On 26/03/13 05:40, Mike Tomlinson wrote:

There's another couple of threads currently running about climate
change, but they've strayed somewhat off topic.

Spotted this in the Grauniad yesterday:

"Scientists link frozen spring to dramatic Arctic sea ice loss

Climate scientists have linked the massive snowstorms and bitter spring
weather now being experienced across Britain and large parts of Europe
and North America to the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice"


If you look at the graphs, you will see that there is no dramatic ice
loss. In fact its pretty average for the time of year.l

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...spring-arctic-
sea-ice-loss

Thoughts:

1) I know, it's the Grauniad


that is all you need to think.

2) these are scientists, not greenies dressed up as scientists


no: there is a cadre of tame scientists whose livelihood depends on
defending the AGW theory who are essentially able to carefully present
a distorted picture of events without actually lying.

They are the equivalent of 'experts for hire' that pop up in ever US
courtroom drama. Who are paid to say that 'in their professional
opinion' the prosecution have seventeen copper plates legs to stand on.


3) I have no particular leanings either way on the climate change
argument. Some people say the amount of sea ice has hardly changed,
some say it's massively reduced. I don't know who to believe.


look at the graphs yourself

http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference.../sea-ice-page/

sea ice is above what it was this time last year extent wise.

OK the greentards will then weae3l that and tell you 'its how thick it
is that counts' well they would say that wouldn't they, but the arctic
is colder this year than last, and the summer melt will be interesting
to watch.

I think that you need to understand the metaphysics of the AGW camp
versus the skeptic camp. I will try and elucidate them both without
being too partisan.

The AGW camp accept that the 'science is settled' and there is
absolutely no doubt whatsoever that rising temperatures are a long term
multi-decadal feature of the global climate, and that any apparent
exceptions to this fact are understood to be exceptions that prove the
rule, and there are (and they will search high and low for them)
plausible reasons why at any particular point in time the actual data
are not refuting their core belief system. That CO2 causes massive
global warming. Overall. With pockets of global cooling due to special
reasons that are too difficult for you to understand.

However why does the Guardian feel the need to keep banging the same drum?

Because the skeptics say that theories that cant predict climate
accurately are, even if broadly accurate, no bloody use politically.

The fact that overall the consensus among people who actually measure
these things is that global warming stopped in 1998, and hasn't
happened since. It hasnt got colder (yet), but its not got much warnmer
either. That gets spun as '6 of the hottest summers were in the last ten
years' which sounds impressive but when examined carefully says 'global
warming happened, we are at the peak,' but not that 'global warming is
still happening'

And this is where the skeptics smell a rat. The data isn't enough. its
being SPUN by the likes of the guardian. Which leads to the inevitable
question

"Why do you need to spin, if te data supports the thesis so well?"

And of course the answer is that it doesn't support it at all well.

ten years ago the absolute lowest temperatures predicted by the IPCC
given **** loads of cO2 reduction are still above the current
temperature by a large margin..and CO2 rise has been completely unaffected.

Now the AGW-ists didn't question their primary metaphysical assumption
which is in simple terms 'temperatures rose, we eliminated all the
knowns and there was a huge unknown left, we plugged in CO2, and it
wasn't enough so we MULTIPLIED it by an arbitrary number, (with zero
justification) and the curves fitted, especially after the data had been
bent a little (climategate) so thtas that, the science is setled'

If they now don't fit, its down to 'some other unknown' or they adjust
the multiplier to make it fit and claim that whilst its not quite so
scary was it was, yes its still really happening.

Now I am going to be partisan here and make the point that disturbs me
the most about all of this, because it is deeply philosophically and
logically abhorrent, and amounts to double think.

Namely that he AGW model as it stands depends on two things that are in
a sense mutually opposed, a known unkown - the CO2 and an unknown
unknown - the multiplier needed to make CO2 rises with the 1970-1998
rises in global temperature. And I ask myself 'why did you pick a
multiplier of a known unknown, rather than an independent variable in
its own right?

I,e the current equation at the root of AGW is, after removing all the
known knowns like solar variability if radiation boils down to

dT=dC*lambda where dT is temp change dC is CO2 change, and lambda
represents positive feedback in the ecosystem.

BUT the equation could easily be

dT=dC + Uv

That is temperature change is change in CO2 plus change in something we
don't know about yet...and there is really no scientific reason to
prefer one over the other,. when you drill down to the exact nature of
what the so call science is.

so why pick that one?

In kind mood, I would perhaps say that the original scientist were in
love with their ideas, and couldn't let go of the idea that their CO2
model was not just responsible for a little warming, but ALL of it, and
the first form is based on that assumption.

In more cynical and partisan mode, I would point out that the latter
form has deep political and commercial implications. It makes CO2 almost
irrelevant in climate change, it means humans are not responsible for
it, lambda is - whatever it is - and there is no point in spending a
single tax dollar on ameliorating CO2 when the problem is, in act,
something else entirely.

If that second form became accepted 'settled science':

- tens of thousands of scientists who have pinned their careers to CO2
investigation, and green energy would essentially be shorn of grants.
..
- billions of pounds spent on renewable technology and other CO2
amelioration measures would be seen to have been utterly wasted.

- ...and you can envisage the rest.

Who after all is going to listen the the great and the good and the BBC
luvvies ever again, if they have to turn round and say 'well we got that
one totally wrong, didn't we? And bet the nations economy on something
that not only didn't work, but even if it had, wouldn't have made a
ha'poth of difference to the climate anyway'.

That is why there is so much spin and so much obfuscation going on.
Because the implications of the AGW theory being more or less refuted,
would change the political commercial and social landscape of the
western world completely, and that could be very very dangerous for
those who are deeply enmeshed in 'being green'

Under that pressure, you will never get a truthful answer out of the AGW
camp. They have benefited immensely from a climate of fear, and they
wont let go of that easily.

In the middle are us - more or less educated people who are more or less
intelligent or stupid who see a lot of vicious argument name calling and
smearing going on and don't know what to believe.

What we do know is that those warm winters we had in the 80s and 90s are
gone. That we are paying a lot of money for whirligigs that even when
the wind blows steadily, don't do much. We know already that the
political class is corrupt and tells porkies. We know that many who
'deeply believe' in AGW are also making obscene amounts of money out of it,

And if we vistit the better skeptic sites - like wattsupwitthat - there
are a lot of intelligent well written posts by people who appear to be
scientifically respectable saying that AGW is at best wildly overstated
and at worst total utter bunk.

whereas te sites where the 'on message' AGW texts are promoted consist
in little more than smears, straw men refutations and ad hominen attacks
on anyone who disagrees with them. 'denier' was invented by the
skeptics, but by the AGW camp. Why?

I know who I want to be right. And it isn't the al gore fanboys.


But then, I am a bit of a scientists. And I don't have any grants to
lose. Or invcstment in renewable energy companies.






--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.