data and by the NCEP/DOE Reanalysis-2.”

      http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/09/a-couple-of-comments-about-the-oppenheimer-and-trenberth-op-ed-in-the-washington-post/

  8. Richard C (NZ) on 12/06/2013 at 5:57 pm said:

    Some gems in the Justin Gillis NYT article ‘What to Make of a Climate-Change Plateau’:

    “The slowdown is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists”

    “…a climate system still dominated by natural variability…”

    “…the practitioners of climate science would like to understand exactly what is going on. They admit that they do not…”

    “Now, here is a crucial piece of background: It turns out we had an earlier plateau in global warming, from roughly the 1950s to the 1970s, and scientists do not fully understand that one either”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/science/earth/what-to-make-of-a-climate-change-plateau.html?_r=1&

    More ballyhoo:

    “In fact, scientists can calculate how much extra heat should be accumulating from the human-caused increases in greenhouse gases, and the energies involved are staggering. By a conservative estimate, current concentrations are trapping an extra amount of energy equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima bombs exploding across the face of the earth every day.

    So the real question is where all that heat is going,….”

    “…if not to warm the surface…..a prime suspect is the deep ocean”

    “Exactly why the ocean would have started to draw down extra heat in recent years is a mystery…”

    # # #

    Lots of mystery, not much understood. Maybe scientists can “in fact” “calculate how much extra heat should be [note - SHOULD BE, not IS] accumulating from the human-caused increases in greenhouse gases” – but that doesn’t mean the calculation is valid.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 12/06/2013 at 6:35 pm said:

      >”In fact, scientists can calculate how much extra heat should be accumulating from the human-caused increases in greenhouse gases”

      As the AGW story goes, aGHGs “trap” OLR in the troposphere creating a TOA “imbalance”. Observations therefore, should clearly indicate the anthropogenic “fingerprint” as a result of “human-caused increases in greenhouse gases” in the following TOA OLR graph:

      Average outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) at the top of the atmosphere between 180oW and 179oE (0oE and 359.5oE) and 90oN and 90oS since June 1974 according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

      http://climate4you.com/images/OLR%20Global%20NOAA.gif

      Anyone see any likeness of OLR observations to “human-caused increases in greenhouse gases”?

    • Richard C (NZ) on 15/06/2013 at 4:05 pm said:

      Along with:

      “The slowdown is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists” – Justin Gillis, NYT.

      We have,

      “The recent slowdown in temperature rise has left climatologists a bit puzzled” – Brad Plumer, Washington Post (blog).

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/14/global-warming-appears-to-have-slowed-lately-thats-no-reason-to-celebrate/

      Either way it’s said, it begs the question – why?

Leave a Reply to Simon Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Post Navigation